New Years Chat With DSO!

All right! Hello everyone; it says I am live so let's give me a second here while I make sure that— That isn't fact? The case... Do doo-doo-do-Do-Dooo Doooo Yes indeed we're alive! "Hello world!" How was everybody today?! Oh my guess better switch over to pretty face! There we go. Hey everybody, how are you folks today? Happy New Year to whoever's watching this, if you're watching this live or if you're watching the recording. Most people watch the recording, so welcome people after the fact. Howdy do. I'm gonna give a little bit here. Here's the annoying part of any kind of live broadcast, whatever you call this thing. Livestream, there you go, that's the word. We wait for people to show up. Otherwise, I'm just oddly sitting here and talking to myself. I'm kind of off-center here. You see the lights behind me? I gotta have those kind of— I don't have to, but it looks better if they're— what would you call it— framing my head. Uh-huh. Cool. Got the guitars. This is a license plate that somebody from Canada sent to me, as well as this little thingy hanging— I'm always backwards on this— this little thingy hanging from the doorknob also comes from the same dude. I got some other stuff. I still have it hung up on the wall, including stuff from Australia, more stuff from Canada. I like putting little knickknacks, little gifts that people send me. If you want to send me a knickknack to put up on the wall, let me know. DSO@dadstartingover.com. Do we have anybody, um, joining us today yet? I got a thumbs up from somebody. Hey, howdy, whoever that was. If you could give me a thumbs up, give me a like, share this thing wherever it is you are in the world, and say hello in the comments. That's what this is all about. Say hey, howdy, and let's get some conversation going. I want to wait before we have some additional folks coming in before we start chatting away. Otherwise, I'm kind of talking to nobody. Hello, Scott. Scott is— Scott M. is from our DSO team, and he is joining us. Scott is a coach on the Dad Starting Over team. And Scott is joining us from YouTube. Thank you, Scott, for that. Need a lot more YouTube, um, followers, whatever, subscribers, that's the word. Um, still kind of slacking on the YouTube, so let's get some more folks. And, uh, Scott says to sell Bro Fest. One thing at a time, my friend. Easy, one thing at a time. Let's wait till we get some more folks in there. Uh, what Scott is talking about is, uh, Bro Fest is our annual gathering of all of us dudes who join or belong to a members group that we have called the DSO Fraternity. It's a private men's group, meaning men only. Sorry, ladies, plenty of other groups online out there for the ladies and stuff, but we have one just for the men called DSO Fraternity. We have live discussion groups online. We have a Discord server for our lifetime members. There's different tiers of membership. You can be a lifetime member, you can pay annually, or you can pay, you can pay month to month. Um, and for those fine folks that joined us in the lifetime, we have a separate, uh, special Discord server for those guys and all kinds of activity on that. Uh, we have a private discussion group on Facebook. No one knows that you're on it, no one can see that you're on it, no one can see whatever it is you're typing in there. It's extremely active. It gives you little stats to show like how many conversations have started, and we've had a couple of different groups on there. We cleaned house and started over and created a new group, just housekeeping purposes behind the scenes. And between those two groups over the years, it's now, we're now in year 4 of doing this DSO fraternity. How fast was that, Scott? We have over 50-some thousand independent conversations, posts have been made in our discussion groups. 50,000, that's insane. So very, very active, like 24/7 from people around the world. And then we have live Zoom meetings, myself and guys like Scott on the DSO team team host the meetings on a variety of different topics, and then we record all of those meetings, and then we post them for the members to hear later. And we have over 600 hours of meetings, a lot of content, a whole lot of discussion, a whole lot of meetings, audio. We have a DSO Fraternity podcast that is just for those DSO Fraternity members. Uh, what else do we have? Articles. We have— we get together. Scott mentions Bro Fest. That's our annual gathering. We've gathered in Nashville, Tennessee, Austin, Texas, Las Vegas, Nevada. We've had a couple of gatherings in Australia. Is it Melbourne and Brisbane? I think that's right. Is that right, Scott? And then what else have we— and then we had some— a few guys got together in Europe, in Amsterdam. And but our big gathering is in the US. We call that BroFest. And that's one where around— I think our biggest one so far has been 50 guys showed up to that one. And we had special guests show up and give presentations and Our next one is coming up here in April next year in New Orleans. So if you'd like to join us, meet myself in person and the rest of the Dad Starting Over team, we hang out for a long week. We show up Thursday night and we leave Sunday morning. And we have presentations and we do dinners together and drinks and have all kinds of fun. So if that sounds like something you would like to do, check out the DSO fraternity at dsofraternity.com. Let me, Pardon my clicking, and I've heard this on the recordings that you can hear this mouse clicking around. Sorry about that. And I'm going to put in the comments here, comments of the chat, wherever this may be posted. There it goes out on YouTube and Facebook. And that is, if you want to try out the DSL Fraternity free for 1 month, absolutely, positively free, you do have to put your credit card info in because if you last past the month, we'll charge you for the next month and the next month and the next month. But if you cancel before that month is up, you got a month for free to test drive and see what you think. So check it out there in the link. If you're a dude, check out the DSO fraternity. Well, how many guys we got on here? I am, get the old glasses out, shall we? Get my glasses. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Oh my, oh. It doesn't show how many we got on there. It just shows we got 5 thumbs up. Thank you guys so much for that. If you could give me a like, Give me a share wherever you're at. I would appreciate it. And, ba-doop-a-doop, make sure I'm not missing anything here. Welcome everyone. Before we start rockin' and rollin' and I just blab, although I'm a dude, dudes love to hear ourselves talk. I don't know if there's any ladies on this or other guys have recognized that. That's a cool little thing amongst ourselves. You know, you talk about ladies love to yap and bah-bah-bah-bah, yeah, well, All you got to do with a dude is sit down and just say, tell me about you, or tell me about your job, or what, and just sit back and relax because he will just keep going. Um, I find myself doing the same damn thing. I can yap incessantly on these things. You don't necessarily want to sit here and listen to me yap. I got like literally hundreds and hundreds of videos out there you can watch me yap about a variety of different things. Um, but this is more for questions. Let's get some dialogue going. Let's talk. I think, uh, it was the last one or one before I did, we just went down a rabbit hole of, uh, fitness and health, talking all about stuff, hormones and working out, and it was cool. I like that kind of stuff. Who knows where these conversations may lead. So if you have a question or a topic, now's the time. Add it into the comments here. And we got Tom, Tom W, T-Dub, says happy 2024, man. Yes, happy 2024. This was something I wanted to talk about. I shot out an email. If you guys are not on my email list, and you would like to do so, I would love to say I have a form that you can fill out to do so. I'm just not quite sure where that is. It's on the website somewhere, or you can email me directly, dso@dadsstartingover.com. Let me know if you want to be added to the email list, dso@dadsstartingover.com, and I can very quickly add you. Not a big deal. We added, um, uh, I'm happy to say like 2,600 new email addresses last month alone. December was a good one. December was a good month for Dads Starting Over overall, and for us to add a couple thousand people to our email list is a pretty big deal for us. We're a small business, small