In this episode of the Dad Starting Over podcast, host Ralph Brewer responds to a Dear DSO submission from a listener identified as “G,” who is navigating a divorce after a 20‑year marriage. G describes feeling useless, isolated, and stripped of his identity after discovering his wife’s emotional affairs and the subsequent separation. Brewer frames the situation as a common, though painful, experience for many men who have devoted themselves entirely to their marriage and family, often at the expense of personal friendships, hobbies, and autonomy. He explains the “pee‑whipped” phenomenon where men become overly dependent on their partner, leading to loss of self‑identity. Brewer emphasizes the importance of maintaining independence, cultivating interests outside the marriage, and supporting a partner’s self‑improvement rather than viewing it as a threat. He advises G to seek therapy—specifically recommending BetterHelp and his own network of therapists—and to join the Help for Men Brotherhood, a community offering private forums, live Zoom meetings, coaching, and free access to Brewer’s books and courses. Throughout, Brewer balances empathy with practical steps, encouraging G to view the divorce as a potential new chapter for personal growth, while also promoting his resources and community as avenues for support.
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Okay, if you're a frequent listener of the Dad Starting Over podcast and you find yourself saying, "Yeah, that sounds like me," well, you don't need another podcast episode. What you need is support. The Help for Men Brotherhood is where men go when they're done pretending that they got it all handled. You know, your dead bedrooms, your divorce, your loneliness, your rebuilding life. We have private forums, frequent live Zoom meetings, one-on-one coaching courses, all my books at no additional charge. And yes, we get together in person. Real men and real conversations. So stop doing this alone and join the Help for Men Brotherhood today at help4men.com/join. I look forward to seeing you in the next member meeting. Hello folks, we have a new Dear DSO entry on the website and you can submit your own story or question to deardso.com. That's deardso.com. Fill out the form, and if your question or your story is a good one, I will create a video out of it for the whole world to see. Or for the podcast listeners, hello Dad Starting Over podcast listeners. On the Dad Starting Over podcast, you can listen to it at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find your podcasts. And guys, if you are watching this on YouTube, first of all, thank you so much. I appreciate it. If you could do me a solid, down below. Click on subscribe, click on like, and after you watch the video, if you would like to, please leave a comment. All of these things really help me out a great deal and help grow the channel. Thank you so very much. And today's Dear DSO comes from G. We'll call him the letter G because I don't want to say his real name here. Um, subject line is Divorce After 20 Years. I'm in the middle of a divorce after 20 years, he says. Says she's just not happy. Nothing has changed with her lifestyle but the fact that I'm not in it now. Mind you, she never had to work a day while we were married, and she still doesn't. During the marriage, I caught her talking to 5 different guys, uh, and I stayed with her because I needed to see my kids every day. Uh, granted, no sex happened between them, and I know this for a fact. But it was still cheating. Now I just feel like I failed and I am useless. I changed everything to try and keep her happy. I got no friends and just now got social media, yet she had it the entire marriage. Had it? I guess she means friends and social media. Oh, I see. She had the social media for the entire marriage and you didn't. Uh, okay. So I'm really lost getting back into society and I really miss everyday family life. No question, really, just no one to get this off my chest to. You know where I'm— guys who watch and listen to my stuff, you know where I'm going to go to with this. He has no one to talk to about this. You're not alone, my friend. A lot of men in the same boat. A lot of men, um, a lot of men in long-term marriages, sometimes even right when we start dating a gal, we just say To hell with friends. I mean, this is like a stereotype. We've seen it in movies, we've seen it with our friends and so forth, where a guy gets— what do they call it, um, pee-whipped, if you know what I mean. I'm trying to say the word here to get this demonetized or whatever. Guys get pee-whipped, meaning they get so under the spell of their new woman that they just forget their friends, they forget everything, and they become this lovestruck puppy dog thing. And, um, That becomes even more amplified for some men, not all men. For some men, once the commitment and the kids and everything else comes into the picture, it's a combination of this pee-whipped, if you will, kind of mentality, putting the woman on a pedestal, so to speak, of this is an angel that requires all of my attention and all of my energy, combined with now I'm part of a family machine that requires money and time and effort and everything else. There's a house, there's a job, there's the kids, there's this and that. All of this requires a great deal of me, and there's nothing of me left for anything else outside of this family machine. Combined with the fact that you're the sole breadwinner, now you have extra super duper pressure on you for basically covering, you got a big nut to cover every month, and that's all up to you, mister. So it's not unheard of And in fact, it's super common and it's understandable to say, to hell with friends, to hell with hobbies, to hell with interest. And you've gone as far as like, to hell with social media and keeping up with the Joneses. And I was like, I don't have time for that shit. I gotta work. I got stuff to do. And now you're on your own. Your wife, who sounds like she's got a problem, you know, you caught her in 5 different emotional affairs at least, and everything else. She's got issues. You know, it's easy just to say, eh, fuck her, she's got issues, not your problem anymore. But there's something to be learned from that, isn't there? And I've said this a million times in a million different ways. We do need to stop and examine that. Not so much why did she do what she did, but more of why, how did you attract such a woman? And why and how did you stick around with them for so long? When you saw them doing this again and again and again, why didn't you go, no, and you say, kids, gotta stay with my kids. I get it, I understand that. But it's also somewhat of a crutch. I hear the same from men in regards to religion. And boy, I'm gonna piss off a lot of people when I say this and offend a lot of people, but hear me out here. The religion thing, the kid thing, and so forth, you can see now that she has divorced you, that that all goes out