In this monologue episode of the Dad Starting Over podcast, host Ralph Brewer addresses men stuck in "dead bedroom" (sexless) marriages. He begins by promoting the Help for Men Brotherhood—a private support community offering forums, live Zooms, coaching, and free access to his books. He then critiques a Reddit post from the DeadBedrooms subreddit, highlighting a "little nugget" most people overlook: the early honeymoon stage of a relationship is hyper‑sexual and signals strong biological compatibility. Brewer explains that as couples age, hormonal shifts (especially perimenopause and menopause) and the natural decline of the honeymoon chemistry cause libido mismatches, often leaving men with higher sex drives feeling rejected. He argues that mismatched sexual drives are a core predictor of dead bedrooms and advises listeners to assess drive compatibility early, and if mismatched, consider ending the relationship rather than staying in a stagnant marriage. Brewer discusses how novelty, external dating markets, and affairs can temporarily boost a woman's libido, underscoring the importance of continual novelty for long‑term intimacy. He promotes his book, The Dead Bedroom Fix, which offers strategies for rekindling spark, addressing attachment styles, and navigating mismatched drives. Throughout, he emphasizes that men should seek community support, be honest about sexual needs, and not shame themselves for wanting intimacy.
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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. When it comes to the old sexless marriage, aka dead bedroom situation, there was a little nugget of information that everyone seems to ignore. And this little piece of information basically dictates the entirety of the future of your relationship, at least as far as romance, intimacy, and yes, sex is concerned. And this post that was recently made on the DeadBedrooms subreddit on Reddit is the perfect example of a guy that completely ignores this little piece of information. His post is titled, "Wife and I haven't had sex in years." years. And years is all capital letters here. He says, my wife, 35 years of age, and I, 36, have been together for 10 years. In our 20s, our sex was good but not great. I've always had a high sex drive relative to my wife, who is not overly sexual. Nonetheless, as we aged into our 30s, she became less and less interested in sex. Anytime I'd make a move, she'd make an excuse or find a way to avoid it. Eventually, I just stopped initiating because it made me feel weird to always get rejected like that. At this point, it's been years since we had sex. I honestly can't remember the last time we did it. I'm physically fit, attractive, and I take care of myself, but for what? One of the hardest things to reconcile with is knowing that we're letting prime years of our sex life go by. Sometimes I see other women and the thoughts creep into my mind of, "I wonder how it would be with her." But then I snap out of it. It's not a great thought to have, but when you're sex deprived, the mind does crazy things. Ugh, he says. Okay, there's a lot to digest here, but the little nugget, I don't know if you caught it. I kind of emphasized it a little bit there. The little nugget of information there was, in our 20s, our sex was good, but not great. I've always had a high sex drive relative to my wife, who is not overly sexual. Guys, I don't know how many millions of times I need to say this. The early part of a relationship, aka the honeymoon stage— and the word honeymoon tends to confuse people. They think that that means just the early part of a marriage. No, honeymoon stage of a relationship is the early part of the relationship. So the first few months, or for some of you lucky bastards out there, the first few years of a relationship, where you are supposed to be, pay attention, hyperconnected. And that means, yes, romantically, physically, emotionally all over each other. You text her first thing in the morning, you're leaving little love notes, she's giving you little butt pinches, she's texting you naked pictures of herself. Yes, this actually happens, guys, believe it or not. You guys are getting it on like monkeys. You can't get enough of each other. This is basically Mother Nature's way of saying, "I have determined," this is Mother Nature talking, "I have determined that you two are really, really compatible in a lot of ways, emotionally, physically, intellectually. You know what? You guys need to get together, make babies, and do it ASAP." That's what your body is doing. Even though you may be on birth control or using prophylactics or had a vasectomy or whatever it is, Mother Nature doesn't really know, so to speak. All it knows is, "Must pump chemicals in this guy and gal's brains so that they just want to get it on all the time." The purpose of Mother Nature as far as sexuality is concerned is to procreate. It just so happens that it makes the experience a lot of fun and feel really, really good. It feels good physically and it feels good emotionally, mentally. The dopamine fires in the brain and all kinds of chemicals race through your body to say, "Must do this and do it often." If you or your partner or both of you are not experiencing that early cascading series of chemicals in the brain and body that make you want to get it on, that is not a good sign. Yes, sexuality, physical