organization, so if you'd like to be added to that list, but anyway, I brought that up because I sent out an email about, hey, happy new year, and some things that I wanna see more of from our dudes, from our friends, whether you're just a follower or if you're in the DSO fraternity, and that is to take Action. Do stuff in 2024. Sounds silly. Sounds like a, well, duh statement, right? But how many of us, it's a new year, really any time of year, I want to do this. Cool. So get to it. All right, I'm gonna get started. And then maybe you do a little something and then old habits set in and you forget the thing. And then before you know it, guys, I don't know about you, man, but I'm almost 50 years of age now, and these years go by like nothing. A year can go by like nothing where you're like, "Ah, shit, I wanted to do the thing. I never did do the thing. Well, you know what? This year, I'm going to do the thing." And one of the most common things for New Year's is losing weight, getting in shape. And how many people are like, "I'm here in the gym. I'm plunking down my money. I'm going to join the gym, damn it, and come 5 days a week." And they don't. It lasts for some weeks, sometimes months, but those habits have to set in and the, it's kind of snooty, kind of a snotty thing, but the gym culture has a term for these people and they call them resolutioners because they have made their New Year's resolution. You go in on the new year at a gym and it's just packed. And usually what's taken up are all the extra, the cardio machines are all taken up by people.. And then the snotty regular gym goers say, hey, don't worry, it'll be cleared out by in a month. These people won't last. And it's sad, but it's true. They don't last. I remember here not too long ago at the gym, there was a woman who was very overweight. I'm not trying to be mean, but she was very overweight and she was working out hard. She was running on that treadmill. She was lifting weights. What's sad is you could tell by virtue of how this woman moved and how hard she worked, she was a natural athlete. This woman had it going on. She was tough. And I was just watching, and every now and then I'd give her the fist bump and be like an unspoken thing of like, keep it up, Mama, you know, looking good. And she had a lot of weight to lose, but she was going after it. And I was in— inside, I was her biggest cheerleader, like, you know, I hope she keeps it up. And she didn't. She disappeared. And that was sad. And one of the things I said in my email that went out to everybody was, um, write shit down. Use the calendar. Uh, one of the most fundamental things that any kind of successful business person does— I like to study and read about successful business people. I used to have a mentor of mine who I worked for for years, and, and I like to sit and study people and what they do and what makes them tick. And I'll be damned, if you looked at every single successful dude that I knew, it was— every day was planned out. To-do lists galore. Every hour had a job. This hour I'm doing this, this hour I'm doing that, etc. Even their social life was like, dinner with wife this hour, this time. Everything was— every hour had a job. They didn't leave anything to chance. And that way they could measure, and they had something to shoot for. I'm going to do these 10 things today. Then at the end of the day, they say, cool, I got all 10. On to the next day, on to the next day, and everything— all those little day-to-day checklist things all work towards a big goal. So, you know, I'm going to take my company to $10 million a year. Well, you better break that down into individual chunks and then break it down further and then break it down into hour-by-hour type of thing. Guys, that's the key. That's it. I don't care what it is you're doing, whether it's losing weight or like the business thing I mentioned or whatever it may be. Got to break it down. You got to take action. It ain't going to freaking happen if you don't. So, guys, 2024, that's your pep talk from yours truly. Let's get some shit done, shall we? All right. T-Dub starting off things with a question. How do you, DSO? That's me. DSO stands for Dad Starting Over. It's kind of my fake internet name, moniker, whatever, for years and years. My name is Ralph Brewer Brewer Brewer. I think— I don't know if I mentioned that off the top of this, but most people just call me like T-Dub says here, DSO. "how do you DSO center or ground yourself when 'triggered' by your lady? You have surely developed a strategy mindset here. Curious what yours may be." I have a fault about myself, and I'm the first to admit it, and Scott and others in the DSO fraternity and stuff will kind of, they've heard me say this many times before. I'm a very impatient person, And I have very little patience for drama. A lot of men hearing that say, well, that sounds like a good thing, dude. Yay, manly man type stuff. Not so much. One man's, oh, that's, you know, oh, silly wife, teehee kind of thing, to me is just like, my wife calls it my dark, what'd she say, my dark, stormy, dangerous eyes. You know, I get that look. So if she does something that crosses the line, I do not let it slide. I'm not mean, you know, I'm gonna paint my picture of some kind of abusive asshole or whatever, but, um, if she— you know, everybody does, men and women alike. You cross that line, you say a little something a little snotty, you're having a bad day, whatever it may be. Um, I'm not one to say, now sweetie, that wasn't very nice, you hurt my feelings just now. You know, please don't do that, whatever it may be. I'm Mr. I go right to the, hey, no, cut it out, don't do that. And early in the relationship, my wife, when she was girlfriend, was very much like, you do not put up with anything. And I was just like, I guess I don't. And she showed me in her female ways, but it will sometimes— it's not nefarious on my part. This is her talking. It's, I'm emoting. I'm being, you know, I'm having a not so good day. You're kind of caught in the crossfire. Sometimes what I don't need is a, "Cut it out, woman. That's enough." Sometimes what I need is just a, "All right, get over here. Give me a hug. Give me some love." So I've learned to soften my approach a little bit, I guess is what I'm trying to say. But my default is one of, Don't like crazy, don't like drama, don't like any of that nonsense. Cut it out right now or else I go to other room type of thing. That is a very avoidant type of thing, if you will. And yes, I'm a dude and we tend to be more avoidant in that way. Um, uh, Jen says, I used to be a barber. Cool, I can see your picture there. I assume that's you, Jen. Nice hair. I'm jealous, bald. Dudes, uh, do like to talk but mostly seem like they prefer being heard. Moms love to talk, but mostly we are excited to vent or trauma dump. Very cool. Karimullah Adabi, did I say that right? Karimullah Adabi says hi. Well, hello, K.A. Josh says, I'm thinking about using a point system to reward myself when I do all my tasks. Each daily task is worth a point. After X number of points, a trip out to eat or something. Oh, that's cool. I like that. Uh, that, that, you mean, you know, reward yourself. That's also something I learned from a lot of my, uh, mentors and stuff as a young adulthood and just sitting back and watching. You know, some of these guys don't know they were my mentor, so to speak. It was just me passively watching them, working next to them or for them, but I treated them as such where, you know, you learn from them. And one of those things, one of those things from those successful men that I talked to, or worked with rather, was, uh, yeah, they rewarded themselves. They weren't afraid to party it up when they hit a certain milestone sales-wise or whatever. They were like, uh, Friday we're paying for all the drinks and food, bring your spouse, just have fun type of thing. And, um, they weren't afraid to say a big thank you to everybody and to enjoy themselves. So I, you know, Josh, in a very, you know, might compared to those guys that were, you know, these were multi-millionaire business owner types, you don't necessarily have to go out, go all out, but I love the point system. What a cool thing. The only negative to that is, Josh, you got to keep track of that. And so you need to be very disciplined in your day-to-day calendar, whatever it is you're using. Like, okay, well, let me see what it is that I do today. Let me track it all. How many