She Was Different Before Kids — What Actually Happened to Your Wife

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. Okay, we're going to get into something today that for a lot of folks, especially the ladies in our lives, is a very forbidden topic. We don't go there. And your marriage doesn't need to be in crisis mode for this to apply to you. Maybe you don't have a dead bedroom situation. Maybe things are okay. You two, as far as being a couple is concerned, you function just fine. But if you are like the vast majority of human beings in a long-term relationship, somewhere along the way, something changed between the two of you. And that change usually comes after what? Kids come into the picture. She changed, you changed, the version of you guys as a couple just shifted dramatically. And if you're like most men that I talk to, you remember what it used to be like. You remember the ease that you had between the two of you, the way she used to look at you, the way she used to touch you in a certain way, the way she made you feel. And no, you probably don't talk about it because it doesn't feel like an emergency. And also, you don't want to come across as being ungrateful for all the good stuff you have. And And also there's a shame component involved here. A lot of guys feel very shameful for having feelings of having emotional and physical needs within a relationship. So if you're like most guys, you just kind of push all that stuff down and you prop up the good stuff. Hey, I'm alive, the bills are paid, the kids are happy, wife's happy, sorta. It is what it is. But sometimes when things aren't going all that great, what do you do? You remember the good old days. You remember the way it was. And for some of you out there, it really hurts to look back at what was, and you find yourself saying, "What happened? Why are we so different? What's going on here?" That's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about what actually happened biologically, psychologically, why it's probably not what you think, and this is important, what a healthy long-term monogamous relationship, marriage, what that's actually supposed to look like. Because a lot of you just don't know. A lot of you don't know what you're supposed to be aiming for exactly, and it's very confusing. So when a woman has a baby, it does something to her body that's pretty extreme. Actually, really extreme. There's a thing called prolactin in the body, and prolactin spikes when you have a baby. Prolactin, if you listen to the term, lact, lactate, prolactin is the hormone that drives milk production in a woman. And when that happens, it actually does something else. It suppresses estrogen and it suppresses testosterone. And those just happen to be the two hormones that drive what? Her libido, her sex drive. So biologically what's happening is it's like the human body is saying, sweetheart, don't go get knocked up again. Don't go get distracted by other men or your husband or whatever. Concentrate on the baby. Keep the new little human being alive. Everything else in her life is secondary. And then there's this thing called oxytocin. Every time your wife nurses, holds a baby, soothes the baby, she gets a hit of the old oxytocin. And oxytocin is the bonding hormone. It's the same hormone that was firing when you guys first met, when you were dating. You got spikes of it every time you guys got together and cuddled and yes, had sex. Now she's getting that hit of oxytocin all day, every day from her baby. And by the time you go to get your fill and reach for your wife and try to connect with her, her tank is just empty. She's genuinely physically and psychologically depleted. She is, as a lot of women say, all touched out. But that biology is just half of the picture here. There's a psychological thing going on that is just as real. In a lot of ways, it's kind of harder for us to see and harder for us dudes to relate to. Before having kids, your wife had an identity. And if she's like most, it was a pretty clear one. She knew who she was. She knew what she liked. She knew what she wanted. She knew how she moved through the world, so to speak. She knew her little rhythm to life. Her own sense of self existed independent of everyone else. And then motherhood hits. And for a lot of women, especially those women who prided themselves on being a very independent person, that transition into motherhood feels more like a collision. Suddenly she is no longer Mary the individual, but she is mother to little Brayden, Jayden, Kaden, or whatever it is. Every little decision that she has to make in life is filtered through that new identity. Her body does not feel like hers anymore. Her time does not feel like her time anymore. Her sleep, her attention, her emotional bandwidth, All of that belongs to somebody else now. And society overall tells those women, "You're supposed to be grateful for that. It's a beautiful thing. You should cherish every little moment that you have with that new little kid. And if you feel otherwise, you're a monster." Now, if she's like most women, she