intimacy within a relationship is important. It's more important for some than it is for others. Let's get that outta the way. Some people say, "You know, I'm the type that's just like, if I have it once a month, that's plenty. And maybe I can skip a month here or there." And you know what? There's nothing quote wrong with those people. That's how they're wired. The problem is, is that they need to find a partner, a romantic partner, who matches their drive, so to speak. A person who's like, "I'm good with it every other month or so," matched with a person who says, "I want it every day," there's no shame either way, but that is at its core a wildly mismatched couple. But it's not so simple, is it? Some of you out there, dare I say a lot of you out there watching this, a lot of you guys don't have a lot of relationship experience. I can't tell you how many guys that I talk to that are in long-term, multi-year, sometimes multi-decade dead bedroom relationships describe their relationship past as, "I had kind of a casual girlfriend, I guess you could call her that, in high school. And then there's this other girl I went on a few dates with. And then I met my wife-to-be. And then I was with her for the next 30, 40 years." That's it. Guys, like anything else in life, you get better at something the more you do it. And I'm not saying go out and screw half the town. I'm just saying, as a young person, you should have mentors and a social group around you telling you, This probably isn't going to be the one, and that's okay. Go out, learn how to be a gentleman, learn how to, you know, coexist with another person. And then yeah, you're probably going to find another person. You do the same thing at various levels of relationships. Some of them stay strictly platonic. It's just a friend you have coffee with every now and then. Some, it goes into kind of a casual sex thing and never kind of goes beyond that. Others become a full-fledged monogamous relationship. As I've talked about in other videos, it seems to be that serial monogamy seems to be the template for most human beings. You pair up with somebody, you have an intense connection, you cohabitate, make babies, all that good stuff. And then naturally Mother Nature says, "Okay guys, you're done here." And you slowly fizzle and separate. That's why it takes a lot of work to keep you guys, eh, stuck together. It takes a lot of work on both your parts. But with that being said, you have to have the foundational stuff in place to begin with. And one of the most crucial things you need to start with is matching drives, at least as close as possible. Usually the man is higher than the woman, or at least you could say a matching outlook as far as physical intimacy is concerned. Both of you have to say, "Yeah, this is really important." Both have to say, "This is a crucial aspect of our relationship. Without this, we're in essence just kind of friends." And we both need to put on the table, what do we think about the old physical intimacy? The problem is, if we were to be honest, if you were to sit down basically every woman on the planet Earth and say, "Hey, you and I are madly in love, right? Yeah? What do you think about physical intimacy?" Probably 9 times out of 10, the woman's gonna say, "Super important to me. I don't see us ever not doing it." Why? Because she's basically drunk, high on the chemicals that are coursing through her body and brain saying, you know, "Get with this guy. Make babies with this guy." That's why I often say to guys when they say that they see that it was really hypersexual at the beginning of the honeymoon phase, great. But then they get married and they have kids and cohabitate and years go by and they notice that the sexuality goes from like a 10 out of 10 to like a 2. A lot of guys interpret that as a calculated plan on the woman's part, very much a bait and switch. And I always say, guys, no. If you were to go back in time and hook up a machine to your wife's brain back when she was in girlfriend mode, you would see a woman who was really, really turned on, really hypersexualized, and very much attached and in love with you. Those feelings naturally dissipate with time. Mother Nature dials down the hormones, especially in our lady friends. Sorry, ladies. There's a thing called perimenopause and menopause, which happens for some ladies late 30s, early 40s, all through for like the next 10, 15 years for some poor gals. Then full-blown menopause, which is basically Mother Nature's way of saying, "Your baby-making days are over." Therefore, it doesn't crank up the horny responsive nature that the woman may have experienced for the first 10, 15 years of the relationship. Now, what really confuses this whole thing is that if you take like, let's say perimenopausal 44-year-old woman who's just like, "Dude, I just don't feel like doing it anymore. I'm sorry, I love you, but it just ain't happening anymore." And the guy says, "Well, I want it like every other day," whatever it may be. "We're wildly mismatched. Let's get a divorce." and they divorce. What does that man see? He sees an ex-wife who is suddenly kind of, in his mind, kind of hypersexual. And what the man does is he internalizes this. Oh shit, it was me all along. I was not good enough of a husband. I was not alpha male enough to get that kind of energy out of her, and so on and so forth. There may be a crumb