Join Ralph (DSO) Live!

All right, all right everyone, welcome to a rare Friday evening live stream with yours truly. Oh, I guess I better turn my camera on here. All right, where am I at? And yay, just me. Oh shit, I'm all screwed up here. All right, hold on a second. Maybe I should sit up. Oh, getting old. That's better. All right, let me zoom in a little bit there. That's better. Hello everyone, how are you guys today? Looks like we are good to go. We are live. Welcome everyone, welcome, welcome. Looks like we already got a like, thank you very much. Just wait a little bit for folks to stream in here. Hey, I got some folks coming in. Hello. Welcome, everyone. Welcome. Welcome. My name is Ralph. Raffalito. You may know me as DSO from Dad Starting Over, DadStartingOver.com and Dad Starting Over and all these social media channels wherever you are watching me right now. I am on right now live on Facebook, live on YouTube and live on Twitter or X or whatever you call it these days. Welcome, everyone. I thank you all so very much for joining me this Friday evening. If you could be so kind as to give me a like, a share. That's how all these social media channels know that, uh, you're a good thing, is if a lot of people like you. So when you like this, more and more people see it. That makes me happy. We can grow our numbers, right? Um, some other pieces of business before we get started with today. How these— by the way, how these normally work is that you guys just get on here, make comments, ask questions, and I blab on and on about it, and we interact back and forth via the chat or the comments wherever you're watching this, YouTube, Facebook, however it works. Then we get a little conversation going and these go for usually 45 minutes, an hour. I've had one go as long as 2 hours before and sometimes have guests like Lauren, The Advocate, Dr. Psych Mom. But today you're lucky enough just to have yours truly on tonight. Thank you so much for joining me on a Friday evening. I have a rare Friday evening. No wife, no kids, no nobody. Just myself. If I ever cancel one of these, it's probably because I have the kids at home, and the kids allow me to do nothing basically on my own without interruption. And I'd like to be interrupted during these, like to have just, just you and me, right? I don't like all this outside, uh, things bothering me, and kids are good at that. So it's just yours truly tonight. Thank you all so very much. So anyway, pieces of business, um, There is— let me look here on Facebook. It should be here. There should be a subscribe button. Hold on a second. Hmm. Yeah, there's a button on my Facebook page called subscribe, and you can click that and you can agree to pay yours truly $4.99 every single month. What do you get for that? Not much, to be honest with you. It's just a way to say thank you and to support the Dad Started Over cause. If you like the content, you like interviews and things that I do on here, and all these videos that I put out, and you want a little, you know, like a tip jar, if you will, just a little way to say thank you. Um, I will have that— will put you in a little separate section as far as followers are concerned, and then I can send you messages, videos, have you— if the numbers grow big enough, we can have a subscriber-only video stream chat. We can have offers on products, discounts, and things like that. So that's something I want to grow. $4.99, just a way to say thank you, and you will get automatically charged every single month until you tell Facebook to stop. YouTube has something very similar, uh, I believe they're called memberships, and you can find it by clicking on join on the channel. Also $4.99. Also, you don't get much for it, just the ability to be called out as a supporter, get a little icon next to your name in the chats, uh, and then you will get, uh, notices, early notices on videos before everyone else and all kinds of stuff. Doesn't mean much with the numbers being as low as they are. I mean, low— I have 140-some thousand followers on Facebook, and then the YouTube numbers are growing. We're up to like 34,000, and that's going, um, for a while there was almost 1,000 a day we were adding, but now right now it's running 600 to 1,000 a day that we're adding. Pretty good. So the number is going to grow. So thank you all so very much. A couple of different ways of, of supporting YouTube Membership, Facebook subscribers, and then of course we have, if you're a dude, sorry ladies, nothing against you. I was gonna say you guys, that'd make any sense. Nothing against you ladies, but we have a private group for men only and it is called the DSO Fraternity. It's the support group, if you will. We all get together and chat privately away from the rest of the world and forums. We have live Zoom meetings. I conduct them as well as other guys on the Dad Starting Over team. We have several of those every single week. We record all those meetings. You can listen to those meetings. The recordings, uh, like a podcast you can write from your phone, pretty cool stuff, or from a streaming player on our DSO Fraternity website. We have a DSO Fraternity podcast, we have articles, we have live in-person gatherings. We get together once a year in the States for a big conference. We have one coming up in April pretty soon in New Orleans. So if you join us, then you can sign up for the conference and join us there. It's gonna be pretty cool. We arrive on a Thursday, have dinner, hang out all day Friday with presentations, lunch, dinner, drinks. Same with Saturday, and we all leave Sunday morning. So it's a pretty good event. We've done 3 of those so far. This will be our 4th one. And then we have separate events for our folks in Australia. They're getting ready to have their 3rd one. And yes, Australia, we're pretty big, pretty big group. We're all over the world. We have got hundreds of guys from all over the world. So check it out. It's called the DSO Fraternity. You can learn more at Learn more rather at dsofraternity.com or go to dadstartingover.com and click on the DSO fraternity logo and learn more about it. Very cool stuff. Would love to see you guys in there. Uh, the common complaint I hear, like Facebook especially, is, uh, I have a Facebook page. All companies have like a page, right? Like Nike has a page, McDonald's has a Facebook page, and you can go on there and you can type away stuff like McDonald's sucks, their hamburgers are bullshit, whatever. And then, um, uh, same with the Dad Starting Over Facebook page. Anyone, man, woman, koala bear, whatever, can get on there and say whatever they want. And men see that and go, why are all these women on here blasting men? Guys, I can't go on there and stop everyone from saying whatever it is they want. It's a public page. I don't have the time to moderate all those, all those comments. I welcome anyone and everyone to leave a comment. Some people are dickheads, men, women