probably loves her kid with a fierce sense of energy. So it's not that she doesn't love the kid. It's not that she doesn't love being this little kid's mother. It's just that the job, so to speak, is overwhelming. She lost herself in the process and nobody warned her about this. And what makes it worse is that nobody shows her a roadmap to getting back to the old her. Now, let's bring husband into the picture. You come home from work. You want to connect with her, so you reach for her. And for most of you, your intentions are just fine. You missed your wife that day. You love her. You love seeing her in her new motherly role and you go to embrace her. And that woman has been physically physically needed all day long. The nursing, the little kid hanging on her, little hands grabbing at her all day, every day. And at the end of the day, the idea of something else or someone else touching her, grabbing at her, needing her for something, that just feels repulsive. It is not revulsion towards you necessarily, specifically. It's just that her nervous system has just been overwhelmed It's been on the on position all day long, and she has nothing left to give. You aren't the problem necessarily. It's just that you came in at the wrong moment. And the more you push for that connection, even gently, the more she starts to associate your physical connection with a sense of obligation. She feels pressure. She feels like you and your emotions and your needs are just one more thing to manage. That's the psychological wall that you run up against. And that wall builds over time. Until one day, for a lot of you, you realize, "Oh wow, we haven't reached for each other through that wall, so to speak, for a long-ass time." And this disconnection between the two of you, this wall between the two of you, is a very natural thing. And it is something that both of you need to recognize, that if that wall is kept up long enough, eventually you may not be able to get through it. So you both have to work hard to chip your way through that wall. But regardless, that disconnection is gonna happen. And some of you need to realize, some of you more sensitive guys need to realize, this is what's in store for you. And if you're experiencing it, welcome to being a human being. It happens to the best of us, even those guys who write books on the subject of dead bedrooms. Talking about myself. Let me share a story that talks about how my wife and I have worked hard to chip away at that wall, so to speak. Several months back, my wife and I did a little trip to Austin, Texas. Just the two of us. We left the new child. I say new, the child's 4 years old now. And all my other children, left them behind. By the second day of my wife and I being gone, my wife was a completely different human being. She was laughing more. She was more present with me. She was very physically relaxed in a way that I hadn't seen in a while. She was more curious. She was more open, playful, feminine. This was the version of her that I knew before the kid came into the picture. And I realized she didn't really go anywhere. She was always there. She was buried by her environment. She was buried by the house, her work. She's a medical doctor, very stressful. And the kid. All of that weight of her life was sitting on top of her 24/7. And it's like she just can't kick it off. But if I take her out of that environment, a short 24 hours later, the old her surfaced again. I'm sharing the story to show you that even with a very strong marriage, that weight of life and its impact on your wife is a very, very real thing. And for a lot of us, we don't fully see it and we don't fully appreciate it until we take our wives out of that environment. So for a lot of you, not all of you, but for a lot of you, She, the old her, is not gone completely. She's just buried, smothered, weighed down by life. So what do you do in your particular case? What's your version of the Austin, Texas trip? Because every man wants to see the old girl that he fell in love with, don't you? Well, let's first talk about some of the common mistakes that I see men make. And as far as what I see, what I'm referring to is the guys that I talk to one-on-one in my brotherhood group. And you can learn more at help4men.com or jump right to the join page. At help4men.com/join. We get together for private forums, live Zoom meetings, one-on-one coaching. We get together in person and conferences. All my books at no additional charge, courses, 1,500+ hours of audio for our members. Check it out, the brotherhood. Mistake number 1 that I hear a lot of guys make is incessantly talking about the issue. At some point, a lot of men, not every man, but a lot of men turn to the wife and go, We need to talk about our intimacy. And what happens for most of you? It goes nowhere, does it? So what happens? The guy gives it a week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, and he brings it up again and again and again. And every time, it either turns into an argument, or she just shuts down, changes the subject, leaves the room, whatever. You're