Welcome to our live show!

All right, all right, all right, folks. Howdy do, howdy do. Let me change my little layout here. Hello? Why not? Why is that not changing? All right, stop. There we go. How you guys doing today? It's your boy Raffalito coming to you live from— do I have my sound effect here? Oh, hold on, hold on, let me try it again. There we go. From Texas. If you ever see with this background, whatever, that means I'm in Texas with my pal Do I have a name for him yet? The little eggplant dude? I don't think so. Down there, that's Mortimer. There's a little— what is he, gopher? Something. Got that in Maine. And then my book's there behind me, as you can see. All right, well, wait, it's all flipped. Is it flipped on your end? Let me see. All right, hold on, it's not showing me live here. Let me bring up my chat here. All right, let me know if you guys can see me, where you are watching me from, all that good stuff. I would appreciate it so very much. Let me bring this up here, pause my upload so I can be crystal clear for you folks. All right. Let me refresh this. Don't mind me, folks, just talking to myself here. Oh yeah, I'm good. Okay, it just shows this flipped on my end, so we're good. All right, cool, cool, cool beans. All right, how is everyone today? I don't know who's joining us today, who's seeing us live. Welcome everybody. All right, Sora says I can see you. Very good, Sora, thank you. So that's Sora from YouTube. Hope everyone is doing well. Haven't done one of these lives here in a while. Been a busy boy. Been doing the podcast interviews. Been going to other people's podcasts. Been doing a lot of the old Dear DSO videos. If you guys are like, what's he talking about? Go to deardso.com. There's a little form there on a little webpage we put on the website. And people submit their stories and their questions, and then I create little videos out of it. And that's been doing very well here lately. Been very, very busy. Every single day I get, um, dear DSO messages from people, and the good ones, I create little videos out of it and answer their questions. And occasionally, uh, I post one where we have a live back and forth discussion. Let me see when my next one is coming up here. We did a little back and forth. That is on April 11th, so here in about a week I am posting one, um, where, uh, a gal A lady, a female, yes, one of those reached out to me and said she wanted to talk like live back and forth. So we did, and we recorded it for the YouTube channel. It'll be posted on Facebook everywhere else as well, but on YouTube it's going live on April 11th. It'll be posted on Facebook as well. Uh, if you are a YouTube member, or what's another way of saying it, sponsor, contributor— I wish they, they allowed you to change it because member doesn't really to reflect what it is. But if there's— if you would like to support what I do, Dad Starting Over, as well as Help for Men, just want to put a few bucks into the tip jar, so to speak, on a monthly basis, you can do so. And on YouTube, let me bring up, um, one more please. All right, invite viewers copy. Let me come back here. All right, I'm gonna put this in the— you'll see this in the chat on YouTube, the comments on Facebook. Click on that guy there, see if it shows up. Should show up. There it is. Um, very good. You will see, um, okay, good, uh, that it, uh, you click on that and then you will be able to, I guess, commit to subscribe to the YouTube channel in a way that it takes $4.99 out of your account on a monthly basis. And one of the perks of doing that is that you get to see all my videos that I have scheduled from now to through the next month or so. You get to see them all now. So we have a calendar full of videos. We do 3 a week on average, sometimes more, uh, long-form videos as well as 2 shorts a day. Well, you get to see all the long-forms all up front, and that's one of the benefits. And then we will start doing live streams just to YouTube members. And Facebook has a similar setup as well where you can contribute, again, $4.99 a month. That's one— that's just the default number they give. You could ask for more, but, uh, don't want to do that. But anywho, let me see, um, if I can— where is that link? No, that's not it. Oh, they don't make this easy. You really have to dig on Facebook to find this. Facebook is not— if you, if you are toying with the idea of being like content creator or something like that where you make money on the social media stuff, it can go well, but it takes a lot of freaking work, dude. And, uh, all right, here we go. Copy link. All right, and, um, and then once you do, they're— each of the platforms has their own little pain in the butts, and Facebook is a pain in the butt to deal with. And no offense, Facebook, but anyway, here is a link on Facebook where you can also do the little subscriber thing, member thing, whatever you want to call it, and spend $4.99 per month. And on Facebook, I send out discounts all the time on stuff, uh, access to certain things earlier than other people get them, as well as we're going to do live streams just to members in the future. We have to a lot of members first before I can do that. I'm not gonna— if there's 2 guys that sign up, I'm not going to do a live stream to 2 guys and hope they show up. But if we have 200, then I would. So check that out, there's the link on that as well. Okay, we got, uh, George says, I'm reading Divorce Panic and I love it. What would you say to those that criticize it for being a book for incels? Oh, well, that's a deep subject there. The incel thing is, um, it's kind of a catch-all insult, isn't it, these days? But let's pause there and say, what the heck does that mean, incel? It means involuntary celibate. It's kind of a very, um, oh, I don't know, nerdy way of describing something which has been going on for generations, which is guys who want to get laid but can't. That's all that is. And so, um, it was a term given to themselves. Guys on the internet created like a club, if you will, Please, if I'm off base here and you guys belong to such an organization— that's not a right term, you know what I mean— you identify as such and I'm woefully misinterpreting this, please correct me. No shame. But, um, this is my understanding, is that guys kind of got together on the internet and said, this sucks, I'm not getting any. And guy said, yeah, me too. And they called themselves, we are involuntarily celibate, we're incels. So they made the term themselves, and then that kind of grew in popularity on the