alike, whatever.. But if you want a man-only section or group rather, just for men only where you're free to talk about whatever, a safe space if you will for men only, then check it out, the DSO fraternity, dsofraternity.com. Enough about that. Again, my name is Ralph Brewer from dadstartingover.com. You may have seen my pretty bald head in a lot of different videos that I post all across the web. I just saw YouTube inform me that I have over 700— that's right, 700 videos posted on my channel. That's, that's a lot. So yeah, if you haven't, you know, head on over to YouTube, search for Dad Starting Over, youtube.com/dadstartingover if you're on a web browser, and, um, uh, check it out. You're never going to run out of material, and I add to it literally every single day. I have, uh, posts scheduled from here through the end of March into April. I have a program that I use to schedule all these videos. They get pushed out anytime I do one of these lives. If it's good stuff, I cut it up into segments, and then that— because those become separate videos. So lots of content, keeping very, very busy here in Dad Starting Over headquarters. And for those that don't know, I am actually in Kentucky. If you can't tell by my accent, I'm not from here originally. I moved here. This is a common story I've learned in the world of men who have been divorced. I was married to a gal for going on 15 years when we split up. We were together as a couple for 20-some-odd years. And in the last, oh shit, 10 years or so of our marriage, is that right? Not quite. 9, 8, 9 years of our marriage or whatever, we moved to Kentucky. To be closer to her extended family, which also put me further away from everybody that I knew. We lived in Illinois at the time, in a city called Peoria, Illinois, and I made some good friends there. I had a good friend network. I hung out with friends almost every single day and picked up, pulled up stakes and went to Kentucky. You know, it's one of those, do I regret it? Yeah, but at the same time I wouldn't be where I'm at today and with all you fine folks if it wasn't for all these little moments in life, right? But no, Kentucky's never really been home for me. Lovely people here, but as far as, they never made the deep friendships and everything else that I made like in Illinois and other places where I've lived. But this will not be my forever home. Basically here because of my kiddos from marriage number one. And I got one in middle school And I think as he gets older, we will be seriously looking at picking up and moving, and he's already, he's ready to go. But he loves his mother and he wants to stay close to mom. But so that's why I'm here in Kentucky. And oh, Dr. Psych Mom says hi. Hey, howdy, DPM. What you up to? You know, if you want to join us, you're more than welcome to. You just give me a heads up there and you can always jump in, Miss Samantha. We all love us some Samantha. I say Samantha because there was a TV show when I was a kid called Who's the Boss. I don't know if you guys remember that, with Tony Danza, and he was a little Italian-American dude with the— I don't know, Samantha, if you're still on here with us or not. I think he had a Brooklyn accent, much like yourself, and he had a daughter named Samantha, and he used to say Samantha, and I just— so every time I see Samantha, I always say that. Yep, nothing but highbrow humor here at DSO World, so welcome everybody. Anybody else want to say hey howdy? Now is the time. I am done blabbing. I'm tired of hearing myself talk, giving myself a headache. Now is the time to say hey howdy, and if you have any questions, or maybe let us know where you are joining us from this fine Friday evening. Um, we'd love to hear it. And Dr. Psych Mom, if you want to join us today, you're more than welcome to do so. I'm, uh, pardon my clicking here, checking my messages, make sure I'm not missing anything. Looks like nothing. Oh boy, this may be a, this may be a short live. Maybe a Friday evening is not a good idea to go live here with you fine folks today. We will see. I'll stick around for a little bit, see what happens. Um, I keep mentioning this because it's a hotbed topic and I like to get conversation going and, you know, get content going and all this other stuff. But a topic that I mentioned a little while ago, I don't know how long ago I first, I talked to a young gal from England whose name is Carla Cravaro. She was recommended to me by another content creator named Harvey with Men Are the Prize podcast. Excellent gentleman, puts out really great content. And I was on his show and he later emailed me and said, you need to talk to this Carla gal. So I reached out to her and we got to chatting and she came up with this concept concept that she called the Forgotten Father. And she does a lot of coaching and counseling with people, men and women alike. And she's like, she sees a trend with men that are like, you know, ever since we had kids, I kind of don't know what my role is in all this, and I kind of feel forgotten. Called this a Forgotten Father. And I was like, I really like that. It condensed it down into two words. I'm a marketing dude, so I like that. And very catchy. And it's something I can certainly, in a lot of men, I think, if not all of us, can relate to it to some degree. And so I talked a little bit about it. And I have noticed over the years, anytime anybody says anything around ladies about, you know, I'm a man and I kind of feel forgotten ever since kiddos came in here, women don't take too kindly to that. And they get very downright pissed about it. And so I made a tweet about it saying, you know, if there's one thing I've learned over the years is that, oh boy, women get pissed when men say that they feel forgotten after the kids come in the picture, which resulted in a lot more anger. And some people picked up on that tweet, namely a, uh, a relatively famous— popular, better word— TikToker who is a, uh, um, her theme is being a mom, overstressed mom, living life as a mom, a self-professed feminist, whatever, you know, not hold that against her. And, um, she didn't take kindly to it either, and she made a video about it, and thousands and thousands of people saw it. And then they went over to my YouTube channel and my Twitter account and left all kinds of messages. It's a hot button topic and it pisses off a lot of women for men to emote about, I feel forgotten as a partner, best friend, spouse, lover, everything else. But those are how, that's how men feel anyway. And, oh, Steve, Steve is a coach within our DSO fraternity from Australia. And he says, "G'day, Ralph. Midday down undah here." It's my best Australian accent, sorry. And then we have Jared saying, "Howdy, Ralph. Appreciate your work. It's kept my head above water during my divorce and trying to figure out what the heck went on. Discovering the work of guys like yourself and Dr. Glover has given me direction." Well, very good. And I am honored