Join Ralph (DSO) and Lauren (The Dadvocate) LIVE!

to— says we're live to Facebook. I will refresh.

Woop woop.

And nope, nothing yet.

The suspense is killing me.

Suspense. There we go. Yes, we are on. Miss Lauren the Advocate, how you doing?

Hello, thanks for having me again, Ralph Brewer.

Well, I like your color-coordinated headphones, mic. You got the Davokit in the background. Look at you, all official now.

I know, so much has changed and evolved since our last meeting.

Let's hear it. What's up? Because this is like official for you now. This is officially your J-O-B now, right?

Yes, this is my first week being my own employer. I do not work for anybody else now.

Oh boy, oh boy. What do you think so far?

I'm, I'm enjoying every single second. I have no regrets about anything.

That's awesome. Very good.

Yeah, this is, this is the best.

And so, yeah, I just did a, uh, interview. I put it out yesterday with a, um, a guy who's a, runs several multi-million dollar businesses over in the UK, and he's also based in Singapore, UK. It's and I've been following him on Twitter forever, and I landed an interview with him. His name's Daniel Priestley, and we got to talking all about business, and I love talking business. So if you ever want to chat business and making all this work and everything else, I'm your man. And I think people would be interested to hear how is it a content creator makes a living. I know you're just starting out with this, but is it for now, is it mainly the, the social media channels paying you for posting and so forth.

Yeah, it's what's really nice too about being able to take this and make it a livable situation without having to go in and work another job. In addition to the number one biggest benefit being I now have all this extra time to spend with my family, which is invaluable, of course, as I'm sure so many of our viewers will, will understand, of course. But in addition, it's the fact that I haven't had to get this money by like begging people in any way. It's all just the trillion-dollar social media companies are the ones paying me to post. And so to everybody else, they get to enjoy my content for free, which is awesome.

That's very— that's awesome. Yeah. There is an inherent risk though. Facebook, YouTube, whoever at any point could say, we don't like you anymore.

Yes. Yep. That is a big risk.

You said that one little thingy that we're like, ooh. And even if they totally misconstrued what it is you said, we've seen this with our fellow content creators, if we call ourselves that, where they're just like, I just got totally, what do they call it, shadow banned or banned or whatever. And you're like, why? And like, I don't know. Like our buddy Rudy the other day, he got cut off, I think for a week from Facebook. And I said, what happened? He's like, I don't know. And then he figured it out. Get this. There was an old video of his where in the background— get this— in the background was a movie playing, and the whatevers, the magical whatever Facebook thing, picked up on the copyrighted audio that he was playing for the world to see, and they said, that's, that's a no-no, Rudy, you can't be doing that. And he's like, no, no, it was in the background. It didn't matter. He was broadcasting a copyrighted piece of material. So we gotta be careful. So that's not even, that's not a nefarious thing. It's just a oopsie thing. But then sometimes it's, you said something, somebody took offense. We've, they've, you've been accused of bullying or something. I've heard all those things. So gotta be careful.

I've been good lately. I've been good lately, but I did have a scare. This was several months ago, but I did get banned on TikTok actually.

It was very scary.

Yeah, it was a very scary, like, 12-minute permanent ban. But yeah, it was after I made fun of Andrew Tate.

Um, so some— so one of his fans accused you of something and got you taken down temporarily? Is that it?

It was really insane timing. Um, I, I made this video where my husband is a really good impressionist, and so we thought it would be funny if I did like a fake interview with Andrew Tate, and it was so— it was so hyperbolic. Like, at one point, um, Andrew has to get off the call immediately because his women escaped to their prison and had grabbed the machetes, and he had to like get everything under control. And it was like, obviously you should be able to tell by the end that it was satirical, but this was— I had recorded this like the week that he got arrested, like right before everything went down. And so I think that in all the misinformation getting out there, they thought that this was a real phone call. And so I think that they were like, we got to shut it down, she's in cahoots with all this violence. But then like once I explained the situation, they restored my account immediately. But they— I signed in and it was like, you're permanently banned if you want to appeal. And I was like, oh no, I was joking. Yeah.

And there is something though that if something goes wrong, good luck trying to get ahold of a human being, like at Facebook, for example, or something.

It's— I got so lucky.

Oh, you did? So you got right away to a real human? Because, you know, I've had issues with— I got in a— I had two— I have two personal accounts. Thankfully, thank goodness I did that because one got hacked. And that account, that personal account was attached to my business advertising account. And they quickly turned the password so I couldn't log in. Got into my advertising account, racked up like $19,000 of advertising or something like that, and I got charged for a chunk of that on my credit card. And it was like, holy crap. So I went to Facebook, I'm like, uh, called my credit card processor, please shut down the card, this is what's going on. Okay, we'll put a hold. Credit card gave me my money back right away, thank goodness. And then, um, So trying to get ahold of somebody on Facebook though to explain it, and then you explain it once, twice, 3 times, and you're like, oh my God, this is so painful. And then finally somebody gets it and they just shut down my advertising account. I'm like, cool, but if I want to advertise in the future, that was a whole other mess. You got to prove who you are, that you're not the, oh gosh, it was a nightmare. But just getting past that robot threshold, whatever, you know, the little automated crap, and then get to a real human, that was a pain in the butt. And from what I understand, that's like most people's, experiences, try to get a hold of somebody at YouTube, Google, Facebook. But yours was TikTok, right? So you were able to get a human at TikTok. So maybe they're not so bad.

Yeah, I would say probably most of the videos that I have reported on TikTok get appealed. The vast majority, I would say. But I'm pretty lucky. But I've also had my periods where they're like, you know what? No, we, we hate this video and we would like you to not post for a day. That's happened like maybe 2 times. Huh?

Well, fun, fun. Well then, as you're, as you're now, I've, I've deemed myself your business advisor. As your new business advisor, I would say you also want to have, if you're not already, some type of ancillary product or service outside of the social media channels that you can point people to. Like for example, I have books and the membership and the courses and everything else. Are you starting to get more into that?

It's, it's interesting. I've considered it and I so appreciate what you are doing too, because it's so necessary for men to have places that they can go be men, talk to other men, and have that sense of community. Um, but I've— that's something I've really struggled with because I know that there are a lot of people out there who have made themselves coaches, and you, you don't have to have like a license or a certification to be a coach like this. But I don't— and I know that there are people who have said like, you know, Lauren, I trust your judgment, I would love to hear your advice, I would love to hear your wisdom on this. I just don't know if I'm ready to take that leap into that level of liability because people's mental health is really like nothing to like make a side hustle, you know what I mean? It's something you really, really have to commit to. So now that I'm not working a full-time job, I think it might be something that I could possibly explore a little bit more into. But I'm more interested in, uh, your— what you've also done is writing a book next. It's my next big goal.

Oh, I like it. Yes, very cool. And as you know, that is something that is easily scalable, so to speak, of you put book out there and if it clicks and it hits and this person shares and this person shares, next thing you know, somebody in Singapore is buying it and thousands of copies are out there and you're just like, wow. So it is something that is, and then in turn that can lead to other things. You know, if you buy one of my books, it mentions in the book, oh, by the way, we also have this member group if you want to join that and blah, blah, blah. In turn, you know, I, um, we, and we had our little conferences that we get together. We're having one coming up in New Orleans for those that want to join us, April next year, 2024, New Orleans. But we had the last one.

Boys only, right?

That's right, boys only. Although we have said for the dinner on Saturday, which is our final dinner, if you have a spouse or long-term partner and you want to bring them with you to that final dinner, you're welcome to do so. And I've heard from a handful of guys that plan on doing that. So that'd be kind of cool. It's just to show the ladies that this is a real thing. It's a real group. It's not a bunch of y'all. You know, so if you want to do— makes it more legitimate. Um, but otherwise it's, yeah, all men, just men. And, uh, in the last one we had in Las Vegas, I polled our group there and said, okay, of this group, you know, how did you find me? How many of you found me via one of my books? Like 90% of the hands raised. So that book leads to this, which leads to this, which leads to this, which leads to eventually guys gathering together in Las Vegas. So you never know where those things can lead to. So pretty cool. So what would your book be about, or do you not want to spill the beans just yet?

I think it would just be a womansplaining book. It would just be womansplaining men, and I would like to follow it up with just a womansplaining women. But I also thought about just having them both in the same book so you can kind of flip, like, here's a man one, here's a woman one, here's a man one, here's a woman one, so that it's a little bit more, you know, even keeled. I haven't fully decided how exactly I want to do this. If guys want just their own book and girls want just their own book, or if it'd be easier to digest as a couple if they could kind of take different sides issues one off and then the other.

So there's an interesting phenomenon I see. Then we'll go to your question here, Ryan. I see your question there. The difference between women books and man books— this is what I'm about to say— is going to sound very simplistic and sexist, but hear me out. Men tend to like books that are just like boom, boom, boom, step 1, 2, 3, 4, instruction manuals, assembly manuals. Those— that's just how we're wired for whatever reason.

We like that.