internet. It's not like a household word by any means, but it's just something that, um, a few guys on the internet got together. I think maybe like Reddit or other like websites use that as their platform, their home for these discussions. And they got together and compared notes. And, uh, kind of sad to sit back and watch a lot of these guys who are, let's be honest, probably more socially awkward, um, guys on the autism spectrum. That's far more common in that world than it is outside of that world. And, uh, they have a really hard time navigating relationships, and as a consequence, they don't get laid. And, uh, anywho, as, as you can imagine, that world can go down some not so nice avenues. And you can have some discussions online from these guys, and it can go in very anti-woman, anti-relationship, um, you know, they refer to people outside of their world as normies, meaning normal people. And, and, uh, they really, they really hate guys who get laid a lot. And they hate the gals who they, in their mind, give it up easily to these guys. And it's your— I mean, dude, this stuff's been going on for generations where Mr. Nice Guy, why don't more women like me? They should appreciate me for being so nice and awesome. They just like the bad boys. And yeah, that kind of stuff. Um, so, uh, that drew the, uh, the ire— is that the right word? The criticism from a lot of people on the internet see those guys talking, because it's open for everyone to see, and say, look at these losers, look at these woman-hating morons, etc., etc. And then that, that term incel became a catch-all term for misogynistic, a-hole kind of guys who, um, go on and on about relationship stuff, very anti-woman stuff. Basically, if a guy is acting like a dick we'll call them an incel. It's kind of lost its meaning along the way, just like everything else on the internet. So when you say, what would you say to people that say your book is for incels? Well, it's not for guys that are involuntary— to use the technical term, the actual definition, it's no, it's not a book for men who are just unable to get laid. It's a book as written from a guy's perspective who went through the whole ugly divorce process, um, discovered infidelity on the part of his— that's me, by the way, that I'm talking about— discovered infidelity on the part of his ex and had to go through life, you know, taking care of these 3 little kids and all this other stuff. And then my thoughts on the matter. And then after I started my Dad Starting Over world and later Help for Men, talking to so many other men, and I share their stories in that book and just my thoughts on the matter. There's a lot of parallels between it and the Dead Bedroom Fix book, by the way. There's a lot of similarities between the two in some parts. You'll recognize if you read both books, you'll read Divorce Panic and go, this kind of sounds like what I read already in Dead Bedroom Fix. Yeah, there's some overlap. Talk about why some relationships don't work, what's good, what's not good, and all that good stuff. Um, it is just by virtue of its subject matter, it's far more negative book. You can read that book and come away thinking, I ain't never getting married, dude. But if, uh, the institution of marriage can't survive a little scrutiny, a little, um, examination, a little negativity, then maybe the institution's not that strong to begin with. That's one way of looking at it, right? So, um, I am a— I have remarried. I mean, let's put that out there. So, love my wife to death. We have a child together. I have 4 kids in total. And so, um, the book is not anti-marriage as an institution. It's anti-marriage as a lot of us erroneously look at it. We're looking at it through rose-colored glasses. We're looking at it through, um, oh, I don't know, prism of just ignorance and very Pollyannish thinking. And the book is one way to kind of wake you up from that, going, no, dude, it's not what you think. Here you go, this is what it's about. Divorce Panic. If your guy's been cheated on, gone through the divorce and stuff, that's a book probably you would, uh, have an interest in. Let me give another link here, divorcepanic.com. I got that domain. That takes you right to a web page on our website. Let me make sure all this is going through properly here. One moment please. Talk amongst yourselves. Mm-hmm. Yes it is! Cool. Alright. Very good. One of these days I'll become a big shot and actually have somebody to help me out with these and produce these so that I can just talk and not worry about all this garbage. George says thanks for your response. I think you're spot on but it's a catch-all term? It seems if you stand up for yourself or man, you're an incel. It's crazy! Some people, some women are making this whole thing much worse by labeling men like this just because they show resistance to treating men badly. Yeah, sure. And, um, hey, but George, you know me, in all fairness, let's flip the genders. Um, we have men that do the exact same thing. It's, uh, men be like, um, some woman will be like, uh, you know, for example, I talked about this recently where, um, women may say, you know, I, I am focusing on career, for example, because I saw my mother go through a horrible divorce. My father cheated on my mother. My Mother was— had to work like 3 part-time jobs just to make a living and, you know, scrape some money together to feed us because my father abandoned us, etc. So these, you know, we don't want to say it, but yeah, these stories happen. Not common, but they're enough so that we hear about them frequently. And, uh, the, um, end result from that was the woman who was the daughter in that case saying, I sat back and watched Mom do this, so I am not going to depend 100% on a man like my mother did. She was a housewife. I'm going to get a career and I'm going to take care of myself. I'm and I'm going to have, um, so, and I'm going to pursue a relationship at the same time. But if that relationship doesn't work, I want to, um, kind of hedge my bets, so to speak, and be able to take care of myself and have a career. And, you know, if that guy leaves me, I don't want to be destitute like my mother was. That sounds all normal to me, but some men hearing that, probably your more militantly conservative types that are like, women should all stay in the kitchen and yada, all that they would look at that woman and say, you evil feminazi. Same kind of thing. And that woman would say, what did I just say that was feminist in nature? I just want to take care of myself. I