"She Warned Me... And I Didn't Listen. Now I'm Paying The Price."

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. All right, we have a new Dear DSO entry on the website, and you can submit your own story or question to deardso.com. That's deardso.com. And if it's a good one, I will create a video out of it for the whole world to see or to listen to on the Dad Starting Over podcast, available wherever podcasts are listened to, I guess. You know what I mean? This one comes from Liam. Liam says, Dear DSO, I was with my woman for 7 years. Everything seemed great. We never fought or argued. We were best friends. We had a dead bedroom for a few of those years, but in the beginning— this is important, pay attention here, folks— she warned me that she had libido issues that ended her previous relationships, and she vowed— and I vowed to work through it with her, he says. It turns out that she just chases the honeymoon high, I guess. She left me out of the blue with no real genuine reason. Come to find out that she had cheated, parentheses, emotionally at least, maybe physically, with a 20-year-old coworker, parentheses again. She is nearly 40. She has already moved him into our home after only 4 months. Her reason given during the breakup and sudden discard— parentheses again, she ghosted and blocked, etc.— was, quote, I can't be someone else's leg to stand on right now. I need to be alone. This 20-year-old had no car, has only ever had the job that he met her at. Oh, I see. Uh, lived with his mother and father, still lives with his mother and father still, and has never been on his own. It's destroyed me mentally, physically, and emotionally. I don't know how to move on with myself after this betrayal. Of course, after the sudden breakup, I left her everything and started over completely, as I didn't know about the cheating and monkey branching at the time. I'd have sworn that she was different and would never do something like this. The day before the breakup, she was telling me how amazing I am and how much she loves me and how good I am to her and how no one has ever listened the way I do or cared the way that I do. I did everything in the relationship, all the bills, all the chores, all the business and adult matters. I tended to them. I pampered her, and still she stuck a knife in my back after she swore that she never would. Now I am in therapy. I've lost 130 pounds. Wow. I've fixed my health. I've gotten promoted. I have my own nice place. I bought a new truck. I've been to shows and concerts and trips. I'm in therapy, he says again for the second time. I read and I read and I read and I work. I have leveled up in every way I can think of, but I still feel less than the 20-year-old kid, parentheses, who is only 3 years older than my son. "Any advice please?" he asks. Oh Liam, buddy, you are doing something which is very, very common in my world. Men that reach out to me, the men that reach out to me, I have said countless times, sorry for you folks that are frequent watchers or listeners of my material, but most of the guys that reach out to me are very anxious in nature. They fall into the category of Mr. Nice Guy, which is another way of saying Mr. Codependent Dude. You, let's just lay it out there. You got with a gal who told you up front, my friend. Let me just back up and say, most people that we get with, this applies, I have a lot of women who watch me. Women, this applies to you too. This isn't a gendered thing. But we get with a person and we fall in love with them. Something about them, we click, and we don't want to give that up. But invariably, they do or say things, or both, that make us stop and pause for a moment and go, that's not good. Sometimes it's just kind of, oh, subtle in nature, those little things here and there that go, I don't like that, but it's not enough for me to dump them because I'm not going to give up this feel-good stuff that we have going on here. He or she is amazing, and on and on. Sometimes though, they come out with really overt stuff, and it sounds like she has problems. She has problems in the— within the construct of a long-term monogamous relationship, and her problems are such that those relationships just don't work for her. And you pointed out she's chasing that high of the new relationship, and she wants people that make her feel great. And once she's got you, and it becomes a real thing and you just give her anything and everything that she wants, she's just like, this has lost its oomph. This has lost that over-the-top, in-love, lustful feelings that she desperately needs to keep going in a relationship. When it becomes real, and especially when you're Mr. Pushover and do everything for her, it just stops and she's done and she moves on to the next, quote, victim. In this case, a much younger dude. That's not a coincidence, I don't think. Everything you're painting You're painting a picture of someone, rather, who has a very childish demeanor about them. You're doing everything for them, and they're just a very, very broken little girl, basically, is what we're dealing with here. And I think any therapist would tell you that's a pretty fair assessment based on what little we know here. That's what these people are, just very broken little kids who never matured to the point where they would make a good adult long-term relationship partner. They just don't have it in them, man. They just do not have those tools in their toolbox. And you ran into one of those people, and they told you up front, I tend to have these problems in these long-term relationships, just so you know. And you're basically like— this is, this is going to sting a little bit— but you're basically saying, I have such a sense of low self-worth. I think so little of myself as a person that even when you, prospective mate, tell me up front, "This ain't gonna work, dude," I barrel through it and I say, "Yes, but you make me feel really good and I can't give this up, so I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear that and just push on through." Not only do you push on through, but you push on