“It’s Not Fair — I Did Everything Right!”

For a lot of men that I speak to, the thought that they don't have ultimate control over their life and over their particular situation fills them with a great deal of anxiety. For a guy to face the reality of, wait a minute, bad things can happen to good people? There's literally nothing I can do about this? I did everything right and I still got the shaft? This is really, really hard for some guys to come to terms with. For some guys, it sends them into a spiral of depression. Like the gentleman, we'll call him John, reached out to me here recently on Facebook. And you can follow me on Facebook on Dad Starting Over, Help for Men, as well as YouTube under the same names. Just look for the bald head. But I'm going to skip some of what he says here at the beginning and start at the good part here where he says, you mentioned in the past that nice guy characteristics, quote, don't work. Well, when I was single 11 years ago, they worked pretty damn well. What he's talking about with the, quote, nice guy thing, let's just get this out of the way. There's nothing wrong with being a nice, kind, good human being. Nice guy, as we say in our world of relationship talk, is kind of a slang term that's been popularized by a book called No More Mr. Nice Guy by my friend Dr. Robert Glover. Check it out. It's probably one of, if not the best book on the subject for men. And the subject is codependency. That's what nice guy is. It's a slang term for codependency in men. You know, the people pleaser guy, the guy with zero boundaries, the guy that tries to bend reality to fill his needs, but does so in a very passive-aggressive way. And guys, this applies to many of you out there. So check out the book, "No More Mr. Nice Guy." But I digress. He says, he says, "I am still independent domesticated. I'm the same weight I was then." I guess he means 11 years ago. "I dress the same. I have the same beard, et cetera." I hear this all the time from guys. I haven't let myself go or slacked off in my effort. I don't do anything differently as far as I know. So what gives? She was attracted to me before. He means the wife. But you tell me that she isn't now. We used to have sex every night, but in the last year, I'm very lucky if it's once a month. Parentheses: during ovulation. My wife has unmedicated ADHD and she is in perimenopause. Hello? She has zero drive to do anything about it either, and she's 100% against hormone replacement therapy. She says she enjoys sex, but it's always something. It's her upset stomach, she's too tired, et cetera. Our teenage son from my previous marriage is gone at least 50% of the time. He's usually working or he's at school. So I just don't understand what I'm doing wrong. Wrong. Let's listen to that last sentence again. I just don't understand what I'm doing wrong. So this guy is doing what a lot of guys that reach out to me do, which is taking kind of ultimate responsibility for everything in this relationship. Dude, are you also responsible for her ADHD? Are you responsible for her very natural, normal shift in her hormonal makeup, AKA perimenopause, which is the time sometimes like up to a year— or excuse me, up to a decade of you know, 10 years of time before the old menopause. A lot of women and men don't realize this happens late 30s, early 40s, up till their early 50s when they go into full-blown menopause. So this is a time when we see a lot of behavioral changes, outlook on life changes. Sometimes some real midlife crisis situations come about in this time in a woman's life. But what this guy is doing is what so many men I talk to do, and it's very, very frustrating, which is they see it, they name the issue, which is all on her, by the way, not her fault in any way, shape, or form. It could be argued it's her fault of how she's approaching a solution to this, which is just throwing her hands up, it sounds like, and saying, "Hey dude, life changed. What do you want me to do about it?" She's refusing the hormonal treatment, and it sounds like she's refusing the treatment for her ADHD and so forth. So this all illustrates a fundamental, I guess you could say, misunderstanding or denial that a lot of men have about said situations. And this isn't limited to just the romantic world. I see guys who talk about, you know, I was with a company for 20+ years. He'll say something like, I ran their IT division for so many years, and then some fresh new faces came in the door and they decided they didn't need us old-timers anymore. And the guy is, you know, sent packing with a box of his things. And if he's so lucky, like a severance package of so many months, and he's out on the job market and he says what a lot of people say, this is not fair. I gave so many years of my life to this company and they just treat me like I'm disposable. It's a real eye-opener for a lot of people in that kind of situation where they realize like, yeah, you are disposable. You're a tool for the company to use to make more money, sell more product. And through all their spreadsheets and number crunching, they realized, yeah, I don't think we need this dude anymore. It may be more beneficial to bring in some fresh meat to try to drum up more business or do things in a more efficient way or whatever it may be. The guy was under the impression, if I just keep my nose down and do my job and do what I'm supposed to do and check all these boxes, the company will reward me with lifetime employment and retirement and everything else. And then he realizes, "Oh, I guess that's not really up to me, is it? It's up to them. And they decide whether or not I stick around as their employee." And then what a lot of guys do, and it's kind of analogous here to the romantic marriage situation, is the men will say, "You know what I should have done all those 20 years? I