Yeah. You know, I wrote a book called The Dead Bedroom Fix, which covers the whole sex and marriage topic. The equivalent to that, which that's not necessarily fair because there's a book that goes much, much more into the topic of sexuality as it pertains to women. And that book is called Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski. It has sold—

I've heard of that one—

millions of copies. And I read it and it's— my book's like this thick. Her book is like this thick. And in essence, I can summarize Come As You Are as, hey, whatever flavor of sexuality or whatever you have, It's okay, you know, and it dives into chapters of, you could be your flavor of sexuality, could be this way, and fleshes it out. That's okay, move on to the next one. That's okay. And men read it, they're like, where's the boom boom boom? Where's the, okay, you have this, then do this? I don't, you know, to read chapter after chapter of, that's okay, some people feel this way, some people feel that way, you're perfectly valid, and we don't get it. So I would say it'd be interesting if you do a book that flips between the two. How can it address both tones and both, you know, perspectives and to keep people hooked and keep the men and women both reading?

See, I have kind of a guy brain in that regard, and that I'm kind of— I like the Albert Einstein quote, if you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. And that's kind of how I try to make my videos is like, let's just get to the point. Let's articulate it as fast as we can. Let's get it moving. And so how I've kind of idealized how my book will go is almost like coffee table style book, a little bit thicker. And I just want a simple illustration at the top, the issue, and maybe like 1 or 2 pages. And then we go right on to the next thing.

I like it.

I'm not trying to hog. Very cool.

Yeah, I like it. And as your business advisor, I would suggest—

Counsel.

Stop there. Hold, hold it close to the chest, so to speak, what you're working on, because people— there are people out there like, oh, good idea, and they'll jump on it. And next thing you know, there's going to be another, you know, mansplaining or womansplaining book out there, and you're like, what the hell? That happens. So be careful. So guys, book's coming. Stay tuned.

Have you ever, uh— I'm curious if this has ever happened to you. Have you ever had someone kind of like steal your bit on the internet?

Not that I'm aware of, but I'm sure, you know, you were in com— you were in comedy, you know, joke stealing's a thing, you know, right? If somebody sees it, change the tone, change this, change this little thingy and make it their own. I'm sure that happens. I'm not aware of it, but I'm— maybe.

Yeah. Yeah. I've, I haven't seen it in like a massive amount, but there have been a couple of videos where someone has like basically done womansplaining, but they like tried to slightly change the phrasing. And I'm like, I think I know where you got this idea.

This sounds eerily familiar. Let's, let's go to the question, shall we? Mr. Ryan Pope from Facebook. He says, a question for Lauren. My wife is very affectionate, but like other women, she can fall into the, quote, freeze mode when life gets busy and anxiety-producing. And this puts a freeze on intimacy, both physical and emotional, which can create a negative cycle. How should I support— how should a supportive partner work with his wife to avoid this and promote positive cycles within busy lives?

Yeah, this has been a tricky one because it's one that I can completely relate to. And having been a woman and a wife for a really long time, one thing that I'll hear from a lot of guys is they're like, my wife is withholding sex from me. And I get what they mean. I get what they're trying to say. But what's most likely is that she's not withholding it because withholding means that she's already ready to go and is choosing to not do the thing that she wants to do. When in reality she's— she just doesn't have anything to withhold.

Yep.

We haven't even gotten there yet. Um, so what I've found is the best way when you are in the freeze state, as the woman who's been there dozens of times, will probably get there again one day and have to be worked out of it, is kind of a, a slow down to speed up approach, right? So what I've found when I am like super wound up and stressed and I just cannot get loose the way your husband wants you to is having a lot of non-sexual physical touch leading up to it, slowing down, like hugging without moving your hands down to grab the ass, actual hug.

You're asking a lot.

I know, I know. It's one of those, just trust me, bro. It's gonna be tough because you're gonna be like doing the hug and you're gonna be like, it's right there, it's right there, just trust me. And that's one thing that I found is you don't even notice it. It's almost like, um, you know, a lobster in boiling water at that point. Like pretty soon you are hot. You just didn't realize you got there.

You're, uh, you're explaining perfectly something that I wrote about in my book, which is called setting the tone. And setting the tone is not done right during the act of, and it's not, you know, immediately precipitating as in, hey, I'm making my move, let's run to the bedroom. Setting the tone literally happens at 7:30 AM in the morning when you wake up and you roll over and go, did you have a good sleep? And kiss on the back of the head and move along. In the kitchen, let me make you the coffee. And I'm big on the butt pats. Pat on the butt, you know, as you go around her in the kitchen. Give her a little honk honk, looking good there. Give her, you know, give her a hug, kiss, hope you have a good day. All these things just set the tone of playfulness, which is something that is really missing in a lot of relationships, is playfulness and just being, you know, goofy with each other and fun with each other. And, um, you know, a little kiss on the back of the head. Just the neck rub when I see she's doing this, because my wife is a surgeon, so she's always doing this. She's always looking down, and this part of her neck is always hurting her, and I can see when she's hurting, so I give her the on the back of the neck thing. None of this— and I've asked her in podcast, do you interpret this, wife, as any of this saying this means you better give me sex later? And she laughed and said, no, I just see it as a normal little playful, loving thing. And that's something a lot of people are missing, but you get caught in this vicious circle of I haven't had any for so long, therefore I feel resentful, therefore I don't want to give her the playful little hug and touch and neck rub and everything. And when I do, I'm such— I'm so, excuse my language, horned up at this point that all it does is lead me to go right to the butt and makes— and just makes me further frustrated. So I better keep a distance. It's tough. This relationship stuff is tough for sure. Any other questions, ladies and germs? We are on right now, we are live streaming to YouTube Facebook and Twitter, or X as it's called now. So welcome everyone.

Welcome everyone. I think there's definitely a point that men and women have to kind of meet somewhere in the middle when it comes to like the freeze or a drought in the intimacy in the relationship where, you know, just like men need to kind of slow it down and ask themselves, like, have I been kind of a sex pest this week? Have I been kind of like badgering her a little bit much and being a little bit insatiable, maybe. But just as much as men need to do that, I think that women do need to like ask themselves, like, when's the last time I initiated anything? Anything? Even a kiss? When's the last time that I was the one who went in for the kiss or pulled him in or anything? You know, like the other night, I actually— I think I, I made my husband's entire day. I'd never done this before. But I tried calling for him, but he was not nearby in the house. You know, we have two stories and a basement. I was on the second story, must have been the basement. So I literally did a booty call. I called my husband's phone. And I was like, will you come upstairs? For one reason or one reason only. And he was like, did you just booty call me?

I'm sure his initial thought was something's wrong upstairs. You know, there's— there a leak? Is there a mouse? Is there a cockroach? What's going on? See, that's—

I'm not gonna lie, this is actually one of my low-key like wife hacks. My, my wife hack life hack is what you gotta do is you do the husband call, the hey babe, the one that he knows is like, I gotta replace a light bulb, or she can't reach this. But instead of there being a light bulb, you're just naked in bed. And now, now it's kind of got like this Pavlovian thing because he doesn't know if it's going to be the light bulb or the naked wife. Either way though, he's gonna be running, he's gonna jump attention. You gotta spice it up sometimes, you know.

That's a good one, that's a good one. Perfect. Uh, any other, uh, anything else from— I'm not seeing much in the way of comments here, guys. Don't be shy, you know, it's not often we have, uh, Lauren the Dadvocate live here for all to chat with. Any questions of myself or Lauren?

This always happens. They call it the spirit of the staircase, where you think of everything like as you're leaving.

I'm sorry. Yes, I like it.

That's when they're gonna—

shoot, I have a question. Bill Cosby used to have a bit years ago, like back in the '70s if I remember right, where he said, uh, he never thought about— like, he would go into the kitchen, for example, to get something, and he'd stand there in the kitchen and go, I totally forgot why I walked in here. And then he would turn around and then go back in the living room and sit down, and as soon as he sat down, he's like, Now I remember. So his, his life hack was he, he determined that it was his butt that you would press. So he would reach back and press on his butt while he's standing on the kitchen, and that would jog the memory.

Oh, that's interesting. I've heard of the just sit down for a minute if you got to think about it.

So just short circuit and press your butt, same thing, you know. So he'll—

he's got like the reflexology down.

Yeah, there you go. Bill Cosby, that was one who fell from grace, didn't he?

Man, I've been so— I've had so many celebrities disappoint me. Like, I had to lose Kevin Spacey, we had to lose Bill Cosby. I used to be a huge Jada Pinkett Smith fan.

Oh wow, yeah, that's a— well, that's one we could go on about. Um, you know, from all outward appearances, those two have just been splitsville for a while, and he's been just emasculated, run through the coals whatever the phrase is, just made to look like a total schmuck for years now. And then we saw he kind of snapped, didn't he, for all to see on live television?

You know, I just, I really need a feminist, a woman who loves to empower women, someone to explain to me how you can make your entire career being, yes, I am the proper model for family values, motherhood, being a wife. I'm going to almost exclusively talk about these subjects, only to come out later and be like, just kidding, I'm a massive fraud. This has been a fraud marriage for 7 years, but teehee, it's all okay. Why do you deserve any respect?