want to make sure I got money in the bank just in case shit goes down. Like, how's— that's just being an independent creature, it's not being a feminist. Same kind of thing, just throwing up the feminazi term or whatever it is that angry men use, and women use the incel term. Guess what? Just a bunch of morons. Yeah, let it go in one ear, out the other. You do this for so long like I have, you just kind of smile and go, yeah. It is what it is. What can you do? And there's no amount of you trying to convince them or campaign and change their mind that will work. It just doesn't work. Um, let me get rid of this here. All right, it's a little better. All right, very good. Anybody have any questions for yours truly? That's what these things are for. These live streams are for me to interact with you guys and chat, talk, and, and tell you about some things that I do. Get questions. There is some business housekeeping stuff that I do like to talk about and promote. Dad Starting Over, this is the channel you're watching on, is part of a larger organization. I've been creating content under the name of Dad Starting Over for over a decade now, in the form first of print, or text rather, in form of blog, which grew to books, which grew to eventually videos and all kinds of stuff, and eventually grew to what you see behind me here a, um, a brand, an organization, a larger organization called Help for Men. And you can learn more at help4men.com. In fact, there's a part of Help for Men that I want to promote that is very big, and it's something we're very, very proud of. And that is our, um, Brotherhood, which is our private community for men only. Men need a private community. I mean, let's keep the wives and the girlfriends and all the women in our life out of it. It's just for men. And, um, we want to be able to have discussion forums, private, so nobody can see what we're talking about, whatever we want to talk about. We want to have live meetings frequently. We want to have a lot of audio and articles and books and all kinds of things for us to, to learn from and help each other out with and so forth. And that's what the Brotherhood is. It's a big community with all kinds of benefits, all kinds of content. You'll never run out of content to listen to. You'll never run out of meetings. And discussions and all kinds of stuff. It's— if there is a negative to our group, is that it's a lot. You go in and you go, I don't know where to start. Like, look at all this discussion going on, all these meetings, past meetings that I can listen to or join in on some live meetings. Yeah, we, we want to just give you all the resources possible. And all my books that I've written, there's 3 of them behind me here, and then there's a 4th that you can't see because there's not a paper version of. It's a small ebook called Red Flags. All 4 of my books Plus we have Coach Austin on our team. He authored a book. All of our books are available at no extra charge to our members, in addition to the live meetings and the discussion forums. And there's coaching and there's courses and all kinds of cool stuff. Check it out, the Brotherhood, at help4men.com/join. Help4men.com/join. Go to help4men.com, click on Brotherhood in the menu, get to it that way. But check that out, and we're very proud of that, and we're trying like heck to continue to grow. We're getting about 1 new member every single day, which is awesome. Let's keep it up. I would love to have 3 new members a day. That's my goal. And, um, what else we got going on? If you guys could— if you are watching this on YouTube, I assume you're a subscriber. If not, hey, pause for a moment and click on subscribe over on the Dad Starting Over channel. I would love that. That would mean a lot. And if you're watching this on Facebook, if you just stumbled upon it, follow me on Facebook if you could please, and give this a like, this live stream. Give it a like, give it a share, however that works. And that will help spread the word. That will let Facebook and YouTube and everybody know that, hey, listen, this guy's worth watching. And then it will show it to more people. That's how that algorithm works. So thank you so very much for that. Um, so Mr. Brendan says he is not married. This is Brendan from Facebook. Brendan says, I am not married, but I stumbled upon your content and I thought it was fascinating. Fascinating is not something I get often, but thank you, Brendan. I appreciate it. I'll take it. That's, that's good. Any advice for a guy going into marriage in the next few years. Um, yeah, I mean, what do you hope to get out of it? Um, what do you hope to not get out of it? What do you not want to happen, I guess, is another way of saying it. Do you already have the gal in mind? In the next few years, I hope you have the gal in mind. You're working on it, but you know, you're going to take this slow. Take it slow, which goes against much of the biological imperative of the ladies in our lives, for good reason, because they're like— for a lot of our ladies, like, let's say for example You're a guy in your early 40s that is divorced. Um, I'm not speaking out of school here. This was my situation. I was like late 30s, met my gal who would be my wife now, Natalie, when I was 39. Is that right? Anywho, and, um, she was 32, 33 at the time. So she also got out of her marriage much like I did. She didn't have any kids, but she was open about the fact that eventually that is something that she wants to do. I have a family. And so, good to know up front. So if I'm the kind of guy that's like, never ever again, sorry, goodbye, ain't happening, then she would know, well then I'm not going to waste time with this guy. But she was also, um, upfront about, and I'm not going to jump into this, we're going to take our time. Whoever I end up being with, whether it's you, whoever, no, we're not going to jump in and get married right away. Been there, done that. And I'm like, me too, been there, done that. And so we dated for close to 4 years before tying the knot. That's what I recommend. Now, if you're a gal who's 33, waiting 4 years may mean the difference between a good chance of having a baby versus a not so good chance of having a baby. Those are very real things to worry about. Us guys listen to that and kind of roll our eyes and go, great, here comes Miss Baby Rabies and everything else. Somebody just trying to shoehorn me and force me into a marriage, or paint me into a corner, so to speak, and force me to make the decision of marriage right away. No, Don't do that. Yes, we try to empathize with their perspective, but don't do that is what I would say to guys that are thinking about marriage. What is it you want to get out of it? And during that time of, you know, the courtship, getting to know each other, whatever you want to call it, during that, let's say 3 years is what I typically like to recommend as a getting-to-know-you phase of life before tying the knot, before moving in together, all that stuff. Um, so wife-to-be What do you want out of this marriage thing? What do you not want? What are some real boundaries, some real, uh, go/no-go things for you? And just, man, just put it out there. And if you can't talk about that stuff now, you have no hope, no hope of being successful as a married couple. Financial stuff, put it out there. Prenuptial agreement, put it out there. I'm a man, I have a certain amount of assets, debts, and so forth. 