points is this worth versus this? Is each task a point? Well, this one task, you know, took me 6 hours versus this other task took me 5 minutes. Are they both each a point, or do you weigh them? So you can see where my analytical mind is going. But I love the general idea. Okay, so Josh follows up with another question. Thank you, Josh. Josh from YouTube, rather, says, "I have a hard time rectifying two things from the book." The book, I would assume, is The Dead Bedroom Fix. Check it out wherever books are sold. I've sold a lot of copies of that one. I'm proud of that one. It really got out there. So when people say "the book," that's usually what they mean. He says, "I have a hard time rectifying two things from the book." No gifts. Didn't say that. And date nights, weekends away, those seem to conflict. Date nights feel like gifts. I did not say no gifts. What I said was underhanded gift giving. Nice guy behavior, codependent behavior, whatever you want to call it. Dr. Glover, in his book No More Mr. Nice Guy, something I recommend to a lot of men to read, he talks about this concept that he calls a covert contract. Which is, I am going to say or do something rather positive for you, partner. I'm not going to tell you what I expect in return, but I'm going to sit quietly back covertly, and I'm going to see how you react. And when you don't react in the way that I expect, I'm going to be pissy. I'm going to be mad. I'm going to be upset. I'm not going to tell you why. And very often these nice guy types have spouses, wives that are like, I don't know which husband I'm dealing with today. Some days you're just the sweetest guy in the world, and some days you're stomping around the house and pouting, and I don't know why, and you won't talk about it. And the man's like, because I gave you the tennis bracelet or whatever for our anniversary, I took you out to the nicest restaurant in the world that you, that you love so much, and when we got home, no sex, and I'm pissed. That's gift giving. So A lot of men, like I said, they do the gifts, they give the thing, and they expect XYZ in return. And that is not healthy. And that doesn't result in anything. So that's what I mean, Josh, when I talk in the book about the mistakes, the mistakes that men do to get the activity going back in the bedroom again. One of those mistakes is gift giving. And that ain't good. You should give gifts to your spouse because drum roll, you love them. And you appreciate them. You see the little thing at the store and you're like, I bet she would love that. I'm just going to get that for her. Watch your eyes light up. Here you go, wife, thinking about you, love you, kiss on the forehead, done. You don't in the back of your mind go, and this better result in a blowjob later tonight. That's not good. I know a lot of men, you go there, you got to get past that. It's not healthy behavior. I know we're tiptoeing towards some, you know, basic human behavior 101. We do positive things for others because there's some kind of ulterior motive behind it. Usually we don't like to admit it. We think we're 100% altruistic, and people typically aren't. But when you're so overt about it, when you're so like, I'm going to get this for my wife and she's going to love it to death and we're going to have a good romp in the hay, and it doesn't happen and you get pissed off, not good, dude. So that's what I'm talking about when I say gift-giving in there. And then you need to do the nights and weekends away. Yeah, that's, um, you know, I talk about with, uh, with, uh, what do you call it, uh, I lost my train of thought, with, uh, with the nights out. Oh, mommy mode. I talk about this all the time. Something that really bugs a lot of men is often in relationships is the wife who campaigns to have children. Not always, sometimes it's a mutually agreed upon thing. A lot of people have certain types of values and religious beliefs and so forth. It's almost understood that as soon as you say I do, you just start the process of procreating. But for a lot of relationships, it's the wife going, you know, we should, it's time, clock's ticking. And husband's like, okay, let's have a child. And, uh, what is not made clear during that process is— and by the way, husband, um, and I did a video on this, it'll be going out here soon, I think. Uh, I have a big schedule of videos on the calendar through March, I believe. So I can't tell you exactly when this one will go out, but I had a Dear DSO guy, uh, who reached out to me. I'll talk about that here soon, the Dear DSO thing, who said he feels very much like he's on the back burner in his wife's list of priorities. That he went from number one, the most awesome boyfriend in the world, sex is off the charts, she's stroking his ego, and as soon as they have a kid, he's forgot about. And that's something a lot of men feel, but we don't like to admit it because it paints us as this little needy, you know, whiny little baby. And that's the message that gets out to us anyway. We need to grow up and realize that things change. Yeah, but still, we kind of miss all that attention, we miss all that love, we miss all that physical affection. And in order to get that back in, you know, little moments, you can't have that consistently again, just like you did pre-kids and early honeymoon stage of relationship, but you can get it back in chunks, so to speak, little moments. The key is to get away. You gotta get away from the kids. You gotta remove her from that environment, 'cause when she's in mom mode, she's only in mom mode. So you gotta get out and do things as a couple together, you two alone. My wife and I do it, on average twice a week. To a lot of people, that sounds excessive. In my opinion, it's a must-do. At least it is for us to keep us connected that way. Uh, happy New Year, DSO fam! Welcome, Duarte. Duarte is one of our longtime DSO fraternity members. For those joining us, DSO fraternity is our private group for men only. dsofraternity.com, check it out. In the comments, I posted a link to try it out free for a month. And Atharva says, DSO, you are my silent mentor. Oh, I'm not so silent, or I guess our— really, whatever. Well, thank you, Atharva. He is also a, um, a DSO fraternity member. Nick says, uh, she likes the bed made, but she had to rush out this morning, so I just made the bed in hopes for some action later. I realized that's not an appropriate thing to do, so I went back in and messed it up again. No, Nick, I hope you're joking. So thanks for setting me straight. No, you make the bed because the bed needs to be made. You sweep the floor because there's shit all over the floor. You put the dishes, you know, away because the dishwasher is full. These are just things you do because you should be looking at all these things and they should annoy you, and you should be like, gotta make the bed. You don't think about what mommy over there, your wife, thinks or whatever. You certainly don't. You certainly don't go back and mess up the bed because you're like, oh shit, I'm doing a covert contract thing in my head. No, you just make the bed and forget about it. That's what adults do. Atharva says, I feel very guilty of not making a recap video of all the things I did last year and the places I saw. I just cannot bring myself to edit so much content and make a reel. Well, you can pay somebody else to do it. There's an idea, Atharva. If the idea of sitting down and editing something, go to Fiverr, F-I-V-E-R-R, and pay some dude in your neck of the woods, in India, Pakistan, whatever. They work for relatively cheap compared to somebody here in the States. When I did the BroFest videos, I didn't do it this last time, but the two BroFests before that, I paid some dude like in Pakistan like $150 and he did hours of work to edit all the little clips together. So you could always do that, or just suck it up and do the work, or realize it's really not that important to you. Hmm. Uh, if you're wondering why you're here, this comment— this is Kaylee talking. Kaylee, I welcome you, I welcome your comments, all that stuff, but you need to be more, uh, clear. Who it is you're talking to. Please, guys, when you— this— not— I'm not picking on you, Kaylee. This is very, very common in the comments where, uh, what we don't like to do is read a comment and then, um, wonder what the hell you're referring to, who you're talking to. Um, I'm actually on my comment system here. Maybe it's more clear when you just look