And I, I admit ignorance here, I am not familiar with her body of work. So you say, is she been like, does she have material or whatever out there that's like talks about being a mother and a wife and everything else? Or how does that work?

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. That's the whole reason that I used to be a fan of Jada Pinkett Smith, like way back in the day, before being a mother myself was even like a glimmer in my eye. She would always hold these, these discussions with her whole family. About motherhood, being a wife, being a good husband, being a good partner. And then that eventually evolved into the Red Table Talks, which I'm sure you've heard a little bit about.

I know of. Yeah, yeah.

And that's kind of been Jada's big claim to fame, is she has these Red Table Talks that cover, you know, big important family issues. And so for the last 7 years, she's gone on these shows with her mother, like, sisters aunts, cousins, all these celebrities talking about her marriage and what it's like to be a wife. And to, to just do that, trying to model yourself for other young women, trying to model yourself for other wives, and it's just fake. And now what you want to— like, you just expect us to keep listening to your drivel at this point? Yeah, you don't even have a marriage and you've just been talking about your marriage for years. Like, how is this not as bad as those people who lied about being at 9/11?

Mm-hmm.

You know what I mean?

Like, I'm not sure it's as severe, but it's—

it's—

I see your point.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's— that's just a weird— it's a weird, like, I don't know, mental thing. I don't know how to— how to explain, you know, what she has become over the years. I've just, from my perspective, and I see all these things that people share online and everything else, I just see repeatedly this woman who just seems to, for lack of a better term, emasculate her, her spouse over and over again. And I saw where, I, I guess, um, she used to have a relationship pre-Will Smith with, uh, Tupac. So that was her quintessential bad boy of the past. And I guess she will repeatedly bring that up And she had like a birthday here recently and she posted happy birthday to me with a picture of herself and Tupac. And so everyone was saying, well, what a, you know, thumb in her nose at her husband of like, here's my bad boy from the past and everything. But in hindsight, looking back at all this, we're like, well, it sounds like they haven't really had a close relationship for quite a while now. So hence, I guess this is why she was having single behavior. I don't know how else to explain it. Just kind of a I don't know, it's very, very strange.

And it's really interesting too, because I— obviously Jada is far from the only woman to do this.

I—

we're just gonna call it the Jada now when, when people do this. I mean, like, I, I remember, you know, there have been plenty of people that I've known who passed away young, and then as soon as they passed away, people started coming out of the woodwork being like, 'Oh yeah, I was their lover,' or 'Oh yeah, we had this very close relationship.' And it's just interesting the way these people will take especially dead people and then they use that to like as their ultimate projection of this is now the perfect person. They're dead because so now I can project anything that I wanted for our future, what they felt for me, anything I want into them. And it's, uh, it's almost like abuse of a corpse in a way.

There you go.

Did not want this, you know? Yeah, like Tupac does not want Jada running around the streets being like, he wanted to marry me, he wanted to marry me. Then where's the ring, Jada?

Oh, this is—

well, if he wanted to, he would.

Yeah, there you go. This is quite the gossipy conversation we're having here. I love it. This is, this is new stuff for me.

Uh, no. And the funniest part too is that I'm sure that she really thinks that like she's winning, that people are really buying it up and seeing her as like, wow, she's really cool, when in reality I think that most of us who have lived full adult lives and seen this kind of childish behavior recognize it for what it is. Like, you took a couple pictures with a famous dead guy and now you're trying to convince us all that You were number one.

Yeah. Okay. And, you know, and back to Will, we saw where this culminated in him losing his marbles live on TV for the whole world to see when a man made a joke about his wife's head. And he just literally, literally, for those two of you who may not know that watch this, literally walked up on stage at— what was the award show, Academy Award, or— it doesn't even matter, just some live scene by millions of people all over the world— walks up on stage and smacks the guy Chris Rock on the face. For all to see and then loudly curses him out for all to see. This was a guy who snapped. He'd had enough. And apparently there's just all kinds of nonsense going on behind the scenes that he just lost it. Yeah.

Yeah. I think it's what we're seeing live is just narcissistic injury after narcissistic injury. And I think this book was all a way to try to avoid all of it because, you know, I think we can all agree that she led to the slap. I think that we can all agree through the facial expressions and the way that he was being treated that, that he was kind of led into that, but she wasn't expecting such a backlash. And now she's writing in the book, oh, it was a surprise to me that Will even called me his wife during that slap. Like, she is trying to remove herself— oh wow— so far away from like everything. And that's the thing about these, these narcissistic types, and I don't even like using that word, I really don't.

It's way overdone, but we— and we She's definitely exhibiting traits, narcissistic traits. Yeah, let's put it that way. Yeah.

If we can't use the word narcissistic about Jada Pinkett Smith, there's really no one we can use it on.

Who can we do it on?

That's— this is who— like, words matter. This is where we get to use the word.

Let's— putting Will and Jada aside for now, let's go back to the comments, shall we? Because Josh has a good comment here. That he is currently in a house separation. Oh, in— pardon me, I had my mouse over that— in-house separation. What is the healthiest way to approach the wife crossing boundaries of expected levels of interaction? So Josh, if I'm understanding, you maybe need to flesh this out a little bit more. You guys are like, we're done, but we're stuck under the same roof, presumably with kiddos and everything else. What is it that she's doing that you see as crossing boundaries of quote unquote expected levels of interaction?

Is she reaching out late, bringing people over?

Yeah, there you go. Or is she, you know, flip it and saying is maybe she is being wifey to you and you're like, no, you know, is she touching? Is she gossiping? Is she like, let me tell you about my day. Let me— you know. So, you know, I guess, Josh, tell us exactly what do you mean? How is she crossing boundaries? That'd be interesting to know if you're still there.

I will say this. No matter what the dynamic has become, even if you're just like roommates at this point, I think you can always call a family meeting. I think that family meetings are so like forgotten about. I think people forget that it's a quintessential tool of any domestic engineering situation is you call a family meeting, everyone sits around the table and you kind of, you go over like, hey, you know, maybe it is, you know, I don't like that you stay out so late and then I kind of have this anxiety of not knowing, you know, or I don't think that you should have people over if I haven't met them. That's a big one. Um, I've known a lot of people who were still living together but separated and there would be the issues of like they'd be bringing over their partners while they're not home and it's kind of like I don't mind that you're moving on, but I mind that they're in my house and I don't know who they are.

Yeah. Or even worse, take it the next step, in my bed. That's the next—

That was a big one I've heard of.

Yeah, that's relatively common. We've moved on. There is this, this arrangement with divorced couples, which I'm not too familiar with. There's a term for it. Nesting? I can't remember what it's called. But basically, this is our home. The kids are in the home. We're not picking— we're not making the kids pick up and go from bounce between house to house. Instead, we the couple are bouncing house to house. You go get another apartment or whatever. The house is mine for the week. See you later. Okay, now you're back in the house. Now I go to an apartment somewhere, and they— the parents cycle in and out, which just— I get it, sounds kind of ridiculous, but, um, whatever can keep the peace, I suppose, and, and make things as stable as possible for kiddos. That's the, the goal of this. And then that's when they hear the stories of somebody came in while you were gone in the bed and all this other stuff. And oof, that's tough. Um, oh, Josh has fleshed things out here. All right.

Okay.

She— glasses time. I can't read this. My eyes are, are failing me. Um, she asked for divorce. So as, uh, she's working on getting a better paying job, we're in-house separated. I had expressed that I wanted to keep the focus on logistics, finances related to the kids and anything involving the kids. Good. Um, she wants to continue to try and have a good friendship, which I have said no to. I am totally on board with being polite and cordial to each other, but the hugs and chatting episodes— what I thought— so the hugs and chatting about our day is not something I'm bored with. Yeah, so the, you know, less nefarious version of what, you know, where this could have gone. She's trying to be over-the-top friendly and tell you about her day and blah blah blah blah. And I think there is something to the, um the response or the theme of, hey, best of luck to you, I get it, but you dumped me, you asked for a divorce. With that comes some negative repercussions. One is you lost your buddy. Sorry. And you know, yeah, the, um, another version of this is, uh, husband-wife separated, they go live elsewhere, and soon-to-be ex-wife contacts soon-to-be ex-husband and said, a tree fell in the backyard. Do you think you could come and cut it up for me and haul it away or something like that? And I can't tell you, probably the majority of men that I talk to go, you got it, and they run over there. And I'm the one— and his friends and family also tell him, it's not your responsibility anymore, dude. You're not that guy anymore. So, well, yeah, but who else is going to do it? Well, that's not your concern who else is going to do it. That kind of applies to this as well. She comes home and says, let me tell you about my day. And let me tell you about this guy that I'm seeing. I can't tell you how many times I heard that one. Let me talk about this guy that I'm dating, soon-to-be ex-husband. And the ex-husband's like, what the hell makes you think I want to hear this? It's like, well, we're buddies now. No, you have to put up— Josh, the drum roll— the word is boundaries. No, we don't. I don't feel comfortable with that. No, don't touch me. I don't feel comfortable with that.

