"My Wife Turned Into a MomBot — What Happened to Us?"

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All right, folks, we have a new Dear DSO entry on the website. You can submit your own story or question to deardso.com. Just fill out the form. And if your question or your story is a good one, I will create a video out of it here for the whole world to see or for the podcast listeners to listen to on the Dad Starting Over podcast available on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or probably wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can find the Dad Starting Over podcast. By the way, if you're watching this on YouTube, please pause for a moment down below, click on subscribe, click on like, and after, after the video, if you so choose, it'd be nice if you could leave a comment. All those things really help to grow the Dad Starting Over channel. I appreciate it a great deal. Thank you so very much. Now on to today's submission. All right, this one comes from A.S. He says, I have spent the last 2 years implementing the Dead Bedroom Fix after reading your book and several others, including book by Esther Perel. I assume he means the Mating in Captivity. That was a big hit for her. And Dr. Robert Glover's No More Mr. Nice Guy. Et cetera. It started as one of the many ways I was trying to rekindle our sex life. It has thankfully become a habit, and I am now 100% doing it for me and me alone. And if my wife wants to come along for the ride, she's welcome, but this is for me now. I think he means this and it is his— I guess he's referring to his efforts in self-improvement. He says, I have lost 60 pounds. That's awesome. I have gained 3 inches on my biceps. Very good. I have dropped 3 pant sizes and 2 shirt sizes. I feel like a million bucks. He's doing what a lot of guys do. He's talking about the physicals. Men are so, you know, goal-driven and they want to fix it. So, you know, for a lot of guys, especially that have been out of shape forever, you know, 60 pounds overweight, to go through this massive transformation, guys are very proud of their, of their work, which they should be. That's huge. That said, my wife is very, a very anxious person, he continues. He says, she was when we were dating, but it was amplified 100% when we had kids. Rather than me, where I feel like I can be husband and father, my wife seems to have a binary switch. She can be a wife or a mother, but never simultaneously. Well, A.S., I called this out in the book, The Dead Bedroom Fix, by the way, deadbedroomfix.com if you want to get your own copy. It's available on Amazon, Apple, you can download directly from their website, all the retailers have it, um, Audible included, the audio version. Um, but, uh, I talk about this very thing that for often for most women when they are in mom mode, they are only in mom mode. So when she's in the middle of doing something motherly and domestic within the home and it's mom mode, you don't come up and, you know, expect her to be turn into lustful horny wife mode. I know she was like that previous, before kids, more so than what she is now, and— but it doesn't work that way. But anyway, I digress. He says, um, I will absolutely say that when I can get her at least an hour away from the kids, the person that I fell in love with is back. I know this is normal and expected. Yep. My question is, "how can I encourage my wife to take her own journey of self-improvement? I feel like she would be happier if she were healthier, if she were more selfish, and with more selfish with her me time," he says. "If we got rid of some of the 6 kid activities every week, 2 churches that we go to. Every once in a while, she'll have a time where schedules align and both kids are busy and she has the house to herself, and she tells me how amazing it is." However, she resists every attempt that I make to give her that alone time more often because to her that makes her a bad mom in her mind. I feel like I can— I feel like I have come close to exhausting everything I can do unilaterally. I have a therapist. I go to the gym 3 or 6 days per week. I make a point to go out and do guy stuff with other dudes. She won't do couple or individual therapy. She won't try sex therapy. She won't join a gym and stick with it for more than just a few days. I'm just... sad that she has to either slug a bottle of wine or be taken somewhere exotic to be able to feel free enough to act like the person that I married. I realize that marriage is work. I guess I just thought it would be different. As do most men. That said, I come from a long line of stubborn Scot-Irish SOBs, so I'll keep working on it. Um, yeah, dude, I mean, you're illustrating what a lot of men, whether they vocalize it or not, a lot of men experience in long-term monogamy and marriage, which is the thought pattern of, this ain't the woman I married. It's like, well, no shit, dude, people go through changes. People get older, people get sick, people lose jobs, people, you know, bad things happen. Really great things happen, you know. You could flip it. It doesn't necessarily always have to be a bad thing. You know, I've heard of men saying like, you know, my wife was this very low education person and then she kind of woke up in the middle of our marriage and said, I'm going to