Let's Talk About Duty Sex (From a Live HFM Brotherhood Member Meeting)

Okay, if you're a frequent listener of the Dad Starting Over podcast and you find yourself saying, "Yeah, that sounds like me," well, you don't need another podcast episode. What you need is support. The Help for Men Brotherhood is where men go when they're done pretending that they got it all handled. You know, your dead bedrooms, your divorce, your loneliness, your rebuilding life. We have private forums, frequent live Zoom meetings, one-on-one coaching, courses, all my books at no additional charge. And yes, we get together in person. Real men and real conversations. So stop doing this alone and join the Help for Men Brotherhood today at help4men.com/join. I look forward to seeing you in the next member meeting. So everybody's talking about duty sex, which is in essence, um, keeping with the the trope of horny husband, disinterested wife, but wife recognizes it's important that we do this. I recognize he wants it. I love the guy. All right, let's do this. That's in essence duty sex. And a lot of women on the internet are saying we got to cut that shit out. It's kind of a patriarchal thing, if you will, of um, a, a relationship template that basically puts at the forefront an act of physical intimacy that even if woman, for whatever reason, physical, mental, maybe some very valid reasons, doesn't want to, she should still feel obligated to do so to keep him happy, to keep him around. Otherwise he's out of there. What do you guys think of that concept? Good? Bad? Does it matter? If she really, really wants it or not? Should she feel obligated? Are we being selfish as men to say, yeah, she should? And those women are right, if they don't, he will eventually go bye-bye. And, uh, I made a video about it where I said, you know, let's try to look at this as fairly as possible. We as men, especially men that have a sense of abundance as we often call it, which means I don't put all my happiness and all my cards into one human being, my wife. If this doesn't work, I'll be okay. I hope it works because I love her, that's why I married her. But if for some reason we are split, there's a lot of women out there, I'll be all right. Same kind of thing with our job and our whatever it may be. There's plenty in the world. And so we take that philosophy and apply it to the marriage. We could say, you know, I try to keep it as fair as possible and empathetic as possible and say, I understand if you don't want to, wife. I don't want you to do something you don't want to do. If you're just like, oh God, no, then yeah, I can pick up on that real quick and I don't want to do it. But at the same time, we have to recognize the more that, that, uh, if you don't want to, you don't have to. And she's like, oh shoot, good. And weeks and months go by, we're going to split emotionally. We've already split physically, now we're also going to split emotionally, intellectually, whatever that other connection may be. That split is going to happen It's inevitable. We're going to— we're no longer going to be a romantic couple. So there has to be some kind of compromise here. We got to work towards connecting that way. And even a lot of women in the comments and so forth are like, hmm, still doesn't sound good. What do you guys think about that? Let's open that up to discussion. It's really the more you think about it and the more you dig into it, the more interesting it gets. Because the sense of obligation, the sense of, I recognize this is important, that's why we need to do this, underlines something, doesn't it? Which is, I, and let's stick with the concept of it's the woman who's the lower libido, I recognize this is important, but I really just don't flat out feel like it. I'm tired, I'm this, I'm that. Yes, I know when we first got together, I was really crazy and I was just as horny, if not more so than him. Some of these women say, but now thanks to whatever, insert reasons, um, I just, it's just not there, but I want to do it. So in essence, we have a partner, or I want to do it for him rather. So in essence, we have a partner who is, um, going against their biology, if you will. It's, you know, it's kind of like the guy who's just like, I really hate eating certain things, but I do eat it because my wife prepared it for me. You know, anytime you try to make comparisons with this concept of duty sex to other things, and other men do it just, and they just put their foot in their mouth. You'll see men in the comments saying, I don't feel like mowing the lawn, but I do that anyway. And women are like, not an apt comparison. Doing something like jumping on your John Deere tractor, it's not the equivalent of taking off your clothes and doing the most intimate of intimate acts with another human being when you, when your body and brain is saying, no, don't do this. They're not the equivalent. Um, I don't know, open up to you guys if you think that that's an apt comparison. And I, here I am comparing it to eating certain foods you don't feel like eating. Again, women would say, dude, no, it's, it's not the same. Well, if that's the case, then if it's that big of an important thing and you flat out don't need to do it, are we pointing to a fundamental disconnect between two people that needs to be there in order to remain as a couple? And if we're presuming you've done the work of trying to connect, the man has done all the work that he's supposed to do, like I outline in The Dead Bedroom Fix. The woman is trying to be more open and responsive. She's recognizing his efforts and she also puts in effort, but it's still not there. And doing the act just makes her go, oh God, I got to do this thing again. Oof. Is that a giant neon blinking sign saying this relationship is over? Just, you guys need to wake up to that fact and just let each other go. I don't know, what do you think? We got a, there's a comment here from Joel. Fundamentally, we make sacrifices for each other, but is sex fulfilling if she doesn't participate? So if she's just lying there like, go on dude, get her over with, is that what we want? I would hope most of us in here would not. Well, now, Matt, you're getting to— you're getting into— you're getting even another deeper