And first of all, I think it's an excellent thing that you are acknowledging that you should be setting these boundaries, because so many men take way too long to acknowledge, like, oh shoot, I'm— I've really let this go on too long, um, for, for a lot of different reasons. And the ones that you've described, this kind of stuff really holds people back from appropriately moving on. Like, I, I don't think I've ever gotten over a relationship by talking to them every day and staying in touch. It, it takes time, and it takes time away. And I think a lot of times what ends up happening is— I've seen this happen so many times— is the, the ex-wife, the ex-girlfriend, she still wants to keep him around emotionally. She's still kind of— and deep down she may even want him to still want her, even if she doesn't want him. She, she still likes that he wants her. She still likes him helping out with things around the house, as you've described, him being emotionally available. And so what I found being a stepmom who's friends with a lot of other stepmoms and women who have dated, you know, single fathers with these exes, is they'll, they'll try to almost like keep the husband while divorcing the husband. And you're gonna have a really bad time dating if you keep that up. I can't tell you how many times you know, a friend of mine has tried dating a dad. And then finally, she's just like, I can't deal with it. He's always going over there to help her out with this or that. Like, they're still married. Yep, they're still married. So there's no point in me dating him.

And that, and it points to some— and the reason why new girlfriend is so turned off by that, that points to some really mentally unhealthy stuff and lack of boundaries and everything else. And that's not attractive. It's just like, what do you mean you go help your ex-wife with everything else? She's an ex-wife. She's a big girl now. She can find other people to do those things for her. What are you doing? Why are you texting with your ex-wife? Why are you having conversations with her every night about, you know, her life and her boyfriends? That's weird, dude. And it's right, it is weird. And to your point, why do you have to put those boundaries up, especially Josh, in your particular circumstance? She asked you for divorce. I would presume then that there is still, if you're a human being, a lingering emotional tie between the two of you. You know, everyone likes to say, huh, kick that woman out on the curb and blah, blah, blah, and throw her stuff. And no, it's Usually that's— it's easy for me to say, it's way harder to do because you have a very natural tie to the person emotionally. And it is a form of addiction if you want to look at it that way. You're used to this person day in and day out in your life and everything else. And the only way to stop an addiction, as we know, using alcohol as an analogy, you put the bottle down and you don't touch it ever again and you walk away from it. And you, when you go to a function and people are all drinking, you say, guys, I got to step away. I'm trying to stop drinking. And you turn around and go the other way. You don't stop addiction by taking a little sip every now and then. It doesn't work. You just go right back to where you were and all that pain and everything else. And same thing with her. So to your point, you're asking, you realize all of this, you need to put up these boundaries, but she's just a habitual line stepper, boundary crosser. And she's always with the hugs and the talking, and you repeatedly have to tell her, I don't, I don't want to talk about this, I don't want to do this. And you're saying, is there a better way to do that other than continuously reminding her? Well, other than get the hell away from her, limit that time. You know, if I start going to the gym, I was going to say, how best to do that? If you both are working together to put the kiddos to bed and do all the other stuff, as soon as the final kiddo goes to bed, I'm out of here. Bye. She's gonna say, where are you going? That's not really your concern anymore, soon-to-be ex-wife. I'm out of here. Maybe I'll be overnight somewhere. See you in the morning. I don't know. That's, that's, you know, it could be gym, could be just going to the library or bookstore to read, hang out with a buddy. Who knows? But get the hell away from her. You need to create that distance. And if there's a lot of quote-unquote nice guy types, which is another word for codependent types, And if you still have very much an attachment to her and you still care for her and everything else, one way to look at this, to flip it, is to say this is best for her too. She needs to learn to be on her own. She's a big girl. And the more, the more you're, you know, hanging on and doing stuff and being that, that emotional outlet for her and stuff, she can't grow elsewhere. So you need to say, this is for you and for me. Sorry, you wanted a divorce, welcome to the real world. And it's not vindictive, it's not mean, it's not poking at it, you know. It's just saying, it is what it is. Eventually, you're going to go on your own. I am too. So let's start practicing now. Beyond that, there's no magic formula here.

Yeah. She's not going to be the first woman in the world to hear the words, hey, I'm trying to get over you. So maybe give me some space.

You know, you can be kind about it and loving about it. I understand you want to talk to me about fill in the blank, and I understand you like to hug every now and then and stuff, but it ain't good for me. Sorry. And it ain't good for us future divorced couple. It doesn't jive with me.

I would imagine probably a little confusing for the kids, but I guess that's a whole different dynamics for each thing depending on how you're living together. I don't know if they've even Yeah, and the kids, or if you guys are pretending, it's all cool.

And you pointed out a big thing where a lot of the women in these scenarios, they, they like the guy that they can emote to and, and, and lean on emotionally and everything else. They don't want to give that up. And since they don't want to give that up, they will— shame is one tactic to keep that around. And one method of shaming is, um, don't you want our kids to see that mom and dad still get along? Don't you want them to grow up in a healthy environment that couples can still, even though they're breaking up, still be friendly with each other and Yeah, but there's a limit. My limit is this. You have to respect that, whatever that limit may be. And it sounds like, and it says that you, Josh, you say for sure there's still a tie between the two of you emotionally, and you're trying to work through the detachment and accepting the healing through the change. So yeah, the only way through that is to limit contact with her as much as humanly possible. And that means any form of contact, phone calls, text messages, definitely hugs. Definitely sit-down chat and gossip sessions. Those are just keeping you inextricably tied together, and that's not a good thing, not a healthy thing. But good question, Todd. Let me see if there's something I missed. No, I believe that's it. Um, anything else? Any questions? Here's one way to look at this. Uh, Lauren has put out a lot of content, and myself as well. If you have seen something recently that you want to maybe expand upon talking to the audience here, or, you know, hear more about, or behind-the-scenes discussion, anything at all. I've talked about quite a bit here, and Lauren has. How often are you putting out videos? Let's go there. I know you put out, you know, text posts and share links and everything else, but as far as your own custom videos that you've created, how often are you putting those up?

I would say I probably am pretty good at putting out a new video like 3 times a week.

That's pretty good.

At least. But now that I am able to do this full time, I'll probably start doing a lot more scheduled livestreams. I'm working on getting a podcast going. So hopefully like once a week there, just basically a lot, a lot more content.

Very good. And I noticed more kind of behind the scenes. I saw where you did a little, um, I guess you could say field trip with the kiddos and you met some fellow creators and you shared the pictures of that. So those little touches I think will make a big difference, those kind of things. Uh, that's something.

Yeah, I think everybody's gonna start seeing a little bit more of the family in my content. I've, uh, I definitely have tried to keep it more of the focus on just me But, you know, there's been a lot of, like, negativity in my content, you know. It's— and it's not like I'm trying to make it, like, just outrage stuff, but there's a lot of stuff that makes me mad. That's what I had to talk about. But there are periods where I'm like, oh my God, I've covered, like, nothing but horrible people and horrible toxic relationships. I really just got to start focusing on like happy people. So the first few things I want to do when I do start my podcast is interviewing different kinds of couples that have been together for a long time and trying to find the unique commonalities there.

Here is one negative though, cynical way of looking at this. I tell you what, I can tell you what moves the needle, so to speak, in my world as far as comments, likes, shares, and that is the more quote-unquote negative stuff. Hey, let's talk about infidelity, let's talk about dead bedroom situations, let's talk about some— a negative aspect of moving on post-divorce, the difficulties of doing this and what some men experience. And there goes the, you know, there goes the charts. I can see the charts on the, on the interactivity go way up, and then I'll be, you know, something relatively innocuous, positive little thing, and Cricket, nothing. A few hundred, you know, views, and that's about it. And like, damn, I would love to be more positive. And when I started this Dad Starting Over thing, it was some content about, oh, parenting and finances and fitness, and it was just nothing. And it wasn't until my experience with the infidelity thing and the dead bedroom thing that people just came to life and said, hallelujah, I can relate to this. So it's one of the struggles, you know. We got to keep the viewers coming in. We got to grow the audience. But at the same time, we don't want to be so negative 24/7.

Yeah, I try to be self-aware because I don't know if you've ever gotten such an accusation, but I'll have people accuse me of like outrage farming. They're like, you're just trying to farm outrage. Like I'm just growing these seeds and I'm just planting it all myself. Like, no, guys, I'm just I'm finding this out in the wild and I'm having a reaction to it and I want to talk about it. And I feel like that's usually what happens when we feel strongly. But as a consequence, and this is where our responsibility as creators come in, is we do have to kind of tend to the fires that we help stoke here. Because what happens a lot of times is when I'll cover like 3 stories in a row of some dumb lady being dumb is those are just 3 dumb ladies in a massive world of brilliant, smart, incredible women. But because I'll cover, you know, these 3 dumb ladies in a row, I'll get guys in my comments who are like, and this is why women are the worst. And it's like, yes, okay, they're like, the reason that we're, we're all feeling this outrage is because we don't see this in the wild every day, right? So like, let's try to remember that. This is a weird thing that's happening.

