"How Do I Convince My Older Wife to Want Sex Again?"

All right, we have a new Dear DSO entry on the website, and you could submit a story or question at deardso.com. Fill out the form, and if your submission is a good one, I will create a video out of it for the whole world to see, or for podcast listeners to listen to on the Dad Starting Over podcast, available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you may listen to your podcast. And if you could do me a big favor, click down below— if you're watching this on YouTube, I should say— click down below and click on subscribe, click on like, leave leave a comment. It will help me a great deal. If you're new to the Dear DSO thing, I do that little spiel every video. I need to mix it up. I'm officially starting to annoy myself. But, uh, this one, today's submission comes from Ramius. That's a name. Ramius. Uh, the subject line is How to Get Her to See Your Videos. He says, my wife is not on Facebook, but she watches YouTube a lot and sometimes Instagram. We've been married for 47 years, and about 4 to 5 years ago, uh, began to get ED. So he's talking about himself. He began to get what's known as erectile dysfunction. The old Johnson's not working like it used to. And after you've been married for 47 years, Not unusual. I've been researching and got T levels up. He means testosterone. So he's an older gentleman. He's got his testosterone up. Interesting. He says, I have pills, shots, losing my belly fat. I'm exercising, more sleep, but she is not interested. Thinks that ship has sailed. So she thinks that that ship has sailed. She's closing up shop and sexuality. Um, she's too old with, uh, too old with emotional connections to leave. I don't know if you're saying she or is that you. You just say too old with emotional connections to leave. You guys are connected, you're a couple, you've been together for 47 freaking years. I am in my 70s. Oh, there we go. And I want the emotional connection. Okay, it's not just physical, he says. Uh, she lost weight and she looks great. She goes to bed at 8 and she is not interested. I entertain myself. I think I know what that means. He says, how do I get her to see your videos without thinking that I sent them? Well, Mr. Ramius, I'm curious what of my videos specifically would take your— would help reverse your situation? Because your situation is this, let's just lay it out there. I assume she's also around the same age, 70s. So, two people in their 70s, two senior citizens at the twilight of their life. Is that the right thing to say here? Near the end. You're closing in on the average lifespan for a dude, and she's closing in on the average lifespan for a gal. You're in your waning years, and most people listening to your story, my friend, Mr. Ramius, would just You know, get wide-eyed and go, "Dude, um, this is nothing unheard of. You guys have been together for almost 50 years. You're in your 70s. Yes, she has closed up shop sexually. This is not unusual. Her body and brain are telling her it's over, sweetheart. Just go lay down." And that's what she's doing. It's 8 o'clock at night. It's time to go to bed. Is there an alternative to that life plan? Possibly it could be argued that we could send her to a doctor and say, go on all kinds of things, hormonal this and that, and stimulants, and all kinds of supplements, and have her working out and everything else. But she's an elderly woman. She may not be able to do some of those things. She sounds like she doesn't want to, and you have no right to force her to do so. And I have not put out any videos that would tell women, you better do this. I have had videos where we talk about, and this is something that is not mentioned often, I guess, in mainstream relationship talk. It's something we don't want to face, and that is aging in general. It's a scary thing for most men and women to talk about. We're all going to die. We're all going to grow old and die. We just want to enjoy life all we can. We don't want to look at the end where these kind of things come up. And by these kind of things, from a male perspective, there is a good chance, not always, but I hear from these guys all the time. And the situation is, I am a, for example, Ramius, 70-some-year-old man. I started noticing a downturn in my physical response, if you know what I mean. And he took very proactive measures to fix that and fix a bunch of other stuff to the point where he actually feels like a million bucks, and he probably feels like a man who's in his early 50s, late 40s, whatever. And he's looking over at his wife going, "Why don't you join me?" And she says, "No." That little scenario is becoming more and more common thanks to the popularity of things like hormonal replacement therapy, supplementation, people going to the gym, cosmetic surgery, all kinds of things. All of these things are in an effort to basically reverse the hands of time, or at least slow down time. Not everybody subscribes to these plans and routines and supplements and things. Some people just grow old gracefully, as they say, which is another way of saying I'm just— whatever Mother Nature tells me, it's cool with me as far as the aging is concerned. That's Team A. Well, Team B is over here saying, no, I'm going to fight it with everything I got. If there's a pill I