She Says She’s “Touched Out”… Except With Him - Dead Bedrooms and Cheating Wives

All right guys, you know this is going to be a good one when I'm responding to an email with the subject line of, my wife says she is touched out, but not with other men. Oof. This is one of those stories that hits every single dead bedroom slash infidelity red flag. Guy by the name of David, let's call him, he says, hey Ralph, I never thought I'd be the guy emailing you about this, but here we are. I'm 41, married 14 years, 2 kids. Life is good on paper. No major problems, no drama. My wife tells me she loves me. We work well as a team, except for the one part that actually makes us a married couple. About a year ago, she announced that she was touched out and needed more space. No more kissing, no more touching. Sex may be every 6 to 8 weeks, and only if I initiate, and only if I basically beg. Fast forward to a few months ago, and my wife suddenly has a new, quote, fitness accountability partner at her gym. Some guy named Brandon. Oh no. I've never met him, never heard of him, never been asked if I want to meet him, but she sends him selfies before workouts, selfies after workouts, long voice messages, heart emojis, and little flirty replies. Sounds like David here got access to her phone. Meanwhile, the only message I get is 'Can you pick us up some milk?' I tried to talk to her about it calmly, and she accused me of being insecure. She said, 'It's not like that. He just gets me.' Gets her? I'm her husband, but some guy at the gym gets her? It gets worse. Last week, she came home glowing, hair down, makeup still perfect, energy I haven't seen in years. I asked how the workout was, and she said, Oh, we didn't work out. We just talked in the parking lot for an hour. Uh, she hasn't talked to me for an hour straight in years unless it's about bills or kids. And here is the embarrassing part. After she got home from that parking lot hangout, she actually initiated sex, but it felt like she was somewhere else in her mind, like I was just the outlet. And I said yes. Because I'm starving. Ralph Brewer Brewer Brewer, is this emotional cheating? Am I crazy? Is this my fault? Okay, let's pause and take a breath. Yes, this is a real message. This is something I hear quite a bit. Obviously to most of us listening to this or watching this on YouTube, obviously something bad is going on here, right? But guys like David who— there's a variety of ways we could categorize David; naive, doesn't know any better, inexperienced, purposefully looking the other way, in denial, whatever it may be. It's so obvious to the rest of us that there is something obviously very inappropriate going on here, but David refuses to look at it, or he doesn't even know what it is that he's looking at, or his spouse, who is, let's just put it out there, David, obviously engaged in an affair. She has done a masterful job of doing what we call gaslighting him, which is basically, to make it quick, when you notice something and you go, "Hey, what's going on here? This is bad." and the person says, "It's not bad. You're just crazy," or, "You're just insecure. It's all in your head," in other words. That causes the person to question their reality, like, "Oh man, maybe I am nuts. Maybe I am insecure. Maybe I'm being the asshole." And they keep seeing things that show, you know, the opposite to be true, and the other person says, "Hey, I told you, you're just being a crazy asshole." And around and around they go in circles to a point where guys like David literally question their sanity. They they begin to not trust their own eyes, their gut. So it could be that's what's going on here with David, or it could be David may be part of the club— and this is not an insult in any way, shape, or form, uh, this represents a big chunk of my audience— are what we call neurodivergent. There are guys that are on the autism spectrum, for example, that have a very difficult time with the social cues. And throughout their whole childhood and beyond, they've been the kind of weird kid, and everyone has told them like, no dude, you don't get it. And they have to explain things to the neurodivergent guy, things that the neurotypical person sees as just very normal normal day-to-day, duh, kind of things, and the neurodivergent guy just really doesn't get it. He doesn't read social emotional cues very well. Kind of perplexing to them. So sometimes guys that are, uh, on the autism spectrum, for example, will be in these kind of situations where they will say, I, I think my gut is telling me, my eyes are telling me this, but is this yet another example of a neurotypical person doing something normal and I just can't understand it? You get where I'm going with this. So it's hard telling what's going on with David here, why he is not seeing what the rest of us that listening to this or watching this video, what we're seeing. But I have a feeling a lot of it just may be out of fear. A lot of guys are very fearful of the unknown and the, quote, stability, if you will, of a toxic situation, just because it's a known thing. They know what tomorrow's going to bring, at least they think they do. They know what their life looks like supposedly next year and on and on. So, even when presented with information that shows like, dude, there's some really bad stuff going on here, they say, yeah, but I'll take the comfortable bad stuff going on here versus the unknown any day of the week. That's really bad. It shows that you have a really unstable sense of self-worth. You don't like yourself very much. I find myself saying that to guys more and more these days. You have a sense of scarcity in life, scarcity when it comes to romantic partners and every other facet of your life. So, basically, you take what you can get. And so, when you're presented with the obvious, like, dude, your wife is sneaking out on you and she's forming an inappropriate relationship with another guy, at the very least emotional, probably physical, you just put your blinders on and you say, "I don't want to see it." Fingers in your ears, la la la la la, not listening. That doesn't get you anywhere, dude. So, to make it blunt, your wife is engaging in an inappropriate relationship with somebody else outside of your marriage. Whether that involves them getting