work on my career, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that. And then next thing you know, she's got her MBA and she's some bigwig at a company. And the guy's like, this ain't the woman I married. Well, yeah, dude, she improved herself dramatically. In your case, which is the case for most men in such situations that reach out to me, your version is we had child and this admittedly already kind of anxious person went into holy shit anxiety mode. This is a topic. If you want to get women going and women labeling me as some kind of raging misogynist or insensitive prick or whatever it is, it's just simply pointing out something that frankly, ladies, any therapist worth their salt will say. And I'm not a therapist, by the way. I'm not anything. I'm just bald dude, microphone, wrote a book, whatever, several books you can see behind me here. Started a men's community, by the way. Let me pause there. HelpForMen.com. Go to HelpForMen.com/join and join the brotherhood if you're a guy. We have a private community just for men only, support community. A lot of guys talk about this very issue in that group and in the comments on my videos and posts on social media and so forth. In general, it's, this ain't the woman I married. Super anxious. All she cares about are the kids. And dude, you were saying verbatim what I hear from a lot of guys, which is, I pulled her away from the, the house and the kids. We went to Puerto Rico together for the weekend or whatever it was. And holy crap, my wife is back. She's bubbly. She's sweet. She's feminine. She's fun. Yes, a lot of hanky-panky, you know, happened in the bedroom at the hotel. This was amazing. And what every man says after that is, how can I continue this on a more frequent basis? Ideally every day, but that's not going to happen. It's like, how can I get it more than just once, you know, a season type of thing, once in a blue moon when we can get enough money scraped together to go on vacation together, whatever. And then, you know, you alluded to the wine and everything else. So we're talking about— and you have probably rightfully diagnosed her with, man, she's got some anxiety. She's just under stress with the kids. She's overwhelmed and preoccupied with this concept of kids and how to raise good kids and how to make sure the kids are survive. And in other words, she's doing what Mother Nature imprinted her to do. This is something that is very difficult for a lot of people to navigate, men and women both. Let's presume that the man and woman marry each other with the goal of— at the early stage of the relationship when they first get together, if you were to pull both man and woman aside separately and say, hey, is your goal in this marriage to maintain you and your spouse, like, as a couple, as much as possible? Because you're planning on having kids and you're planning on moving in together and you're planning on doing all this stuff. Do you plan on putting in the work to make sure you two stay connected? Both man and woman will say, absolutely, 100%.

And they mean it.

Both of them mean it. But then life hits both of them and man gets overwhelmed with money and work and everything else. But to the men that reach out to me, more anxious guys, more preoccupied guys, to their credit, they put in a lot of work to stay connected to wife. At least they try. And they're usually with kind of avoidant women who think the other way, or they're with women whose anxiety goes up a thousandfold once they make the big step of having a kiddo. And then— and that woman is almost a victim of the circumstances as well. She doesn't know what her mind and her brain is going to be like once she has a child or two or three or whatever it is. But now she's a victim of this new mindset that she has, this overstressed, super anxious mindset. Again, if you had quizzed her early on, she would like, I ain't going to be that way, I'll make sure I'm not going to be that way. And then every woman says, yeah, right, just wait. Then she has the kids and she's like, sorry, preoccupied, all I think about is kids, I don't sleep very well, I certainly don't want sex with my husband, not nearly as much as what he does, because all I'm thinking about is this, this, and this. I can't believe that he's not also thinking about all this stuff like I am. Which makes me doubly stressed that I feel alone in all this stress and anxiety. I need to chug a couple of bottles of wine, otherwise I can't go to sleep tonight. Not good, not healthy. Ask any therapist, doctor, whatever, they'll tell you the same thing. Oh, lady, you need some help. Therapy. Yes, you do need your alone time. Trust your husband to watch kids so you can go out and do the selfish thing. Go hit the yoga class, go to the gym, go to the library, go to the coffee shop, go hang out with the lady friends, be social. Do all those things. Walk around the block. Go do the half marathon thing. You know, whatever it is. You need to take care of yourself. It's for your health and your well-being. And if it helps to sell this— and by the way, this is kind of a speech maybe you should have with wife— I'm worried about you. Usually that doesn't get it done. They're like, I don't care about me. I just care about kids. I just care about being a mother. Okay, well then here's