'Um, whoever I marry needs to be cool with the idea of signing a prenuptial agreement.' 'Well, I don't agree with that. I think it's antithetical to marriage and happiness.' And, 'Well, then we're not going to work. I'm sorry.' That sounds pretty cold, doesn't it? But, um, there is a delicate balancing act with this marriage, or it doesn't even need to be like technically marriage. It could be just long-term committed monogamous relationship, whatever that means for you. There's a delicate balancing act between very pragmatic about it, technical about it, cold about it, like prenuptial agreement. We're not going to intertwine this asset and that asset. You're going to have this money, I'm going to have this money. But, you know, it's just— it's very unromantic, isn't it? And a lot of people hear that and say that's the antithesis of a good, healthy relationship. Fine if that's your opinion, but not mine. I'm very rational about these kind of things. Sorry if that goes, you know, if that hurts feelings or whatever, but I'm trying to protect myself. And this isn't necessarily a bad thing. And ironically, we hear this quite a bit. I had an attorney tell me this once, that she saw this— again, she, okay, not a sexist thing by any stretch of the imagination— but what she saw, and I don't have any data to back this up on a grand scale, this is just anecdotally, literally one attorney told me this. But it makes sense if you think about it. And that was, she said, if a couple's getting together and they're going to get married and they're going to— they're deciding whether or not to do the prenup, if the woman makes considerably more money than the man, she is more apt to be the one to say, prenup, we have to have one. It seems like the women are catching up to the men in terms of, I have assets to protect and all this other stuff, and they feel more comfortable in doing so. Versus the men are kind of shamed into, don't do that, dude, it's very unromantic, you're going to scare the woman away, etc., etc. That message apparently hasn't gotten through to the wealthier ladies. So if you're with a gal and you're dating her and she's vice president of some company or something like that, and you're thinking about getting married, chances are she's going to bring up the prenup thing. Which, by the way, do you blame her? I would too. That's good, whether it's man, woman, whatever. I think it's a good idea. So I don't know, Mr. Brendon, what do you think? Um, is this something that you are thinking about doing? Is— do you have a lady in mind already? It's just, just, just a thought that you're having? I want to get married. It's always been a goal of yours. If so, why? You know, really answer these questions. And if your answer is shrug your shoulders and say, I don't know, it's just something you do, man, it's just You get married and you have kids, right? That ain't, that ain't it, man. You need to have a very real, concrete reason with pros and cons and all that good stuff as to why to do the whole marriage thing. It's got to make sense at a very pragmatic, rational level. Otherwise, why do it? And what I've talked to a lot of men— let's be honest, my, my vision of this is very much prejudiced or colored by my personal experience, as well as the experience of all these men that I talk to that have horrible, terrible, dysfunctional, awful relationships. And for a lot of those men, they describe a woman who from day one was just a nightmare. Whether he's being biased, whether he's not telling the whole truth, whatever, just taking him at face value, he describes a woman who's got some problems. Homegirl's got issues, as I often say. And when you say, out of all the human beings on the planet Earth, Mr. Man, why her? Why'd you pick her? Because it sounds like she's got issues. And he's like, I don't know, man, it's just what you do. I was dating her, I loved her, you marry, you have kids, right? That's it. That's the extent of their thought process for doing what is arguably— or making what is arguably the biggest decision of their life, hitching themselves to another human being. And it all went to hell. Surprise, surprise. I'm gonna take this off. I don't need this. Nobody's talking to me. So, um, and George says, uh, Brendan, don't, don't do it. That's what he's saying. Don't do the marriage thing. That's, uh, and George, why would you say that? Because you had a bad experience and you know a lot of other people have bad experience. And if you guys watched my interview with Dr. Orion Taraban, I'm going to provide you a link Mm-hmm... Do-do-do doo-doo-doo— Pardon me? All right! Copy go back here all right there's the link to the live chat I had with Dr. Orion Taraban and he really went off on his thoughts of marriage for himself; and gave some very good reasons as to why he doesn't want to do it for himself and, um, and why he thinks that he has done a better job overall for himself and for society in general. He had more value as a single man being able to work on his craft, his career, and help out, um, you know, potentially millions and millions of people, something he probably wouldn't have been able to do, at least not as effectively if he was a father and a husband, so on and so forth. So you might want to give that a watch. It's, you know, gotten a good number of views here in a few days, and Orion is always a good interview. It's the second time I've interviewed him. I also interviewed him at the Help for Men YouTube channel. Let me give you a link to that. I'm just Mr. Links today, aren't I? YouTube.com— boom! Check that out. That's the link to the YouTube channel for Help for Men. So we're using