to be in the same sentence as Dr. Robert Glover. I don't know if you saw Jared or others. Dr. Glover, who has been immensely popular for shit, 20-some-odd years now. Is that right? I think that's how far back his book went. The book is called No More Mr. Nice Guy, which a lot of people take offense to or they have issues with because it sounds like he is telling people to be a dick. No, being a quote unquote nice guy is another way of saying being a codependent person. Man in particular, manipulative, sneaky, just a people pleaser. And he wrote a book all about if that, you know, if that sounds familiar to you as a dude, here are some things you can do to overcome that mindset and get better. And that touched a nerve with millions of men, and he has sold a ton of books. And I've spoken to Dr. Glover several times. I spent a weekend with Dr. Glover. He joined us for our Bro Fest, which is our annual gathering, the That's the name we give to our annual gathering. I know, a little douchey, but whatever. And, uh, he was in, um, where did he go? Austin, Texas. So he hung out with The Weeknd himself, and G.S. Youngblood, another famous author, uh, joined us for a weekend there. It was awesome. So I've really gotten to know the guy over the years, and, um, really cool dude. But anyway, I think his level of popularity is going to kind of go up a notch even more so. He was on a really big podcast, one of the biggest in the world, called, uh, Modern Wisdom with Chris Williamson. He was on there, and that's going to take him to the next level. And he has a men's group much like my own men's group. Mine's called the DSO Fraternity, and I am not purposely forgetting, but I can't remember the name of his. But check it out, Dr. Robert Glover does excellent work. Um, why would I promote another men's group or even mention another men's group? Guys, I'm not in this to rip you off. I'm not in this to get stinking rich, although Making some money would be nice. Helps keep the lights on, right? But we're in this to help dudes. And I would be an asshole if I thought that I had a monopoly on helping men. We need a lot more Ralphs out there, a lot more Dr. Glovers and other folks out there. If you get the help you need to get better at life, to become a more healthy, well-rounded, grounded individual, and you do so by saying, I don't like Ralph's stuff, I like Dr. Glover's stuff better, then amen, brother, go for it. Hallelujah, you're in good hands with Dr. Glover. Or vice versa, he would probably say the same thing, I assume. Get help, whatever it takes. That's a great thing. I think we have a really good group and we have a lot of really good benefits to joining us. And obviously, or else I wouldn't run the group, I wouldn't put it on and spend so much time on it. So check it out. And, uh, Kobe Baller, are you a Kobe Bryant fan? Um, oh, Keen. Okay, I remember Keen from a previous, uh, go-live. No more Mr. Nice Guy and the Dead Bedroom Fix have changed my life. Well, very good. Thank you so much. And Teddy Polus, Polus, he says hi. Hello, Teddy. A man of few words. Good old Teddy. Ira says hello from Northern Ohio. Greetings, Ira, joining us from YouTube. Thank you so very much. Keen from YouTube. And we got Mr. Jared joining us again from Facebook. Okay, we have an official question, or scenario here, rather. Jared says, 10 months post-separation, my ex-wife likes to do things as a family with the kids, which I still find quite painful. I'm a bit torn between avoiding the pain and trying to move on and still doing activities together. Any thoughts here? Well, I'm gonna open that up to the forum as well. Let me make some adjustments here to my window so I don't have to stretch my neck to look. All right, can I move this up? Yes, I can. Sweet. All right, here we go. Alright, so doing things as a family with your ex. I know there's— that's not a unique thing in terms of you didn't come up with— you and your ex-wife didn't come up with this concept. I hear a lot of people saying the same thing. And it always strikes me as a little, by my estimation, a little odd. It seems like when you are separate, you are separate. You wanted to you know, leave said arrangement wife, you want to divorce, well, you lose the benefits of said marriage. No, I don't come fix your faucet for you. I've heard those stories. I remember I had a guy who I brought him up several times where the ex-wife said a tree fell in the backyard, and he's like, I'm coming right over. And he took his chainsaw, cut up the tree, loaded up in the trailer, and took it away. And I'm like, why would you do that? He's like, well, why not? I got a chainsaw, I got a trailer. What kind of dickhead would I be to not do that? I was like, well, dude, that's not your responsibility anymore. She's a big girl. She wanted to separate, divorce, move out and start over with somebody else. Let the somebody else take care of that, or her own, or herself rather. And he just didn't want to be an asshole. Mr. Nice Guy, right? That we talked about, people pleaser. Jared, I would say if that bothers you to be hanging around with the ex and playing family, playing mom and dad and all this other stuff with the kiddos, then it behooves you to put up the old proverbial boundaries and say, I don't feel comfortable doing that anymore. I'm sorry. Um, you want to take the kid out— kids out somewhere on your own? Have fun, and I'll do the same. But together as a family? Sorry, it's not in the cards anymore. We're separate for a reason. If that is in fact what you're thinking, what you're feeling, then I don't see anything wrong with that. That's personally how I would be. I don't think I'm a dick for thinking that way. Um, but then there's the whole mindset of, uh, we're doing things for the children, this is best for the children, this is, you know, to keep a— what's the word— like a, uh, the, the face of the family, to show them that you guys are working together for their benefit, to, you know, do things positively for them, the children. Mom and dad are together, you know. I've heard of families getting together still for, uh, holidays and so forth. I could see see that. You know, it's Christmas time, here comes dad and his new woman, mom and her new man, we all get together. I can't personally imagine that with my own personal, I guess, baggage and so forth. But some people are able to pull that off. God bless them, whatever. I don't know, what do you guys think? Open that up to you guys. Do you think it's weird to be doing things together as a family with, with the ex? You know, talking about avoiding pain, You know, some people are like, you gotta suck it up, dude, and, and just face the music for your children's sake and go out there and do stuff with their mother. At the same time, um, this is a unique thing with this breakup, with being together and then suddenly not. You're definitely not going to be together anymore, right? You broke up for good. This isn't