In this Dad Starting Over podcast episode, host Ralph Brewer reads a listener’s (Elvis) story about a sex‑less marriage to a 49‑year‑old wife who delayed sexual intimacy until after their church wedding. Elvis, a 36‑year‑old man, describes how the marriage has been devoid of foreplay, sex, and emotional connection for over two years, attributing his wife’s avoidance to an avoidant attachment style, a lack of healthy relationship models, and possible perimenopausal changes. Brewer offers blunt, direct advice: the relationship is fundamentally mismatched and should be ended; he urges Elvis to cut ties, seek self‑respect, and consider partners closer to his age. Throughout the monologue, Brewer critiques the common religious belief that postponing sex until marriage will automatically create a passionate, fulfilling sexual relationship, labeling this expectation as unrealistic. He also promotes his “Help for Men Brotherhood,” a paid community offering private forums, live Zoom meetings, coaching, courses, and in‑person gatherings for men dealing with dead bedrooms, divorce, loneliness, and life rebuilding. Listeners are encouraged to submit their own stories via deardso.com, subscribe, like, and share the podcast, and to join the Brotherhood at help4men.com/join.
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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. Sometimes these Dear DSO submissions that I get, the answer is so obvious that you wonder How come they don't see it? Usually a lot lurking under the surface that we don't see, a lot more under the hood, so to speak. Like today's Dear DSO submission, for example. And if you would like to submit your story, you can do so at deardso.com. That's deardso.com. Fill out the form, and if your submission's a good one, I will create a video out of it for the whole world to see, or for the podcast listeners to listen to on the Dad Starting Over podcast, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you may listen to your podcasts. And do me a favor, YouTube watchers, if you could click down below and click on subscribe, leave a comment, like, share, all that good stuff, that helps me out a great deal. Thank you so very much. Now on to today's submission, and this one comes from Elvis. He's back, folks. Uh, the subject line is Read a Book, Read a Woman. I'm not sure what that means. He says, dear DSO, DSO... such a short abbreviation with a powerful message. Well, thank you. A bit dramatic, but thank you. He says, I just read Dead Bedroom Fix and I just woke up from a miserable mental nap. I met my current wife 4 years ago and we hit it off. We were in our local church and dating each other. It was going fast, but well, I buckled one day and I asked her to marry me. Buckled is not a good way to put it. In the midst of several obvious red flags that I will address soon, I had a previous relationship with children from another woman and needless to— Oh, you didn't have the relationship with the children. You had a relationship with children. Okay. I was thrown off there. Sorry. I thought, what the hell is this? I had a previous relationship with children from another woman and needless to say, it did not work. "My current wife had no children and very little healthy dating experience and even less healthy examples growing up with her parents, who in the book was literally hit on the head when you described the quiet, meek little man who married the loud, bossy, boisterous woman, and they procreate, and he goes into his proverbial corner and she goes to hers. He buried himself in work." and his shop hobbies. He was very practical, etc. You already know where I'm going with this. Fast forward to our relationship. From the beginning, it was hot and heavy often, but we never had sex right away and zero foreplay and so on. So it was hot and heavy but no sex, zero foreplay. How exactly was it hot and heavy? You say nope. I don't know, I'm confused already. He says she seemed very uncomfortable talking about it in general. It being sex, which is weird to me because I talk about anything in that realm freely with past partners. I love exploring sexual conversations and flirting. Anyhow, she suggested that we wait to have sex until we were married to, quote, set a good example for the church. I was a pretty heavy people pleaser and I agreed to wait. Oh, and by the way, I'm 36 years of age and she is 49. The wedding came, and no pun intended, I did not. Uh, we did nothing that night and at all that whole honeymoon. She seemed stressed and moody and disinterested in our romantic connection completely. I remember just being another fixture in our hotel room, a horny one to boot, but she had me at arm's length. Fast forward and we are 2.5 years in and I don't even know what her privates look like. Still never felt, touched, and vice versa. She ranges from not interested to wanting me to get a vasectomy so that she won't get pregnant, to I can't even focus on being sexual if I'm stressed. I had enough and I read your book. He means The Dad Bedroom Fix. And based on how I describe her upbringing, yep, she is a high stage avoider. So much so on the regular that she tells me that she hardly saw her dad growing up because of work, food, back to study, rinse and repeat. Her father still to this day won't tell her that he loves her. When she says it to him, he grunts or he says, thanks, k, bye. Anyway, I heard what you had to say about that type of individual and myself personally. I'm a horny dude. I want affection and sex, but I don't think that putting your playbook towards her is time well spent. Hearing that there are guys out there that waste 20+ years on these situations, I'm pissed about my 2+ years. I'd rather take my loss and gain self-respect from the principles, from the principles that I learned from reading, uh, your book. Am I wrong