of truth to that for some of you. Some of you guys, you know, really let yourselves go and really suck as a husband, let's be honest. But for the majority of you watching this, I would say the majority of you who have experienced this, a big, big component of that is your wife is newly on the market. Women tend to flourish sexually outside of the confines of a strict monogamous long-term relationship. Those are just the facts, guys. There are books written on this. This is why it takes work to keep the spark alive within the confines of the guy that I see every day, all day long. The guy I had the kids with, the guy I have some resentments towards, and all this other stuff, all very normal things, the libido goes from like an 8 to a 2. She needs that spark of novelty, of newness. And nothing accomplishes that more than being out in the market and dating again, or God forbid, having an affair. Affairs are absolutely the number one most, I guess you could say, erogenous, erotic, exciting thing that a person can take part in. Dare I say, especially our lady friends out there, it's that novelty as well as that little forbiddenness, isn't it? She shouldn't be doing it. She shouldn't have these feelings, but she does. That's why a lot of guys, when we don't know it, but our spouses are having affairs, we see a lot of quote crazy behavior. Her brain is just all over the place. It's just spinning out of control. Like what's gotten into this woman? Kind of a midlife crisis kind of thing. And then we discover the affair and we're like, oh, there it is. And those women get a whole heck of a lot of sex done, don't they? So guys, I'm kind of going off script here. I'm digressing all over the place, but it all ties together. The initial early stage of the relationship should always, always, always be very hypersexual and very hyperconnected. If it is not, and if sexuality is very important to you, and if you're a guy watching this, it probably is, then it behooves you to be the adult in these situations. And when you are in an early relationship and you notice, like this gentleman did that posted on Reddit, wow, we seem to be kind of mismatched in this way, it behooves you to stop and go, timeout, girlfriend, I like you, you're really awesome, I love our time together, but eh, this little thing ain't working. Shake hands and say, I wish you all the best. Really? It's that important. Now, there is a society out there that will shame you for having those feelings. There's plenty of women, and I see them in the comments on my videos and social media posts, who will say that men are dogs and creatures for putting that at such an important level in their lives. No, men are human beings. Male human beings. In case you haven't noticed, with all the plethora of adult entertainment and other things out there, that this whole sex thing is kind of important to us. Sorry, it is what it is, and there's no shame in it. That's who we are, most of us, and that's who we probably always will be well into our old age. So there are a lot of things at play here, but a lot of those things, a lot of those things can be addressed very early on in the relationship when a lot of you guys notice, huh, we don't really seem to be matching that way, do we? Don't overlook it. Don't downplay it. Don't sweep it under the rug. Pay attention to it. Put it front and center and address it. The problem is, is that if most of you address it thoroughly and properly, the outcome will be, "See you later, girlfriend." And a lot of you do not want to do that. Why? Because you have an innate sense of scarcity in life in general and romantic relationships in particular. You don't like yourself very much. You don't think much of yourself, and you think, "If I let her go, I'm not going to find another one." That's not good, dude. Not good at all. May I suggest a couple of things here? A book I wrote called The Dead Bedroom Fix. Go to deadbedroomfix.com. It is the most popular thing I have ever done. It addresses that keeping the spark alive that I talked about, introducing the novelty, and it talks a lot about, you know, what if you're wildly mismatched and anxious attachment and avoidant attachment, all that fun stuff. So check it out at deadbedroomfix.com. But what a lot of you, if not all of you, need to do is surround yourself with smart, driven individuals who are there to help you. And those individuals need to be, yes, men. A lot of you just don't hang around guys. You don't talk to guys at deep levels. You talk about football, beer, golf, and that's about it. It's time to cut the horseshit, guys. It's okay to raise your hand and say, little help here. You just have to know where to go to get said help. If I may suggest, I have a support community for men called the Brotherhood, and you can learn more at help4men.com/join. We get together in private forums that are extremely active, live Zoom meetings. We get together in person. You get all my books at no additional charge, courses, coaching, over 1,300 hours of audio content. So if you're a podcast, audiobook kind of guy, you're going to be in heaven. So check it out, the Brotherhood, at help4men.com/join. And guys, this dead bedroom thing is not insurmountable. There is hope one way or another. So join me, let's talk about it. Thank you guys so much for watching. Give me a like, give me a subscribe, and I'll catch you on the next one.