some temporary thing just to test the waters or whatever bullshit people come up with. You're done. You're 10 months post-separation, you say. So going on a full year of not being a couple anymore. There's still a very real tendency for people to feel attachment to their ex, longing feelings, romantic feelings. That's normal, right? And, you know, still long for them in a way. Maybe they really, really hurt you, but still there's a part of you that secretly wishes. But you realize rationally, not a good thing. We need to, we need to stay separate. You don't help your cause and you don't help expedite that separation process, emotional separation process, if you continually are in contact with them. Chatting, you know, texting back and forth little funny things, and you want to come on over and eat lunch with the kiddos, blah blah. You're still a little— you're getting a little taste of your drug, your addiction to them, and it's that just, um, prolongs that attachment. And if you want to expedite the detachment from them, you have to eliminate those little moments. That's all there is to it. So there's nothing wrong with just saying Timeout, ex-wife, not gonna happen anymore. And you don't have to, you know, go to her and say, it's because I still have these lingering feelings and it's really tough for me emotionally, blah blah blah. You could just say, no, I don't feel comfortable doing that. That's all there is to it. There's nothing wrong. No is a complete sentence. No, period. Not happening. Why? It's best for the kids. No, no, you're more than welcome to do those things for the kiddos. I will pick them up on Saturday or whatever it may be. So nothing wrong with that, dude, as far as my opinion is concerned. Joseph says, wasted time doing all that stuff with the wife, I assume is what you mean, Joe. Um, Steve says, if it's painful for either party— this is Steve from the DSO Fraternity, our coach from Australia, excuse me— it's painful. If it's painful for either party, the kids will sense this, and it's not good unless it's an important occasion. Yeah, you know, there's, um, I was just talking, uh, was it yesterday in our DSO fraternity meeting? I think it was. Yeah, Thursday, yesterday. And, um, we were saying that it seems like it is— not to pick on the ladies or anything, but we do see it, uh, well, let's be honest, our perspective as dudes that are divorced from women, that's the only perspective we have, right? But we see it from our women— ex-women, rather, ex- partners, um, where we see a lot of them want to prolong that comfortable family state and all that goes with it, all the comfort, safety, and everything else that goes with it, almost pretending and going through the motions, even when they at times are the one to say, husband, I don't want anything more to do with you. We're done here. They initiate the divorce and the breakup or do something as painful as, you know, sleeping with others or whatever it may be. And the husband's dumped and the husband feels abandoned and all this other stuff. And sometimes those women are just like, "Come on over and do this. Can you come help me with this? Let's go do this, blah, blah, blah." And the men are like, "Are we broke up or what?" Sometimes it behooves the man in that position to play the part of the adult. "Sorry, we're no longer a couple anymore, sweetheart. I still love you in a way," Part of me always will, but romantically, no. And with that goes all the other stuff that goes with being your romantic partner. And that is, no, I'm not going to come over and chop up the tree and take it away. No, I'm not going to come fix your sink. No, I'm not going to come have dinner with you. No, I'm not going to go to the mall with you with the kids. No, I'm not going to the amusement park. No, no, no, no, no. Welcome to the real world, sweetheart. Sorry. Comes with breaking up. And that's a very normal, healthy adult thing to do, at least by my estimation. Um, but what a good topic. Thank you so much for that, Jared. Appreciate it. Pardon me while I take a drink. Talk amongst yourself. All right, anything else, folks? Any other questions, comments? Thank you all so much for joining today. Pretty small group still here with us today. Thank you for joining us from YouTube, Facebook. I mentioned earlier at the top of this, we have a couple of features. YouTube has a feature called Join, a membership. You can click that, join, and agree to pay me $4.99 a month. It's just a way of filling up the tip jar to say thank you, just an appreciation for what we do. And there they— YouTube gives you some silly little benefits like a little icon next to your name, and you get, you get notified when new videos come out and things like that., just as a way of saying thank you. But, uh, and then Facebook has something similar called the subscribe. If you want to, uh, do the old tip jar for $4.99, or if you want to go full-blown and really join the cause, join your fellow dudes to get better, help others, get help yourself, the DSO fraternity, dsofraternity.com, private group for men only. All right guys, thank you so much for that. Jared says, great answer, appreciate the wisdom. Thank you so much, Jared, appreciate the awesome question. Keep them coming, ladies and germs. Anything else from anybody else? Um, I posted the, the link, uh, previously mentioned the Forgotten Father thing, the lady on TikTok who was super pissed off. I posted that on Facebook for all to see. Uh, I'm scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. Wow, I post a lot of shit on here. There's a lot of stuff on this page. You guys are lucky to have— asshole thing— you guys are lucky to have me. No, you guys are lucky I haven't gotten sick of this yet because I mentioned top of this, I have some 700-some videos posted on YouTube from one dude. That's a lot. So check it out, YouTube, Dad Starting Over. Sorry. Uh, what else? Anything else, folks? Anything else, folks? Anybody else have any questions, comments, conclusions, anything at all? Please don't be shy. Really don't want to sit here and talk to myself. We are— I can't see— about a half hour into this. Not too bad. We don't have to talk. We could just sit here and stare at each other lovingly. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on a second. Mr. Steve. Steve, our coach from the DSO Fraternity in Australia, once again says, how important is men meetups? I think you mean our men meetups, Steve. Proper grammar, please. Local one-on-one, etc. I think it's pretty important. What do you think, Steve? It kind of takes it to the next level, doesn't it? It's, um, We have our online groups and people, the men talk to each other frequently online and, you know, get to know each other. And the anonymity allows you to probably share more than what you would in person. You're behind the screen, so to speak, behind your keyboard, and you feel safe in doing so. But with that being said, all these guys that we have met with in person at these conferences, Steve knows, Steve is the one that organizes and hosts the meetings that we have, the conferences that we have in Australia. Had two already. He'll have a third here in October in Sydney. Is that right? And, um, Steve also joined us for our last one in the States in Las Vegas. Thank you again for that, Steve. What an epic visit that was. That was awesome. And I think Steve will attest the fact that all men pretty much the same thing. This took this whole thing to the next level. These men will say went from this online virtual thing with these buddies, these little two-dimensional pictures on the screen, to Holy crap, he's here in front of me, this dude. And then you form real friendships, lasting, you know, real life friendships, and get to press the flesh with guys. And nothing beats that. And that is something that is sorely missing from a lot of men's lives, period. Not just men in these fraternal groups like ours, but just men in general in life, that we just don't have much time for one-on-one dude time. We're so caught up with being a dad and a worker and a husband and Where do you shoehorn dude time in there? Now, I've mentioned before plenty of times that it's, uh, this is very apparent for guys that are, um, newly divorced. So let's say you got a 50/50 custody and you got a week without the kiddos. Kids leave on Sunday and you're like, well, I got a Sunday night free or Monday night free or whatever it is. And you call up your, your friend Bob or text him and go, you want to get together? And he's, no, soccer. Tomorrow? No, gymnastics. Next day? Nah, work trip, blah, blah, blah. And you just realize, wow, nobody has much time for some good old buddy time anymore. Pretty common, pretty common, unfortunately. So if you can get that time with other dudes, whether it's forced via a fraternal group like ours, support groups, whatever it may be, take advantage of it because it's very good for your mental health. Very much so, especially for dudes to talk to other men, especially like-minded men on the same kind of mission going through the same stuff, like with our group. Um, I've mentioned before how, uh, you know, you sit down with your regular dude friends that you just know in your, you know, casual dude friends that you know in your day-to-day life, and you sit with them and talk about things like sex and marriage and divorce and everything else, they're just going to sit wide-eyed like, holy shit, I don't know anything about this stuff. All I know is gymnastics and soccer and, you know, cleaning my house. And listen to my wife bitch at me. I don't know about any of this. And, um, so to get with like-minded men going through all the same stuff, it's like, oh God, there's a whole world out there of people just like me. Yeah, dsfraternity.com. Good question, Mr. Steve. Um, Keen asks, what, quote, precautions would you suggest apart from good partner selection, LOL, after getting engaged but prior to getting married in order to avoid a dead bedroom? Oh, very good. So You're engaged and you're about to get married and you're having these worries like, oh shit, what if as soon as she says I do, this all goes in the toilet and she's like, don't want to touch you anymore. You know, we hear those stories and those are horror stories. It's not the majority of men though, trust me. It's a very vocal minority of guys who are really pissed off and angry at the world. They'll share those stories. And what I'm talking about is the woman says I do and you're walking down the aisle and she turns to the guy and says, you know, By the way, we're never doing that anymore. That happens, but it's not as common as you think. What is more common is get married, get hitched, move in together, get comfortable, life starts throwing all kinds of stuff your way, and then you have kids, and then you just kind of wake up one day and go, wait a minute, we went from 3, 3, you know, hot and heavy sessions a week, if you know what I mean, to once a month if we're lucky. What happened? That's the most common. So your question is, how do I avoid that? Because that's technically what we call a dead bedroom situation. Good part— you say apart from the good partner selection. Well, that's pretty much it, dude. And I know you're thinking, I'm already engaged, the partner selection thing's already done. No, it's not. At any point in time, you can turn around and go, I don't think this is going to work out. It's awkward and and terrible as that may be, um, I mean, what if you suddenly discovered that your wife had a horrible drug problem, or she was some criminal on the loose, or a serial killer, or something like that? You would, you would say, 'I— this ain't gonna work,' right? Um, same thing if you discovered in some way that your wife has some kind of, uh, mental hang-ups that prevent any kind of real intimacy later in life. Well, how are we going to determine that? Well, as far as I can tell, The best predictors of that are her behavior early in the relationship. I can't tell you how many men that I talk to in dead bedroom relationships. I say, did you go through a hot and heavy phase of really being, you know, can't keep your hands off each other? You're so interconnected. You're so in love with each other, romantically, intellectually, and sexually, and blah, blah, blah. And some men just say, sort of, you know. What do you mean, sort of? It's like, we were good for maybe like once a week if we were lucky. I'm like, dude, This is not the good foundation for a relationship. You know, it's not all about sex. Well, but sex is important. Any good therapist, physician, minister, whatever, will tell you the same damn thing. As far as the health of the relationship is concerned, physical intimacy is important for most people. Um, so where was I going with that? It always starts up here as far as the physical intimacy is concerned in a relationship. And as the safety, security, and everything, and comfortability comes into the picture, it always peters. So if you start at this level, let's say it's from, from here to here is the range. If you start here and it dissipates, you're— look at that, you're off the charts. You're so down low nobody can see you anymore. Not good, dude. Always want to start up here. Always. And some people are going to say, no, it's not all about sex. Well, we're talking about sex. We're talking about physical intimacy and connection. Got to start way up there. So you're engaged to this gal and you're like, it's still not great. Well, maybe it'll get better as we get more comfortable with each other. No, it won't. Maybe as we grow together and we have a life and get a home and I get my career settled and she gets her career settled and she's out of school and all the stress of school, maybe then it'll get better. No, it won't. Mm-mm. Sorry. If you're a betting man, put money on— no, not going to get better. So, Ralph Brewer, look