the window, that crutch of the kid. And you're left with, well, buddy, now what you gonna do? She made the decision. You can't lean on the kids anymore and say, I'm sticking around for them, Only one person. It only takes one person to divorce, right? And, uh, she says, see you later. So now it puts a giant magnifying glass— or better yet, the better metaphor would be she's putting a mirror in front of your face saying, there you go, buddy, that's who you are. And you're looking at it going, I'm a lonely man who, as soon as my spouse said I want a divorce, I became Nothing. There's nothing left of me. I was a father and I was a husband. And the husband thing is questionable because husband infers like a romantic connection, sexual connection, all this other good stuff, which I bet you didn't have much of, did you? So you were a husband, you were a caregiver, you were an earner, and all these other things. And a lot of that went out the window with, I want a divorce. I want a— for, for 4 words and done. So now you can't go, but kids— doesn't matter. I want a— 4 words came out of her mouth, and that's just all done, dude. This is why it's so very important for men and women only. This isn't a gendered thing, as I often say. Um, it's important that you keep your independence, your autonomy as another human being. Not so much just in case we break up, but for your mental health. For your own well-being, you need to socialize. You need to hang out with other people, preferably men, preferably like-minded men that want to do better and get better in life. Um, you need to have interests and hobbies, things that keep you going, things outside of that world. That's what makes you a complete human being. And if you're with a partner that says you doing those extra things and hanging out with people outside of us is wrong, bad, you're terrible, they have a problem, not you. They are a wildly insecure individual. Again, men and women alike. Guys, if your gal says, I want to join an exercise class and I want to get better and I want to hire a dietitian and everything else, your initial reaction shouldn't be, oh shit, she's going to leave me, she's cheating on me, etc. It should be, I'm joining you, sweetie. Sounds like a plan. High five. I'm proud of you. Same in reverse for the women. Your spouse says, I'm going to work towards getting a better degree so I can get this promotion that's coming up at work and so forth. You don't say, oh no, you're going to leave me, you're going to make so much money, you won't want to be with me anymore. You say, good for you. I'll help, you know, I'll make sure I'm home with the kids so you can do your nighttime work and go to your classes 2, 3 days a week or whatever it is. And I'm here to help you. I want to see you do better. That's what this whole partnership thing is all about. So kind of going off on a tangent there about these things. But the point is that self-improvement, life outside of marriage, All of these things are normal. All of these things are healthy, and they should be promoted and helped along by and supported by your spouse. All of that is normal, and if you think otherwise, you are in a highly dysfunctional, unhealthy marriage. Congratulations. So dude, um, you got some work to do on yourself. Therapy would be a good thing. You know, we have a, a association with BetterHelp. Go to betterhelp.com/help4men, betterhelp.com/help4men, and you can get connected with a very real therapist in your area. You don't like them, you can just drop them and they give you a new one, a new one if you want. And you can talk to them over your phone through chat. You can, you know, do a voice chat, video, I believe, all kinds of cool stuff. Way easier than booking a time with somebody and not seeing them for 6 weeks because their schedule's full and all their stuff and trying to find somebody in your area. We've got a lot of guys that live out in the middle of nowhere. So BetterHelp is a great tool for that. But you don't necessarily have to use BetterHelp. You can go with a normal local therapist. We also have our group, the Brotherhood. Go to help4men.com, or better yet, go directly to the join page, help4men.com/join, or go to Brotherhood in the menu, the HFM Brotherhood. We have discussion forums, private, nobody can see what you're talking about outside of the forums, between men just trying to help each other out. We have live Zoom meetings, we have anywhere from 6 to 8 live Zoom meetings an hour plus each, every single week. And then we record them all. If you don't— if you don't— if you're not able to attend one, which most guys are not able to attend every meeting live, hundreds of guys listen to them, uh, in like basically like a podcast format later on. We record them all for our members, and our members get access to that. It's like, by now I think it's over 1,200 hours of meetings have been recorded. Pretty cool stuff. And, uh, we have all my books at no additional charge. We have courses, we have coaching. We get together in person, we have conferences, all kinds of good stuff. So check it out, the Brotherhood at help4men.com. But you're going to need help. You're hurting, you're lost. Um, a therapist would have a field day with this next statement I'm about to make. It's kind of like you're an abandoned little kid, aren't you? I don't know if you ever had one of these moments, you yourself, or maybe one of your kids. Um, you're in like a department store or something and you're looking at something and you turn around and mom and dad are gone. You know that feeling that blood sinks or your blood pressure goes up and you're in alert phase, you know, alert state and scared to death, and all your senses are heightened as you're looking around for mom and dad and you're scared to death? Um, that's kind of what you're at right now. You're turned around and everybody's gone and you're like, oh shit, I don't know what to do next. Um, understandable but not good. It points to some shit that you need to work on, my friend. So get to working on it. You could look at this as a woe is me, this is the end of everything, it's all downhill from here, or it sucks, I wish I wasn't going through this, but you know, this may be kind of a blessing in disguise. This, uh, maybe a good, good new chapter for me. Turn the page on the old and new, and this is actually kind of exciting. Who knows what's in store for me? I'm a smart dude, capable dude, hardworking dude. Yeah, probably some child support and other will go to her and everything else, but eh, thousands and thousands of men have done the same thing. And a lot of men flourish after leaving such relationships and after working on themselves especially. So let's see if we can do the same for you. And I am here to help you however I can. So I do wish you the best of luck. Do keep in touch. I do appreciate you reaching out. And guys who are watching this and those listening on the podcast, We'll catch you on the next one. Thank you so much.