naked together and rubbing their dirty bits together and all that stuff, I don't know, probably. Typically, emotional affairs don't stay just emotional for very long. They very quickly build to the point of no return and they just have to see each other. It's not unusual for people in these emotional affairs to say, Honey, I gotta go take an unexpected business trip across the country. Then they'll fly like 5 or 6 hours to go see their affair partner in person, which shows you just how addictive some of these relationships are, which unfortunately is evidence for, you know, your comfortable, safe, long-term relationship of you guys being married can't compete with the energy of that affair. Sorry, but it's true. So, David and others that are going through this, yes, your partner is engaged in an affair. No amount of you trying to rationalize it or to try to, you know, get them to wake up from the stupor that they're in. None of that will work. I tell you what does work. Go to the attorney tomorrow. Attorney, here's my assets, here's our debts, here's the kid situation. This is what I think is going on. Tell me if I were to divorce my wife, what does life look like for me? What do I need to prepare for? How much is it going to cost me? And on and on. You draft a divorce agreement and you go to wife and say, we both know what's going on with you and Brandon, the other dude. Stop with the nonsense. Stop with the gaslighting and all that stuff. Just, I'm not listening to it. Here's a divorce agreement. "So, look it over and let your attorney look it over and see what you think. I don't want this to be unfair. I want this to be a fair split, but we both know this is over. So, I wish you all the best." Ironically, that is the sole pathway that may, sorry to say this, in a very small percentage of you people, may result in the reconnection of the couple. She may very well say, "Holy crap, didn't see this coming. This is not what I want. I will drop this other dude immediately. I want to go to counseling. I'm in it for the next so many years. What do I got to do to win your trust back?" And even then, even if she's solely on board, what I found with a lot of guys that I work with in these situations is the man's basically already at baseline anxious nature is cranked up like 100-fold. So, he starts questioning every little thing in the relationship. Why were you 5 minutes late getting home from work? Who's that person you were texting? Why are you smiling while looking at your phone? Did I hear you just talking to somebody on the phone upstairs? When I just hugged you just now, it felt a little different. What's going on? Who are you screwing? Your trip to the grocery store usually takes an hour. It took an hour and a half this time. What's going on? And Eventually the guy becomes his own worst enemy. Even if the wife has completely changed her tune and she's genuinely working on the relationship and genuinely going to counseling and therapy to try to figure out why she did what she did and all this other stuff. Sometimes Mr. Anxious says like, "I don't think I can put up with this anymore. This is a crazy way to live." Or he becomes a much more secure individual and he says, "You know, there's a lot of fish in the sea. There's a lot of women out there that don't do this sort of thing. And you know what? Maybe I don't want to get married after all. Maybe I just want a girlfriend." or girlfriends, plural. Whatever his mind frame is, it always comes to the same place, which is, "What am I doing with her again?" And so they divorce. Regardless, buddy, of where your path is and where you go and how you get there, from what I've seen again and again and again, the true path to becoming a healthy, more secure individual is to show this person that they no longer have power over you like this, that you no longer are going to put up with this gaslighting or whatever the hell's going on, that you love yourself too much to put up with this nonsense. You deal with the heartbreak, you deal with the loss. I don't care what anybody tells you, even in these circumstances, you're still going to feel bad. And guess what? You're a human being. It's okay. You'll be fine. But if I may suggest, don't go through this alone. Therapy can be a great thing with the right therapist. What a good therapist will tell you is, what kind of groups are you involved in? Do you have a regular friend or mentor group that you hang out that you can talk to about this kind of stuff? That's where most men say, not really. You may have your friend John or whatever, but usually you and John get together and talk about football, golf, or whatever it may be. You don't really have that sort of emotionally close relationship with another guy in your life. Definitely not multiple men, definitely not in a group setting. So, a good therapist would tell you, you need to go find that. That is crucial for your development and crucial for you to go from an insecure guy, the kind of guy who hangs on to a relationship like this. Yes, if you're involved in a relationship like this and you find yourself hanging on tight, you're a very insecure guy. You need to surround yourself with like-minded men, guys that are going on the same journey, guys who have been there and done that, and that's how you expedite the process of getting better. And I happen to have such a group. Check out the Brotherhood at help4men.com/join. We get together in private discussion forums, live Zoom meetings. By now we have over 1,400 hours of audio content for our members. If you're the kind of guy that likes audiobooks, podcasts, you're going to be in seventh heaven. We get together in person. We have one-on-one coaching. We have courses. All kinds of cool stuff. The Brotherhood, help4men.com/join. Dude, don't go through this alone. The whole lone wolf thing is a complete myth. That is a fast track towards Depression, I'm sorry to say. So, reach out to me if you'd like some help. Any of you going through this, I'm here for you. And so are hundreds and hundreds of men from around the world in our group. Guys, thank you so very much for watching. If this hits home with any of you, get help, whether it's our group, another group, therapist, whatever it is. And guys, thank you for watching. We'll catch you on the next one.