the Help for Men brand has its own YouTube channel, and, uh, that is devoted to interviews with important people to talk about men's issues. So we talked to Orion, I talked to Dr. Robert Glover and, and, uh, Adam Lane Smith, Dr. Samantha Rodman-Whiten, and on and on. And so check that out, uh, the Help for Men YouTube channel. All right, um, what else, ladies and germs? What else is going on? Any questions? Any other questions for yours truly? I do have a big announcement to make. Let me see if I can find it real quick. I'm not prepared. Bear with me. This is as good as it gets, folks. All right. Yeah, this will work. Let me bring this up. Ah, if you follow me on Facebook, even YouTube, I've been posting it on the community portion of YouTube. All right, let me do share. Let me get rid of this. Talk out loud as I figure all this out. Share screen. Here we go. All right, here we go. See if this works. All right, can you see that? And there you go, it's a little bit better. There we go, that's a little bit better. Uh, we have an event that happens every year in the States, the United States, called BroFest. It's our annual gathering for our membership of our group, the HFM Brotherhood. We've had here next month, we're going to have the 5th annual one in Charleston, South Carolina, but that one's been sold out for a while. Sorry. So 2025 is sold out, but we already have it planned out for 2026. BroFest 2026. You can learn more at brofest2026.com. BroFest2026.com. Uh, it's going to be in Louisville, Kentucky, March 27th and 28th of 2026. We have some special guests lined up.. You can meet myself, all of the Help for Men team, all the coaches, as well as Adam Nissenson, who is known as the Betrayal Shrink. You can learn more at betrayalshrink.com. He's the guy who specializes in helping out gentlemen going through the whole thing about being cheated on. He also helps gentlemen out with, um, a little thing called sex addiction. So he'll have some interesting info to share. He'll be putting on presentation and hanging out with us for the weekend. Dr. Robert Glover, If you guys don't know who that is and you're in the whole men's help space, then you've probably been living under a rock. He's the author of No More Mr. Nice Guy, probably one of, if not the most popular men's self-help book ever written. He wrote that over 20 years ago and he keeps selling more and more copies every year. Um, I consider Robert a friend, colleague, whatever you want to call him, and, uh, we chat frequently and he has agreed to join us for BroFest, gonna hang out for the weekend. And then Lauren, The Dadvocate. You guys know Lauren. And if you follow The Dadvocate on TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Lauren's going to hang out with us for the weekend, put on a presentation. Pretty cool. Really looking forward to it. So check it out. Brofest2026.com. Would love to have you. So yes, the next question you may have is if this is for members of the brotherhood, does that mean only members can join? No. We are opening this up to the public. You just got to be a dude. If you're a dude, you can join us for brofest2026.com. Check it out, brofest2026.com. Um, and, um, you get to see what the brotherhood's all about. We would love for you to join us so you can attend all the next— all the future BroFests and all the benefits I talked about earlier with membership, the live forums, the Zoom meetings, and on and on and on. We would love to have you join us, but check it out. We'd love you guys to hang out with myself, special guests, the whole HFM gang, learn. We're gonna have presentations and workshops, hang out. It's always fun after the— you know, what we do is we have from morning until like 5 o'clock, so like a 9 to 5 thing. We'll be the, you know, in a conference room, a large conference room or ballroom if you will, and watch presentations and workshops and do all kinds of cool stuff. And then when that's done, You can retire to your hotel, wherever that may be. We have hotels in, in the area around where the presentation is, as well as downtown Louisville. And then a lot of us will probably be heading downtown to hang out, do dinner, drinks, all that good stuff. So you're welcome to join us. And the dinner drinks is usually where a lot of the fun happens. So we're looking forward to it. BroFest2026.com. Let me put the link here in the chat. Boom. Would love for you guys to join us. All right, let me do this and stop sharing. All right, very good. All right, guys, well, enough of me blabbing away. Oh, here we go. Hold on. Mr. Brendan is, uh, giving us more detail on his situation here. He says, I've been dating her for 3 years. Very good. Our physical relationship has slowed down a lot over the last year. Roh roh. I have fears about this setting the tone for a marriage. Other than this, I see myself spending the rest of my life with her and having a family. I appreciate the advice. And then Eric says, red flags that you ignore in the beginning of the relationship will become huge problems later on after marriage. And read that, Brendan, what Eric just said. Read that about 12 times until it sinks in. Uh, I'm sure she's a wonderful human being. I'm sure she's a real doll, and she's probably considered your best friend and everything else. There is an aspect of long-term monogamy, marriage, that is not so nice. And it is, um, especially not so nice if you are a person who very much values physical touch, intimate physical intimacy in the form of sex. Otherwise whatever, however you accomplish that in the bedroom, if you will. If you value that, there is a little not-so-nice fact that, that affects the majority of human beings in such relationships. And how I describe it— bear with me if you've seen me say this a few hundred times— libido up here, and then when long-term commitment— I'm going to marry you, you're going to marry me, we're going to have kids, right, right— when that commitment hits, there's a dip in the old libido department. And it looks like this for men and women both. Yeah, dips down a little bit. Now for men, for the rest of the relationship, for most of us, not all of us, that libido kind of maintains, doesn't it? So things that I say to illustrate this point is like a guy could have the worst day at work ever, uh, he may be getting fired, he— this horrible thing may have happened, is Whatever. Picture like really, really stressful day in this guy's life, and he comes home to a wife, and the wife says, "I know what you need, mister. Let's go to bed." He'll be