right on— no, it's not— when you look right on Facebook. But, uh, you're saying, I— if you're wondering why your You're misspelled. Here, this comment des it all. I think you mean says it all. So I'm not sure who you're referring to exactly. It sounds like you're kind of pissed at somebody about something. Maybe it's Nick's thing with the bed. I assume it's a joke he made myself. In other words, Kaylee, be clear about who and what you're talking about, and then we can talk all about it. Um, because a lot of times people just get on there and just post things like, yeah, I agree, and you're like, agree with what exactly? Because comments are just flying by. Um, Nick says she's replying to me. You assume so? I assume so too, but okay. So Nick, you went and made up, messed up the bed. That's why you're here, buddy. That's why you're at Dad Starting Over. You suck. It knows. That's what Kaylee's saying. In other words. So thank you, Kaylee, for that. Ryan says, Ryan from Facebook says, who is feeling good about 2024? Last year before DSO, we were fighting and facing separation. Night and day difference now. So Ryan, do share more what Recognize your name from the DSO fraternity, I believe. I apologize, got a lot of names scrolling around and flying around everywhere. We've had a lot of Ryans. I don't believe you and I have spoken. So how are things night and day different between you and the wife, and what exactly did you do? A lot of people are going to wonder. And then Nick says, in case it's not clear, I was joking. Thank you, Nick. You never know, it's all kinds of yahoos on the internet. Um, boy, that's one thing that's been brought to light for me after talking to so many dudes. And I say this and it sounds like I'm throwing dudes under the bus. I'm not. But, uh, there's some guys that I talk to that I leave the call when the coaching call— these guys pay to talk to me, dadsareneverover.com/coaching DSO fraternity. It's like half the price if you belong to our members group for the coaching. But anyway, and I will leave the call with these guys and I'll have to go lay down because it's that like traumatic of an experience talking to some poor people because their life situations are so bad. Um, and, uh, I see a posted a few times in the Dad Starting Over comments, which are mostly negative, let's, let's be honest. Uh, but every now and then somebody will post something along the lines of The biggest decision you can make, the biggest, most impactful decision you can make as a man, is who you select as your mate for life. It can absolutely make your life and be a wonderful, beautiful thing, or it can absolutely, positively destroy you. And not to be melodramatic, but pardon me, yeah, I heard the stories. Um, wrong woman And yeah, forget about it. It's just hell on earth. And you got to be careful, and you got to understand those red flags of behavior. You got to understand your own baggage, what you bring to the table, and how that attracts certain people to you, and how that makes you attracted to them, and why it is you keep bringing so much drama into your life. And sometimes that drama can be pretty freaking bad. And my— pardon me, my phone's buzzing if you guys hear that. Joe says, Happy New Year, actually looking forward to 2024, and a lot of that is due to the DSO community. Well, welcome, Joe. Joe is a member of our DSO fraternity, one of our new members. Welcome. And Rudy says, Happy New Year, brother. Well, Happy New Year to you. Check them out, Rude Advice. Rudy A on Facebook, TikTok, YouTube. Where else yet? Are you on Twitter, Rudy? Check them out, Rude Advice. And Rudy and I have collaborated on some stuff here in the past, and we should do so here in the near future again. Christian says, hey, you beautiful bald man, thank you for creating this platform. Well, thank you, Christian, I appreciate it. You can call me beautiful bald man all you want. All right. Hello from South Africa, says Mark. Well, hello. I was gonna say good day. That's, that's Australian. What do they say in, in South Africa as a greeting? Is there a South African greeting? Uh, but he says, unfortunately, our divorce date is February 14th. Oh, I don't know over there, but in here that's Valentine's Day. How ironic. Sorry, buddy. Or not, I don't know. You tell us, is that a good thing or not? Um, Ryan says, I was overlevered, levered in my development business, so when rates sky— oh yeah, we're over, uh, what's the term, uh Uh, shoot, it'll come to me here in a minute. Uh, so when rates skyrocketed, I was beyond stressed and kept pestering her for sex, which overwhelmed her and got us stuck in an awful cycle. Uh, leveraged— that's the word. You were overleveraged in your business, so you borrowed too much and rates skyrocketed. So it sounds like this debt was adjustable in nature as the rate was, and then they decided to raise the rates, and that caused you a lot of stress. And so your stress relieving, your method of coping was give me more sex. Pretty common thing amongst dudes. And, uh, which overwhelmed her and got us stuck in awful cycle. Then you got the Dead Bedroom Fix book, you hit the gym, you improved your self-confidence, which let me give her more space. Very good. And so we could get back into a healthy rhythm again. Welcome. So you overwhelmed her with your anxiety-driven sexuality and hey, make me feel better, woman, you know, treating her like a human aspirin. A human analgesic. There's a joke there somewhere. And, um, and she picked up on that real quick. Like, here comes Mr. Anxious Anxiety, want me, grabbing me, touching me. He's like, dude, back off. And so you're like, yeah, I need to back off. I need to work on myself. I need to figure this shit out. How is your business doing? Is it doing better? Talking about being overleveraged. Um, and, um, hit the gym. Self-confidence, the gym does wonders, doesn't it? Sounds clichéd, especially these days on the internet. The one of the most clichéd things is, uh, the whole man's divorced, better hit the gym type of thing. And why is that? It gets out all that aggression, gets out all that anxiety, that anger. And then we want to— we're back in the mating game again, so we want to look better. And it's just this perfect storm of things. But whatever it is, getting back into the gym and exercising— you don't necessarily have to go to a gym, gymnasium, exercise facility. Drop to the floor here and I can do push-ups, burpees, lunges, squats, all kinds of stuff. But you just need to move your body. It's what it's meant for. And when we don't do that, things break down. We, in our head and our bodies, it's not good. Um, and Mark says, yeah, it's Valentine's Day in South Africa as well. Oh, sorry. And then, yes, very sad, thought she was my forever person. Well, Mark, do you want to share what happened? We have whatever you're comfortable with. I am sorry that is going on with you. Uh, welcome to the club, buddy. If it helps, you know, makes you feel any better, uh, are you in the DSO fraternity group? Check out the link that I posted, uh, that has, uh, let me see if I still have it here in my clipboard. Yes, I do. Posting the link again for Mark. Whoever wants to check out the DSO fraternity, excuse me, you can do so for free for a month. There's the link. Try it out for free, no strings attached. Nick coming in with the jokes again. Phone's still buzzing. Nobody leave me alone. Maybe I should tell the wife to buzz off, huh? And, um, all right, any other questions? Anything else? Anybody have any big plans you want to share? Maybe we can hold you accountable. You know, they— some people say there's this theory of if you have some kind of plan, share it with the world, and by sharing it with the world, it makes it more real and you feel more obligated to follow through. So you don't want to disappoint all these people that you shared it with. And then there's a school of thought of that, you know, you need to keep it inside to yourself. For some reason, that causes people to be more, uh, aggressive in, in reaching their goal. I don't know what's the best. What do you guys think? But does anybody have a big goal for 2024 that you care to share? Whatever it may be, as silly as it may be, as big and grandiose however it may be. I want to, um, you know, I'll kick things off. I want to continue growing the DSO fraternity. Right now we are averaging 1 new member every day, which is great, but, uh, I would love for that to be 3 a day. How do I do that? It's