Mrs. DSO is Back! Let's talk about sex and marriage, women and accountability/entitlement, and whatever else comes to mind.

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. Hello everyone, DSO here from dadstartingover.com, and with me today is the lovely and talented Mrs. DSO. Insert applause here. I'll have to edit this later and put some applause in. We're not, we're not in the usual recording studio. We are sitting here in our Texas home. For those that don't know, we have two different homes in two different states for a lot of reasons we won't go into here. And we're in the Texas home in the little TV room, den, whatever you call it.

Yep, the one that has absolutely no wall art.

No wall art. This was a big—

yeah, okay, this was a big thing where my birthday is next week and I'm asking for wall art.

I guess I need to go back to Amazon anyway.

Etsy. Etsy.com.

My bad, Etsy. So Yeah, the link earlier.

Okay, wow.

So I, uh, um, thought this place would be good because it's isolated sound-wise from the kiddo and everything. And then she pointed out that there's no wall art in here, to which I as a man didn't even conceive of before, because it's just a perfect little enclosed room. What do I care? Maybe it's a little echoey in here. I guess we'll listen back to the recording in here. But otherwise— oh, and she had to put this little blanket here on the couch to break up the color. Otherwise, I'm— for those that don't know, if you're listening to this, we're gonna have a video of this conversation for our DSO for members to watch, uh, as if that's some special treat to see our faces.

I thought this was going on TikTok.

Oh, we will take clips of this and put on TikTok.

Okay, so the outfit—

not the entire thing, because before this I was wearing my workout. Would you not want to change your attire for the DSOF fraternity members? Are they some kind of lowly group?

No, they're casual, but the TikTokers are way more judgy.

Oh, this is true. This is true.

Yeah.

Give you that much. Yeah. Normally we don't sit around at the home at 9 o'clock in the evening wearing our jeans and sweaters. It's usually a, uh, it's usually the, the jammy pants. Yes. We're the king and queen of jammy pants.

I think all Americans are the king and queen of jammy pants.

Well, yeah. What we've, I was gonna say, as soon as we hit the door and we come inside the house, we put on the jammy pants. Yes. The majority of humans that we've seen wear them when they go out around here in the, in the States. You see them at Walmart and Target everywhere. So to get started, you had an awesome idea. You have these— okay, let me look at what the brand is here. Um, Couples Time Together. I can't read the bottom print. What does that say?

It says cozy conversation and pleasant company.

Oh, it's a little card.

It's about as dorky as it gets, but it is—

we've had a few different brands of these, and they're basically conversation starters with couples. You pick a random card and you read it to each other, and it gets a good— uh, we've had some good chats from these, so we thought, why not you thought, why not whip these out for the, uh, the podcast and we can, um, do one of these for the folks at home.

I think we were going to see how this is, see how this goes to show you guys what we do when we don't know what else to do.

I'm old and I'm blind and I can't see any of this. And so typically you hand a card back and forth and take turns and you read it. So Mrs. DSO is going to read all of them and we will discuss each one and take turns answering each one. So you will start, I will answer, then you go. So you go ahead with the first one and go.

What would you say has been the best decision of your life?

Well, this is where I'm supposed to say marrying you, of course.

It's okay if it's not.

No, no, this is a tough one. The absolute best decision of my life. Well, you know, this is where I'm supposed to take the manly route and say divorcing my first wife. Mwahaha. But guess what? That wasn't my decision, so that goes out the window. Plus, I'm not that much of a dickhead. Is it— what's too late to say, Mary and you? I mean, that's—

I'll take it.

That was a pretty amazing decision on my part. I mean, I didn't have to. I could have eternally dated you and watched you go, man, are we not a serious thing?

No, I would have left because I wouldn't have had a green card. You didn't have much of a choice there either.

Wow. No, you could have stayed indefinitely without a green card.

Probably, yes, true.

Because my mother did.

Yeah, your mom had a green card because she married your dad.

Why did I— no, no, I'm thinking of the citizenship thing. Yeah, she did the dual citizenship. She wasn't a citizen for like most of my childhood, which was weird. You're right, you're right, she had the green card. But so we— so just so it's clear for our viewers and, and listeners, you didn't marry me to get a ticket into the state. You were here for work training and supposed to go back. You are a medical doctor and you were here for medical fellowship training, if you will. Got a divorce unexpectedly, just happened to meet me, and the rest is history. And you were supposed to be going back, but we said, uh, you know what, we would like you to stay. And but, but here's the kicker for those— sorry, for those of you who didn't know this— if I would have said, well, we want you to stay in the country, let's get married, that'll do it, that wouldn't have done it. So you're not telling the complete story here, but it kind of sounds like if I didn't marry you, you wouldn't have been able to stay. Remember the whole, you need to go back home due to your visa? We were like, well, what if you got married? And they said, nope, not going to do it. What if she got pregnant? Nope, not going to do it. All these things.

We didn't even go down that road.

So no, we didn't. So eventually we found loopholes to where you could work in certain, what they called underserved areas, and you were able to stay in the country. That's what did it. And that allowed you in turn to get a green card and stay.

Well, I did still get the green card through you, but I could have gotten it through the hospital that was sponsoring my visa at the time. So technically marrying you still got me the green card.

Mm-hmm. Yes.

It should make you feel really good and powerful that you have these powers.

No, it just sounds like some kind of desperate dude that just was used for his green card.

Wouldn't you like to be used a little bit? Maybe.

Anyway, well, I don't know why we went off on that tangent. Yeah. Um, so it was still marrying me after this whole Oh, I'm trying to think of major milestones in my life where I could say I had this big fork in the road moment of what to do. Do I take A or B? And marrying you resulted in so much positivity and took my life in a whole new awesome direction that otherwise would have been way tougher for me to do, if at all possible. So that was a major decision where it was so obvious of, oh wow, look how this opened so many doors for me.

Anyhow, I, you know, I, I'm thinking on this too as you're talking about your biggest and best decision. The point is that I think we make a million decisions within a week, and, um, sometimes we don't even recognize the small decisions that might be really important. So I actually think butterfly effect, right? So I do think the best decision of my life, if I'd like look at my life and its overall trajectory was to move to the United States, which is funny because I actually don't love living in the United States, but it changed the trajectory of my life into— everything turned around for me. I was very happy in Germany and I thought everything was going great except for my marriage, maybe. And but not only did coming here change my career for the better, it changed everything for the better. It ended my previous marriage, which was really a trap. And, um, it brought me you. It brought me your awesome 3 kids. It brought me our kid. Everything in my life turned for the better because I made that one decision, which was not an easy decision, to pick, pack everything and just leave my country.

Is it safe to say that was a big step outside of your comfort zone?

It was a— like, I— so the thing is, when you're in the middle of it and you're just caught up in residency and paperwork and exams and a lot of A lot goes into moving to the United States as a professional, as a fully academically trained surgeon. Moving here is not a small feat. It takes a lot. But, and so when you're in the thick of it, you're thinking, ah, it's just a— so many people go to the US for some training or for some research time. And so I, at the time, it didn't seem like a big move, but when I look back at it, I'm like, oh man, this was kind of ballsy to just risk everything and move over here and things could have gone poorly. And actually everything got better.

I say that I recently did a little video about how comfort kills men and how many men I talked to were just, I'm comfortable, everything's safe, everything's good here, I'm just going to stay right here. And it's like, you don't realize how much opportunity is just right there. Or like you point out, it could have been a catastrophic failure, right?

It could have been, you know, this is the whole thing. The person that stands at the edge, what if I fall? Yeah. And the other person says, but what if you fly? That's exactly what it's about.

Poetic.

All right, do you, do you think about a change as, oh, I was gonna— what if something bad happens? That's not how I ever look at anything. I always say it might make things just better.

Yep, there you go.

People are people of comfort and habit, so some people have a really hard time changing that and risking something because it's always easier to fall back on something you already know.

There is a risk involved for sure. Yeah. All right, so let's go to the cards.

See how this gets conversations going?

It does.

Um, describe your memories of our first date. Leave this, the saucy stuff.