layer of this whole thing, because the more we dig, you're right, you're getting into this. And this is what a lot of the women, uh, espouse here, Matt. Like, dude, why on earth would you want that? Now, all you have to do is go to my comments in my videos and my material, and you'll see these dudes, and they are very open about this. And we may have something— I'm not trying to shame you guys if this is your your stance on this. Let's explore this further. There are men that are saying, um, I married this woman, which means I have cast aside all other human beings on the planet for this one, her. That's a huge sacrifice for me as a man. So I have a very visceral biological need. Again, I'm not necessarily, um, agreeing with the sentiment, but this is basically it, trying to put it in nice terms because they don't put it in in such nice terms. I basically have a— I'm a human being, I'm a male, I have these needs, yada yada, you're my one woman. Even though you are like, eh, I still have that very strong need and it's got to come out one way or another. And I'm hoping I can do it in a very healthy way with the person I love. So even though I get a eh out of you, I'm willing to ignore it. That's— oof. Again, Matt, I'm with you. Because it kind of makes me go, ooh, dude. But in essence, they are in very blunt ways advertising their kind of scarcity about this whole thing. But is it a— is it an unhealthy scarcity, or is it a reflection of their vows, their chastity, if you will, as men? I don't know if that's the proper term. You know what I mean. Their devotion to their wife. That— there's a lot of therapists. I think even a, you know, a Dr. Psych Mom might be a good person to have on a talk like this. She would probably say, and it may surprise some of you guys, that woman, you got to do that anyway. I know you don't feel like it, I know you 100% aren't there, but in order to maintain your connection as man and woman, there are a lot of things that he does he doesn't want to do, etc. You got to do that. That's what she says. Watch some of her videos. And a lot of women are like, uh, no. And even me, I'm like, that didn't sit well with me either, Dr. Psych Mom. I gotta tell you, I'd much rather have somebody intuit connected with me, etc., etc. And if she's not, and even in spite of working with each other, even if she's not, then I guess maybe it's easier for me and Matt and others who have been there, done that down the divorce road. Maybe it's easier for us to say, that's fine. You know, if you don't want to do it, I'm not going to force you to do anything you don't want to do. But I guess this is the end of us as a couple. That's easier for us to say, Matt. Compared to some of the other dudes out there. Yeah, I know, it's good. It's— yeah, it can get— it can go down yucky territory real fast. Um, and, uh, you know, trying to empathize with the ladies, typically in these kind of scenarios, both men and women do the same thing, which is in these kind of what-if scenarios, we envision the worst-case scenario. And the worst-case scenario for the woman in this regard is one that is realistic for a lot of women, unfortunately. And I've done done content on this as well, which is the wife will tell you, husband and I are wildly disconnected. There's no intellectual, emotional, nothing there. And it hasn't been for a long time because of insert reasons. I resent him, he resents me, yada yada. There's just— we don't even say good morning to each other, you know, that level of disconnected. Yet Mr. Man gets upset when I don't want to have sex with him. And he's grumpy and he pouts and he throws a fit and he's pissed off. And you go to the dudes and go, there's nothing in the environment of your marriage that leads to the type of connection that would lead to sex. Don't you realize that, dude? And some of these men are like, don't give a shit. I have a need. I've, again, I've set aside all other women for this one. She doesn't want to fill it. F her. That's her job. That's the mindset of a lot of dudes out there. And I don't know, kind of yucky. Yet there's a big lesson to all this, which is the responsive desire thing is a real thing for most women in long-term relationships. They're not going to have that spontaneous, I need this man right now, I want to rip his clothes off. Once in a blue moon, sure. But most women, it's like, I, number one, recognize it's important. I love the guy, yada yada. Once I get going in the act, then, ah, there it is. Okay, that's why we do it. It's almost like they, it's not necessarily they forget, it's just not on top of mind like it is. For us, but once they get going, they enjoy the thing, the act, so to speak. And what's interesting is something that a lot of men can't relate to is once act is done, then they can flip the switch right back to mom mode and caretaker mode and, you know, all this other stuff and get out of sexy mode pretty quick. But once in the act, yay, this is great. That's ideally what we want to see. I guess the question is if we don't get that switch flip during the act into the response of, oof, that's not good. The other big lesson though to this is, and this is erroneous on the part of both men and women, what's interesting is you will hear this from a lot of the, uh, uh, your more manosphere, red pill-ish kind of guys, which is if you don't have that intense spontaneous type of desire from her all the time, That is indicative of, sorry dude, it's done. It's like, well, you've just thrown out 99.9% of marriages. Sorry, that's just, you know, that's how it is. And then we have women on the other side saying, you know, that whole responsive desire thing and I will do it because I love him. And once we get in the act, that's kind of duty sex and that's a patriarchal nightmare. We need to break free from that. If we don't feel that desire, that spontaneous desire, which we feel early in the relationship and during dating, if you don't feel that now, then yeah, it's over. Just let them go. So we got two camps and two diametrically opposed groups coming to the same conclusion, which is if you don't have that lustful spontaneous reaction, it's indicative of deeper horrible things in the relationship. It's like, eh, not a healthy mindset.