like, "You got it," right? That's probably majority of men be like, "Let's do this," because at baseline he has that libido that is always just kind of boiling under the surface. It's a flame that's always burning. Pilot light is always on. And, um, but for the woman, it's not so much. As long-term monogamy, comfort, stability, familiarity sets in in a relationship, especially after monumental things such as— I'm keeping with this libido level— goes down a little bit with commitment. I'm married to you, you're not going anywhere, goes down even more. And let's have some kids. For some, it just completely falls off the cliff and it's gone. It's horrible as, as that is to say. You haven't even seen any of that yet, my friend. You haven't seen the— have you moved in together? Have you married? No, you're still here. You're supposed to be kind of still humming along and enjoying this honeymoon phase, as we call it. But you're like, no, I'm here, but she's already down here. Uh-oh. And you haven't had the marriage and the kids yet. Uh-oh. That doesn't bode well for the physical intimacy department. Now, some men hear that and go, that's actually not that big a deal to me, dude. Well, cool. No, more power to you if you're that way. Great. But a lot of men are not that way. A lot of men see that physical intimacy thing as being like paramount, hugely important thing in their life. We understand wife just had a baby, and for the next few, 3, 4, 5 months, whatever, it's going to be down here. Cool, I get it, because her body's recovering hormonally, she's changing. I'm not some dickbag who's going to force myself on the woman. I understand these things happen. Some monumentally horrible thing, her mother died, or I understand. Hands off. Cool. That's not a time for physical intimacy. She's not wired like I am. That's just the way it is. But prolonged month after month after month, year after year, that's not good. And if you're already seeing that, my friend, uh-oh. Now, another possible uh-oh in this is if Brendan, you go to— let's call her— do we want to call her fiancée? I don't know. Is that right? That's for the sake of argument. If you go to fiancé now and say, I'm, I'm not feeling good about something, and here's what it is, here's what I'm feeling very uneasy about with our relationship— if you can't have that conversation now and hash it out like two adults and come to some kind of compromise solution— let's go talk to somebody, maybe we need to go out more together, maybe, are, are you depressed Lady, or lady, let's call her Sally, or Depressed Sally, or Sally, maybe this, this is kind of, maybe the, for you, the, the new relationship honeymoon feelings have dissipated, and this is kind of who you are. You're kind of a low libido person. Is that, would you say that's fair, Sally? That's kind of how you are. Oh, well, good to know. Oof, I don't know if this is going to work, that extra little, I don't know if this is going to work. That's the tough part, isn't it, Brendan? And others. It's like, well, I don't want to go there because I love the woman. I understand, but you asked, so this is bothering you. This is potentially a big deal. And, um, I guess you have to decide how big of a deal it is because it'll probably get worse from here in that regard. Other things may improve, but that physical part may just— dude, it may just die completely. Um, but it's not a good— not a good sign, my friend. What do you think about that, hearing that out loud? And as Eric is saying here, you ignore this shit, man, this just gets worse. It's true, this, this will just get worse. Whatever little red flag it is, especially this physical intimacy thing. Yeah, um, yeah, I did a, um, uh, was it a meeting or— I can't remember, it may have been a live— where a new analogy I used, and this isn't anything I made up The analogy is something I made up, but the, the, the, um, phenomena is not something that I made up. There are, uh, pardon me if you've heard me say this a million times, it's getting to the point where I'm annoying myself by repeating myself over again. I need new material. But there are authors who have authored books on this subject as well as related subjects, such as Esther Perel, who was a psychotherapist, a woman, hence the name Esther, and She wrote a book called Mating in Captivity, and there's another book by a gal named Wednesday Martin who wrote a book called Untrue. And, um, a lot of other anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and so forth, a lot of women who are pointing out, yeah, there's a very real phenomenon of once safety and security come into the picture, eroticism, overt sexuality goes out. So the little metaphor, I guess you could say, that I use is You have a home and it's filled with sexuality, eroticism, all that stuff that we love as men in the early stages, right? And there's a front door and a back door. As comfort, security, stability, safety come in the front door, it pushes some of that eroticism, sexuality out the back door. Not for everybody, but for the majority of people, we can say, yeah, it's kind of a thing. And again, books have been written on the subject. So when men try to overtly bring back some of that sexual and erotic energy into a relationship, women are like, I'm kind of scared that we're going to lose some of those safeties. So when he tries to bring it into the— from the back door and bring it back in the house, she's worried that it's going to kind of push the safety and security and everything else kind of out the front door. And she has a point to worry because it's true. Some horrible examples of this are, as a man, let's say he goes from 100 pounds overweight to losing a bunch of weight and looking like a Greek god. He goes from $50,000 a year job to hitting it big, and he got a big career change, and now he's making a half million dollars a year. So he's looking great, he's got a lot of money. I, I use these two extreme examples to illustrate the point that he now has a lot of options mate-wise that he didn't have before. As horrible as that is to say out loud, we can all agree, yeah, probably, right? He takes his new self out into the dating market, he's going to get laid, he's going to get a lot more attention from women. And wife inherently knows this, which may be in turn why she's kind of nervous about, why are you going to the gym so much? Why are you dressing so much nicer? Why are you losing all this weight? Because she's worried you're gonna be Mr. Sexy again, and that's gonna shove me right out front