through way into the realm of codependence. You just basically do anything and everything for this person, and they hurt you in the end. You have put all of your mental health eggs into one basket. You've put them all on the shoulders of this very broken woman. Don't do that. This is a big life lesson for you, my friend. When somebody up front tells you, um, hey, I'm a broken individual, you say, oh man, I hate to hear that, because we were really clicking, it was great knowing you, but I'm gonna have to move on. So best of luck to you. Does that sound cold and different, like an asshole? Does that sound like I'm some kind of sociopath to you? If you hear that, any of this, not just you, Liam, but anyone listening to this or watching this, if that makes you go, oh dude, you got some stuff you need to work on, because that is what healthy people do. That is what healthy people who have the tools in their long-term relationship toolbox, that's what they do. They hear and see those things and they say, "Eh, eh, ain't for me, buddy or gal or whatever it is," and they move on because they love themselves too much to put up with that shit. You don't like yourself very much, Liam, and that is exemplified here because let's put it this way. Let's say there's Liam and there's this dude next to you, and dude next to you has a real sense of abundance in life. I know it's a way overused term, kind of cringy, but it applies. People with an abundance— a sense of abundance in life, rather— they don't put up with a really shitty job with the boss who treats them like dirt because they have a lot of skills and know-how, and a lot of other companies would like to hire them. So they say, see you later, thank you for the opportunity, Mr. Boss Man, but adiós. They don't stick around with friends who take advantage of them and ask them to do things repeatedly and never give anything in return. They say, "You kind of suck as a friend. I'm not doing this anymore. Please don't call me." And they certainly don't put up with romantic partners who right up front say, "I'm a really bad romantic partner," who repeatedly take advantage of them and take advantage of them. They say, "No, I'm an adult here. I'm looking for another fellow adult." Oh, that's not you? You can't do fellow adult things? You don't have those things in your mental toolbox, so to speak? Oh, okay. You know, it doesn't make you a horrible person. It just means you're not for me, a healthy individual. And you go your separate ways. I know, easier said than done. You got some stuff going on, my man. As I often say to guys in your position, you got some stuff going on up here in the old noodle. You need to work on that, okay? Therapy, it sounds like you've done that. Um, you need to go to therapy and direct them towards working on your codependence, as they man and why this— what therapy will be good at, what it will be better than me at. And yes, my services are available to men, Liam. You can book time with me, consider me a mentor or coach going through some of this stuff because I've been there, done that. But what a therapist will do a much, much better job of, and what they're hopefully trained to do, is to look at your past as a young boy and identify and say, "That right there, my friend, what you put up with as a kid is what's in turn causing all of this. This isn't necessarily your fault that you have these lack of tools in your toolbox, so to speak. But now that we've identified it and we've picked out what's going on here, now let's build some tools that will help you deal with this in life, that will help you avoid doing this again in the future." them combined with a guy like myself combined with— this is huge, you didn't identify this, this was, this was very obviously missing from your, your list of things that you've done that you've kind of painted yourself as— look, I'm so much better now. You've lost all this weight, job promotion, moved into a nice house, truck. You got the things worked out. I'm going to trips, I'm going to concerts. The concerts and trips sound good to me, because they have an insinuation of you're with other people. You need to socialize. You need deep social emotional connections with other individuals. Yes, at a vulnerable level, but not to the point where you just hand over your life completely to them and say, "Here you go," especially when they are so obviously broken. But you need to work with other men. You need to socialize with other men, and it'd be ideal if you could do so in a very constructive manner with other men that are also trying to do better in life and get over the hump and have better relationships. And that's what we have in our community that we call the Brotherhood. And you can learn more at help4men.com. Go to help4men.com, click on Brotherhood in the menu there on the homepage, or you can jump right to help4men.com/join and learn all about how to join our group. We have a lot of really cool benefits to joining. Overall, you're going to talk to hundreds and hundreds of men in your shoes from all over the world We get together and talk regularly in forums and live Zoom meetings. We get to book time with me, and it's way cheaper booking time with me if you're a member versus if you're just some dude off the street, so to speak. But check it out, thebrotherhood@helpformen.com. I think that will be huge. So, 3-pronged approach here. Therapy. Hey, Mr. or Miss Therapist, I need to work on my codependency because I'm— because, brother, you're going to do this all over again with the next gal. Trust me, I've seen it a million times. You got to get on top of that, figure out what's going on there. Thing 2, um, joining our group, The Brotherhood, or something like it, some kind of fraternal organization, if you will, a help community for men, specifically for men. And then book time with myself or any of the other guys on our team for one-on-one mentorship or coaching. Okay, brother, I wish you all the best, but your story, unfortunately, it's not unusual. I hear it on a daily basis, but thank you for reaching out. I really appreciate it.