getting nowhere. But here's what's happening. Every time you bring this up, as a problem that needs to be solved, you are reinforcing her idea of associating physical intimacy with conflict. Closeness now equals pressure, more weight on top of her, more pressure weighing her down. You think you're communicating, but she is hearing, "I am failing him. I am failing the relationship," and she has nowhere to put that energy. She's already overwhelmed as it is. She already probably feels like a failure as a mother because she's scrolling on Instagram and she sees that she's not the perfect mother with perfect children that she sees over and over again on her feed. And here comes Mr. Husband saying, "Let me show you another way that you're failing." No wonder it goes nowhere. That doesn't mean that you never ever talk about this, but there's a difference between one honest adult vulnerable conversation and a guy who persistently whines and complains to his wife with no resolution. One opens the door to better things and the other one quickly locks it. As with most things in life, there's a delicate balancing act here. Mistake number 2 that a lot of guys make is doing things transactionally. You start doing more things around the house. You plan a date night. You're more present. You're more helpful. You are a more attentive husband. And guess what? All these things are great. But underneath all these good deeds, if you're being very honest, there's a scoreboard. You are keeping track of all this stuff, aren't you? And when nothing changes between the two of you, oh boy, you don't take it well. The resentment builds and builds. When all of your good behavior has a hidden invoice associated with it, she can tell. Women, it seems, are extraordinarily good at reading the energy behind all of your good deeds. The moment that she senses that all of your kindness is actually a form of currency that you are exchanging for goods and services, It's not good. Now intimacy feels like a debt that she owes rather than an organic thing between two people that love each other. You, my friend, cannot negotiate your way into true sexual desire, love, and romance. It don't work that way. Mistake number 3 that a lot of guys make: withdrawing and waiting. This is on the other end of the spectrum with a lot of guys that I talk to. They're like, you know what, screw this woman, figuratively. Forget her. If she doesn't want me, I don't want her either. I'm gonna sit back, cross my arms, and do nothing, and let's see what happens. If she wants this, she's gonna have to come get it. She's gonna have to be the one to initiate, not me. I'm done with this bullshit. Let me save you the time. It ain't gonna work. That distance between the two of you, the silence, if it persists for long enough, that becomes the new normal. She adjusts to it. She's like, Oh well. Silence without intention. That's not just space, healthy space between the two of you. It's just absence. It's just disconnection. You're pouting. Ain't gonna get anything done. For a lot of you, you're just avoiding those difficult moments, aren't you? You don't want to rock the boat? Let's just sit back and do nothing and see what happens. You know what's gonna happen. Mistake number 4 that a lot of guys make: pornography, fantasy. Using those things as a way to release some of that pressure. For some of you, if you are using adult entertainment as a way of not bothering her, you're solving the wrong problem. You are reducing your own drive enough to stay comfortable, so to speak, which means that you are reducing your motivation to address the big elephant in the room. You are managing the symptom instead of the actual situation under the surface. And over time, unfortunately, it rewires your brain to the point where you need more varied and different adult entertainment in order to get your rocks off. Real genuine intimacy and connection with another human being becomes more and more difficult. In case you didn't know, this doesn't bode well for a marriage. I'm not trying to moralize here. I'm just trying to tell you what I've seen over and over again. It's not good. Mistake number 5, reading the valleys as far as the peaks and valleys of a relationship are concerned, seeing the valleys as being permanent. Guys, in a relationship, there's gonna be some dry spells. When the kid comes into the picture, there's gonna be weeks or months of not a whole lot between you. She's exhausted, you feel disconnected, and it feels like the whole thing is sliding downward, doesn't it? For a lot of guys, especially your more insecure guys, and insecure, it's not a bad word, It just means you don't feel safe within the relationship. When they feel it slipping, going downward, one of those valleys, so to speak, they catastrophize. That's it, it's over, we're done, she's cheating on me. And that internal narrative that you have in your head, which is most of the time erroneous, that changes the way you approach the relationship. You become very distant, you become anxious, you become very resentful, and all that energy, it