shouldn't have put all my eggs into this one job basket. I should have gone to night school and taken some classes to get some certifications. I should have put my resume out there and talked to other companies and at the very least got some interviews just to see You know, what everybody's looking for out there. Because the guy realizes after 20 years of service with XYZ Company, he goes out into the job market and everybody says, yeah, everything that you were doing for XYZ Company doesn't really matter anymore in the job market. We're looking for ABC instead. And the guy's like, well, shit, that's not good. I gotta start all over. I'm an older guy. It's really tough to learn new skills. I gotta basically reinvent myself and put myself back out there in the job market. Holy crap, this is a very daunting experience. I don't know what I'm gonna do here. And right now with the way the economy's going, that's a story that I'm hearing more and more, unfortunately. So back to the romantic relationship thing. A lot of men are lulled into a state of comfort, if you will. And the guys say, well, obviously this relationship's gonna keep going at this pace. I have so many years of experience to show me this is, you know, I act in this way, this is what I get in return. Like this guy says here in this message, I look a certain way and I keep myself, you know, physically fit and I do the job and I do these kind of activities as husband, as partner, and in return I get this loving wife who gives me very frequent physical intimacy. And then suddenly that changes. Suddenly she hands him the proverbial box of stuff and moseys him out the door saying, "You're no longer needed in that way, dude. Your job as lover is over." And he does what is a very natural reaction, which is, "What do you mean my job is over? What can I do to keep the job?" and he reads material like mine and other people's that show like, well, there's only so much you can do. There's only so much that you can control. Here's what you can control. What it is you do, what, you know, kind of the husband package that you're presenting to a wife. Some guys really need to hear that kind of stuff because they've really let themselves go physically. They're not connecting to the wife in an emotional level. They forgot things like date nights and doing things for your partner and listening to your partner and really, you know, flirting throughout the day and so forth. But in this guy's defense, the guy who wrote in, it sounds like that's not really his situation. He's like, dude, I've been following everything to the letter all up to this point, and now my wife has basically kind of laid me off or fired me from the job as a lover, and this is very unfair. Yeah, dude. And you know, you guys that are watching this, life is not fair. Sometimes you get kicked in the balls when you least expect it. Sometimes you do everything right and life still says, yeah, we're gonna let you go. And it sucks. It hurts. It hurts to be rejected. It hurts to be dumped, which is basically what this guy is experiencing here, is a woman who says, "Dude, I've kind of turned the chapter, turned the page on that chapter of our life. That's kind of in the past, our hypersexual, hyperconnected lover thing. We're now, we are now," the woman will unilaterally announce in these kind of situations, "we are now moving on as a couple into a more sedate, subdued, comfortable existence as kind of older couple, grandma, grandpa, whatever you want to call it. And what I hear from a lot of men is, I didn't agree to that. Let me flip the page back to the old chapter. I'm not done experiencing this yet. And I don't know if I ever will be, to be honest with you. A lot of women kind of roll their eyes at that, but there are sexual men out there late into their 60s, 70s, and beyond. I should know. I talk to them all the time. We have some in our brotherhood group. And guys, if you want to join a support community for men only, check out helpformen.com/brotherhood. Join. We have lively discussions, live Zoom meetings, courses, all my books at no additional charge, one-on-one mentoring or coaching with myself. We get together in person for conferences. Check it out, the brotherhood, helpformen.com/join. And we will hear from these guys in their 60s and 70s and beyond. And you know what they tell us? They say, young guys, be aware, it's coming. The old menopause, the old hormonal shift, the girl that you know and love, she's gonna go through changes. You gotta be ready for it. This gentleman, John here, who reached out to me, what he's exemplifying is a lot of guys are just not ready for that. At all. They're like, "Oh no, this is not fair." Well, John and others, it may not be fair in your eyes, but it is reality. She is an autonomous, independent human being who has every right to say, "You know what? I don't want to do this anymore," whatever this may be. And for her, the "this," unfortunately, John, is the old romantic relationship. Nothing in her body and brain— yes, I'm speaking for her here, I'm making a lot of assumptions here— but nothing in her body and brain is saying, reach out and connect to this man. Hang on to this dude. Nothing in her body and brain is saying, get turned on right now. That ain't even in the picture right now at all. If she's in fact perimenopausal, she may feel like shit. It may be that everything in her body and brain is saying, go lay down. It's just not in that way. And you say she's unmedicated ADHD. I don't know, maybe she went through a formal test and she got the official diagnosis and she's like, I really don't want to take any kind of stimulant or whatever it is they're giving me. I've lived with it this long. I'll just continue to live with it. That's pretty common. So you have that working against you. In other words, she's neurodivergent. And