just getting the word out more. Uh, whenever any video I have goes semi-viral or viral— my biggest was like around 5 million people saw a video. We— I can trace exactly when that video came out, all the views. I can trace it to, oh wow, spike in book sales, spike in DSO fraternity membership signups, spike in coaching, all kinds of stuff. So proof's in the pudding, writing's on the wall, insert analogy here. The more people hear our stuff, the DSO world, uh, the more money, business comes our way. That's a good thing. Helps keep the lights on, help, you know, coaching. We have a team. There's not a lot of overhead business-wise, but I have a pretty good nut to cover every month. There's a lot of expenses involved with this DSO fraternity, the recordings, the hosting of the files, the software to manage all this shit, the team of DSO fraternity coaches. I have a guy who does the IT stuff for me, Tony. And so money's a good thing. It's needed. To keep this machine going. And oh yeah, I gotta pay myself as well. So the more we put this out there— so if you could please give me a like, give me a share, helps out a great deal. And if you guys have any— here's, pardon me, here's an idea. If any of you have a topic, subject that you would like to see me expand upon, talk about, write about, whatever, now's the time to share that as well. 2024, give me some ideas for things to talk about, maybe things you haven't seen or things you want me to expand upon, whatever it may be. Josh says he plans on losing weight, finishing his bachelor's degree, replacing the roof, uh, buying a 20-foot trampoline for his gymnastic daughter. Well, that sounds like a plan, my man. Get to it. Uh, congrats on all those. Those sound very attainable. I'm not hearing anything out there crazy. But then here's Atharva coming in with 10 times— he wants to 10x his revenue. That's a big, uh, how you gonna do that, Atharva? That's a big goal. Who wouldn't want to, you know, 10x the amount of money? 10x, multiply by 10, the, the amount of money coming in the door. That's— I would love to do the same. Uh, one thing I would— that would also help spread the word is, uh, being on more podcasts, other people's podcasts. So if you have big podcasts— they don't necessarily have to be big— that you love listening to, maybe drop them a note saying you need to talk to this dude. Help get me in the door, so to speak. You know, that's how— if you've seen me at other people's podcasts, it's probably because somebody suggested me to those podcast hosts to help spread the word. Um, uh, Jen says, my husband and I focus on goals or a theme every year. This year we're updating our home gym and role-playing gym crushes. Oh, Jen, look at you! I love it. That's awesome. See, those little fun games, working those things, working together as a couple, that's, that's what it's all about. Staying connected in that way, having fun with life. Nick says, okay, no more jokes, uh, he says became certified for coaching. Well, very cool. Will be working with a therapist who is expanding her practice, stepping in slowly but hoping 2024 is a good year for that. Well, very good, Nick. Good for you, buddy. Mm-hmm. Atharva says he's possibly closing on a new client this week, and that one client will already put him at 1.6x So you're on your way. And we talk about early, we're only January 2nd, so that's awesome. Keep it going. That's what it's going to take, those kind of clients again and again and again. And put it on the calendar, map it all out, and you'll look at it and go, well, I need so many clients like this this year. Or, hmm, how can I get a bigger whale? So I don't necessarily need, you know, 8 more guys like him, I'll just— 2 more whales. You know, whale meaning in the business world, or any world really, it means like the big catch, the big client who covers a lot of money. A million dollar client versus a $10,000 client, the million is the whale. You catch my drift. I love talking about business and making moolah, and I am a capitalist at heart. Sorry if that offends any of you. I did do this DSO thing for free for many years. It's very time consuming, and quickly realized with the book sales and everything else that I have a legitimate business thing here, and I've devoted myself 100% to this as of, uh, 2 years ago. I did have a day job, so to speak, in marketing, doing creative work for several different companies. And, uh, but, uh, those all went away. Now it's just the DSO world and you fine folk. Any other questions or topics or anything? Uh, Atharva says, I don't know if I can get a million dollar client for software development. Well, my knee-jerk thought is probably not, but you never know. Um, you need to, uh, that would be networking with others. You probably, you and several other people could get a million dollar client and split the pie, but you alone, that'd be a tough one. Yeah, you know what would help? Artificial intelligence. You may want to look into it. I'm teasing. I know we've talked about that before, Atharva. That's, that's a big thing. I'm all about it. Any other, uh, questions, comments, anything else? When I had hair, name was Don. Oh, I see, because the marketing creative— that's good stuff. Yeah, no, I'm not Don Draper, nor have I ever been anything of that level. I did have my own little small, um agency there for a while. Agency just means, uh, basically a team of people working and doing marketing advertising work for a bunch of people. And that wasn't very lucrative in any way, shape, or form. Makes me sound big. It wasn't. It was very small. And I quickly realized, yeah, that ain't gonna work. So kind of went on my own doing my own thing. Uh, thank you Jenna for the— is that stars? I got two screens going here. I apologize. One is my, main screen with the program I use for streaming, live streaming simultaneously out to all these services. And then I'm looking over here to Facebook. That kind of lets me know that things are still working here. And I see that Jen on Facebook sent me stars. Thank you, Jen, I appreciate that. If you guys want to send stars, have at it, please. I'm not gonna stop you. That'd be awesome. All right, going back to comments here. Oh boy, uh, Henry Nguyen— I assume that's how your last name is pronounced, please correct me me if I'm wrong. Henry says, I don't know if you're joking or not, but because you use a term that is— but anyway, I will read this out loud for the folks. Henry says, I want to start a topic on how to start a harem and maintaining one to keep the sex consistent. Harem, um, you know, a term that is used often in, I guess, religious circles. You could talk about, uh Oh, what is it, the Muslim faith? There is some faith or whatever, but I, you know, I was made here not too long ago privy to the fact that actually this came about in our last BroFest gathering we had last year. I didn't know this. One of our Muslim members was telling me that in his faith, that it's actually on paper okay for a man to have 4 wives. I thought, oh, I had no idea. Holy shit. He's like, yeah, here's the kicker. You got to take care of all 4 of them though. You got to provide for all 4 of them. It's like, oh well, there you go. So basically 4 real wives that you have to take care of as their one husband. I thought that was interesting. But Henry, with his term harem, means, um, let's drop the term harem basically and let's say, how do you maintain sexual relationships with more than one woman at a time, keeping it consistent? The idea being from a, from a very selfish male point of view, sexual point of view, you have this rotation of women, so to speak. So when Barbara is not having a very good day, you can jump over here to Sandra. These are really hot names, Barbara and Sandra. And when Sandra's out of commission, so to speak, you go over to Candace and I, you know, when you say it out loud for a youngish bachelor on the prowl, you know, there's a subset of men, relatively small subset of men, that that's their life. They have a, um, a pool of women to choose from, so to speak. And it's not every day, all day, but they just have, you know, 12 women in their little black book. That's what we used to say back in the day, or on their phone now. And so they're feeling a little frisky on a Wednesday night, and they go through the list and they say, who do I want to contact first? You want to hang out, Netflix tonight? I'm going to go out to eat, blah, blah. And away they go. And it's that easy for