just poisons everything. It slowly chips away at your chances of reconnecting with your wife. So when the peak comes, you don't even see it. Now, here comes the inevitable plug. Sorry guys, but I've been working hard on something and I want to talk about it. This is why not only I created the Help for Men Brotherhood and the one-on-one coaching with myself and the 5 other coaches, but we also have the Dead Bedroom Fix app. This is for those moments in between coaching sessions, in between the live meetings, where you wish that you had somebody sitting on your shoulder, somebody whispering in your ear, "Buddy, don't do that," or, "Hey, this is one of those moments. Do this instead." The Dead Bedroom Fix app is exactly for that. It gives you the daily roadmap based on your input in your particular situation to bring you to a more secure headspace and in turn closer to your wife. Daily behavioral action real science, all those things that even on your hard days during your dry spell keeps you focused and grounded and on the right path. Not long talks, not grand gestures, not vague horseshit that gets you nowhere. This is the type of action that actually moves the needle in relationships. So check it out at deadbedroomfixapp.com. Now let's talk about the good stuff. What to do? Before I give you real practical advice here, it's time to shift your expectations because I think a lot of men are chasing the wrong thing and that's making you miserable. You are not going to get the honeymoon stage back as the baseline level of normal. This is not how the vast majority of human beings in long-term relationships work. This is not a sign that something is broken within your relationship. This is just the honest reality of a long-term relationship that involves kids and work and stress and everything else. What a healthy marriage looks like, what most healthy marriages look like by my estimation, it's less of a constant Yahoo, everything is amazing kind of feel, but it's more like an EKG with lows and spikes, lows and spikes. Those spikes, moments of genuine heat, if you will, and connection, Those are the things that remind the average dude, "Oh, this is why I chose this woman." And those moments will come in a healthy relationship, and they are very real, but they come in waves. It's not a constant current, so to speak. The men that I see, the ones who really suffer through all this, are the ones that see the valleys as a sign of horribleness and awfulness between the two of them and impending doom, catastrophizing every dip, if you will. You have to know how to navigate your way through those valleys so that you don't ruin all your chance of seeing any of the peaks down the line. And you have to know how to cultivate an environment that makes the peaks way more likely to happen. That's what we're gonna talk about right now. All right, so we want to speak in specifics. We don't wanna speak in vagaries. Advice like, "Be more present," or, "Help around the house." It's not enough. Men need specifics. So that's what we're going to get into here. First, we need to understand the weight that your wife is feeling. We need to understand it before we can try and lift it. Most men think that they understand what their wife's day-to-day life looks like, what she's experiencing emotionally, and most of you have no idea. The fact that most of your wives are tracking the kids' doctor appointments, permission slips, What's in the fridge? Who needs new shoes? Which kid has the project due? When was the last time anyone cleaned the baseboards in the house? If she's like most women, she is the operating system of the household. That operating system is always humming, always running in the background, and unfortunately, it is rarely acknowledged. So before you do anything else, get curious about that situation. Not to actually fix the situation, but just to see it, to acknowledge it. Ask her about the mental load. And when she tells you what she's doing day to day, don't try to minimize it. Don't try to solve it. Don't compare it to your workload. Don't say, "Oh my gosh," and roll your eyes as she tells you about something that you see as the most innocuous nothing thing in the world. To her, combined with the dozens and dozens of other things, it's a big honkin' deal. For most women, they will say they feel like all this stuff is very unseen. So, for her man to see it and acknowledge it and appreciate it is a huge first step. The second thing to do is to help take things off her plate without expressly looking for some kind of feedback or attaboys. This is different from helping. Helping means she's still got to manage it. She's still got to be the boss. She has to notice that this thing needs done. She has to ask you to delegate, saying, "Husband, can you please do this?" And then she has to keep up with whether or not you've done the thing. This all contributes to the mental load that they always talk about. No, what I'm talking about is you need to take ownership. You see that something needs to get done, you just freaking do it. And you don't go running