as you know, that brain wiring gets in the way of a lot of genuine connection between human beings. So you, my friend, suddenly have like this perfect storm of issues hitting all at once. But if you were to be completely honest and look back at the timeline of your relationship, you probably had issues all along with her behavior and connection and this ADHD thing probably driving you nuts in certain ways. But it was all smoothed over by what? Physical intimacy. You may have had like a bad day or two of like, "Ugh, this woman's driving me nuts. She's just not listening. She's not doing what she's supposed to. She keeps dropping the ball on this and this." And she keeps getting fired from jobs or whatever it may be. That's something I hear quite a bit from guys. But the fact that she jumped in the sack with you kind of hit the reset button on the relationship, didn't it? That's a go-to mechanism for a lot of people in dysfunctional relationships. You can have knock-down drag-out fights and just have a really toxic moment. But then you have awesome makeup sex and the guy says, "Eh, everything's fine now," but it's not. So maybe in a way you need to look at this as you kind of cleared the table of that quick fix medicine, if you will, that sexual intimacy, and now you're left seeing what's really going on here, which is two people that are really disconnected. Because it could be argued if you were very connected in a good healthy way, you would find a way through this. You would have some very big sit-down conversations of, "Wife, This is still really important to me. We just, we're really disconnected in a lot of ways and it bothers me a lot. There's nothing wrong with that. There are plenty of women out there, by the way, who can completely relate to you. I hear from them more and more now. A lot of women saying, you know, you got the male point of view of the woman's low libido and disconnected. I, my husband's been very disconnected for years now. Usually after some kind of health thing, like the guy has high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke, whatever it may be, prostate issues, and he's medicated and his, his hormones are down to nothing, or he just really hates himself physically and emotionally, and he doesn't feel sexual in any way, and he's just like, "Wife, leave me alone. Let me, you know, be miserable on my own." Those situations happen. Yours is kind of a version of that. Perimenopausal, the ADHD thing. No, she doesn't want treatment. No, she doesn't want any help. In other words, sorry, John, my job as your lover is over. And consequently, your job as my lover is over because I don't want anybody to fill that role anymore. And it sucks. And I'm sorry you're going through that, dude. So you have some really big life things to talk about with the wife. Just how important is this physical and emotional intimacy to you? It sounds like really damn important. And guess what? You're like most men. Just that most men don't admit it. Most men don't have the big sit-down talk. Most men do this little sneaky thing on the side. Whether it's adult entertainment, as I often call it, whether it's affairs, sex workers, whatever it may be, all those things exist for a reason. Ask anybody involved in the industry and they will tell you, who are our biggest customers? So to speak? Married men. Let's just put it out there. It's really, really common. But it doesn't have to be your world, dude. You can either be an adult and sit down with the wife and just say, "This is a situation. This is what I'm thinking." Put it out there once and for all. But let her know if this is in fact what you're thinking, "I don't think I can continue on in this relationship with you under these parameters. It's depressing. And I think I may want to explore a life with somebody else as a result." That sometimes is the talk It sounds very ultimatum-ish, but hey, ultimatums work. Sorry. But that may be the thing that kind of makes her go, "Oh, okay, I guess he is serious about this. Let's, maybe I do wanna explore the hormonal thing. Maybe I do wanna go with him to talk to somebody else about this. You know, have a third party in the room to talk things, to kind of referee us and talk things back and forth." Or she may say, "Yeah, you're right. See you later, dude." And that's heartbreaking, but that's life. As you can see, you can do all the right things and life still comes back to you and says, No, dude. So how do you prepare? How do you react? Do you face reality and say, "It is what it is. Let's get to work here." Or do you say, "It's unfair. It's unfair," and cross your arms and pout and live out the next so many years of your life saying, "She should be doing this, gosh darn it." That, as you can see, that gets you exactly nowhere in life. So brother, if you'd like to talk about this one-on-one further with me, you can do so. Go to helpformen.com, go to coaching in the menu, but realize that members of our brotherhood get coaching at a very steep discount. Not to mention you get the conversations with hundreds and hundreds of men from around the world, our live meetings where you get to talk in a group about this kind of stuff. You need help with this, dude. Don't go through this alone. Very common issue. Been there and done that. And so have millions and millions of other men around the world, which is why out of everything I've ever done, my best-selling product period is a book called "The Dead Bedroom Fix." It's the number one pain point for married men all over the world, lack of sexual intimacy. Guys, gals, thank you so much for watching. I do appreciate it. If you could give me a like and subscribe and all that fun stuff down below, share the video, leave a comment. All those things help me out a great deal. Guys, thank you so much. We'll catch you on the next one.