Yes.

That's why we feel the way we do. This is not most of us.

That's a very human tendency is to see, especially if said thing happens to me via somebody from an opposite gender, race, sexuality, whatever it may be, instantly people have this knee-jerk reaction of, well, people from that race, gender, sexuality, whatever, must all be bad because this person from that tribe did bad thing to me. It's just, it's a very human knee-jerk thing, I think. But the more educated and tolerant and everything else that you are, you take a step back to go, that's a stupid little thought that entered my head. But a lot of people don't have that mechanism, apparently. And you know, they— to, to dive further into that topic, I have a lot of men that say, I've been cheated on by not one, two, but three different wives. I've been married three separate times and all three have cheated on me. Therefore Dude, why would anybody want to get married? Why would anybody want to enter into a relationship with anybody? And I say, well, or the, the more logical way of looking at this is to say, hmm, there's something about me that sure seems to attract or be attracted to women who cheat. What's that about? You know, what, what's going on up here that allows me to carry on in relationships with women that probably other men would have said something's off here? But I, I don't have that mechanism to see that those red flags, as we call them? What is it about me? Because dude, you're the common denominator in all this. But that is really tough for a lot of people to do because it's victim blaming. You don't want to go there with it. No, it's not. It's just trying to step back and look at this logically, because dude, you're going to do it again and again and again. And sure enough, they do. But it's a lot easier to say all women are insert nasty word here and move on with our lives. I guess it makes us feel better, although it doesn't, does it?

I think that's such an important conversation too, because there's, there's so much to be said about the fact that there are covert narcissists, the ones who you would never be able to tell that they were going to switch the flip— or switch the flip? No, flip the switch. I feel like I did this in our last one. I always do this, but you never know when they're gonna just turn on you and go from being this nice, loving person to this selfish monster, but how is it that you just happen to have married 3 covert narcissists in a row too? You know, it's a little bit of both. Like, yes, we don't want to blame the victims, but at the same time, we have to acknowledge— because in, in every failed relationship, there's almost no way that it was 100% one more— one person's fault. Almost never.

At the very least, the, the victim in it— let's say man cheated on wife, ran out, a bunch of men, whatever— and he really, he really— that guy in that predicament really doesn't want to hear that he was at fault in some way. So you have to give him his distance, I've learned over the years, and just be like, you know, hear him out, don't jump right into— but after After a while, when I form relationships with these men, this client-coach, whatever, relationship that we have, eventually you start digging into, well, dude, let's look at this relationship from the beginning. And sure as shit, you're like, right there, man, in your story. Why didn't you pause at that point and say, what the hell's going on here? Well, I just pushed through it because I figured, you know, you know, give her the benefit of the doubt. I'm like, dude, catching her texting another man is giving benefit of the doubt. That is, you know, and this was years ago, dude. Yeah. And then you realize there is— at the very least, dude, you're at fault because you let a lot of things slide. You don't like yourself very much. You're very codependency type of dude, and you need to work on that. And if they're in the right mindset to be like, yeah, you're right, I do need to work on that. That's something that's bit me in the butt my whole life with friends, with girlfriends, whatever it may be. That's, um That's a tough mindset for a lot of people to get into.

And that's probably the hardest part of your coaching job is it probably feels like a long con getting some people to take accountability.

Well, sure. Especially when they've been, you know, so blatantly hurt by somebody else. They, like I say, they don't want to hear you have some semblance of blame in this. Although, you know, on a, on the grand scale of blame here, yeah, they may have 90%, but there's There's still a little bit in there that you've done. It may be something as quote unquote innocent as overlooking a lot of bad things over your whole life. I don't wanna lose comments here, if I may, but from Rita asks, Rita's a longtime follower, I guess, of mine. So welcome, Rita. Just curious, I see a lot of men say that they are not getting married or remarried. Is this really a trend these days? Uh, if you look at the stats, yeah, the marriage rates are going down. The fertility rate, baby-making rate, going way down. There's definitely a trend there. Um, if you know, when, when they've surveyed young men, for example, I don't know the age ranges off the top of my head, something like 18 to 30, uh, those men are not having sexual relationships with women. They're just not. And it's concerning and scary because that's the most prime fertile get out there and meet girls and form relationships and see how the whole process works, and they're just not, for like the lowest in recorded history. So, um, an ancillary to that is, uh, there's a podcaster who I follow. His name's Chris Williamson. He has a podcast called Modern Wisdom, and he likes to dive into a lot of these type of topics, and he posts really great stuff on Twitter. And recently he posted, um, stats that show When they asked men, um, do you approach women, meaning, hello there, what's your name? Something like over half of the men said, never have. Never.

Yeah.

Have I done that? That's not good. That's how relationships are started. Men pursue women they see as pretty and say, hello there. So if that goes away, we're seeing the marriage rates drop. It's not looking too good right down.

No, I've been saying it's, uh, it's our job now, ladies. Like, we, we did this, we made this bed. We are the ones who told men over and over and over again, do not approach us, we do not want to be approached, we do not want to be perceived. We have said that, we have screamed it into the mountaintops. And so now if we want the men, we have to go get them. That's our job now. We are now, we have to be the pursuers because we have all collectively across almost every culture told the men we don't want them. We don't value them. Leave us alone. So now that's on us.

You can go down rabbit holes on TikTok and so forth of videos by women saying, you wouldn't believe the shit I went through today. Let me tell you a story. And they tell you a story about this creep, a-hole weirdo who came up to them. And I'm listening to the story going, a short few years ago, that's called a man hitting on you. That's all that is. You know, you're in a coffee shop and some guy goes, I just saw you across the way and I thought you were beautiful and I just want to say hello. And they're like, oh my God, can you believe this? And they turn their phone on and record, look at this jerk. And you're just like, that's— I— that may be— that may be a relatively small subset of women who are that anti-approach, but it's enough, I guess, that the message has been received by a large swath of the population of, well, I guess we don't do that anymore. It's like, so who does that? Here's, here's an interesting kind of conspiratorial— I don't know if that's the right word— look at it. If half the men are saying, I have never ever approached a woman, which is scary, that leaves— what type of men are left in that pool of guys who are not afraid to approach women? Are those your super attractive alpha male types, to use that term? Are we leaving just a bunch of hyper-confident jerks? Are we, you know, so I don't know who's left. Is this kind of a, if you will, a societal test by women of don't approach us, but we secretly do want you to approach us, but don't approach us. Let's see who doesn't listen to us and does approach us. Those are the men that we do want. Just some food for thought.

That's the scary part too, is it's the hyper-confident jerks who are gonna be ruling the forest in no time. I just— I, I was actually just thinking about this. I remember being in the 8th grade and there was this one boy who I found particularly annoying. He was just like loud and constantly having an opinion and he was constantly hitting on everyone and there was nothing particularly like attractive or cool about this person. He was like a pretty kind of a, kind of a big nerd, which I'm allowed to say because I was also a big nerd and I still am. But I remember one day going home and asking my dad, I was like, Dad, why does this guy always have a girlfriend when he's like not cute? He's shorter than all the other kids, he's really annoying, and he literally just hits on everybody. How does he always have girlfriend. It's like, well, you just said he hits on everybody. You ask out 100 girls, one of them is going to say yes. It's a numbers game. And I was like, oh my God, you're so right. It is that simple.

It is.

So it is the hyper-confident jerks who will truly be ruling.

Yep. It's your more, your more anxious neurotic types will, let me get up the nerve. Let me do this. I can do this. Let me, let me drink a couple of drinks. Let me go into this room. I see this woman. This is— it sounds horrible, but this is the thought process of your more neurotic types. Okay, I see a girl over there. She's not too attractive, because if she's too attractive, I'm too scared to, to approach her. So she looks normal, average, like me. Let me approach her. Um, hi, how are you? And she's like, no, go away, I have a boyfriend. That man turns, goes out the door, and says, not doing that again. Maybe next year I'll give it a shot, but I, I'm done. Versus hyper-confident, low neuroticism, low anxiety jerk. Hey, you're hot. No.

All right.

Hey, you over there, you're hot. No. All right. Hey, you, drink thrown in his face, whatever. But by the 19th woman, he gets a conversation and away he goes. And then neurotic, anxious guy sees jerk and says, all women just like jerks. That's all there is to it. No, you don't see the 19 strikeouts, the drinks thrown in his face, the— yeah, the fact that he just doesn't care. That's, that's it. You're right. The numbers game. It's a big, big part of it.

You got to be somewhere in the middle, you know, you got to— there you go with, uh, you got to just do what you want to do, take your licks and let me not do what you want to do.