to Mommy and saying, "Look what I did." You do shit around the house because it needs to get done, because you're an adult. Because you're part of the team. You're walking by the bed in the bedroom and you go, "Oh, the bed's not made." You don't immediately say, "Wife will take care of that because that's just what she does." No, you take 10 seconds out of your life and make the stupid bed. You see there are crumbs all over the floor, you don't just step over the crumbs and say, "Ooh." No, you stop, get a broom or get the little vacuum or whatever and you clean it up. This becomes your default way of life. You're part of the team. This is not a strategy to get into your wife's pants. This is just your new way of doing things. You want to be the guy that when your wife is at the dinner party or whatever with friends and she's surrounded by all these women who are just pissing and moaning about their husbands doing nothing, she just sits there with a glass of wine in her hand and says, "I don't know what you ladies are talking about. My husband does stuff. It's no big deal. He does stuff all the time." And they all look at your wife like, "Can your husband teach our husbands how to do stuff?" You want to be that guy because the wife to that guy can what? She can relax. She can trust you. She can trust that you are going to help carry the weight without her even having to ask, without her having to manage. Third step is to reduce the pressure that is revolving around the physical closeness thing. This is kind of counterintuitive for a lot of men, but stick with me here. For a while, and I don't mean just a couple of weeks, it's gonna take a while, you need to pursue or go for some kind of physical closeness or interaction with her in ways that don't lead anywhere. You touch her and there's no understood reciprocation. A lot of guys touch their woman and pull her in, and next thing you know, he's wildly making out with her, and the wife's like, "Now's not the time." You don't want to be that guy. Just little loving squeezes on the arm when you're next to her in the kitchen, little smooch on the back of the head, and move on. A little pat on the butt, move on. When she sits next to you in the car, reach over and just caress her leg, and done. These are little things that just say, I see you, sweetie, I love you, I'm still your loving husband here, and done. Nothing more to it. Nothing more like, and that means you better let me in your pants, you better take off all your clothes, you should feel shameful for not taking the next 3 steps in this whole thing. Again, it's just something to be asked from her in probably the worst possible time. Us guys tend to have really bad timing when it to this because we have like this consistent level of horny that she, in case you didn't notice, doesn't necessarily have like we do. So when you introduce the horny at the wrong time, it just puts pressure on her. So what you're showing her is you can trust me with these little physical touches, little signs of affection, and I don't take it to the super crazy horny teenager phase. When you show her over time, look, you can trust me, I'm not some spazzy horny teen, She stops bracing when you touch her and she starts inviting it. And then eventually you notice she kind of comes to you more. This kind of thing takes patience, real patience. A lot of guys I talk to don't have the patience after being, you know, ignored and after being rejected for so many, sometimes months and years. But dude, this is what it takes. Fourth, create conditions like what I did with our trip to Austin with the wife and I. Even on a really small scale, These things help. So with my wife, I can't take her to Austin, Texas every weekend. That's just prohibitively expensive and it doesn't work with our life. But what can I learn from that moment? Something that I can mimic in a small form. Take her to an environment where nobody needs something from her. Nobody's asking her for permission to do stuff or whatever it may be. She gets to be herself. This may mean we're going to go for a walk together. This may mean, wife, go do your thing. Leave me with the kids. The thing may be go to the spa, you go for a walk by yourself in the park, just go have a glass of wine down the road at the bar with your friends, go to the cafe, listen to your podcast while having a latte. She needs time for herself, much like you do, and you need to be the champion of that. You two can have a weekend away, arrange for childcare, go stay with Aunt So-and-So or Grandma or friends of the family, whatever it may be. It doesn't have to be some faraway place. It could be at a hotel locally, an Airbnb or something like that. The goal isn't necessarily romance. The goal is to get away and let her experience life as Mary again, not Braden's mom. Romance, which I know is what you, Mr. Man, want, has a much higher chance of coming about from that kind of environment versus all the other horseshit that you've been doing for all the years preceding this. Fifth step, be a man that she is drawn toward, not a man who