the kicker. If you really do care about the kids, do you want to see the kids in happy, healthy relationships down the line in the future? Yes? Cool. What you're doing now is going in the opposite direction because they're sitting back and watching an overly anxious, overstressed-out mother who is way overwhelmed, ignoring her husband, not taking care of herself, and it's just becoming this— here's the term that every woman loves— Momby, like mom zombie. You know, picture the mother like, must take care of kids, like a mom robot. Mombot? Maybe that's better than momby. You know what I mean? Like this mindless, overwhelmed— like the zombies are all about brains, brains, must eat brains, must eat humans. They don't think about anything else. Same thing with the wife. Must take care of kids, kids, kids, kids. And everybody's like, why don't you come do this? No, must take care of kids, kids, kids, kids. And the husband's over here, can we have sex? And no, kids, kids, kids. Not good, not healthy. Anyway, you are modeling for these kids. This is how parents are. This is how mothers are specifically. Guess what? They're going to do the same thing with their kids, and so will their kids, and so will their— your mom probably did the same. Ask your dad, you happy with that arrangement? He's going to say, hell no, I'm not happy with that arrangement. I've been miserable for years. Is that what you want? Are you cool with that? And kids say, yeah, I got to sit back and watch this stressed out mom. I couldn't wait to get the hell out of the house. She was like helicopter mom, just hovering over me every little thing I did, even well into my teenage years and beyond. She just wants to be in everything. And so I just stopped returning her calls, stopped answering her text messages. No, Mom, I'm fine. Leave me alone. I don't share all my details of my life with my mom, and my mom goes nuts. As a process now, her and Dad are divorcing, and on and on and on. And here's something a lot of women don't hear, and then the kids follow that up with, I finally get my dad and why he was the way he was, and I don't blame him. For leaving mom. She's kind of nuts. You don't want that. You want to make— you want to show a good example for how a couple does that very delicate balancing act of being a good parent and being a good spouse, doing all the domestic logistical stuff of life and also being a romantic individual. That's really tough, especially for your very anxiety-prone individuals. The alcohol thing, the getting away from the kids, all point to, yeah, person needs some help. You, wife, need some help. And she's, she's saying, nope, not going to therapy. She's already said that. That's not good, dude. Sometimes what moves the needle for these people— and let me pause there— she may be depressed as well. I don't know, maybe she needs to get help with that. That's beyond your pay grade, above mine. My light just went up behind me. I don't know if you saw that. Battery died. Oh well, moving on. So, uh, it's going to take a professional to say, yeah, what you're doing is wildly unhealthy. This is going to have all kinds of repercussions down the line for your personal health, your physical health, your mental health, your kids, your dad, you need help. And unfortunately, husband saying that probably go in one ear out the other. Bring in the kids reinforcement. I don't mean like bring them in literally, but the subject of kids, how this is bad for them, that may help wake her up. But often what helps wake him up is, this can't go on. Sorry, I love you. I, I want to be with you till the day I die, I really do. But what we're doing is not healthy, and I can't go on like this. Sorry, I've offered the help in the form of counseling and everything else, but you have, in a very not so roundabout way, said I don't care. Well, I do. So we're going to go get help, or else we're not us anymore. Sometimes that's what it takes. And they go, all right, dude's not messing around. I get it now. Fine, let's go to counseling. I know that's not how you want it to start, but often that's how it starts, with the fine, whatever. And then you get them in there, and then after the 7th or 8th session, if you're so lucky, then things start to click. And they have a— you have reinforcement saying, honey, we're worried about you, this isn't good. And husband, maybe you need to be a little bit more patient with her. And wife, You have to understand where your husband's coming from. He misses his wife. That's normal. That's healthy. I understand you want to take care of the kiddos, but it takes a village. So you're going to have to allow grandma and aunts and friends to help watch while you guys go do things together. That's what successful, healthy, normal couples do. That's a tough sell, man, but I wish you all the best. Good luck. But that's what it's going to take. The old come-to-Jesus moment, the healthy version of the talk, as we call it in our group, the Brotherhood. And once again, help4men.com. Go to helpformen.com/join or click on Brotherhood in the menu and join our community where we talk about all this kind of stuff amongst our group. All right, brother, thank you so very much for reaching out. I do appreciate it. And guys, thank you for watching, and we'll catch you on the next one.