Our first date, there wasn't much saucy stuff there on our first date. There was some making out and kissing, sure, but, um, it was very whirlwind, whirlwind, go, go, go, which I think was in part predictive of our future together because, uh, that, yeah, that's pretty much the next 9 years of our life after that was go, go, go, whirlwind. It was, uh, that was very— we set the tone with that one. It was jump from place to place. Um, which is funny enough, there's like this, um, school of thought or this whole world of online learning for men that are new to the dating world and pickup artistry and stuff like, like how to get girls and how to woo girls and how to have successful dates with them. And one of the things that is often said by people in that realm is you have to keep it exciting and keep it moving and go around and do different things. That keeps the woman happy and excited and on her toes and wondering what's next versus, you know, just sitting having coffee, doing nothing. So we unconsciously just did that and accomplished that, I think. And that again set the tone. It was happy, and we both left there saying, my gosh, we did so much. How long was the date? In 12 hours. 12 hours in total. Basically all day long thing, from early afternoon to late at night, from a basketball game to a restaurant to a museum to a movie to— is that all on one day? It's ridiculous. Basically it was— we could have at any point said, well, it was nice seeing you, let's do it again next week, but we didn't want it to end.

Well, there was that 1.5-hour drive too.

So, you know, a bit apart, hour and a half drive from each other. So might as well make it worth it, right?

Yeah.

And what precipitated that date was us both saying, I don't know with your schedule and my schedule and the distance how we're going to make this work. And maybe a month from now we can meet or so or something like that. And then eventually we're like, nah, let's just go ahead and try it this weekend. And then of course, soon as that happened, it was the weekend after that. Was the weekend after, was it 3 weekends in a row?

Yeah. Once we, once we got hooked on each other, we made it work.

Okay, so question to you.

I have lots of memories, but they're really more like fragments. Um, like, I do not remember any of the conversations we had, which is funny because we talked a lot. Yeah, but I remember specifically the components of our date. I remember the, um, basketball game and how you bought me drinks and commented on my boots.

You always mentioned that. That was apparently a big thing for you, right? Mentioning your boots.

Because I felt embarrassed by something I said. I said something meaning something different, but it was just one of those foreign people don't really know how to say things, and I goofed.

Something I grew up with my whole life with my Spanish mother. Right.

And I said something, you were like, "All right," and I was like, "Oh, what did I just say?" So that's why that stuck out and then it stood out. And then I remember our lunch at the Spanish place where I already looked at you beautiful, handsome, delicious eyes. And you got all the butterflies. And then we went to the art museum where I could already sense that there was this tension in the air, that something was gonna happen. And I was getting a little nervous and wasn't quite sure what signals I was gonna send and what signals I wanted to send and what signals I might have— might be sending that I didn't want to send. You see, women think—

wow. Yeah, and I was just like, she sure looks party. I'm gonna kiss her, right?

And then, and then I remember our first kiss. Next question. Um, what is my most annoying habit?

Hmm, probably your controlling ways at times.

Is that a habit or just a personality trait?

I guess, what's the definition of a habit? I'm staying with it. So when you are anxious about something, you become more controlling. And that is annoying because I'm a man. We don't like being controlled.

I don't control you, I control the situation.

You try to control me.

Never with any success though.

Damn right.

Tell me not, not to put me in my place.

Spank you.

Well, the thing is, if, if the controllingness comes out of anxiety, then it's helpful when you take over control because it makes me feel at peace and at ease. And then I feel like you're already helping me out with my anxiety. Here you go.

Yeah, but sometimes as a man, when you're just tired because of whatever, and then it's this little unexpected like, no, no, do this, no, no, do that, and you're just like—

I think sometimes, I think sometimes it's also us just being in the habit of being controlling all day long because we're controlling the kids, controlling our moms. Right now. And then we're just like, we're on a roll of controlling, and then you come home and we're like, take your shoes off, do that, do that, do that, just because that's what we've been doing all day. So I think it's not necessarily against you, we're trying to control you, we're just in a controlling mode, and you just need to stop it by taking over.

Okay, so what's my annoying habit?

Um, none.

Moving on.

The toothpaste in the sink and I mean, that's every woman's answer, is the flipped up toilet seat. It's just, you know, I thought I was good about lowering the— sometimes, but there's still pee dribbles.

Can't help it.

That's it.

Well, all right, toothpaste pee dribbles. Could be worse.

I don't have a—

strangely enough, the title of my next book, Toothpaste Pee Dribbles.

Lili. Just the amount of time you spend on your phone, but I understand that's important for you.

Oh, I'm trying to do better. Yeah.

Anyhow, moving on. All right. Okay, we're done with this card.

Oh, that's it?

Really?

Okay, well, there you go.

We should talk about other things.

So I thought, um, I, you know, I've been doing a lot more on the little TikTok and Facebook videos and so forth, and I can see what is really making people go, ooh, and comment and like and share and everything else. And it's always when I do some little gender-specific things such as, um, things women do, or did you notice that, or I often hear from men that their women say, sure enough, boom. And a lot of it's a lot of women saying, oh, I don't think so. Um, the general tone, it's one that I've done and my buddy Rudy A on TikTok has done, um, and others, which is, uh, start with The most obvious example was one where I did the little TikTok experiment video which got 4.5 million views. So it went viral, viral. And it was, um, hey ladies and men, what would you say if your spouse said I am no longer physically attracted to you? Go to the men, 80-some-odd percent, high 80s, I don't have the number here in front of me, said, uh, well, I guess time to get back to the gym. I don't want to lose my wife and my family. Over something like my looks. Um, I would say, what can I do to fix it? There were a small handful that said, go fuck yourself, woman. But again, very, very small. The exact inverse happened with the women. 90-some percent said, go fuck yourself, go to hell. Um, funny enough, a lot of women said, you know what I would do? I would lose a ton of weight and then divorce his ass.

That's just weird.

Um, sorry, time for me to— time for me to take him for all his money and get a mommy makeover and then leave him for somebody who actually loves me for who I am. Okay, um, very small percentage said, well, I guess it's time for me to go to the gym or diet because it's how we look is important to our man. So the exact inverse. And so I kind of left it to the crowd to say, what the hell's going on here? And sure enough, some women responded extremely negatively. A lot of men got on there saying, amen, brother, thank you so much for saying this, it's totally one-sided thing. It's a bias thing, whatever you want to call it. But then I took that kind of theme and applied it to other things. And some other things— Rudy did a video where he said, uh, he responded to a woman who made a video where she was literally in tears saying, I was with my husband for so many years, I begged him basically to do things with me and we ended up divorced. And now guess what he does with his new young pretty bride? He's going all over the place doing those things I always wanted to do. Hmm, what the hell? And Rudy gets on there and says, I can totally empathize. Us men have a similar thing, which is, how come my wife doesn't want to be sexy and sexual and pretty and all those things like she used to do when we were dating? But as soon as we divorced, she just transformed into this new woman and became all sexual and lost a bunch of weight and started going to the gym and dressing sexy. And he's like, where was that? So there's this theme of where was that from both sides, different things. Funny how the men seem to focus on the physical, the look pretty, put effort into your parents, and the women seem to focus on put effort into your doing things and showing with this acts of love and service and so forth. So I don't know where to go with that except for maybe here's a good starting point. Let's qualify this further. This will be for a good little TikTok video. Just so we know who we're talking to here, and this is no dummy, you're an educated woman, uh, you're a medical doctor, you're a surgeon, you cut people for a living. Yeah, um, you speak, you speak 3 languages, 2 fluently, third French. I've heard you speak French, it's pretty good.

I can order my food and get I listen to you.

You carry conversations. No. Yeah, whatever.

Yeah, the conversation like, where's the bathroom? And thank you for—

I heard you in a cafe. It was pretty good. Okay, so you're 50% French, 100% English, and German. And, um, so we're talking to not an idiot here.

So— well, you didn't bring up my Latin.

Well, so non-idiot, extremely smart, beautiful woman. Are women in fact entitled? Do women have a lack of accountability? And maybe qualify that further of what type of woman are we talking about here? Modern-day Western woman? Is there a lack of accountability? Is there a lack— is there an entitlement thing? Go.

Okay, how about this? I do think that our generation is more entitled than most other generations, which makes sense because we were raised entitled. We were raised in luxury and wealth. Even the ones that weren't raised in luxury and wealth were compared— if you compare it to 100 years ago, we're still raised in luxury and wealth. We had all our needs met, most of us. And I'm, I'm going to talk about the, the big part of the bell curve, not the edges. Um, so I think, and part of our generation is just entitled, period. And a lot of our generation feel like they have no accountability. They are— they, they deserve stuff. They don't need to work for anything. They should just be given things because that's kind of what their childhood experience, upbringing was. So I do think there's a lot of people out there, and I do think that the trophy culture in schools and the emancipation of women have kind of created a bit of a monster with where some women just think that they should just be sitting there and do nothing and get the best husbands on the planet and not be expected to do anything for it. I don't think that that's a lot of women, but there seems to be a theme even in pop culture. If you listen to the songs, a lot of the songs are, I could do whatever I want, I can, you know, get away with anything, and you should still love me, you don't deserve me. So there's a lot of that theme going on, um, but, but I don't know how many people really feel that way and are really truly that way. I think we just I see a selection bias that a lot of those people that act entitled and have no accountability, those people tend to also be very loud on the internet and in pop culture. So we— I think you get a skewed image, but it also feeds into other susceptible people that they then think, oh, if that woman's the way to be, then I need to be like that too. So I think with social media becoming— being in everybody, literally in everybody's bedroom every night, a lot more women adapt that behavior and that culture. So maybe it is a kind of like a pandemic of entitlement.