There you go. I'm going to read from Chris's post here on X. Twitter, men were asked, when was the last time you asked a woman in person for a date on the street or in a bar or a club or at school or work or wherever? 45% of men aged 18 to 25 have never approached a woman in person. Never. This is pri— is this primarily because of the MeToo movement? He says no, because, um, between 60 to 70% of those men just cited a fear of rejection. That's why they don't approach. Um, uh, it, it—

fair enough. But I think, I mean, I guess I, I would have to wonder, because again, it's tough to say, it's tough to say that the MeToo movement has nothing to do—

it has to, in part, have some.

Yeah, it has to, because the MeToo movement was a huge and pretty important cultural shift in things. I think that there are a lot of good conversations that started because of that. I think that a lot of people started to realize the importance of having consent conversations and all of that— all very important. I don't think anybody would disagree. But to pretend that it's— it didn't also significantly shift the way that men approach women is also—

you cut out there for a second on me. Say again, the way men approach women?

Yeah, to say that the whole MeToo movement played no role in how men approach women is disingenuous. It's like, I just don't see it.

Yeah, well, men may not overtly in their mind say, Because of MeToo movement, I think the fall— no, it's just that it's been so socially ingrained in terms of he goes to the office and HR pulls all the men into a meeting and say, men, just so we're aware, there are certain behaviors that are good and not good. Don't do this, don't say this, don't say blah blah blah, don't joke in this way, don't— and then, okay, Jesus, the man sit there after an hour going, I'm just inherently kind of a ticking sexual time bomb ready to go off, I guess. I better just sit with my arms crossed or sit on my hands. And when a woman walks in, I just look the other way. And so he takes that energy out into the, you know, that's just the office. Then he hears it from possibly his sister, his female friends, of all these men are jerks, all these men are dickheads. And the message gets across, and it takes time, and it's years and years of hearing those kind of messages. And I can see how that may result in 45% of these young men saying, I have never approached a woman ever. That's, um, it— but to Chris's point here, he's saying this is actually a white pill. Familiar with these pills? Red pill, black pill. This is a white pill, meaning I guess a positive thing. It isn't the powerful forces of society at large that explain young male singledom. It's much more mundane. It's just that young men are simply not trying. So that means this isn't out of their control. You start trying, and men, you will see an increase in women accepting you. Yeah, but a little bit of both. It's, you know, the fear, anxiety, plus, well, what's the source of said fear, anxiety? It has to— the MeToo, if we want to label it with that label, it has to have some kind of impact in all of this. Absolutely.

Yeah, I think it's MeToo, and I also think it's the kind of social media that's out there. You know, obviously there has been this big rise of red pill and black pill and, you know, the, the kinds of content where people are pointing out like, wow, can you believe this? The Cheesecake Factory lady who refused to get out of the car because he brought her to Cheesecake Factory and she doesn't eat at chain restaurants on a first date. And, and, you know, I think that a lot of guys are like, well, this is just what modern women are like, when in actuality 99% of the people in the real world are nothing like these, like, brain-dead morons on the internet. And you're not gonna experience that. Like, I, I think what guys should— I really do think that the guys who are like, I'm not letting the internet convince me that it's all bad out there, I will approach a woman I want to talk to her. And if she rejects me, she rejects me, but I'm still gonna try. I think those are the guys who are gonna really thrive in this world. And yes, they will also get rejected, but after they get rejected, they will thrive.

Yeah. Yeah. That's, uh, you're describing kind of a low neuroticism, low anxiety guy. He's just like, uh, I don't listen to all this outside influence. I'm, I don't even know. I don't even know about it. I'm too busy. I don't social what? I don't do any of that. Nonsense. And yeah, those guys are gonna thrive in this environment versus the people that are just consuming, consuming. Because if you look for it, you're gonna find some shit that's just gonna, you know, make your toes curl and be like, what the hell? Like, like a Cheesecake Factory chick. I saw another trend which was pretty disturbing, which is youngish gals saying what gives them the, quote, ick about men these days. You've seen this trend? And when the more you, you know, TikTok sends you down a rabbit hole of ick videos, you're just like, okay, so basically it's when, when a man shows me any semblance of humanity in any sense of normalcy, it makes me as a young gal go, oh God, no, yuck. And some of the things were just downright like, oh, come on. But then men push this out there as, see, anytime we show any kind of vulnerability, anytime we show any kind of normalcy, if it's not super duper alpha male tough behavior. Women want nothing to do with this anymore. This is how women are these days. No, this is how young TikTok gals who just try to get a lot of views and stuff, that's how they are. And flip it, make it a more powerful statement. You— I don't want to be with those women anyway, so let them think whatever they want to think. Whatever's ick to them, cool, whatever. I really don't care. It's kind of my thought pattern on that. And often men come to me and go, what do you think about this? And they'll send me some video of a woman on one of these podcasts where they have the, like, the Fresh and Fit, where it's young men on one side, young barely dressed women on the other side, and they, and they go back and forth, and the men are just basically like smirking and laughing at just what dumb things the young gals say. You're familiar with this setup that they do over and over.

The format It was just never— it was doomed to fail because what they're doing is they're, they're just— I don't want to say like pulling low-level thinkers, but they're, they're incentivizing people through very superficial, low-level means. They're saying, hey, do you want the booze and the attention? We have booze and attention for you. And they know what they're gonna get when they incentivize people that way. Anytime you see a table full of barely dressed women with red Solo cups, you're not getting a Socratic seminar.

This is not going to be the most intellectually stimulating conversation. It's just going to be the girls just going like, here's what I like, like, like, like this, like that. And then the guys just kind of cross the table looking at each other like Can you believe this woman? It's an hour of that, or 2 hours, or 3 hours, or whatever. And frankly, it gets a little old. But they cut that into clips, post it, it gets bazillions of views, and men send those to me saying, can you believe what this girl is saying? You should do a video on this. And I watch and I go, yeah, she's an asshole. I don't, I don't know what to tell you, dude. They're all over the place. You know, it's— assholes exist, all genders and sizes, colors. It's like It is what it is.

And you, yeah, the, and the thing about Fresh and Fit is they do demonstrate reality. They do demonstrate the reality of if you get a bunch of girls who are planning on going out clubbing anyway and feed them nothing but Patron, you're bound to get some outrageous opinions. That's the reality for sure. It's just, I don't know how often the average guy is in such a scenario, in such a setting.

And let's look at the source. I'm assuming— how are they finding these young gals is my first question. I would assume they saw them on social media somewhere, some little video that she posted, and said, you're hot, you want to be on our podcast and you'll be in front of tens of millions of people? Okay. And that's pretty much it. They didn't seek them out for, like you say, some intellectual pursuits or, you You know, they didn't write like a paper on something that was published.

Yeah, you could not pay me. You could not pay me to go on a show like that. And no one does get paid to go.

Well, I'll tell you what, if they approached me and said they wanted an almost 50-year-old, you know, perspective on this whole game, I'd be like, yeah, I'll get on there. I don't care. That'd be fun. Put my dumb face in front of tens of millions. Sure. They need, they need more of that. They never would, but that's, I think, to make that a more even-handed thing, that's what they need to do. But from what I've seen, I guess that format has been replicated across at least a dozen other shows that I've seen that pop up on my feed all the time. Yeah, interesting, interesting world we live in, isn't it?

Yeah, and it is, it is very sad too because Essentially, these girls are just like showing up and they have no idea that it was all a trap all along. They're just the lambs to the slaughter. They show up looking all cute. Next thing you know, they're like, what would you rate yourself? Oh, a 10. Fuck you.

Oh wow. And then they had some poor gal on there. I presume a gal. I'm trying to be politically correct here. She was very heavyset. Are you familiar with the one I'm talking about?

Oh, I think I might. And she was wearing all pink.

I'm colorblind, so you're asking the wrong guy.

Oh, she was cute.

I don't remember color.

Light pinkish-greenish.

Thank you. She was just a very objectively not attractive gal who was very, very heavy. And she was this poor big gal amongst this panel of of obviously, quote, attractive, barely dressed gals. And they— and of course, I've— TikTok or whatever just keeps feeding me clips of this poor woman on there. And it's just like, this is just— now it's getting mean. I don't see the, the point in this. Um, but yeah, but it gets views. That's what it all comes down to. And we're, we're somewhat slaves to that as well. It gets views, whatever it may be. And I've learned over the years of doing this, sex sells. If I talk about sex, boom, there you go. My biggest views, you know, I've had a video that went 5 million or whatever, and it was sex, all about sex and relationship stuff.

And yeah, I think there's like kind of, um, a Schadenfreude, I think the word is, which is the, the German word.

Schadenfreude.

Yeah, like the basically the, the karmic retribution you get when someone being dumb and then they get bit in the ass for it is I think that a lot of people enjoy watching conventionally hot women get owned. There's like a weird niche there that I think that guys just love because they just are so used to like seeing conventionally hot people get everything they want. And so when they see them go on a show thinking that they're gonna get everything they want and they don't, for a lot of these guys they're like, yes, finally! It's like all my hype getting shat on. And in a way I kind of get it, but I think that the guys who are doing that, like that extra level of self-reflection to be like, what is actually entertaining about this? And "don't I have better content to be watching?" are probably the happier dudes.

Yes, I would think so.