at your activity now in the honeymoon stage, as we call it. It better be really, really good. The other thing to look at is her family. That really pisses off a lot of people, and I completely understand why, coming from myself, a somewhat dysfunctional family, and knowing a lot of really good people that came from dysfunctional families. Sorry, but still the biggest predictor of dysfunctional behavior later in life is let's look at, oh, mom and dad, grandma and grandpa, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters. Let's just start. If you start noticing a pattern of dysfunctional behavior throughout the relationship or throughout the family rather, and you know, you go visit mom and dad and you're like, these two people just do not act like they like each other at all. They're just two business partners living under the same roof. I, you know, I've known them for years and I've never seen them hug and kiss or anything like that. You got a front row seat for your future. Not always, not 100% of the time, but enough for me to go, dude, you need to think long and hard about this. I'm sorry, it's not a knock against the partner. It's just, I mean, we can't eff around with this stuff, guys. Who you pick for your life partner is one of, if not the biggest decision of your life. Because if you pick the wrong person and they introduce all kinds of chaos and awfulness to your life, I got a few million guys you can talk to who've been down this road. It ain't pretty. Men and women alike. Okay? We want to keep it fair. And they all say the same thing. I saw the signs there. I really did, but I ignored them. Why? I was in love. I finally found somebody who liked me. Somebody loved me. Somebody who accepted me for me. Never had that before. Didn't want to let them go. Sure, I noticed they drank an awful lot. Sure, I noticed their mom and dad drank an awful lot. Sure, I noticed fill in the blank with whatever dysfunctional behavior here, but I kept trudging on. Oh, fuck, that really messed everything up. I shouldn't have done that. That's, you know, 10, 20 years down the line. Uh, Ryan says we need some DSO golf trips. I'll let you take care of that, Ryan. I am not a golfer. I actually live on a golf course. I've had over my life probably, shit, I don't know, 5,000 golf balls because they all end up in my yard, and then my youngest boy takes them and he sells them. Little entrepreneurial thing. And, um, even with all that free golf balls on a golf course, the whole— I never played a round or hole of golf. I, I've hit balls on the range or whatever just for fun. Beyond that, or, or putt-putt, miniature golf. Pretty good at that. Beyond that, no, I have no interest. So you guys can do that and I'll just sit back in the— I'll be in the golf cart, you know, smoking cigars and, and making fun of you guys. Andrew Jones says— Andrew from YouTube says, I want to go because no matter how many times we discuss improving things, she always defaults to good old indifference. We've got busy jobs, but she seems so comfortable with indifference and I need more. I'm sorry to hear that, Andrew. So here you are, you're painting the picture in one— well, we got two sentences here. Here I am being a Mr. Know-it-all and trying to pretend I know exactly what you're talking about. But you are, in just a few sentences, kind of outlining, if you're not aware, a pretty common scenario. In the scenario one of the pursuer, let's work on this, let's discuss things, let's talk about the relationship. And the other one being, as you put it, indifferent. Nah, I'm good. We're fine. We don't need to talk about all that stuff. We don't need to always bring in this drama and blah, blah. Let's just live our lives for God's sakes. The psych terms that the psychologists like to throw out there is one is the anxious, and we're talking about attachment theory. One is the anxious partner. And the other one is the— why am I drawing a blank today? Avoidant. Thank you. The anxious and the avoidant. And you're Mr. Anxious, it seems like, and she's Miss Avoidant. Pretty common dynamic. How the opposites attract and they find each other is always kind of funny, but pretty common scenario. I'm sorry. And, uh, how do you get past this? Well, you both work on— you work on your problems and come more to center, to more secure, and stop chasing her around all the damn place. And she comes more to center and she, you know, opens up more. All right, I'm willing to talk, I'm willing to do things, I'm willing to whatever. So you got to find that middle ground where you both can come together. Pretty hard. From what I've seen, by nature of the anxious person, the pursuer and everything, they always want to put in work, it seems like. So when I come to them and I go, I got a book for you, or a course, or a YouTube video, or something like that, the anxious person's like, yes, yes, whatever it takes so I can bridge the gap between myself and the avoidant person, just whatever I got to learn. Well, on the other hand, by virtue of their nature, the avoidant's like, I've read enough, just stop with the bullshit, with the constant trying to fix things and stuff. Can we just not? Makes things really difficult. So, uh, often in the online circles, you'll see the anxious person kind of painted as the angel, the, the victim, and the avoidant person is the devil. They're the one doing the putting up the wall. They're not exactly wrong, but it's not the full story. The, the anxious people have a lot of work to do themselves, which a lot of them learn after the fact, after they get out of that relationship and they go on to the next relationship and they go, goddamn it, I did it again. And here I was, I thought the love, the new love of my life is telling me to back off and stop being so needy. I've heard that before. Maybe you got something to work on, right? And now we're talking about Mr. Jason Hughes, who is the Coach J. If you guys go over to YouTube or on Facebook, wherever you're watching this, and in the video section of Facebook or on YouTube. My interview with Coach Jay, you will see that on there. That's who they're talking about. He would be hilarious on the links and golf, they're saying. But he says— Ryan says, you're serious, DSO golf trip? We'll make it happen, Ryan. Let's talk about it. Let's get something together. Like I say, I'll go sit and watch you guys make fun of you, but I ain't gonna golf. Then Andrew says, in follow-up to his story, the trouble is that it's so tough financially to sell up and buy two smaller households. It'd be a financial nightmare. I can't work out if the cost would outweigh the benefits. Yeah, there's— here's the thing, dude, and you're painting a picture that a lot of people do. If you were to end said relationship, or rather, let's say this, if you were to put up, you know, like the big boundary of them all, or the big ultimatum— or by the way, ultimatums work, nothing wrong with a good old