But if you listen to, uh, a lot of the women in my comments and stuff, they will say it's not necessarily I as a woman feel like I am worthy of stuff just because I exist. I'll tell you what the problem is, is the problem with these men these days, right? Men these days just royally suck. On a lot of levels.

And I've heard that too.

And here's how they suck. One thing I hear is, um, once we get married, the men just kind of fall by the wayside, and they're like, woman, you take care of the logistics of the family, you take care of the household, you take care of all that, I'll just be over here playing video games. And I'm sure that exists for a lot of men, but, um, from the men I talk to in my coaching dadstartingover.com. It's, um, I will admit it's a subset of the population which maybe doesn't represent the whole. And that is, I typically talk to almost a codependent, pretty neurotic, will do anything and everything to keep his wife and his family type of guy. And he will step way over his bounds and have no, no boundaries. And he'll be one of those guys. Um, well, those guys, like, to say they don't do their fair share is ridiculous. Because they do their fair share, like a lot. They do every— anything and everything. And in some of those cases, the women just flat out do nothing because those women are depressed and they have all kinds of issues, and the man really picks up the slack. And yet those men say much the same thing that Mr. Lazy Boy playing his video games says, which is, what happened to my wife? What happened to the sexy? What happened to all this? So you got two ends of the spectrum saying the same thing. As far as the end result of marriage, the end result of cohabitating for long periods of time. You're right, we don't hear much from the, the, the big bulk in the middle, the average dude who does have his boundaries, who does do his fair share, who does work really hard, who does keep in relatively good shape, who's not a giant fat slob. And then the wife who's like, yeah, I gotta go to yoga class 3 days a week and watch what I eat. You don't— now, are we being a little Pollyannish by saying that's the majority of men and women out there? Maybe. But that's the people in our social circle, wouldn't you say?

The people in our social circle, they represent the people that put in effort.

The women that— let me say this— the women in your social circle that you talk to—

yeah, I think so.

If I were to go to the woman, let's call her Amy, her name starts with A. And you were to say, um, Amy, what do you think if your man says we need to hit the gym and get healthier and work out and so forth? Would A say, yeah, you're right, we do? Or would she say, go to hell?

A little bit both, maybe. But I think, um, you're right. I think the people that we are hearing of, that's— and it's a gender-unspecific problem— that those are people that are entitled, that have poor mental health, they have maybe codependency, they have maybe sad childhood experiences with an absent dad or a narcissistic mom, and, um, or an absent mom, or a mom with poor boundaries, or a dad with poor boundaries. So I think we're— what, what you and I both see, that the bad people, the people that are slobs, or they don't want to participate in things, and they blame the other side, they have no accountability— those are not the people that we hang out with. But they're also— I don't think they're the majority out there, or the average person. I think there are, there are just a lot of unfortunate people out there that have maybe a difficult story, but they are overrepresented on the social media because they need to share their stories. Sometimes they don't have the resources to get access to mental health, um, you know, mental health counselors. So I think that that might be one of the reasons, for sure. Well, and then there's also the thing that, how many people do you think that we know that we think are perfectly fine and normal and have good boundaries, but there's, there's just badness in their marriage. We just don't know because it's under the surface. So we don't— we have no clue what goes on behind people's doors.

Also, who we're hearing from are those people who are most vocal about their problems and have reached out for help via complaining on the internet or talking to me directly, or—

right, that's what I said, or whatever.

Yeah. And so, um, Maybe this— maybe the majority is silent. Now we're dipping into a whole, um, kind of not-so-good conversation about marriage. And is it for the majority of us? Our majority of marriage is kind of dull and lifeless and really not much to write home about. They just had some kids and they just go about their separate ways kind of thing.

I think a lot of people get married and think that once they're married, the work is done and they can just push on the autopilot and everything else will kind of happen on its own, like they, you know, they, they get promoted, they have kids, the kids raise themselves magically, money comes flying in magically, and people don't really think about how much work it takes to keep a marriage going. A marriage takes as much effort as raising kids or getting a promotion in your job, but people don't look at it that way, I think.

Well, there's the, uh, I have seen these comments from people saying if— because I say much the same thing, it takes work, and not everybody's cut out for the work It takes training, it takes a personality type, it takes experience coming from certain type of background, family, blah, blah, blah. And some people come back with, actually, if it feels like work or it takes work, then it wasn't, quote, meant to be.

But here's the thing, the per— the person that says, oh, he tells me I need to lose weight because he's not attracted to me, that's also the person that says marriage shouldn't be hard work. Those are the people that don't want to put in work, because life is work pretty much from the second you're born. Just struggling to breathe is like the first moment as an infant where you learn, oh, it's actually kind of hard. So life is work, and anything good is double the work. And so I think there are just some people that just expect life to be easy for some reason.

I've said this before, and I've got some grief for it, that it really— the more I I dig into this whole world, it's just like this winner-loser mentality. And a lot of winners are like, well, I got knocked down, better get back up again. Well, this is the work it takes. If it means I got to work 100 hours this week to get this done, that's what it means. Well, your more loser types are more like, I shouldn't have to do all this work, I shouldn't have, and right, this should just come to me. If it doesn't come to me, F all you people.

But that's— that goes back to maybe it's our whole generation. We never had to work for anything. We got a trophy for sitting in the classroom and That could very well—

it helps contribute to it for sure.

It's not the only reason, but I think it's part of a— yeah, a whole part of a complex spectrum of what our generation faced when they grew up. Um, but, and, but I'm saying, you know, even people that didn't grow up in fortunate environments still think— a lot of them still think life shouldn't be hard, relationships shouldn't be work. And I agree, relationships shouldn't be a daily fight where you're just struggling to have a normal conversation and it always ends up in—

there's a dividing—

there's a tipping point where it goes from work But it's a maintenance kind of work. So for example, ever since we had the baby, my— a lot of my attention is drawn to feeding her, taking care of her, playing with her, still running the full-time job. And with us having a long-distance relationship where most of our relationship was built on the texting and staying in touch with each other throughout the day, now there are hours sometimes where you don't hear from me and vice versa. And that brings the maintenance of our marriage down to an absolute minimum to where in the evening I'm like, oh man, I don't know what my husband did all day. And it's awful. And that's where I remember we need to do a date night. We need to stay in touch with each other. And if you just got comfortable at that point and said, he's fine, he's got his stuff, he's got his buddies, he's got his hobbies and he's got his job. I mean, it's fine. Then before you know it, you you live up— you live each other's lives separately and you grow apart and you don't know, you don't recognize the person next to you. And then before you know it, you don't sleep with each other and you don't kiss each other in the morning, and you just walk out the door and you didn't even realize if you woke up with them and had breakfast or not. You might as well have done this all by yourself.

When you get caught in the family machine, it's very easy to lose sight of each other.

Oh, he's taking this kid to that school, I'm taking that kid to the school, and then when you get home, you take one— you gotta run to a work meeting.

Yeah, we haven't talked about work, right?

One goes to the PTO meeting, and before you know it, you haven't had a conversation that went beyond who's taking the next kid to where and who's making dinner for whom. Um, and so that's, that's, I think, where people think, oh man, and now I have to work in a marriage too. It shouldn't be work, but that's, that's unfortunately wrong.

And so this week, for example, very busy week for both of us. We made a point to say 2 dates this week, 2 date nights this week, which consist of a couple hours of dinner, drinks, and this thing.

This is actually— so we had a date night yesterday, we're doing this now, and then we have a date night tomorrow.

So you could consider like 3 date nights in a row. So just for people, what did we do yesterday that we consider a quote date night? We went to dinner, drinks.

That's it. Speakeasy. Not just dinner. Where we go in the phone booth, say a secret word, and the magical door opens. Magical wall.

Yes.

And then sit down to a normal restaurant like in every other restaurant.

It's really silly. And, uh, tomorrow we do an escape room or no?