door. And, um, and she's right, so that there's a higher chance of that happening as a result, because we know a good predictor for, uh, infidelity, for example, in men is frankly how many options does he have. Another thing is the higher testosterone in men, the higher chances of infidelity. These are not nice things, they're not very pro-male things, but if we can't look at these facts, we can't be honest with ourselves as men. Sorry, that's the way it is. So it's always a delicate balancing act of that back and forth, in and out of the bringing in the safe and comfortable but maintaining the sexy. To do that dance consistently, it looks like this. It's always a back and forth, back and forth. We got our date nights and the weekend away from the kids, but hey, we're back with the kiddos, gonna reintroduce that. Um, somebody got sick, somebody lost the job, well, that really bring— we got to really focus on safety and security and stability. Hey, everything's great now. Somebody lost 100 pounds, bringing the sexy back in. Um, it's always a back and forth, a seesaw type of thing, and that's very, very difficult for a lot of people. And what I've seen is probably majority of people in my life that I have known have just thrown out the sexy erotic completely and said, that's just done. We're just a couple of overweight, comfortable, schlubby, who-the-hell-cares kind of people. It's just sitting on recliners and watch TV until we die. As horrible as that is, a lot of people live that lifestyle until one of them wakes up and says, I don't want to do this anymore. And then, oh shit, all hell breaks loose. And I've talked to men who have been on the receiving end of that wake-up. Their partner, the woman, woke up and said, I don't want to be like this anymore. I want to go to the exercise class. I want to work on my career. And the chances of divorce go up. But it's still a good thing, the balancing act back and forth. Anywho, so, um, and then Brendan says, hearing that out loud is just echoing what I probably thought already. I brought this up with her, but she doesn't seem bothered and would rather ignore the problem than come up with a solution together. Brendan, my friend, that's not good. Are you familiar with this concept of the the anxious person and the avoidant person. Psychologists do a heck of a job of labeling things, and for good reason. We want to categorize, label, and better understand and put, um, practices and things in place to help out people under said labels. And so they— somebody years ago came up with this idea of attachment. How you as a child attached to parents and vice versa dictates in part, a large part, how you attach to people later on in line, down the line, especially romantic relationships. So what I have noticed over the years, so I've said this many, many times, is, um, a lot of the guys that come to my material are guys that are really trying to work on their relationship, like the Dead Bedroom Fix book. Dead Bedroom Fix. Go to deadbedroomfix.com. Um, guys that read that book They book time with me. You can do so at help4men.com. Um, they talk to me one-on-one. They join our men's group. They're really actively doing the good dude thing, which is working on the relationship. They see the value of the relationship, keeping the relationship going and making it as good as they can, and trying to fix some not so nice stuff. They're very anxious in their attachment. They're very preoccupied with the health of the relationship, which sounds great, but it can go too far. And, uh, they become people pleaser, yes men, Mr. Nice Guy types. If you've read, uh, No More Mr. Nice Guy, that is a book about, um, a phenomenon we called codependency. We have a lot of codependent men in our group and so forth. And who they tend to match up with— and Brendan, tell me if this sounds familiar— is women that we call very avoidant in nature. They don't really like all the lovey-dovey stuff. They don't like to have long, drawn-out conversations about the relationship. You want to go talk to a counselor about some of our issues? Oh, I don't want to go talk to somebody about my issues. No, everything's fine. You know, we haven't had sex in like 3 months. That's kind of weird. I don't want to talk about it. No. No, um, couples don't do that kind of stuff. Just don't worry about it. It's not, it's not that important. Everything's just kind of like, meh. And the more you push and the more you pursue, the more they do this. It's always the pursuing, back off, pursuing, back off. Uh, ironically, most avoidant people in the world are men. Men are the one that are rolling their eyes going, can we stop with the drama? Can we stop always trying to talk about shit? Can't we just live in peace? Well, we have the anxious men with the women that are playing— the women are playing the avoidant role. Um, that much like with the anxious attachment, the avoidant attachment is born out of what they endured or what they experienced, as in this case, as a young girl. What we see often in the guys or in the gals of the guys in our group, for example, is they will say, my wife was the type that kind of had to take care of herself. Father, probably out of the picture. Mother, can't really depend on her all that much, so she had to take care of herself. And she— a lot of these men say she kind of excelled at that. She hyper-excelled as a student, as a career person, and all this other stuff. Very hyper-independent, I'll take care of it type person. And they're not the most loving human beings in the world. They're not the most loving, schmoozy, cozy, lovey-dovey, as we say, kind of individual. Maybe a little bit at the beginning of the relationship, enough to fool Mr. Anxious into thinking, "Yeah, I found a good one." And then as the comfort and stability— there comes that— as the comfort and stability, that I say sexual and eroticism for her, also just the schmoozy, lovey stuff goes out the back door. As the comfort and stability comes in the front door. And, um, the only way this gets better, Brendan and others that find yourself in this dynamic, is if the avoidant person says, I got a problem, I need help. Um, my, my makeup as far as my attachment— they probably don't know that vernacular— my personality is such that it keeps A lot of my insecurities and problems from childhood bubble to the surface, and it kind of ruins my romantic relationships. I keep losing good people like Brendan here. I'm pretending I'm your, your significant other, so I need to work on that or else I'm going to lose