is sitting back and waiting to be chosen. Big difference. There is an energy that comes from a man who knows who he is, a man who has a mission in life, a man who has things that he cares about outside of himself. That energy is attractive. This isn't being manipulative. This is being real. When a man sits back and is anxious about whether or not his wife desires him, when he is constantly monitoring her moods for signs of hope, when he makes himself smaller to avoid any kind of conflict, your wife, you better believe it, senses all of that. That does not draw her into you. Does just the opposite. So the work you need to do is ultimately on yourself. Stay connected to things that make you feel alive, things separate from the wifey. How about your health? How about your friends? How about your life purpose, your mission, whatever all that looks like for you? All of this again is not a strategy to get her to chase you. It's a strategy for a more healthy life. You, with or without your wife, you are a whole person who has a life that has meaning. You have worth, you have value. You need to realize that. When you are that man, those spikes that I mentioned, those spikes of connection where you see the old girl coming back, those happen far more frequently. And number 6, when those spikes do happen, you need to be there and be ready for them. Don't overthink it. Don't make it weird. Don't act like you need to maximize the situation because it is very, really rare and these never come up ever. You need to be cool. Be present for it. Enjoy it for what it is. Don't try to make more out of it than what it is. I had a guy that I talked to years ago who said, uh, after— if I remember, months and months of a real disconnection from the wife, he was putting in all the stuff we were talking about, and he had the eureka moment. He had a real over-the-top kind of sexual connection with his wife. And Mr. Anxious just took it up the next, next level and ordered like 4 sex toys off Amazon. And they showed up a couple of days later, and he's like, look, wife. And she was like, uh, just disappointed in him. He was acting like the spazzy horny teenager. He needs to be cool with it. He needs to act like, been there and done that, it's not a huge deal. This is what a loving couple does. But she does want to be acknowledged, not like a performance review kind of way, but in a warm, yes, sensual, sexual kind of way that lets her know that you see her, you appreciate her, you're glad that you're in this position with her, so to speak. But yes, she's still your dirty girl. That acknowledgement and that connection makes the spikes much more likely to happen the next time. She remembers how you made her feel during that encounter, and she wants to feel that again. So in closing, for many of you— not all of you, but for many of you out there— she's not gone. The woman you fell in love with, she's still in there somewhere. She's just hiding under a pile of stress and obligation, under a lack of identity, under an environment that needs a lot from her always, and that environment gives very little back to her. Your job is not to demand that she comes back, dammit. Your job is to become the kind of man that helps to create the kind of conditions that allow her, the woman that you fell in love with, to bubble to the surface again. And when she does surface with those spikes that we mentioned, be there for it. Fully, with no agenda. That's what a good marriage looks like on the other side of having kids. It's not the constant honeymoon phase. It's not a flatline of nothingness. It's a living, breathing EKG with peaks and valleys, peaks and valleys. Such is life. Two things before you go. If you are in one of these situations, these dead bedroom situations, check out my book, The Dead Bedroom Fix. And check out the Dead Bedroom Fix app. Go to deadbedroomfixapp.com. It's that daily reset. It's those short lessons, clear daily actions, a personalized roadmap based on your conditions and where your marriage is. It is behavioral leadership. It is not begging. It's not therapy, and it's not guesswork. Wherever you're watching this or listening to this, we'll put the link down in the description for you. And if you feel like you are carrying all of this alone and you still feel like you need a lot more help and you would benefit from learning from others who have been there and done that, then check out the Brotherhood. Join us at help4men.com or jump right to the join page at help4men.com/join. Real men in there doing the real work necessary to become better men and in turn, for a lot of our members, become better husbands. And have a better relationship that they always wanted. Straight talk from guys who have been there and done that. Check it out. Again, we will put the link down in the description, help4men.com/join. Guys, thank you so much for watching, for listening. Do gimme a like, gimme a subscribe, gimme a follow, however it works, wherever the hell you're watching this or listening to this. I would greatly appreciate it, and we will catch you on the next one.