Ralph Brewer and Monica discuss whether men in sexless relationships should raise their testosterone levels. The core tension: should a man suppress his health to keep an anxious partner comfortable, or pursue self-improvement even if it strains the relationship? One example is a husband who skipped a career-advancing certification because his wife couldn't handle his absence.
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Yeah, Ralph Brewer. I'm interested to know, how are you feeling about a guy who's already in a, like, a dead bedroom situation? And so therefore, you know, his drive's going to be less. Of course, there's other benefits, you know, muscle retention and mood and, you know, making sure to ward off depression and things that happen with you guys with low testosterone and mood and all the other benefits beyond the drive. What happens when you have a guy who's earning a dead bedroom situation, and now he's going from $250, $300 to $800, and now his plight's gonna even be worse? Like, is it worse to just kind of let the sleeping dog lie and not address it? What's your thought on that?
That sounds like a her problem and not a him problem. I mean, that's a really shitty way of me looking at it, but your relationship is split. You're not— often with these scenarios, it's I want but she doesn't. Okay, so should you in turn then keep your levels low to accommodate her unhealthy levels of low libido, or should you go ahead and go to the gym, which naturally raises testosterone a little bit, eat better, lose body fat, testosterone goes up a little bit? And if in fact, um, you go to the doctor and they do the blood draw and they go, you're still pretty low, do you want to look into this testosterone thing? I say, yeah, go for it. Yeah, but Ralph, my libido is potentially going to go through the roof and I'm still with gal who doesn't want me. Well, again, what can I tell you, dude? You're a healthy man. She's not so healthy, either mentally, physically, or whatever. That's her problem, not yours, dude. Yeah, but I want to work on the relationship. I want to stay together forever. I want to build the bridge between us. Well, you can't have your cake and eat it too. What do you want to do? Do you want to stay low and unhealthy just to accommodate the unhealthy relationship, or do you want to improve yourself? You know, this goes back to the whole, um, accommodating people that have these deficiencies in relationships. You're with a partner who's got, let's say, an anxiety disorder, and they can't stand you being, you know, out of their field of vision. I need to know where my husband is all the time because I'm very anxious without him. And I was talking to a guy who turned down a job promotion because he would have had to have gone to a course which would have taken him away from his wife for just a few hours a week during the nighttime to go get certified in some kind of software thing so that he could then be promoted and get this big raise. And hey, so he goes to his wife, honey, I, I have to go take this certification test. And she's like, no, you're not. You can't leave me. You can't leave me here with the kids. I can't. It's not fair to me. I got 4 kids, blah blah blah. He's like, it's only like 3 hours a week for the next 8 weeks. Nope, can't do it. Sorry. So he had to go back to the boss and say, I I can't do it. And that's not good to morph your life for somebody.
That's a very female-led dynamic there. That never works out.
So it's kind of the same kind of thing. I'm very low libido and yet you should accommodate me and keep yours artificially low. I guess it's more naturally low to accommodate me and my low desire. No, it doesn't work that way. Sorry. And maybe that's not the nicest thing in the world, but that's how I take it.