ultimatum— we sit down and we talk about this wife and we work on this issue because I love you and I really want to make this work. I know I'm being an needy little ass, and you're really sick of me, but I can't go on like this. Do you agree, wife? Are you willing to work on this at all? She may very well say, no, go fuck yourself, which leaves you with a decision. Well, I guess we're done here, which in turn, as you're pointing out, is going to cause a whole hell of a lot of drama and stress and anxiety and all kinds of life stuff that just makes you go, oh God. Do I have to deal with this, this finances? I gotta cash in my 401k to do this, and I gotta— yeah, it's gonna be hell. But, uh, the point I'm making is that just because it's the right thing to do, which putting your foot down, communicating, I'm not willing to live like this anymore, I want to get better, let's work on this together, being rejected, all that stuff is the, the right pathway but it results in a lot of pain. That doesn't make any sense. That must not be the right pathway. That ain't the way life works. Sorry. Sometimes you do the right thing and you end up living in your car for a year. Sometimes you do the right thing and you end up living in your parents' basement as a 40-some-year-old man, but it's still the right thing to do. And in the end, after so many years of doing that and you get over the hump and you get better, every man, woman says the same thing. Glad I did that. I'm glad I went through that hell. Because, uh, that's what I need you to do to get better, get over the hump. And you're describing a little mini hell here. Like, this is a nightmare. Two households and all this other shit. What am I gonna do? You'll get through it. I'm not saying to divorce. I'm not saying that's the— you know, there might be 18 steps between that and here. But looking ahead, I can't ever put up with this. I can't live with this. Sure you can. People deal with a lot worse, dude. Matt says, yeah, I picked the wrong person. Joe, Joe also from the DSO fraternity. Hello Joe. Hi all, happy Friday. Or is it Saturday? Yeah, what is it for you? Steve says happy Friday, Joe, from tomorrow, because Steve is in Australia. Oh, that always freaks me out, the whole time difference. It's like I'm speaking to some whole parallel universe thing. I never quite get the time difference. How many hours apart? It's like 13 and a half or something freaking weird like that. Ugh, and it's like summer when it's winter, and it's just a— oh, you backwards people. You— one day I will go there. Hey Kim, also from Australia. This apparently is the Australian time. Maybe I need to do more of these. Kim, um, I see the guitar. I remember you, you were a guitar player there, as you can see behind me. Uh, boy, I need to play more guitar. I haven't played in a while. Hope all is well, says Kim. Yes, thank you. Howdy, Kim. Try flying here. I know, it's a real pain in the, in the tuchus from what I hear. Talk about jet lag city. Or is it— or the time difference such that the jet lag is kind of cancels itself out? I imagine not. Kim says it's 11 AM on Saturday there. Oh God, so weird. All right, another bald stud. Lots of us out there. What did my— my dad was bald. What did Yoshi used to say? God only created so many perfect heads and the rest he put hair on them or something like that. I can't remember what he said. He also called himself a solar-powered sex machine. Oh, Dad. Um, anything else, guys? We have been going at this for about 45 minutes now already. That was fast. Always a pleasure chatting with you fine folks. And make sure I'm not missing a message here. Massage. Looking good. Oh shit, I lost you guys. Oh God, there you are. All right, Mr. I part— I apologize, not sure how to pronounce your name. Graham, Graham, Graham. Uh, he says, just want to say thanks for your advice from a guy over in Scotland. Oh well, thank you so very much, Graham. Great. Um, The cord being— Scott says the cord being pulled in the background is bugging me. The cord coming off of the, off the guitar. Oh yeah, now that's all I see now that you mention it. Oh God, now you had to send my OCD in overdrive there. Look at that, it's like a little tail, some kind of little appendage coming off of it. The tension of the wires ready to pull the guitar down at any moment. If you guys are wondering, this— I always get it backwards— the, um, this is a license plate from the, uh, help me out guys, um, what's that called, the, uh, the territory in, in Canada. Uh, Vince lives there. Vince is one of our DSO fraternity members. He always sends me little gifts to, uh, talk about, or from where he's from, to kind of show off where he's from. That's up there in Canada. That's what their little license plates look like up there. How cool is that? And what else I got there? Am I missing— oh, above me, I've never really shown that. One day I'll do a little video on that. Um, is, uh, this is our DSO fraternity logo emblem. Oh, right there. This is wood, a wood carving made by Andrew, one of our DSO fraternity members. And on the back, it was signed by all the members during, uh, I believe our first Bro Fest in Nashville, Tennessee. Is that right, or was that in Austin? May have been in Austin where he gave me that. I think it was Austin. Yeah, Austin, Texas, our second one. And, um, Northwest Territories, thank you very much. Yellowknife, thank you, Steve. Thank you. I don't know what I'd do without you guys. But anyway, so that's a very cool little gift. Love it. And Steve, pardon me for a minute here as I stretch. I need to— I need to figure out how to put this up on the wall. One day I will do that. Sticky it. But look, a little thing that Steve gave me. A little boomerang. Can't see it. Has a little plaque on there on the front that says, Dad starting over. You have changed our lives from all of your Aussie mates. Oh. So sweet. Got that at the, um, yeah, the Las Vegas, uh, BroFest from my Aussie fellas. Thank you all so much for that. I'll put that somehow up on the wall. It's on a cool little plaque there. What else do I have? I've shown this before on here. I'll show it again. I'm sore. Also from Australia. Steve, can anybody guess what this is? Anyone? Anyone? Going once, twice. Uh, these are— this is a kangaroo scrotum. You heard me right, this is the scrotum from the balls. Testes, technically a scrotum with a pouch, the skin, furry skin pad. It's very soft. Why am I petting kangaroo balls here anyway? Again, nothing but highbrow humor here at the DSO world, DSO headquarters. And then this, also from Vince. I gotta put this up on the wall from Ragged Ass Road. What's that say up there? City of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. Well, there you go. All I had to do is look at the sign. I'm gonna put that up there. Very cool. If you guys want to send me a little something, send me a message. I'll take it. I'll put you up on the wall. Hmm. Do do do do. You have a