Because I think that content's gonna make you really swiftly get negative about things.

I mean, there is, um, there is this underlying theme of women have it easier in the dating world. Um, this young pretty thing doesn't realize how lucky she has it. She can, you know, online dating seems to be the, the go-to format for meeting people. So she puts a profile up, she says, here's my headshot, here I am, world, and she gets bombarded with hundreds and hundreds of people liking her and contacting her and everything else. And I, as a man, can barely get anything. It's not fair. And men get very, very upset by this. And I say, well, welcome to the real world. That's kind of how it's always been. It's just been amplified by this online dating world. But then men are like, How can I get back, if you will, at these gals in this unfair— and then they, you know, if they see some little negative thing, they're like, aha, yeah, you know, you, you get it bad too. And, you know, and you'll see versions of this which get even nastier and nastier, which is, well, these gals are young and pretty now, but just wait, as soon as they reach a certain age and they hit the quote wall, um, it's all downhill from there. It's— they're going to be alone with 12 cats. And then us men in the end, we win, no, don't we? And it's just It's just some— it gets old after a while. Um, I did a video, we all get old. The wall comes for us all, people. I don't know if you realize.

Yeah, that's why I'm, I'm very happy to see that. I would say probably the majority of both of our audience knows where that line is to be like, okay, I'm not gonna wish ill on this person or like hope they become ugly. I just think what they said was stupid. And now I'm better for not dating them. I can move on.

Move on. But that's, that's tough for a lot of men. You know, there is this pedestal— it's always tough for me to say— pedestalization, which is women in general, just by virtue of them being women, are kind of above us on the scale of humanity. A lot of men have that thought? Well, because it's been kind of hammered into our heads at an early age where this Neanderthal little animal that just goes and breaks things and we need to be tamed, we need to be called into HR and given seminars on how to behave ourselves and all this other stuff. And women are kind of above us. And when we see not so nice behavior from— it could just be a woman in our life, one little woman in our life— that just crumbles all of our worldview of how all of this relationship thing works and what women are about. And then men just run with that and say, "Oh, all women must be whores," and everything else. It's just, much of that, when you talk to these men, much of that is born out of, "I thought these women were different, and I've kind of placed all of my sanity on their shoulders, and all of my mental health on the shoulders of these women, and I went with one and she hurt me badly, like really badly, and broke my heart and cheated on me or did whatever, did my best friend," you know, you hear horror stories. And because of that, I can't quite recover from this. And people that are not— don't have that mindset of pedestalization, or whatever you want to call it, unhealthy— pardon me— unhealthy worship, they'll kind of look at their story and just say, yeah, you got cheated on, it happens, big deal, dude. You know, I got cheated on 5 years ago, and I'm— you move on, what's the big deal? Same thing happened. Mindset is everything, I guess, is what I'm trying to say, and how you view this whole world of ours. And unfortunately, we, we hear from in our comments and everything, what I call the vocal minority. They don't represent the majority, but they're the loudest. And, you know, you look at your video and it has 5,000 likes, but then you look down and see 50 negative comments. What sticks out, sticks out in our brain are the 50 negative comments, not the people that just went, "Oh, I like it," clicked and moved on. It's the people that are like, "I'm angry, watch what I'm going to say." Those are the ones that get most of our attention.

What's interesting too is I think that a lot of— I think that there's like a warped perspective that both men and women have in a different lens. So I think that men have this warped perspective that they often feel like they have to settle or they have to take maltreatment because they cannot do better. They've convinced themselves like, men have it so rough out here. I really could not do better than the woman that I have. And then women have this other warped perspective where they always think they can do better no matter what, that there is just this guy on the other side of the grass who does and can anticipate all of their needs and knows to, to get her flowers when she wants without her asking and cleans the house that not only cleans the house but cleans it the way that she wants.

It's a hyper, hyper abundance versus hyper scarcity. And both are wrong. Yeah, I deal with a lot of the men that are hyper scarcity. Well, why did you know, in essence, when I hear these horror stories of these men, I've been in a dead bedroom for 12 years, and you're just like, Jesus, okay, go on. And I caught her cheating on me. Oh, Wow, okay. And she has a drinking problem. Jesus, keep going. And it just goes on and on and on. And then you're like, well, Bob, I gotta ask you, what keeps you around in this relationship? What are you doing? And invariably, after 30-minute speech, you can summarize everything with, I don't like myself very much. And because I don't like myself very much, I don't have any options. Well, I just told you, Ralph Brewer, these 97 horrible things, there are these 2 really great things about her. And if I dump her, I'm never going to find anybody else with those 2 great things. That's sad, but that's a mindset of a lot of people, men and women alike, you know, that are in these abusive relationships. But what we see online— thank you, online dating and so forth— is a lot of women have this, uh, while he may have these 97 great things about him, there are these 2 little things I don't like, and I think I can find somebody with the 99 that I do like.

What's really interesting to me too about that, the perception that I think a lot of guys have is that I think that a lot of guys think like, well, if I leave my wife or if I leave my girlfriend, then I'll be alone for a really long time. And a lot of women think like, well, if I dump him, I can just find someone else in no time. But if you actually like right now search like, what do men's romantic relationships look like after a divorce versus women's? Men are the ones getting laid more, moving on faster, marrying again. Women are not, actually.

That's true. Yeah.

And so I think that's really interesting, is the reality of that situation is, is not lining up with the horrible preconceived notions or the super exaggerated pre- conceived notions that we may have had.

You're right. And you're tapping into something which is, um, I get a lot of from a lot of men, which is, dude, when men get divorced, they are just ruined completely. I mean, life is over for them. And I say, for some, it's really rough. Don't get me wrong. There's some men out there that they lose three-fourths of their wealth and they're, you know, living out of their truck and everything. Those are horror stories, and we've heard those. And those— they never see their kids, But from the vast majority of men that I speak to, and I know this is anecdotal, it's not a sample size of thousands of men, but the stats seem to back it up. Men tend to do better financially long-term than women do after divorce.

And I've read the same thing.

And relationship-wise, you're right, they tend to remarry way faster. But here's the interesting little— and I'd love to hear your feedback on this. There was— and I did a video on this. There was a study that was done by— it was a governmental study. They were trying to measure happiness amongst people, and they said, uh, all right, you're a single man, how happy are you? You're a married man, how happy are you? You're a single man with kids, you're a married man with kids, and a single woman, so on and so forth. And then they look at the data and they say, who's the happiest? Self-reported, I'm the happiest. And the most— the happiest group was single women with no kids. Those were the happiest people. And that made a lot of your traditional conservative types said, timeout, no, I— this can't be. Like, if word gets out about this, nobody's gonna have babies. And I really wasn't surprised to hear that, simply because I talked to a lot of men and women. I'm getting more and more messages from women who basically say, after marriage and kids, something flipped in me and I am just not a happy creature anymore. And this is really anxiety-producing. I have trouble with anxiety. I have trouble with stress and depression. And this sent it into overdrive. And I feel very, very guilty for saying so. But consequently, our marriage has disintegrated. And, uh, what a lot of these women say, marriage disintegrated. I'm out on my own. I see the kids half the time. I actually feel better. I feel guilty for feeling better, but I feel better. And I don't think I want to go back to the marriage thing. No, thank you. That's— I think that's a— that represents a big chunk of that population. What do you think? Does that surprise you to hear that?

Um, it really doesn't surprise me because I, I, I— it's so interesting. I would love to know like how exactly the quote unquote like happiness is measured, but I mean, I think so much of it has to do with the societal pressures that are put on mothers in particular as opposed to fathers. I think that there is a lot more expected of the mother. Like, when a woman has a child, I think that so much pressure is put on her, so much pressure by men and women, herself, generations, to say, okay, this is your identity now. You can no longer like smoke, drink, have too much time on your hobbies, um, spend too much time with your friends, take vacations, or else you're a bad mother. But I think that there is a lot less, at least for married fathers, pressure. I think that if a married father continues to smoke, continues to drink, continues to go out and play golf or see his friends, I think that there's a lot less judgment and criticism. Now, when you take a single father, that's a completely different thing because that man is being judged for literally every sentence that comes out of his mouth. Um, but at least, you know, when a man has a wife, he's more respected by society, I think. Um, and so I, I do think that women end up losing themselves a lot, and there, there's a lot that I'm trying to work on, especially with my videos, to correct this. And a lot of that— a lot of what's going to correct this is when we stop making all these jokes, even if we mean them to be in good fun, where we're like, look how incompetent men are. Men are so bad with their kids. Oh my God. This dad tried to fill a baby bottle with Red Bull, and this dad left this baby so unattended he made a mess of the mantle. And like, we're all like, yes, this is all men. Oh, so this is all of our husbands. And it's that negative societal spread, and we're giving each other anxiety by doing this. We're literally convincing ourselves, like, if we don't take on 100% of the parenting, he is going to mess it up. He is going to do it wrong. He won't be able to do it as well as me. And we're making ourselves so miserable. Whereas if society— I'm not going to like blame it on the patriarchy. That's a little too easy for, for people to do is just say, well, it's the patriarchy's fault. Okay, whatever you want to call it, how are we going to fix it as society? And I think what we're going to do is the sooner that people start going into having kids and being like, okay, we made this child together. We are both fully capable of doing anything this child needs. I'm not going to assume at all that I'm the main one gonna do this.