I don't know, we haven't really committed to tomorrow yet. Yeah, I kind of feel bad for leaving my mom alone for like 3 nights.

Yeah, her mother's here from Germany for several weeks. Yeah, over a month, right? Right.

Yeah, 5 weeks.

Yeah, we'll think about it.

We'll figure it out.

Yeah, but we feel bad, but all the baby does is sleep.

No, but it's just more about leaving her alone and feeling bad that she sits here by herself. But we can always do something with her and then just us, but we'll figure it out.

But that's the point, is that we're figuring it out. It is a, a prominent part of our our coupledness is this— we have to do things for just you and I. And, uh, I recently did a thing about— there's this, uh, you know, Dr. Carl Jung has these famous archetypes. That's his thing, his whole— when in his writings and so forth, he comes up with these archetypes, these little categories of people that he sees, you know, throughout life. And one of them is the devouring mother. Which is this mother who becomes so intertwined with her child and her entire identity comes from the child. And just this hyper-neurotic, hyper-anxious, um, attached to the child to the point where the child's dependency on mom is crucial for mom's well-being. And these are the mothers that— the child sleeps with me even though he's 12 now, you know, that craziness. I'm going to breastfeed the kid even though he's 5 years old. Um, no, kid's not going to school. I'm going to homeschool him because I can't trust any school. I don't want the kid to leave my side.

Right, right.

Then they become a teenager. Why do you need to go out with girls? Isn't your mother good enough for you? That kind of awfulness. Um, so we have— that's extreme, extreme, the devouring mother. But we see kind of a lot of women— I— a lot of men I talk to, their wives are kind of inching towards that with We don't go out on any dates. Well, why not? My wife doesn't trust anyone to watch our child. Only she is able to do so. It's like, does she have siblings? Yeah, she has 3 sisters and a brother. None of them? Nope. Yeah, grandma on the picture? Grandma. Both grandmas are still in the picture.

Grandpa?

Yep. Nope, nope, nope. Um, for an—

I mean, for an hour, I trust my mom for an hour. Just phones. She has a hard time, she can message us. And we have nannies and your siblings, you should trust them.

So I feel like there's something that takes a village, right, as they say, right? Um, but a lot of men internalize that as this wife is using this child as a shield between the two of us.

Maybe subconsciously she is.

Yeah, if I keep this kid in bed, this man will stay the hell away from me because I don't want anything to do with him anymore. That's probably a part of it. The other part is just this extreme anxiety and guilt over being mom, and they become hyper-attached and they think 24/7 about kid.

Well, I can see that, especially if you're a full-time working mom. There's a lot of guilt, and you know, you, you feel like you try to make up for it when you're back home. So I can see how you easily fall in that trap. But then what about the husband? And that's one thing I asked you yesterday. Doesn't it— doesn't that trigger a lot of negative emotions and resentment in the male when, you know, all— he was always number one in the wife's life, and then the babies come along, and then the wife doesn't even remember to kiss him good morning because she's too busy making breakfast and getting the kids dressed.

I tell you what, I think it's naturally, um, of course you give a little, oh man, I kind of miss the old her. This is the wife versus girlfriend dynamic, right? The girlfriend's so hyper-attached and validating of the man and strokes his ego, um, while the, the— but excuse me, the girlfriend does that while the wife is more— wife and mother of his children is more Dude, you come like number 8 on the list, right? You're a husband, you're an adult, you can take care of yourself for a lot of this stuff. I got a lot of other things I have to do. You are an adult, so you know, I'll see you when I see you.

Yeah.

And like, oh, now what I've seen is who is able to tolerate that more so are men that come from good backgrounds and families, that they see that dynamic and they see it still work and they see this loving mom and dad in spite of all that, except they have the tools to make that work. Um, the guys that I see that not working are your Mr. Playboy type who slept with 1,000 women and he was able to get his needs met very, very readily, and he could sleep with multiple women in one week. A lot of these guys come from like the nightclub world and bartending and stuff like that, and they throw— they're around a lot of party scene, and then they get tired of that, and then they're thrown into the 'I want to settle down with a wife and kids' Then they do that, and then the inevitable slowdown happens, and they're like, no, like, this ain't happening. Yeah, I need that.

Give all this up for that.

Yeah, I need that constant go, go, go. That was fun. That, that was, uh, right, exhilarating, addictive. Well, and it made me feel like a man. This makes me feel like less of a man. And those guys have affairs like crazy. But then there's also the needy type that has no self-esteem and thinks that now that his wife isn't paying attention anymore, he's But that you're tiptoeing towards something which a lot of women point to, which is, ew, what kind of man needs validation from his woman? No, but what kind of man—

no, but there are men out there that really want to own their women. They want their women around them.

Yeah, exactly. But the point is that we point to the man who's like, uh, I don't want you going out, I don't want you to do anything, who are you talking to, blah blah blah, all your attention is supposed to be on me. That narcissistic kind of sociopathic dude, but that's 0.000 whatever percent of men. Okay, got you. The guy who's perfectly normal and says, man, I want to spend some time with you, what happened to the good morning kisses, you know? And if he dares make the mistake of saying, what, no kiss? A lot of women just go, is that all you think about? And look at the man going, what'd you just say? What, no kiss? Is it all about you and your body? And it's all about— it's all about— and the man slumps shoulders. There's a lot message received, dynamics. Yeah, that part of our life is over, right? And it's— some men become suicidal over that.

Yeah, but if you were at that point where that conversation goes that way, you've missed about a million steps where you could have maybe worked on your marriage. Because when you told me yesterday, I didn't get no kiss in the morning, I felt horrible. And I gave you a kiss and more, two kisses, and I felt bad for the rest of the day. And I didn't shame you or say Is that all you can think of? No, I realized, oh man, I really didn't notice that you were in the kitchen while I was making breakfast and preparing the lunchbox.

And here's the thing, early relationship, Mrs. DSO, it wouldn't have been a kiss. It would have been fill in the blank with your imagination, right? Right. So if you give a man that, which by the way is the most rewarding, addictive, um, set of circumstances any man can get, uh, introduced to. A more than a battle, you know what I mean. Any man who has experienced that will say the same thing, dude. Once you experience that, you can't go back. There's no going back. You just can't. Um, so you've experienced that, and then— but as a mature adult, I understand, dude, you can't have that every day forever.

I mean, you can, but then you don't get married and you just go through girlfriends.

And but with this one woman, that can't continue day after day after day. It's ridiculous. Nobody can keep that up.

There's also a natural evolution of every relationship. And you know, as you get old together, there are things are going to change about your bodies and your needs and your intimacy and your emotional needs too. So I think, but that's the beauty of deciding to grow old together, is that you accept all those changes and that you're going through them together in the most graceful and sexy way you can. But again, that takes work. It takes the effort to say, yes, we're growing old together, but we're growing old together by staying fit, by eating well, by working on each other and ourselves. And, um, I'm digressing.

No, but so to tell the guy who was used to— let's use the analogy of steak dinner on a daily basis from his girlfriend. She used to wake him up by doing all kinds of unspeakable sexual acts with him, validating the hell out of him. He— every day he's got a smile on his face like, I am king of the world. And then, would you like to marry me? Would I marry you? I'd marry you a million times, woman. Of course I will marry you. Everything's great, the honeymoon period. Then kids come and, hey honey, you want to— I— yeah, oh, okay, you know, baby came, I understand, cool. You string months together of that years together of that, and then he has the, quote, "nerve" to say, "Remember how we used to be?" Women snap like that, turn, and go, "Excuse me? That chapter of our life is over." And for some men to hear that is, like I say—

It's a kick in the stomach.

More than that. It's a, "What have I done? I've made the most giant mistake in the world" kind of thing. And women hear that and go, "Are you serious?" it's that much of an issue for you, the hot sexy time? Yes, because it's more than just— well, but hot sexy, it's all the stuff that's—

the hot sexy stand is, is like the cherry on top, or it's the trigger where you realize something isn't right. And, and for the man, because it's so— they're so much more physical, and it's one of those very basic needs, when that isn't met, it just amplifies everything else, amplifies everything else. But it also is a sign that everything else under that is already not working. And they're holding on to that one last thing. Well, but at least we're intimate. And if that's gone, there's nothing else left. And so I think if they get that response from their wife, who, by the way, sees it the other way around— for her, intimacy, she's like, yeah, whatever, I can, I can have sex, no sex for 6 weeks and probably not even remember because I, or notice because I have kids and I have all this stuff going on. So for women, it is so far down on the priority list once they have kids. That they, they don't even understand how big of a deal it is for the guy. And when the guy brings it up, the woman is like, really? Of the million things on your to-do list, that's the one thing that bothers you? But we don't understand that that's not one of the million things on your to-do list. That's your basic need in a relationship. And I think that's where a big of the— a lot of the disconnect comes from, is that we think, oh my God, it's all you can think of, such an animal, and I don't feel sexy. And of all the things, at the end of the day, he wants me to put on a cute outfit and be sexy for him. Really? So I think that's, that's just a big disconnect between the genders.