them. Again, relatively small portion of the guys out there. And I guess you could say that that dude in that imaginary scenario has a harem of women. But here's the thing, and I, I posted about this on Facebook, and, uh, yeah, I think it was just Facebook the other day. Um, I follow some people who do research on Oh, sexuality and relationships and so forth. And they post real data, they do actual surveys and so forth. And I would love to say his name, but I don't know it off the top of my head. I could probably share it in the comments later on here. But he posted some data from surveys that showed a relatively small number of people out on the dating pool are having a lot of sex. And who are they having sex with? Other people who are also having a lot of sex with other people. So the promiscuous tend to match up with the promiscuous at the top of the little hierarchy pyramid of people who are having sex. Those people tend to interact with each other and have sex with each other. So if— here's— I'm saying that because, pardon me, I forgot his name— Henry. How do I do the harem thing? In other words, how do I have this rotation of women to have sexual relationships with, and how do I maintain that, and how do I keep that going? Well, number one, you have to be comfortable with the fact that, let's say you have 5 women in your rotation that you're consistently on a regular basis having relations with, they are in fact also having relations with multiple other Henrys out there. Are you cool with that? Because you kind of have to be. They're not going to be, you know, you only Henry and only Henry. They're going to be with other men. And especially in this day and age, how simple that is for the ladies out there. Do an online thing, Tinder, whatever it may be, and your inbox is basically, you know, a smoldering pile at the end of the day because of all the messages coming in. It's just a totally different world for the men and women in that regard. I know not every woman does the online dating thing, but let's also take it out to the quote real world. Go into a bar and just randomly look for some single guy, go up to him, start having to chat. 5 minutes later saying, you want to go back to my place? It more often than not that the guy is going to be like, sure. There's been like, uh, videos on YouTube and stuff where the— there's been little social experiments where a man and woman do the same thing. Man goes up, hey woman, you want to have sex? And they run off and complain, like, get the hell away from me, you freak, and maybe call the police or whatever. Versus the woman does it and the men are like, uh, yeah, I got, I got 10 minutes, I get— sure. It's a totally different world. So anyway, Henry, be aware, um, I'm sorry, I got interrupted by messages here, but be aware that you're going to be, um, uh, uh, with women who are also with a lot of men, probably. Are you cool with that? That's a whole other topic for discussion. Nick says, I began ADHD therapy and also have a book started that I'm committing to finish. Oh, that's tough, Nick. Trust me, as a guy who's written books, that's a real tough one. Lots happening is one of the reasons I tune in to you and to DPM, which is Dr. Psych Mom. Great material and resources, resources for learning. Well, thank you very much. Yeah, um, the book needs your attention. So if you don't— if you're not able to give attention, Mr. ADHD Therapy Guy, to the one book, you know, a book is tough because you have a lot of balls you have to keep in the air, so to speak. Uh, if it's— especially if it's a fiction book, characters, plots, subplots, you got to tie loose ends together, all this other stuff. If it's a non-fiction self-help book, you have to keep the same tone. It's not something that you can just drop for 6 months and come back to. You got to be in the state of flow, keep it going, keep it going, uh, right, right, right, right, right, you know, edit, go back and edit, you're paying somebody to edit for you, proofreading, all this other stuff. It is a lengthy, time-consuming process. Hours and hours and hours and hours. Don't half-ass it is what I'm trying to say. And if you got other stuff, one thing at a time. Like this coaching thing you're talking about, get that out of the way. Get the certification, boom, put that up on the shelf. Next thing. Um, that's how you got to look at these things. And I'm writing a book, it's not something that always kind of needs to be, you know, lurking under the surface or in the background. It needs to be front and center, get your full attention. That's my advice. Elena says— well, this is unique, Elena, I love this— I'm gifting my husband with a subscription to your program. I assume you mean the DSO Fraternity. I want to help him be happy and healthy. Well, excellent. And Elena, if— I know you didn't say this, but one of the hang-ups for a lot of women is I'm sending him into the, you know, the lions, so to speak, that he's going to be joining a group of men that are all like you know, get divorced, screw a bunch of women. No, the— I don't know what percentage. I would love to tell you what percentage of our group are married and want to stay that way, but it's a pretty good chunk. And, uh, he would be welcomed as the guy who's just like, I just want to make my— work on myself, work on my relationship, make it happier and healthier. He would fit right in. But he is going to be amongst other men, little subgroups within the group of, uh, some men are like, uh, I'm divorced and I'm starting over again, and I really don't ever want to be married again. Well, others are, have never been married. The relationship world kind of eludes me. It's all over the spectrum. But we've learned that they all have a lot in common. To separate them into, you know, distinct separate groups that don't talk to each other doesn't make any sense because they all end up bleeding together anyway. Atharva says, uh, it's all day every day, DSO. I stop sex to watch your live stream. Not kidding. Wow. All right, Atharva, that's good stuff. And, uh, Atharva is your expert on maintaining a roster of women. There you go. He says get in touch with him, Henry. Um, and then Henry says, uh, his— with the harem, what he's doing is— harem, a group of women he'll be having relationships with— what he's doing is he's saving women from being in bad marriages. Since they start the majority of divorces anyway. So see how altruistic I am? That's one way of looking at it, Henry. This is for your own benefit, sweetheart. You want to be in my harem of women. You don't want to do that whole marriage thing, trust me. Well, that's one way to explore it, I'm sure. Anything else, guys? This is good stuff. Where are we at time-wise? Looks like, Oh, got about— going about 50 minutes. We've been on for about 5-0, 50 minutes. So any other questions, comments, any subjects that, uh, Henry brought the good subject of maintaining a roster of women in a sexual relationship. That's maybe something I'll do a future video on, or maybe that was our video. Maybe we'll cut this and that'll be good enough, um, or articles on, but that's a good one. So I mean, that's difficult. Let's say you're a dude that's, uh, out of a— making this up— 20-year dead bedroom relationship, marriage, whatever. That's, you know, off and on dead bedroom. It's just not satisfying in that way. Uh, it didn't, didn't fulfill you emotionally, sexually, whatever it may be. And you're out of that marriage, very toxic marriage, pardon me. And then, um, you go out into the dating world And for a lot of men that come from that environment, they come into the dating world with the mindset of, I'm going to have a lot of activity in the bedroom. I'm going to get it on with as many women as humanly possible. I'm just going to be a horn dog. They go from— what's the word— from— they go from victim to Viking. I heard that the other day. I thought that's a really good one. I'm gonna steal that. And, um, you know, they're just sowing their oats and going out like crazy. And what a lot of those men do is they eventually say, this is a lot of drama. One thing I say in my book, The Dead Bedroom Fix, is with sex comes drama. Even if it's in a strict monogamous relationship, the sexier it becomes, it seems to elicit more drama, more emotion. And, uh, yeah, you— if you're a dude that's going to be out in the prowl and you want to have 6 different women that you're having sex with Your drama measuring tool, whatever, or your