But we don't. And you know, it's, um, a common refrain I hear amongst women in my comments is, um, maybe women would be more sexual, open, fun if men actually did their part around the house or did what they should do with the kiddos. And I'm sure that happens. There are dickhead fathers that just sit on the couch and play Call of Duty while their wife's doing everything in the background. But that's not my world, and it's not the world of people I know. It's not my social circle. And I've said in other videos, men have never been more domestic in the history of mankind, of changing diapers and cleaning the house and mopping floors and running this kid to that while coaching and doing everything else. It's— that's not unheard of. And that's my friend group. That's what I hear again and again and again, is we're all doing our part. So to hear from all these women saying men do nothing, and how much of that is realistic, how much of that is just a cope, if you will, or just a way to lash out at men and because they're angry and they've been wronged. But frankly, I don't see it, and I think it's kind of silly to reiterate that over and over again. And but that's out, that's out there. That's in, that's, uh, out in the zeitgeist is that men don't do things when it comes to kids and household.

I just think that they do things differently is the, is the big one. Because if you really look into the studies of how single fathers are doing versus single mothers, they're doing great. They're doing spectacular. Even single fathers are raising incredible children. So I don't know why we're still pushing this narrative that like, oh, men are so incompetent, you just can't leave these men with these kids. Like, hand him the baby, hand him the baby and walk away. Just do it. The sooner women start doing that and, and stop valuing men's contributions at the paycheck too. And I realized This is both a men and a women's issue that they're playing their role in. There's a lot of men out there who think, well, I make the paycheck, so I anticipate everything else should be done by her, but not even realizing that by having that mentality, they're, they're making their value the paycheck.

Yep.

And nothing else. But there are women who do that too. There are women who are like, well, you know, the way that I was raised, and since I was raised this way, it must mean that it is correct and will not be continuing a series generational trauma is that I stay home, I take on all the domestic labor and all the child rearing, and you provide the paycheck. And now it's like, you don't realize that you are making his value only be the paycheck either.

Yeah, that, uh, what we call the provider mind mindset, um, is one that, uh, kind of an old-timey Man goes office, makes a bunch of money, paycheck, comes home, wants a hot meal, stiff drink. Wife takes care of the home. That's— that exists for some people still out there, but it's one that's basically gone away. And both parents usually work and both do the domestic stuff around the house and help take care of the kiddos. But there's still a subset of men that live with that, still with that mindset in their head, even though wife works just as much as him. 'Even though this and that, I am the man and I only do manly things. She's the woman, she only does womanly things.' And if you ask them, and that varies, what does that mean, womanly, manly, and so forth? 'Well, I don't do laundry. I don't fold clothes. I don't iron clothes. I don't mop floors, and that's a very not manly thing to do. I mow the yard.' That exists. And when those guys divorce, they take that provider-y kind of mindset out into the dating world, and it doesn't work too well. Not simply because he doesn't do chores, but simply because he also is not Mr. Loverboy either. He's not cool, he's not hip, he's not fun. He's, he's just paycheck dude. And, uh, not a good mindset to be in. Not the sexiest, most well-rounded persona to take on, that's for sure. And, uh, Tom Thomas here says that all of his circle is also very involved. And but he, he does know some who don't want anything to do with their kids. Yeah, those people exist, men and women alike. I can attest to that.

You know what's really interesting is Whitney Cummings, who is a stand-up comedian, just came out with this bit. And it's, of course, a comedy bit. So it's meant to be funny, but things are not funny if they do not have grains of truth in them. And she was talking about how, you know, now that she makes a lot of money, she has the, uh, she jokes that she has the luxury of dating broke men. She was like, you know, now I don't have to find a provider, so I can just date these broke men. But she said that, you know, as she's dating these broke men, she started to realize, like, the more and more she's paying for things, that she was, like, starting to fall into this headspace of, like, you know, I'm the one paying the rent, I paid for our last 3 dates, why am I not coming home to a fresh-made Sandwich. And it, you know, she's joking, but it's, it is interesting because I think that, you know, as much as we look at the stereotypical husband of the 1950s who was providing all the money and having an affair with the secretary at work and coming home and being like, where's my fresh steamed linens and meal? Is, you know, we as women, if, if we are the ones paying for everything We could just as easily turn into that monster if left unchecked.

Yeah, it's not necessarily a gendered thing, is it? So, and we're going to see that more and more because you ladies are kicking our butts in the corporate world and you're kicking our butts in the universities. And it's going to get worse. That's not the right term. The discrepancy is going to grow. And unfortunately, what we see corresponds to that in the dating market is more and more women saying, I don't have much in the way of a potential pool of dating candidates. And when you ask them, it says, well, because I have certain standards. I'm, you know, I'm an executive in my company. I'm an executive vice president of sales and so-and-so company. And for me to date somebody, you know, maybe who's a plumber or a carpenter and stuff, man, it doesn't really appeal to me. What am I gonna have in common with those people? And it's not very attractive and so forth. I think that mindset's gonna, gonna change because basically it has to. And with the Whitney saying, I, you know, I've looked, starting to look down the old hierarchy to see what I can find. As horrible as that sounds.

Yeah. And I think it's also going to force women to start taking family court issues more seriously because in the past, you know, we're just coming off of like 40 years of the Tender Years Doctrine in our country, where it was just presumed that the mother is best to raise the child. We're just coming off of that, and now we're swiftly going to be entering the territory of, well, who's actually making more money? Oh, you're making more money? Well, then you can't be the custodial parent, you need to be the paying parent. And so soon it's going to be these, these women who built their careers and did all this who are going to be paying alimony and paying child support and being every other weekend moms. And it's already happening.

Oh, yeah. Oh, I've heard, I've heard those stories from guys I talked to. You know, he works part-time from home kind of thing, and he's taken on the childcare. And then she split and she was very, very upset to hear that because she was a high-paying executive that she's paying him child support and alimony. And he's like, well, all right. It's how the tides turn. Yeah.

It's actually crazy. I've gotten some, some messages in my emails where people have literally, like, told on themselves to me. And I'm like, why would you tell me this? I'm not on your side. But, you know, I've gotten emails from women who are like, oh, Yeah, I want to separate from my husband, but I make so much more money than him. So what I did was I convinced him that I would stay with him if he got a job. And now that he has this better paying job, I can divorce him because now I won't have to pay. And I'm like, that is— why did you send me this? I'm just so triggered.

Yeah. Yeah. Very, uh, that's very cold and very, uh, sociopathic almost. Oh well, now I can leave him because of the money thing. Did you just say that out loud? But yeah, I've heard those things. Um, this, uh, this relationship game has an ugly side to it for sure. And, um, those ugly— those people on the ugly side sure are pretty vocal on the internet. That's, uh, that's for sure. Uh, Justin says specialized skill workers are making more money than high-level executives. Sometimes they are. There's like the Pareto principle. Like if I have any kind of specialty or competency, if you will, like plumbers, for example, I have 10 plumbers in my town, probably 2 out of the 10 plumbers are gonna do really, really well and have like a big crew behind them and lots of trucks and multiple locations and all this other stuff, while the rest, eh, they don't do too well. But those at the tippy top, they do, they do really well, and they'll, they'll beat the pants off of any kind of, uh, vice president of sales in some company, that's for sure. So those ladies that are, uh, saying plumber, I don't know, they're looking at the 80% that don't make all that much. They're not looking at the top 2 that are raking in the cash. Um, so any other thing we're missing here before we wrap her up? Because I need to go eat, I'm hungry.

Oh, I know I'm getting a little peckish myself.

Peckish. That's a good word. That's a very old-timey word.

Sometimes I date myself.

Okay, well, I think that catches up. I'm going through to see if we missed anything. Mark says he's on his second marriage and the bar is high for who he is wanting to Oh, he is. I'm sorry. He is open to a second marriage and the bar is high for who he wants to accept as a potential partner. And approaching is a lost art for sure. Yeah. Well, anything else, Miss Lauren, before we wrap it up? Anything to promote? Check out the Dadvocate on all the social media channels.

Yes, yes. The YouTube here on Facebook. Instagram, TikTok. Uh, just keep your eyes open. I'm gonna keep making more stuff.

All right. And, uh, Dad Starting Over on all the social media channels as well. Wherever you're watching this, check out dadstartingover.com. And men, check out our men's group, the DSO Fraternity, a private group for men only. And we got all kinds of cool benefits. Check it out. You can pay month to month, year, lifetime, all that fun stuff. And there's all kinds of cool stuff on the Dad Starting Over website— books, courses, all kinds of neat stuff. Miss Lauren, thank you so much.

Appreciate having me.

Appreciate everything you do. Keep doing it, and we will see you around. Thanks. Bye, guys. Thank you.