But here's, here's what I would say to that, which I completely empathize with you, and I'm not painting you as a villain for saying what you just said in the last 30 seconds, right? But a lot of men hearing that say, do you realize what you just said?

Yeah, no, I know.

You have just told 80% of the male population, don't you dare get married. That's how serious what you just said is, right?

Well, the question is, what do you want out of life? And if you want just daily sex and that's all you want, then maybe marriage isn't the best thing. If you want intimacy and growth together—

not daily sex— when you just said, look, it's number 18 on my list A lot of women— let's qualify this further— a lot of women have, when you're in a long-term monogamous relationship, you have what's called more responsive desire. Once we get going and we're in the act of the sexy thing, I go, oh yeah, of course, I love this, this is awesome, we should do this more often, right? And then you're able to go, uh, back to mom mode, back to whatever, and your man's sitting there going, remember how you said we should do this more often? We Did it this morning. Yeah, I know.

It was like, great, tonight again.

So we're just wired differently that way. Um, yeah, but it's getting to that point of, all right, it's important, let's do this. That's the barrier for a lot of women. And you just laid out the campaign for women to not do that.

Well, but here's the point.

That stuff—

here is the point that I was trying to make, is that when women always say, oh, that's all you can think of, and why don't you do— why don't you take the trash out? Why don't you ever make dinner? Why don't you do this? I think we do exactly what you guys do, just the other way around. Instead of thinking about all the things that we think you should be doing, we need to remember, hey, he's actually trying to work on this marriage. He's trying to put some intimacy back. We should give you credit for the things that you bring into the relationship dynamics. Instead of saying, ugh, just want sex again, we should be thanking you for saying, oh right, We are married and there are these things that I just forget about, and I'm thankful that you bring up that I didn't kiss you this morning because that brings, brings the, the romance back and the, the working on us back. And it's the, it's exactly the same that you, that thing that you're doing because you— so the men saying, hey, I want more sex, is exactly the same thing as the women saying, hey, you need to take the trash out. I'm sorry, it is. Yes. You know why? Because the men— for the men, that's a very important need for them in that moment. And for the woman, the trash is a very important need in that moment.

Here's, here's the difference, right?

How's it— is there different?

Never have I taken the trash or watched you take the trash out. Let's flip the gender and just said I love this woman. I would hand over my wallet to this woman. I would move across country for this woman. I would make human beings with this woman. I would start— I would start a family with this woman. Sexual whatever is integral to us as human beings, men and women. It's basically why we're here. It's to procreate, right? Let's not equate domestic duties that every person does day in and day out, at least you should, to something as special, unique, loving, wonderful, magical as physical intimacy between two people. When you equate that, the two together, it's very, very hurtful to men. Extremely hurtful to men.

So you're saying having sex is not a task and it shouldn't be looked at as a task, but it's a connection and intimacy.

Every man wants to know that it's not a task on your list,— but rather a visceral, almost animalistic, almost natural, whatever thing that is a given that we have to—

But is it? But is it?

It, quote, in our minds should be.

Right.

And if it's not, here's the kicker, the more, I was gonna say valuable a man is, the more, on paper attractive the man is to— okay, so let's put it this way. If I got a guy, this is the analogy I often use, and I put him up on a stage in front of an auditorium of single women, the kind of guy where 98 out of the 100 women say, can I have him, can I have him, that guy, that guy is going to be far less tolerant of a wife who says, I would if you just took the trash out more without me asking. I would be into it if you did this and this. That guy with the 98 women says, why in the sam fuck would I put up with that nonsense? Now the super needy, anxious, codependent guy says, can I take out 100 bags a day of trash? I'll take out the neighbor's trash. I'll go down the block and take out everybody's trash. You just sit right there on the couch, young lady, and I'll do anything and everything.

But I didn't make this a conditional thing.

That's what it sounds like. But I know what you're saying is the equivalent of— it's the, um, what's the word?

Well, what I'm saying is service. The woman has needs and the man has needs. And when we say there is a need that's unmet, and our need is help me more in the household, help me more with kids, that's at that point very important to us. And it's about as important to us in that moment as it is for you asking for intimacy, and we think, oh, he's just asking for physical stuff. What? Why does he think of that right now? Because we think of that when all the tasks are done, when, when the day is done, the kids are in bed, the house is clean, the food is precooked, we read all those work emails for the next morning, and then we step in the shower, wash all the crud off, and then put our sexy lingerie on, and then it's intimacy time. And so the faster we get to that point, the, the better. And so I think that what I'm trying— what I'm trying to say is, no, I don't want you to do chores so that I reward you with sex. That is absolutely not what I was saying. I'm saying we have needs and we express them, but our needs unfortunately do not include up top the sexual part. But for you guys, you express your needs and you bring up the sexual and the intimacy and the need to connect part first And then you're like, who cares if the trash is taken out? Who cares if the dishes are dirty in the sink? Let's be dirty first and then get, get those dishes cleaned together. So actually, I think you guys, as the males, because the, the sexual part is so high on your priority list, you bring the health into the marriage by reminding us of that. So I'm, I'm trying to be nice.

No, I get it.

And putting it in the best possible way.

But here's Let's go to the man who says, uh, wife, it's been 4 months. I've been tracking this. We haven't had sex.

This is ridiculous.

This is ridiculous.

Yes.

No, I have men who keep spreadsheets. That's understandable. They're spectrumy, kind of, you know.

No, but I mean, if you're—

if it gets that severe, you want to go with her to Evans to go see, right?

Plus also, if you're trying like to figure out what gets her going, you better keep a list of things to try. That's what they do.

These spectrumy guys are very technical engineer type, you know. I took her to lunch Wednesday and it resulted in sex Thursday. So every Wednesday, you know, they get that serious about it. And so that guy has, you know, he's had enough. He's about to lose his marbles. And he sits down with the wife and the wife says what you said, which is, you know what's important to me? I need more help around this house. How man interprets that is help around the house more equals sex, right? He does that. It doesn't work. Therefore, I tell often, guys, do chores because that's what adults do. You're a partner, right? You're supposed to. What are you gonna else you're gonna do, sit around and just twiddle your thumbs? I understand if you're at work, I understand if you're on a business trip, whatever it may be, but if you're sitting there and you walk past an unmade bed, just take 5 seconds out of your life and make the bed. See dishes, wash them. Takes 20 seconds of your life. It's not a big deal. It's just what you do. And, um, So these guys hear that and they hear that from the wife and they do this. But I tell these men, it's not— all that stuff is not going to result in sex. So, uh, in a perfect demonstration of how important sex is to men, oh, that's not going to get me laid, then why would I— why the fuck would I do that? Because you're being nice. Men then take the next step of, I'm not some chump schmuck guy that's going to go around and do a bunch of household work like Mr. Mom when it gets me. Nothing. And then you women go, what do you mean it gets you nothing? It gets you, you know, it's called being a good dude. It's just called being a partner. It's called being a husband. Of course you're gonna do that shit. Not if it doesn't get me rewarded. But that's kind of the vicious circle we're in here.

Well, you can flip it around the other way. Why would I have sex where the woman is like, why would I, why would I have sex with you? What do I get for that? The man should be like, um, well, we're married. That's kind of when you're married, you have sex. That's kind of part of the thing.

But what every man wants is that it's such a visceral thing for you, just like it is for us, that it's not even a question, right? That, um, that's why every man's fantasy is to be dragged into the bedroom by his insatiable wife who just says, we got 5 minutes, I need you so right now, I can't, I'm about to lose my marbles.

I know.

Oh, that means I've tapped into something into this woman so much so that it makes me feel like a king. And that happens once in a blue moon, happens a lot in the early stages, post-marriage and kids, every now and then.

Well, I mean, a lot of it is just hormones, right? When you're, when you're in the early dating phase, the testosterone of the female is higher, so they're more interested in sex. And then as they, the more, the longer they're together, the older they get, and the more babies they have, the testosterone levels drop. I mean, they can be as low as zero in a female. So there goes your libido. So I think a lot of it is just pure physics. And, uh, how do you get through that?