can take, I want to pop it. If there's a shot I got to— medicine I got to shoot, shoot it in me. Whatever it is, give it to me. And I want to be as vibrant and virile, energetic, as long as humanly possible. Team A, Team B, they ain't on the same team, man. And you can try to shame her into being, you know, Team B, whichever one I said there, on your team. But that's no way to look at this. You need to empathize with her situation. She does not want to do that, sir. She's in grandma mode. Hell, she's probably in great-grandma mode. And you're not in great-grandpa mode. You're still in virile, acting like a hungry wolf on the prowl mode. You're two different chapters. Let her do her thing. You do your thing. And if you're saying, yes, but that means no sex with my wife, I'm sorry, such is life. There are ways of working your way around this that some couples have come to certain arrangements. This is not often mentioned, but it's probably more common than what you think, and I've mentioned this in some videos. Maybe this is what you're referring to, where people have arrangements where they say, "Husband, I see there's a disparity between our libidos here. I see that you still got it going on, and I'm in great-grandma mode. I tell you what, do your thing. I don't want to hear about it. I know what's going on. Cool. Just let me know when you're going to be home." Let me know that everything's okay. Go out and do your thing on Friday night with your little girlfriend, the secretary from work, or whatever it is that's going on. I don't want to hear about it. That's probably— it's not common to the point where we can say the majority of people, no, no, it's still probably the minority of people, but it's more common than probably what you think. And so that's one avenue to explore. I'm not necessarily condoning it. I'm not saying that's a good idea. You could break your woman's heart if you go to her with that. But that's an avenue that some people explore. Another avenue is sex workers. They exist for a reason. There's all kinds of implications for doing so. Some people say those people are— those women— there's men and women sex workers, but mostly women— those women are victims of their circumstance. Well, some women in that work who I know say, "No, I'm not a victim. I know damn well what I'm doing. There's no shame behind it. I make a good living." I'm fillin' a— there's a need for my services, so they do that, right? There's that you can go to. Sex workers come in all shapes and sizes. A strip club, a stripper could be seen as a sex worker. A massage parlor person, all the way to a prostitute. There's that option. Illegal in a lot of parts of the world. And then there's the option of, "See you later, wife, we're divorcing, I'm gonna go elsewhere." You're a 70-some-year-old man. The women are not going to be jumping all over you, dude. This is something that is also not said by a lot of people in my world because it's not very nice towards men, but men tend to, um, overemphasize our value in what we call the sexual marketplace, if you want to call it that. We tend to hyperinflate our value. Men tend to, you know, we have these 60-some, 70-some-year-old men that are hyped up on testosterone and Viagra and everything else, and they feel like a million bucks, and they think that they're just gonna go out and bang some 20-some-year-old. Probably not, dude. Unless you go to said sex worker, or unless you're a trillionaire. But that's probably not you, Mr. Ramius. None of this is fair. None of this is nice. None of this is comforting to you. A guy who's got a raging libido. But such is life. My thought is, it sounds like your wife is a great woman. You have a great emotional connection. You love her to death. Be empathetic to her plight, I guess you could say, which is not necessarily like— she's not like she's critically ill. It's not like she has been in a horrible accident. She's just a 70-some-year-old woman who's like, I'm tired, and no, I don't have a libido. I'm way past menopause and everything else. Sorry, dude. Appreciate her for what she is, in the positive, what she is, and figure out a way in which to get your very real— and there's no shame behind your need as a man, let me just put that out there. There's a lot of puritanical thought when it comes to a lot of this stuff, like, oh, you must be some kind of monster to have that need, or whatever. No, he's a human. Yeah, some of that is maybe brought about by your pharmaceutical endeavors or whatever, but you still have that need, that strong desire if you want to use a more apt term, and it's normal and it's healthy. You're probably a pretty healthy dude. Good for you. We got to figure out a way to scratch that itch in a way that doesn't hurt wife, in a way that allows you two to continue on as a couple. And I don't know what the heck that may be, but you need to find it, or you need to resign yourself to doing what you're doing now, which sounds like it ain't cutting it, and you're probably going to go crazy. So you got to figure out something. All right, dude. And I don't know what that something is. It's not for me to say. That's for you and the wife to say together. All right, brother, thank you for reaching out. I appreciate it. Guys, thank you for watching, and we will catch you on the next one.