alarm, your drama alarm is going to be going off all the freaking time. Uh, just going to be a lot of drama. You got 6 individuals, 6 different people. I'm talking about an emotion-laden thing, relationships, sex. You know, we, we try to say, I'm going to keep emotion out of this, it's just about sex. Good freaking luck, dude. Um, you may be wired that way, but not necessarily other people that are that you're— these women that you're interacting with, they may not necessarily be wired that way. They may not be able to keep emotion out of the equation. They may not be your F buddy, as they're called. And frankly, for a lot of guys with that mindset, you probably aren't either, as you'll learn as you fall for some gal. Oh, so cool. Steve White is saying— Steve is a coach within the Dad Starting Over world from Australia, from Down Under. Steve is saying I'm not going to read this in an Australian accent. We are excited down under in Australia for DSO Matefest in October of this year. Very cool. What city, Steve, have you decided what city to have it in? Matefest is the Australian version of the American Brofest, the gathering of members in person. So they have, they've already done two in Australia, and now he's— Steve is telling us they're going to do a third in October. And I don't believe I've heard this before, so you guys are learning right alongside with me. I didn't know it was coming out October. So tell us, Steve, where shall it be hosted? Hmm. Mr. Steve from Facebook says, hey, Ralph Brewer. Hey, Steve. Curious about how important to have the explicit chat about exclusivity. Oh, I see. And how early in the dating cycle. Had a blowup recently on me with one lady. Assume exclusive on date one intimacy. Well, um, how important to have an explicit chat? Hmm. So here's— I guess I'm trying to think of a scenario where that chat may come up. A bit of advice that I've heard from a lot of people, including Dr. Robert Glover, author of No More Mr. Nice Guy, and other folks in this relationship talk sphere is basically one of when you enter into this world dating, assume that the person you are seeing— dating may be too strong of a word— the person you're seeing is seeing others, and they in turn should assume the same for you. For her to assume, hey, we've been intimate with each other, that means there are no other people in, in the picture, right? The answer should be Ooh, no, not right. That's not something we've discussed. If that's very, very important to you, Sally, we'll call it, that's my go-to fake woman name, Sally, that I'm talking to. If that's very important to you, maybe we should discuss this because I am not ready for that. I'm not ready to settle down and devote myself to one individual. I hope you're okay with that, Sally. If not, I understand. That's your value system. That's whatever. Cool. So, um, maybe it's a matter of being very explicit and open about it up front. But then, I don't know, kind of a weird thing if I'm— you know, how early are we talking? Like, if you're just meeting this person for the first time, you sit down with coffee and you shake your hand and you go, so tell me about yourself. And then they go, well, tell me about yourself. And you go, well, let me just say this up front up front, if you and I end up being intimate with each other physically, don't get too hooked because there are other women in the mix. Okay, just want to get that out of the way. Anyway, that's kind of weird. Doesn't really flow. It seems very forced. It seems very odd, socially awkward. It should just come up, I guess, if, you know, after a few dates and there's a very real connection, and just be open and just say, hey, Where do you, Sally, see this going? What are you thinking? Is this something— let me tell you what I'm thinking, Sally, and you go. That's a very adult conversation. And somebody's heart may be broken. With drama comes sex, with sex comes drama. And Steve says he's aware of the Glover approach. He did not assume on day one, but sounds like she may have. You just may be on different planets as far as the exclusivity and sex and all the other stuff is concerned. And Steve says it will be in Sydney. The, uh, gathering of our members in October in Australia will be in Sydney. Very cool, thank you for that, Steve. So we have any other Aussies on this, um, live stream? Uh, you should join us in DSO Fraternity, dsofraternity.com. I've already posted twice in here a link to try it out free for a month. And if you stick around and join the group and you're in Australia and you can join up with fellow Aussie members in Sydney and Steve will be heading that up. Very cool. And Henry says, do not be exclusive in date number 1. It sounds like she has borderline personality if she asks for exclusivity on date 1. It speaks loud of an attachment, anxious attachment style, huge red flag. Well, let's not jump to, you know, diagnosing the woman with a personality disorder, for goodness sakes. But it is indicative of— you're right, it could be she's anxious and she wants to hang on to you and she's afraid of losing you after date number 1. A little weird. Or it could be, um, you know, I talk to a lot of very conservative religious people who, um, that would not be unusual for them to basically assume that the person that they are with is only going to be with them. Because when you're dating and getting to know somebody, you are fully 1000 100% focused on that one person, that there are no other people, and there's certainly no sexual intimacy before marriage and all this other kind of stuff. So those people aren't necessarily suffering from a personality disorder, it's just that their, their culture, their, their value system is such that they assume that. So that could very well be what's going on with, uh, her as well. Don't know. Um, Mike asked a good question. Do you have any tips or suggestions on meeting other happy long-term married couples? Everyone we meet in LA— well, there you go— is either divorced— sorry, LA— newly remarried, single, or in an open relationship. Well, all right. We are married 20 years. Bedroom is alive, but— and we want to keep it that way. Um, so I guess the question is, what do you hope to achieve by talking to other happy long-term married couples? You have a value system you share, you Certain culture you want to maintain between the two of you? Hanging out with single people, divorced people, open couple, whatever people are going to kind of— are they a danger to you and your marriage? Um, yeah, you're right, you're living in a place like LA, good freaking luck with that. Um, maybe, uh, what do you guys think? The only way I know— you know, it's funny, the other day I hung out with a couple, very happy married couple that, uh They both come from good families, the whole nine yards. I really think the world of them. The last week my wife and I met up with them, brought two of my kiddos, my two youngest, hung out with them and their two kiddos. And, uh, I think back on how did I ever meet these people to begin with? Well, uh, the dude used to work with my ex-wife. That's it. Got to know him then, got to know his wife. They really hit it off with my now wife Natalie., and away we go. That's how we got to know each other. So it's— I don't have any secret formula other than I got to meet them through my network of people. Hmm, any recommendations for learning about borderline personality disorder? Lots of books out there and YouTube videos. Books and YouTube videos, that's my key for everything. Uh, Aaron says happy new year from Melbourne. Aaron, I don't know if you missed it, but we have Steve who is on the on the chat here today on the live stream. He is, uh, from Australia. He's a coach with the Dad Starting Over World based in Australia. And we were just talking about they're going to have a gathering of our DSO fraternity members in Sydney in October. I want to check it out, dsofraternity.com. Um, Atharva points out these kind of women, and he's referring to the women that are asked for exclusivity on date number 1, they're often cheated on chumps I see them in forums, he says, they're very hurt. Yeah, a lot of hurt people out there, and especially the flavor of hurt for women in that situation may be they were with a guy who cheated on them, expected a lot more sexually, you know, jumping around, doing a lot of things. They thought they were exclusive or married or whatever it may be. They don't want to get hurt again, so they're just, you