And us men experience a lot of the same thing, right? Remember we talked about the Coolidge effect where, um, uh, and this was all, all the old studies about how, um, animals respond to new mates was all about the male. They never looked at the female for whatever reason. And they noticed that there was the famous study with the rats in the enclosure The male rat bred with all the, or mated with all these females, and then he was done and he couldn't do it anymore. And then they plopped in a new female and all of a sudden he sprung to life and said, oh, I can just go like crazy and just did it all over again with a new one. So we're wired to just be kind of worn out by, I just can't anymore, I just can't. I think it's more so with women. You and I famously, probably to the annoyance of many, talked about our early relationship trip to New York City. Where we had sex 13 times in 5 days. If you held a gun to my head and said, you got to do that now, that'd be tough for me. Just because I'm older.

Oh, and I'm fatter.

No, um, but that new relationship stuff kicks things into way into overdrive. And, uh, I'm just like, how the hell did I do that?

Shiny bike, shiny car.

We were like, we were maybe 5 months into our relationship when we did that. Yeah, so still relatively new. Yeah, um, so yeah, so you guys are an amplification of that because you don't have all that other testosterone stuff, right, to that quantity to back it up and everything else. And some women are— I've been corrected by a lot of women. Um, there is a growing population of couples where the man's like, no, I'm good, and the wife's like, what do you mean you're good? Yeah, I got my porn and my video games, and I'm gonna say there's also— and I'm obese and I'm out of shape and my hormones are all out of whack and I'm good with not doing it for the next couple of months. And the women just can't believe that, right? And that's a growing population, unfortunately.

It'll just get worse once the sex robots come out.

Oh man, we could go on and on about that. So why are we still so sexual after 9 years together?

Because we make the effort.

Because we make the effort.

Well, and here's a big thing: you make the effort even when I forget about it because I'm wrapped up in stuff.

But what does that effort look like to you?

Well, you're being sweet. It's little touches, it's little gestures, it's reminding me of the morning kiss.

Do you take every little gesture I have as, "We better do it tonight, missy"?

No.

Well, some women do.

So I take every gesture as a reminder that there is a physical me that you see and, and I sometimes forget about the physical me because I'm just so wrapped up in my head. And so for me, it's more of a loving reminder of, hey, hello, inside there is still that, that cute 32-year-old that I had sex with 15,000 times in one week. Um, so for me, it's actually flattery because I, I think it's awesome that after all that we've experienced together, that you still if you've seen me give birth, that you still feel all those things and want that connection. So for me, it's really a nice thing, and I'm thankful for that, because I think if you didn't make those little efforts sometimes, I sometimes get so caught up in other things. So for me, it's never a, ugh, please, can you do anything else? Can you think of anything else than this? It's never like that.

And none of what I do is calculated either.

No, but it's also— that's just how we are, a very touchy-feely. And not all of the couples are like that. We know couples that haven't— we think they're like brother and sister living together.

Psychological term is very avoidant, right?

They never touch each other.

Intimacy and closeness.

For some people, that's just— that's cultural or religious. They just don't have a public display of affection thing going for them.

So weirdly, private display of affection, but it's very mechanical, right?

Um, and so everybody is a little different in how they show their love and their feelings for each other. So I think we are just— we happen to just have similar love languages, and we love being touchy-feely. But that's also because both our mothers were very loving, and my mom is still very touchy-feely, and that's just how we were loved. So I think how you were loved says about— will, will imprint a lot of the ways that you will show your love. And so I, I could see how maybe some women that weren't showered with affection— yeah, they— when you touch them, they'll be like, Why are you touching me?

For all the codependent, nervously neurotic nice guy types that I talk to, I don't have a number, but I'm gonna say 9 times out of 10, they pair up with a very avoidant, cold, I wasn't raised around any kind of lovey-dovey anything type of woman. And any kind of anything from him is like, ugh. And they deal with that. And these men, instead of going, hey, we're not a match, it's nice knowing you, they latch on because, well, this is the only woman who's shown me any real attention. Maybe this will get better. And 20 years later, they're like, this sucks, there's nothing to do with me.

There's also, um, more fluctuation in how women respond to certain touches. So, you know, there are the windows in the month where women are like, I just don't feel good in my body and I don't want to be touched. And then there are windows where like, hey, why don't you come over and give me some kisses or give me a foot massage? And then there are also— I, I remember that after pregnancy when I still nursing, there were moments where I just did not want to be touched because there was constantly the infant touching me and somebody literally draining my body of elixir of life. And so there are, I think, phases in a female's life, um, cyclical ones, and then also life stages— I'm also talking about menopause— where a touch is just not a welcome thing. And so I think a man who's used to just doing little, little loving touches and then hasn't done them for a while and then re-engages in that may hit his wife at a point where— I'm not hit, but like may meet his wife in a stage where a touch might not be welcome anymore. It might really throw her off. And so I think that's another thing that makes it really hard for a man to know what to do and when to do what. So I don't know how to bridge that. Yeah, because I also don't want people walking around on eggshells around their women trying to figure out, does she want to be touched today? She want to be touched tomorrow when the moon is right?

Um, it shouldn't be like that either for some of couple, I'm sorry to say, it's almost an impossible task. They're at this impasse. And sometimes it takes sliding the divorce papers across the table saying, I've tried all I can to connect with you, woman or man. Let's just keep with the woman theme, right, for simplicity's sake. But, um, you know, I've tried, I've done this, I've done that, I've tried taking you out, I've tried blah blah blah, and you really want nothing to do with me, uh, physically or hell, even emotionally anymore. I think I'm done here. And that's where a lot of women say, okay, I really— I didn't realize you were serious about this. I didn't realize how serious this was to you. Let's— now, but the problem is with that, and we're going down another whole rabbit hole here, is that a lot of these avoidant women, when the man says, I want to go to therapy, um, in man speak, you know what the next thought they have, or the next question they have for me, is, how long do you think until we can turn this around? I said, I don't know, years. That's, that's realistic. You're trying to change a personality trait in somebody that's been ingrained in them for 30, 40-some-odd years, and you're suddenly like, let's, let's reignite, um, let's go back to a taste of what we had in the honeymoon phase, which is usually the only time they get that connection is because that over-the-top honeymoon phase. Even then, it wasn't great with a lot of these women, but at least it was something. And, uh, can we go back to that? Probably not. And if it's a 1% chance of working, it's going to be after years of intense therapy. You guys going together, you guys going separately, you guys working really hard and you're going to have days where it's good, weeks where it's not good, months where it's not good, up and down. Are you ready for that? And a lot of these guys say, um, oh yeah, I've been patient up to this time, I can wait another 3 years, sure, why not, I love my woman to death, I don't want to leave her. And then the man loses weight, the man starts looking better, the man's working hard, and then the little secretary at work says, you look awful handsome today, mister, and he's done. Just like that, he's out. I've seen it plenty of times. Um, yeah, illustration of just how important that little bit of validation and connection is to— these aren't bad men, these are good men. They're human beings who just need something, and they finally figured out the formula for the world to say, oh, I see you're a man with needs, here you go, in the form of women who finally notice them. And these— a lot of these men are hitting their prime in their early 40s where they're Professionally successful, they're more confident in their own skin, they look good, all that stuff. And now they have 20, 30-something-year-old women saying, um, uh, look at you, mister, you got one lucky wife at home. He's like, do I really? Yeah, I guess I do. And then he goes home, honey, I'm home, and she's just like, anything, I'm having one of my days, my stomach hurts, I just— don't touch me. He's like, oh, fuck. You string together 3 or 4 of those days in a row and he's like, I'm out. Happens pretty quick. And it surprises the men as much as it surprises the rest of the family, just how quick it is. I say quick after enduring 20, 30 years of not so good stuff from her.

Well, but there's also— because it's, um, if intimacy is the thing that goes, and that's the part that makes the man go, ah, maybe I, maybe, maybe I'm not happy in this marriage. Because men are putting up with a lot. But I think when it comes to not getting getting that intimate connection and not having sex, that's probably the point where they're wondering, what am I— what am I doing this?

Ding ding ding ding.

But here— but here's the thing, they probably haven't really brought it up for a long, long time that there were other issues. So maybe there are issues and issues and issues and things they didn't like, things that the wife did, or— oh sure, sure, right. And so, but they were like, well, It's fine, I guess that's how things change. We got kids now, it is what it is. She yells at me, and I mean, this is marriage, nothing's gonna be perfect. But they put up with all of that, and then the sex goes away, and then after 20 years, I'd be like, well, no, we don't even have sex anymore, I don't think this is gonna work for me. And at that point, the woman is like, oh, really, you make this about sex? When really, he really should have made it about that one time she slapped him in the face for saying something 20 years ago.