for choosing this path? Um, again, this is one of those, well, duh things. Sorry, I don't mean to, uh, insult you, but you know, there's got to be more here, dude, because this is so obvious to everyone, myself included, that is listening or watching this on YouTube. Um, you are just fundamentally sexually mismatched with this woman, and that was apparent quite literally from day one. There's this erroneous line of thinking, especially— and I don't mean to pick on you folks— but especially amongst your really religious conservative types, of which it sounds like you guys are. But there is this thought that, hey, we can't do it now thanks to our religious moral framework, you know, of our social circle, of our social group says don't do it pre-marriage. That's pretty common. And then holy shit, we discover after marriage we're not sexually compatible. That's a big gamble. There's this thought that amongst that group that, hey, once we say I do, suddenly it will become this passion-filled, sexy adventure between the two of you because you are in the eyes of your God or your maker able to do so sin-free, I guess. So that will absolve you of all this guilt, and suddenly you'll be head over heels in lust with each other. And from what I've seen, that's kind of a rare thing. More often than not, one of the two partners, usually the man in these cases, says, "Wow, I was kind of hoping for this sexy, you know, life that I always hear about between a man and woman, and this woman has all the sexuality of a toaster oven." You gotta kind of test drive before you buy. That sounds really cold and crass, but that goes with everything when it comes to a relationship. You guys are together for an extended period of time. I always suggest 3 years, and you get to see people in all facets of life, how they, you know, work through stress and how they deal with good times and bad. And yes, the sex thing, the physical love thing. Are you guys matched in that way. That is not a given for everybody. There are plenty of people in the world who have gotten with people and said, this person's really a great person inside and out. And then they try to do the physical thing and they're like, I don't know what's happening here, but this is horrible. One avenue we can go down that's really common with these situations is to demonize her as the avoidant one, as being this really broken individual, this really asexual broken individual who just, is not in touch with her emotions, other sexuality and everything else. Oh my God, run for the hills, dude. Yes, run for the hills. You two don't need to be together. I'm sorry, this is ridiculous. She's not gonna get help with this. You know she's not gonna get help with this. And even so, do you have years and years of therapy and patience to withstand all this therapy that she will need to go through to overcome this? Obviously not. You're 2 years into this sexless relationship, which is supposed to be the most sexy part of the relationship, the honeymoon phase, literally. And you're seeing nothing, it's time to just cut and run and say, "This was a big mistake, sweetheart. I'm sorry I did this and sorry, you know, we went through all of this, but obviously this is really broken." The age thing is a big factor in this. If she's not perimenopausal, well, she most likely is at 49 years of age perimenopausal. And when full-blown menopause comes in, that is not going to help with the libido department. I, you know, I say libido department, she doesn't have a libido apparently. At least not within the confines of your relationship with you. Nothing is going to get better, dude. It'll only get worse. So yes, shake hands with this woman and say, experiment over, sorry, I don't know what got into me. And go and get help with your issues too, because again, this is so obvious to everyone on the planet. I'm not quite sure why a book about how to improve your sex life was the thing that, uh, flip the switch to allow— that finally allows you to see, wow, this is really dysfunctional and broken. This should have been really obvious to you up front, but apparently you didn't have the tools in your mental toolbox to see that. You need to work on those tools, or else you're going to do something like this or something similar all over again, mister. And you're only 36 years of age. Maybe start looking at people around your age or younger. They'll be a better match for you libido-wise, at least a higher chance of it. But that is obviously very important to you, and I know that may sound cold and calculated to go after a certain age range and so forth, but trying to improve the chances of you, Mr. Elvis, finding your Priscilla. See what I did there? So yeah, you know what to do. You don't need to hear me say it. Everyone else in the comments, what do you think? I have a feeling I know what everyone will think. Yeah, dude, run. What are you thinking, dude? You got a problem, dude. She's got problems, dude. You two together don't make anything right. You know, it's just problems compounded with problems. So thank you for writing in. I do appreciate it. And may I suggest, my friend, getting help from other dudes. Why don't you check out the brotherhood at help4men.com or jump right to the join page at help4men.com/join. We have a private community, a support community for men only. We all help each other out. I just, right before recording this, got out of a Live Zoom meeting, one of 3 that I conduct most weeks, and then our coaches conduct their own. So we anywhere from like 6 to 8 meetings every single week, uh, private discussion forums, my books, we get together in person, coaching courses, all kinds of good stuff. So check it out, the Brotherhood, at help4men.com. Thank you, Mr. Elvis, for writing in. I do appreciate it. And guys, thank you for watching, and we'll catch you on the next one.