know, trying to— what's the word? Uh, hedge their bets or whatever the term may be. Just right out of the gate, they're like, I don't want to get hurt again. I want to be clear you're not some kind of playboy jumping around screwing a bunch of women, right? Because I don't want to be— I don't want to go through all that nonsense again. So I can get their point of view, but they have to realize that that's— it's the dating world. You have to assume that people are going to be with other people. Uh, this person says, don't announce my name. I, you know, I'm looking at your name. I wouldn't know how to pronounce it. It looks like a company name. I'm not going to say it. Uh, he says, don't announce my name, but I'm having a hard time. I'm stuck on the image of my ex and what could have been. Seeing her to co-parent is fine. It's social media that is affecting me. Any tips? Yes, stop the social media. Sounds like a no-brainer, duh thing, but dude, it's not good for you. Not right now. It's not good for any of us. That's the guy who makes his living off of it. But anyway, um, Yes, dude, I'll call you dude. Um, it's stop looking at her on social media. Block her if you want, uh, but— or just get off of it completely. Uh, it's, uh, for some of us, the connection with the ex was such that it's, it's a very unhealthy thing, a codependent thing, a thing where, uh, we're kind of quasi-addicted to them. And when that is cut, that connection between us, it's very, very traumatic and very painful. And I always use the same analogy, so I apologize for those that have heard it 100 times. If you're an alcoholic, most alcoholics will tell you— I'm not one, by the way, I had somebody ask me that the other day. No, it's just that I hear so much about it and I talk to so many men who do have alcohol problems. But what most will tell you is they've come to the conclusion that I cannot Certainly can't have another drink. You know, a lot of people that are alcoholics are the type that I have one beer, I need 15 more. That's just how it works. But some even go as far as I can't even be in the same room with it. I can't get a whiff of it, I can't smell it. I'm in that party environment and I automatically wanna have a drink and join everybody. I have to stay out of the bars, I have to stay away from parties. I know I'm a, you know, Debbie Downer when it comes to that, but sorry, I can't be involved in that world. They can't even be anywhere near it. And you keeping with the alcohol analogy, uh, with your ex, it's every time you see her, interact with her, look at her social media, it's like taking a little bit of sip of whiskey or something, right? You can't drop your alcohol habit, your addiction to her, if you just keep having little tastes and little tastes. You have to limit. I know if you have children and everything, it's, it's, it's tough and you can't eliminate them completely. But you have to limit as much as humanly possible. And certainly don't do something as voluntary as going to a social media page or app or whatever it may be and seeking her out and looking at it. Or maybe she shows up in your feed or whatever it may be. That's very— that's voluntary in nature, dude. Just if I was there, I'd smack the phone out of your hand and say, there, problem solved. That's how you get rid of this. You don't keep going back and taking a sip of alcohol of your wife and expecting to not, you know, get over your addiction. It doesn't work that way. And you need to keep busy with other things. There is a school of thought— there's this awful saying, if you want to get over somebody, well then get under somebody else. They've even heard it as far as, you want to get over one woman, get under 10 others. Now here's the thing, they're right. You will— your, your addiction, so to speak, will shift over here. It's kind of like you want to stop drinking alcohol, go to heroin. Well, guess what? They both aren't good for you. And you jumping to other women and jumping into bed with a bunch of strange women just to get over an ex is not the healthiest thing in the world. You'll just end up hurting a lot of people, and you won't address the underlying issue of why is it you were with such a person. I'm jumping ahead here, or making a lot of assumptions, Mr. No Name. That you, uh, that she may not have been the greatest match for you or the greatest partner for you, and it wasn't a healthy relationship, hence divorce. Uh, so maybe you need to take time to go, why was it— why was I with such a person that was such an obvious mismatch and didn't work? Um, oh yeah, Atharva, we don't need to go down the whole trying to figure out who this person is. That's not important. But, um, yes, I know what you're talking about. Uh, so yeah, you need to limit contact as much as humanly possible. Figure out why you were with this person. Now that I— now that Atharva is helping me connect the dots of who this person is, uh, yeah, she was toxic in that way. She was very unhealthy for you, for anybody. And why is it you were with her? You get that, um, you need to figure that out, dude. Or else you're— as I often say— or else you're going to do it all over again. Uh, Henry suggests for those that, uh, with a borderline person to go to BPD loved ones on Reddit. Oh, Reddit. I have a love-hate relationship with Reddit. Every now and then I'll get into one of those groups and there'll be some good post, my Googling will take me there or whatever it may be, and then I'll read others. I'm like, oh God, what a cesspool of weirdos that is. No offense, Henry, if you're very active on there, but there's a lot. Just go to the Dead Bedrooms group on Reddit. Holy shitballs, what a sad group of people. That is codependency 101. If you want to see what codependency is, go to the Dead Bedrooms— there's two groups, Dead Bedroom and Dead Bedrooms, uh, group or subreddit as they call it on, on, uh, on Reddit. Dude, it is sad. Just a bunch of people that are all commiserating in their sadness. They have zero interest in solving their situation, which probably for 99% of the people on that group is leave that toxic relationship. Duh, dude, it ain't working. Or gal, there's a lot of gals on there, and they just come back with, no, no, that's the— no, I have to stick around and try and keep trying and keep being miserable. Their misery becomes part of their persona. It's their life now is to be miserable in this codependent relationship, and without it, they don't see any purpose. That's freaking sad. So thank you for the tip, but just so anybody who's interested in exploring that world of Reddit, good luck. And all right, we're coming up on an hour here, and as I always say at the end of these, time for me to eat. The low blood sugar is kicking in. Any— anything else before I hang it up? If not, I'm gonna post this one more time here in the chat. Boom. In the comments, rather, wherever you're watching this. This is Simon Castian on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, by the way. There is the link. Join our members group, men only, pardon me. Check it out, 1 month for free and, uh, all kinds of cool benefits. I mentioned early on in this, we get together at meetings in person, live Zoom meetings. We Private discussion groups, podcasts for our members only. Oh, you get access to all my books for free. That's kind of a cool audiobook as well as PDF format. All kinds of really cool stuff. Thank you all so very much for joining me today on this Tuesday. Happy New Year to all of you. Wish you all the best. Don't just throw out a resolution and just say, "The hell with it. That's— let's see what we can do." No, put it on paper. Put it on your calendar. Take action. Aim for something high. Break it down into digestible chunks. Put it on the calendar day to day. It's not sexy. It's not necessarily fun, but that's how you do it, guys. Whatever your little goal may be, get it the eff done. Especially to you dudes watching this. I'm not trying to exclude the ladies, but that's what this group is for, Dad Starting Over. Guys, um, get it done. Stop bellyaching. Stop whining. Stop getting online and complaining about every goddamn thing out there. Just get the shit done. Get— you know what you need to do, so do it. There's my pep talk. All right guys, you all have a wonderful rest of your Tuesday, or wherever day it may be, wherever you're at. Is it Wednesday officially in Australia now? But, um, uh, thank you all so very, very much, and I will see you around. Toodaloo!