Yeah, every—

so I think it's about this is the last boundary that they have, and if that's broken, the no sex part, then they're out. But maybe men should set up boundaries earlier in a relationship where they're saying, I don't like that.

Absolutely.

And that goes for both. I'm not just saying men. Obviously we're talking to a mostly male crowd, so that's why.

Oh, but the women are masters of— if you sit down with a third party and, you know, turn to the woman and say, so And you're, from your perspective, why are we here, Miss Wife? And the floodgates open, and the man's just sitting there like, because the woman's like, February 23rd, 1987, 8 PM, you said this. He's like, really? Yes. Um, uh, Dr. Psych Mom has a very cool, uh, term for this: empathic ruptures. And these are little things that happen within the relationship that is like a major turning point. Where one spouse expects— let's stick with the wife— expects X response to happen from the husband, or X action to happen from the husband. Perfect example is, um, I just gave birth to our first child. She turns to the husband and he's asleep on the couch in the delivery room, and, uh, the most momentous occasion in their life, and he's just snoring through the whole thing. Or after the birth and she's holding the baby and nursing, and she's exhausted and tired. And she turns to the man to say, you know, can you go get me some ice water or something? He's asleep. And then she's like, hey, hey, wake up. And he wakes up and he says, you know what, instead of me laying here and ruining my back on this couch, how about I go home and I'll be back 5 o'clock first thing in the morning? And the wife's like, you're gonna leave me? Now rationally, in that guy's mind, he's like, all I'm doing is sitting here staying awake all night long. Um, she's sleeping with the baby or whatever. What am I doing here? I could go get a good 5-hour sleep and come back. Who cares? But in her mind, that's one of the worst things you could have possibly done. You just abandoned me and the child in our most vulnerable moment when I just need my husband here to hold my hand and, and just be with me and the baby and sing songs and we just bond over this moment. And so a lot of men do something to like to that degree of awfulness, and the wife remembers that for the next 20, 30 years.

But then, first of all, a lot of this just right there, the expectation of what the man is supposed to do, a lot of that comes from Hollywood and from what we were raised to expect and what we feel like we're entitled to. So there's that. And then the second thing is there are two ways to address that. You can, as the woman, say, really, I just gave birth?

I'm really hurt by that, right?

Or you could just say, you know, I really would feel more supported if you stayed with me and if you got me some ice chips.

Or a compromise. How about you run home, get a shower, and come right back?

Right.

Um, something like that. Because I would really like for you to stay with me tonight, if you wouldn't mind.

Right.

It just means a lot to me if you did that. Every man would be like, oh, I'm sorry.

A lot of conversations and relationships aren't very mature.

So, but every guy that I've talked to that has these really toxic coming to the end of the road marriages, and the, the usually ends What usually takes the man talking to me or going to a therapist or whatever is some really holy shit moment. Affairs. She said or did something, filed for divorce, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He's uncovered something that makes him say, who the hell is this woman? And I say, surely this isn't the very first, right? There has to be. Well, and then an hour later I go, well, see, dude, you saw this coming 15 years ago, man. And I always say to the guy, what the fuck were you thinking? Um, just had one of those recently where the guy is with a woman who has— it was almost like it was a joke. I thought he was almost playing a joke on me because he was like reading from the textbook of a borderline personality person, and he had never even heard of the term. And, uh, her background, her actions, her violence, her, her extreme emotions, her all these things, the cheating, all— it was just It was nuts. And, uh, he's just like, well, I don't know what to do. I said, you knew what to do 15 years ago when you met this woman.

I think there's a lot of innocent, naive people out there that think that their partner is going to change if they're just good enough to them and they're just sweet enough and they just stick it out long enough.

I can fix him or her, right?

A lot. And I mean, in a way, that's beautiful that they feel that way and that they have maybe Christian values that make them believe that. But I think also, and I just talked to that, to my mom about that today, you can only give your other cheek for the next slap so many times. There's only two cheeks you can give.

Four.

So, um, so I think there, there's a point when that goes back to boundaries. Nobody deserves to be abused and be in a toxic relationship. So if a person acts toxic, and that's hard for some people to identify because maybe they came from a broken home where their parents never had a healthy conversation. And so some people just have a con— have a relationship that mirrors exactly what they knew from their childhood home. And so how are you supposed to pick up on those things when you don't know what a healthy relationship looks like? And then again, a lot of the Hollywood stuff we see, how couples fight, that's not very healthy. The women tend to slap men all the time in Hollywood movies.

And back in the olden days, there was the men slapped the women. Yeah, it was the woman being hysterical and you'd shake her by the shoulders and say, snap out of it, calm down.

So yeah, so, but I mean, basically what that boils down to is, um, if you marry a, a broken human, then you can't expect them to become unbroken and, and for this to go well.

Um, remember what Dr. Robert Glover said, how you find them is typically how they are. So I found this very broken woman who has this horrible toxic baggage and she's just a wreck, but man, she's a beautiful person inside. I'm gonna— I'm going to ignore all that awfulness and just— and everyone convinces ourselves that I'm a better person for ignoring these 18 things that are orbiting around him or her that are terrible. Um, those things mean nothing because deep down they're a really good person and I can look past all that. You got to be a little bit more pragmatic about it and say his or her narcissistic parents and their past drug abuse and their 1,000 past sexual partners and their 4 kids by 3 different men and they're all these things, they mean something. Not all that is their fault. That's the key. That's the, that's the, the kicker is that he or she couldn't help that, that they came from a world of abuse as a kid. Um, a lot of terrible stuff, but it does— it's part of their Lego pieces that make up the puzzle pieces that make up the who they are.

Well, it's also kind of when you early in the relationship point out things that may not be going well. Let's say when we met early on, we had—

we brought some baggage into the relationship having come out of just from our immediate relationships. Yeah.

And, um, because we had a pretty tricky situation with me accepting 3 stepkids and you accepting a pretty long distance, long-term long-distance situation. Um, you know, a lot of maybe poor, poor behavioral patterns that I had from a previous marriage that was based on long distance came out in me again, and I realized, well, if I keep certain toxic thoughts going or certain negative beliefs going, then this is not going to work out. So what did I do? I actually started counseling by myself, which helped me overcome some of my previous behaviors that weren't always helping me in my relationship before. And so I think if you're watching your spouse over the years, do you see them trying to improve themselves? Do you see them taking accountability for the things that they can—

right there, I was gonna say—

that they can add to the marriage? Like, is it always you, or is there something coming from them? Like, both people have to go halfway to make things work.

So that is the crucial component, and that is what, um, the current dialogue on the internet amongst angry men who are really pissed off at women right now is women have zero accountability. And, uh, there was a famous line in the movie As Good As It Gets by Jack Nicholson where he was the, the neurotic writer, and a woman said, how do you write women so well? And he says, I think of a man and I take away reason and accountability. And, uh, every man quotes that as like, oh my God, that was just so perfect. Well, like anything, there's a kernel of truth to it. Um, I think women— in my little experiment, Rudy's experiment, and others, and we're not the only ones that have done this— have pointed out that the knee-jerk reaction, at least from— let's be fair— the most vocal portion of the female internet population who are on TikTok, Facebook, blah blah blah, whatever. Of that group, um, accountability is not their strong suit, which is, uh, well, women get away with a lot of stuff in society too. Sure.

Yeah, right.

But it doesn't help that we have this going all another rabbit hole of, um, if you got a woman And I'm gonna piss off some people by saying this, but I'm gonna say this does not appeal to the majority of men. This is not your typical objective ideal of beauty. 400 pounds, facial hair, she smells like garbage. She's dumber than a box of rocks.

Okay, this person doesn't exist.

Oh, have you been to Walmart recently?

That's true.

She. Goes outside in the parking lot of Walmart, and she says, does any man here— is any man here interested in having sex with me right now? Some dumb shit is gonna go, well, I guess I will. I got 5 minutes. The equivalent man does that and the police are called, right? And they haul him away. Um, there is an army of men that are so desperate for any kind of physical, emotional, whatever you want to call it, intimacy, closeness, validation, just the physical act of sex with a woman, that they will take anything and everything. And that— and this is a theory, and I, I think it's true, um, gives a lot of women a sense of, well, control, or I'm a prize here, right, right, right. Um, you know what, I got my choice. I got, you know, I have to put in work.

