"She Slept With Me… So I Guess We’re Fine Now?"

Okay, if you're a frequent listener of the Dad Starting Over podcast and you find yourself saying, "Yeah, that sounds like me," well, you don't need another podcast episode. What you need is support. The Help for Men Brotherhood is where men go when they're done pretending that they got it all handled. You know, your dead bedrooms, your divorce, your loneliness, your rebuilding life. We have private forums, frequent live Zoom meetings, one-on-one coaching, courses, all my books at no additional charge. And yes, we get together in person. Real men and real conversations. So stop doing this alone and join the Help for Men Brotherhood today at help4men.com/join. I look forward to seeing you in the next member meeting. So this happens to me all the time. Guys will reach out to me via email or some kind of message on social media or something and say, "I need to speak to you like right now. This is an emergency. 911." And I say, "What the hell's going on?" It's like, "My life is blowing up. Me and my wife just had a big huge fight. I think everything is over. I really need to talk to somebody about all this." So, I'll be nice and I'll move some things around on my calendar and try to make room for him or talk to him late at night. And by the time I chat with him, guess what? Everything's fine. And why? Because he and his wife had sex. And look, I get it. Sex in a troubled marriage, often in these long-term dead bedroom marriages, it's like finding water in a desert. You're crawling across the desert, you're all blistered and delusional and going out of your mind and on the brink of death, and your wife throws you a Gatorade. And you don't stop to say, "Why is it I'm crawling near death across the desert here?" Instead, you chug the Gatorade and say, "Yay, my wife loves me!" When in fact, she didn't feel closer to you in that moment. She didn't feel love and devotion to you in that moment. She just wanted to shut you the hell up. Let's break this down, shall we? For a lot of men, sex equals everything. Let's be honest. It's a signal that she's not mad at me. We're okay as a couple. She loves me. She values me. And I can cancel therapy now. Sex becomes the temporary reset button. The all clear signal. But you can think of it as the eye of the hurricane. It's calm. It's peaceful. That is until your roof gets blown off. But here's what's going on. She's probably using that sexual connection with you as kind of a release valve. She's relieving some of the steam, the pressure that's been building up. She knows you better than anyone. She knows what it takes to get you to shut the hell up. It's kind of like giving a toddler a cookie. Or these days, an iPad. You've had enough. Here you go. Shut the hell up. Leave Mom alone. Temporary peace and zero lessons learned. He, meanwhile, thinks that this is some kind of reconciliation montage out of some, you know, corny rom-com movie. Cue the music, cue the hugs, cue the rolling credits. Movie's over, right? No. This is exactly how men get trapped in these situations. They settle for little breadcrumbs, if you will. You get the breadcrumb of sex. Great, I'll hang in there for another 6 months. I've seen guys that stay in really toxic, horrible situations bordering on abusive marriages. And when you ask him, what the hell are you doing, dude? He says, well, we had sex like 3 times last month. And he says, I mean, that's an improvement, right? Things are getting better. That's like going to a restaurant that poisons you every single day. And then suddenly they feed you this, you know, wonderful steak dinner. And you think, "Eh, it's not so bad, I guess." It's like, "Dude, no. She's still poisoning you." Ask yourself this: Did the sex come with a real heart-to-heart talk? A real come-to-Jesus moment? An apology on her part or your part? Was there a most definite change in behavior or effort towards a real change? Or was it kind of awkward makeup sex followed by more silent treatment? More awkward resentful moments, and her once again saying, "I'm just too tired, dude." You might be confusing access to her with affection, performance with progress. Here's the truth. If you were panicking yesterday, but today you feel calm because your spouse touched your genitals, you don't have a marriage. You have a drug habit. Sex is the drug, and you are the addict and she is the dealer. And she knows how much or how little to give you to keep you strung along. So you don't go cancel your coaching call or tell your therapist, "Never mind." You show up mentally to the situation and you say, "You know, I do feel better, but why do I keep ending up in this position?" That is where the real work begins. One-time sex after a huge blowup or after a series of huge blowups over months, maybe years of time, all that's doing is masking the symptoms. If you keep ignoring the deeper issues just because you got laid, you're gonna keep repeating this cycle over and over and over again. As I often say to these dudes, I'll see you in a few months when you have your big blowup and she's threatening divorce and you're sleeping in the car. If any of this sounds familiar, it's hitting a little bit too close to home, you need to talk to somebody about this. I recommend therapy to most of the guys I talk to. I, doing coaching or mentoring if you want to call it that, as well as other guys on my team, we work well in tandem with therapy. And I strongly, strongly suggest that you get in a support group and talk to other men just like you going through the same thing, or more importantly, men who have been there and done that and solved their situation, just like with our group, The Brotherhood. And you can learn more at help4men.com or jump right to the join page at help4men.com/join. I look forward to seeing you on our next live member meeting. And guys, if you enjoy this video, do me a favor, click on subscribe, follow, like, hit the bell, leave a comment, share, however it works wherever you're watching this. I would greatly appreciate it. So thank you so very much, and we'll catch you on the next one.