dozen— you have a dozen kangaroo balls from Matefest? Is that what you're saying, Scott? I'll wait for the answer because I'm somewhat stunned, shocked, concerned. Maybe even a little intrigued if you have a dozen kangaroo scrotums. Why would you have so many kangaroos? What would you do with a dozen kangaroo scrotums? Juggle them? Yeah, Friday night. All right, Kim says he does the same with his set. I don't know what that means. I don't know if I want to know what that means. All right, anything else, folks? Uh, Joe says— Joe from the DSO Fraternity says, uh, if you're not part of the DSO Fraternity, try it out. I agree. I'm a little biased though, as the guy who started the whole thing, but check it out, dsofraternity.com. How about I do this instead? Instead of just saying it, I could Is that right? Yeah, I couldn't see what I was typing, throw my glasses on. Looks good. DSOfraternity.com, check it out. Men's group, join us. You get— I didn't mention earlier, you know, my books that I wrote, about 4 books. Uh, I don't have any here in front of me, otherwise I'd show you. And you get access to all those books, uh, PDF format, download it, it's yours forever. We also have the, uh audiobook version you can listen to on your phone, streaming audio player on the web. And, uh, so you get all my books, no additional charge. In addition, all the other stuff I mentioned before. For those who are just joining us, some of the benefits include live meetings— we record all of them so you can listen to them like a podcast format— Disciplinary Podcast, a live, uh, rather a private, uh, discussion forum. We even have a Discord server for the lifetime members. Pretty cool. And we have discounts on coaching, discounts on courses that we have on there. We have live meetups, all kinds of cool stuff. I guess I'm probably forgetting something, but join us. Scott says that rooiballs are a great conversation starter or ender depending on who you're talking to. Yeah, I can imagine. Just there's a lull in the conversation like in a dinner or something, you go, well guys, Put an ending to that real quick. And, uh, and also the auto audio recordings for the books, yes, are done with my very own smooth calming voice. I really put it on, you know. I, um, I listen back to those sometimes. I don't know why, just hear myself, I guess. Narcissistic trait in myself. And every now and then I kind of cringe because I really kind of put on the radio voice a little bit too much. It's like, who reads like that? Well, apparently I do, trying to impress everyone with how manly I am. Yeah, but yes, I do read all the books myself with my voice. And as, as the audio goes on in the book and I get tired, the voice actually gets more and more rough. It sounds like I'm a smoker or something. I also noticed that myself. Um, anything else, ladies and germs? Thank you all, you, uh, Aussie and DSO fraternity members. Scott, Steve, Kim, Joe— who am I missing? I'm missing somebody. All you guys from the DSO fraternity, thank you all for joining us today. To help spread the word. For those of you joining us not in the frat, like Mr. Andrew going through your issues there at home with the avoidant wife and everything else, check out the DSO Fraternity. Check it out for a month, see if you like it. I'll tell you what, hold the phone, boop-a-doop-a-doop-a-doop. I got something for you, Andrew, and whoever else. Wapow! Check it out in the comments, a link to try out the DSO Fraternity for one month for free. You do have to put in a credit card, I will warn you. I had a couple guys go, if it's free, why do I gotta put it? Well, because if you, if you stay past the 30 days, past the one month mark, we're going to assume you want to, you want to keep up with the membership, and we will automatically charge you. If— mark on your calendar before the 30 days just so you know what's coming up. And if before that date is up, you contact us, or I think even from the right there in the your account, you could just say cancel and you're done. Out or email us and say, I would like to cancel, please. Okay, no hard feelings. We want people that want to be in the group. We will go on with or without you. We would prefer you be in the group. We want a lot of good guys in there to help each other out. But if you don't want to be in there, all the best. Go get help somewhere, talking to other dudes in some way. That's all we ask. And Jared says he will check it out. Excellent, please do so. And it's great to join in, says Steve. Thank you, big dog. I like being big dog. I don't think anyone's ever called me a big dog before other than you, Steve, so thank you. It was good chatting with you yesterday. Steve and I had a little chat over the, the interwebs. Oh, the technology. I was driving around in my car talking to him through Facebook Messenger, to a guy in Australia. How cool is that? Well, ladies and germs, it's been about an hour. Should I call her quits? Is— if I'm gonna say one more last round, if there are any questions or anything at all anybody would like to ask before we wrap her up. I'm here for you. Like I said, I got no kids, no wife, no nobody today. This is rare. Here's a little side note. My, uh, my 16-year-old son, who's quite the stud— dude's got more muscle than me, dude. He's built like— yeah, he's a wrestler and a good wrestler. He made it to the state finals— not finals, state tournament— 2 years in a row. Ralph Brewer, he's a junior this year, got himself his first official girlfriend. He's always kind of like had like dates to dances and stuff like that, but no, no official girlfriend, girlfriend. He has his first official girlfriend and she is a star, um, high school basketball player who's like one of the best in the nation. And she's recruited by every school there is. So in Division I level, taller than him, which is kind of funny, always tease him about that. And, um, Um, so she's over at the house today. She comes over quite often. They're up to watch the boys' basketball team tonight. And so, uh, uh, it's kind of cool. Just— and so that's why he's out of the house. My youngest is with a friend, spend the night. And, uh, yeah, kind of cool. You're all alone. As you get older, those things happen more and more. And Kim says men need, uh, male spaces. That's for sure. Or mate spaces. As Steve says. That's right, for our Aussie friends. Well, ladies and germs, thank you all so very much. I appreciate every last one of you. DadStartingOver.com, check it out. And, uh, check out the YouTube if you could please join. Click join on the YouTube channel, good way to show your appreciation, get a little special announcements, little benefits. Same for subscribe on the Facebook page. Good way to show your support. Or again, if you're a dude, join us, dsfraternity.com. I posted a link to try it out free for one month. All right, ladies and germs, thank you all again so very much, and I hope you have a fantabulous weekend. Toodaloo!