I mean, there's a lot of empowerment if you are a female just being a female, it comes with a lot of empowerment because you literally see how you can control men by offering certain things or not, or by giving them attention or not. So when you're a young female discovering your sexualness, your sexual being, and your, your effect on men, you toy with that and you realize very quickly, oh man, this guy's doing my homework for me and I just have to give him, you know, nothing. No, just pay attention.

Yeah, give them hope. Right, that's the—

right. So that gives— that brings a lot of power to the female identity. And so for— and then also, of course, there are women that sleep them— you sleep their way up in professions. And, and I'm not saying that that's a common thing that happens, but women are able to do that. And again, that plays into this whole understanding of, I don't really have to do anything, I can do whatever I want and I can get whatever I want, I just need to look halfway pretty, not even, I just have to have boobs, and men will just fall and fall over themselves just pleasing me and to get 5 minutes with me in the room. And unfortunately that happens often enough, women use it often enough, men use it often enough to where it creates a society where a lot of people just think all that they need to do is just be female. How can we end this on a positive note?

As we're talking, I'm like, oh, there's gonna be so many good little TikTok nuggets on this thing. You're gonna piss off so many women with what you're saying.

You cannot put this all on TikTok. You need to show me those things for approval.

Oh no, I'll go ahead and just do it without your approval. Listen, I can't have you approving everything.

You can.

I'm a public figure. I am the man. Thank you very much.

I cut people open for a living. Do you want to be cut open for a living?

Do you think that may be a professional liability to put your face?

It could be actually, yes. I need you to be careful with that, man. You have to—

I could blur your face.

Oh my God, there's so many ways I want to answer that.

I'll blur your face.

All right, all right. So how are we going to end this?

Positive note, um, women should be more empathetic to the, the need of the man. And put a little effort into making time, put a little effort into initiation, put a little effort into getting past the hump to where they can have that responsive desire. Men need to be more cognizant of the fact that the wife is not engineered like him. It's not on her mind 24/7. Not every touch and every move is towards, um, the hokey pokey. You just need to have genuine intimate little connection, connection every now and then.

It's And it's really the, the one thing that I think women keep forgetting is that to men it's not just sex. Yes, maybe the sexual act may sometimes just be underwhelming. Maybe sometimes it's just 5 minutes, but it's not just sex. It's the, it's the, the actual connection that happens in that moment. All the hormones that flood our bodies. It's really important for the connection. It's really part of marriage. There's a reason why, why that portion of marriage is mentioned even in religion as being an important aspect.. It's not just a mechanical act that makes people happy. It's, it's a lot more than that. And so for a man to express that as a need is, is just, as I said, like a woman expressing a very important need for her.

So it's not—

it, um, but we shouldn't be belittling men for bringing up that as a need.

But in women's defense, there I am, uh, playing devil's advocate here. Um, if you go without forever as a man let's say it's a period of years, eventually it does become just a mechanical, sure, angry, I need thing. And he reaches over and grabs the wife and gives her a butt squeeze, and she's right in interpreting that means he says, I want now. It's not, hey, you look beautiful, you look pretty today, and you know, I just want to give you a little kiss, show how much I appreciate you. No, no, that's all— that was out the window 2 years ago. Now it's just me have needs, you're not giving, You're a terrible wife. And so you're caught in this vicious circle. If she picks up on that energy, he's like, damn right I do. I mean, I've talked to men who have laid out this menu of reasons why his wife is terrible, and anybody listening to that would just sit wide-eyed and say, what the hell are you doing with this woman? And then at the end of all that, I'm like, well, you've sold me on the fact that this is one broken-ass woman and that you probably shouldn't be with her. So why is it we're talking? He goes, well, because obviously I want more sex. Well, like, really?

I do want to add one little perspective, and that's again not ending it on a positive note. You still have to figure out a way to flip it. But as you grow up as a female, I remember very much, you know, you're very innocent as a— at least in the '90s we were. I think the kids now are not. But in the '90s, when I was 15, I would go drive to tennis on my bicycle. And one afternoon, a bunch of trucks were passing me as I was riding on my bicycle, and they kept honking and waving and whistling at me. And I remember—

you're so friendly.

No, I remember that even though I was innocent, didn't really know what was going on, I knew why they were doing it. I felt that energy, and I felt stripped. I felt naked. I felt vulnerable. I felt like a victim. Like, I felt like deer that was in the woods, and I felt very uncomfortable with that. And so if you experience that as a female, even just a few times, it makes you just feel like you're not a human. You're not being seen as a human. You're just meat that's laying out for people to grab it. And that is a very awful, very weakening, punching in the gut kind of feeling. And so I think some women may get triggered by that.

Yeah, yeah.

Or even on the first date, I've had first dates where the guy was just not reading the room and started touching my knee, and I was like, yeah, what? And I'm not that person. I like to be touched I like physical display of affection.

There has to be some kind of connection first.

And so I can see where in some relationships where the women are so far gone from that, thinking that way of her husband, of their husbands, when the husband is a little too aggressive maybe, or just has that glint in his eye of horny, I need to do it, that they're just so put off and even triggered into, into a sense of, oh my God, I'm in danger. Which is crazy.

But yeah, yeah, it gets to the point where the man's just like, hey, excuse me, I need to get by you. And she's like, right, right. And that's when the man's like, oh boy, we got a problem, right?

You do at that point.

Yeah, I can't even barely touch this woman without her cringing, literally cringing.

But I think that's an aspect that men never think of.

No, we cannot relate to the, um, ever since I was a pubertal teen, people started changing the way they looked at me. No, not at all, right? None of— well, I shouldn't say none of us. I'm sure there's some very, very handsome outwardly whatever men that some women treat them like, you know, trying to think of what equivalent would be like your Chippendales dancer or something like that kind of guy, you know. But that's very, very small percentage of us. The rest of us never experience anything like that. Yeah, so we can't relate. We just all frame it as this is this need that we're supposed to be doing and connecting and This is just what we're, uh, we should be doing as a couple, and when we don't, something's majorly off here. And we're right, it is something majorly off there.

Yeah, but there's also a really different dynamic in the physical aspect. Like, for women, they're just really taking more of a vulnerable role.

Well, you are receiving, right?

Yeah. And the men are more in an aggressive role. So it's going to be difficult either way because it's just so diff— the experience is so different for the genders. Again, that's why you need to connect emotionally before. So we could do more cards, but the, uh, not on the show.

No, no, but, um, but I'm going full circle here, is that all of this comes so naturally and effortlessly— hard to say— at the beginning of the relationship. And that's why it is so deceiving for both sexes. The woman will say, he used to be so sweet. He used to give me notes. He used to drop me flowers randomly. And that just all went out the window. And man will say, do you know why I used to do all that stuff? Because she used to validate the hell out of me, and I felt like a king, and I was rewarding her for— thank you for being the thing that makes me feel so good.

So rewarding her?

This is vicious.

It's not like she's like a puppy that you give a treat to.

And, well, but no, consciously, but it's a, it's a back and forth.

It's like you give me something, I give you—

you're making me feel— but it's not even conscious. Is just like, you feel like he's just driving to work going, I love my woman to death. You know what, flower shop. Pulls in, gets her flowers, and turns around and goes back to the town and gives her. She's like, oh, you're so nice. It's like he wasn't thinking, if I do this, I will get sex, or I did this because sex. All he knows is, I feel this way, this is why I'm doing it. And then he stops feeling that way, she stops feeling that way. And I call it the Mexican standoff. Somebody has to shoot first. Somebody has to say, I'm making an effort. When they're both like, I don't need to make an effort because she doesn't do this. Well, I'm not making an effort because he doesn't do this. Now you're just stuck, right?

That's scorekeeping. That's not— never good anyway.

No.

All right, I think we've exhausted our listeners.

Okay, that was a long one.

Exhausted.

All righty, well, until next time. We should do more of these. And like I said, we're recording the video for our DSO fraternity members, hello, we will put that up. DSO Fraternity, go to dsofraternity.com or dadstartingover.com and join us. $14.99 a month, try it out for 1 month. We have the discussion groups, we have live Zoom meetings, we have in-person meetups, we have the coaching which is heavily discounted for our members, we have a podcast for our members, we have articles, we have just all kinds of cool stuff. And then you also—

videos of us—

and then you get to see our pretty faces. We'll do more of these kind of things. I'll do more, um, fraternity-only videos, not both of us, just myself or some of the coaches and stuff. So we're gonna make it a more— even more of a multimedia experience. So thank you guys for listening, appreciate it a great deal, and we will catch you on the next one. Say bye. Goodbye.