him or any other future people. I got problems. And I see Brendan over here, he's trying, he's going to this DSO guy's live streams and asking questions, he's buying books, he's doing all this, he's trying to fix and become a more secure version of himself to become a better husband. I kind of need to the same. That's what it takes. But Brendan, buddy, that's really freaking rare. Like, I don't know what percentage, but it's point something percent. I'm sorry, it really is, because their nature is such that it prohibits that vulnerability. To get to that point, to say I need help, is hugely vulnerable. It's usually like not independent. It is saying help. It is extending a hand saying, will you help me please? To a therapist, to a loved one, to a family member, whatever it may be. And that's very— ugh— they don't like to do that. So to go to a therapist and really open up about this stuff— let me tell you about my mom, dad— it's no, it's very anti-them. They don't do that. So it's a giant leap of faith, and it's really, really hard for them to do that. Now, what may help is that they have a partner who is now more secure. Now they feel a little bit more comfortable in doing so. For some are lucky From what I've determined is that this avoidance, for example, kind of exists on a spectrum. Some people are super, super avoidant, some just a little bit. For those that are just a little bit, they tend to respond better to a guy who's more secure, more manly, if you want to say that. He extends his hand, she takes it, and he's like, come over here to the secure side, and she follows him, and everything goes well, and she's much more open and bubbly, feminine, loving. And the guy goes, this worked, this is great. From what I've seen, they're in the minority. Um, it seems that those that are more so avoidant, just— they don't— when you extend the hand, they pull theirs back and say, I don't think so, mister. Nope, I'm not doing that. It sucks, but it is what it is. And that does not get better with time, and that certainly doesn't get better after kids. And you bring that up when there's comforts, familiarity, comfort, familiarity, safety, security comes in that front door, all that lovey-dovey stuff goes out the back door. And it's gone. And the back door is shut, locked, deadbolt nailed shut. It ain't ever coming back, unfortunately. Unfortunately, I'm sorry to say that. But if she's willing to work on it, I don't know, we'll see. Maybe. I have a wife and 2 kids, says Joe from YouTube. I would like to make a career change, and she said she didn't sign up for that. Any advice? Well, you're leaving off a lot of detail here. What kind of career are we talking about? If you, if you're going from a from vice president of sales for some big corporation to I want to become a male stripper. I can see your point. I sincerely doubt that's what we're talking about, but maybe in her mind something as drastic as that, I don't know. So tell us what kind of career change you're talking about. Maybe she's got a point here, or maybe she needs to— or maybe it's a, um, what she's doing is just a reflection of her insecurity, her very natural fear of change. Nothing wrong with that. You know, my spouse came to me— my spouse is a physician, by the way— if she came to me and said, I don't want to be a surgeon anymore, I think I want to be, um, a barista at Starbucks, I'd be like, okay, there goes everything about our life is changing completely. Oh, so you're an airline pilot now, or you want to become one? You just say airline pilot. Keep going, Joe, help us out here, help us understand. Pretend like you're talking to a 12-year-old and explain because we don't know all the little detail, and all the little details matter. Pardon me while I take a drink of my sody. Chipotle, folks, lunch of choice. I eat entirely too much Chipotle. Brown rice, half the brown rice, full chicken, full steak, cheese, lettuce. That's what I do. No beans, no salsa, just so you know. Kind of paint a picture of myself. Kind of boring in that way. Protein. It's all about the protein. Waiting for Joe to kind of fill in some blanks here. Anybody else have any questions, comments, anything at all? Please don't be shy. That's what these lives are for, is to interact and talk. Brofest2026.com. Check it out. Brofest2026.com and join us. Dr. Robert Glover, Lauren the Advocate, Adam Nissensohn, myself, and others. We're gonna be hanging out. In Louisville, Kentucky for a weekend. We would love for you to join us Friday, Saturday, 27th, 28th of March, 2026. Brofest.com. Kind of killing time here. Help4Men.com. Go to Help4Men.com, articles, our community. Oh, I see. So you are, you are now in heavy diesel repair but you would like to become an airline pilot. Well, if I'm playing the part of your wife— hold on, Joe, I'm wife— hold on, Joe. Do you realize what it's going to take to become an airline pilot? Do you realize the training? I assume you haven't had any of that yet. Maybe you have gone to school. Don't you have to go to a pro pilot school? Don't you have to go to professional training? Don't you have to have so many thousands of dollars to go through that training? Don't you have to have so many thousands of hours in the air to become first a private pilot and then become— get your commercial license? And are we talking like years and thousands of dollars and all this? Have you really looked into this, Joe? Do you know what that means? What brought all this on? Airline pilot? Where the hell— does this all sound familiar to you? So I mean, that's all legitimate, isn't it? She's worried about the safety of the family, and you're kind of through a and left turn and all this. I want to be an airline pilot. That's like, wow, okay, cool, but what a dramatic change from where you're at now. Or maybe, you know, you've always been flying, you have your pilot's license, I don't know. Um, all kinds of questions, Mr. Joe. Eric says beans equal protein, but beans equal something else. Eric, fill in the blanks there. I have a sensitive tummy. And I don't want to— yeah, my wife would not like it if I ate some beans, let's just say that. So I have learned over the years to just avoid the beans. I know they're healthy, all that good stuff, protein, fiber— not for me. Um, all right, wait on Mr. Joe. Um, is there anything else to talk about today? Don't forget, brofest2026.com. Hang out with myself, the rest of the HFM team, and 3 special guests: Dr. Robert Glover, Adam Nessonson, and Lauren the Dadvocate. Yes, Lauren, our friend who I will be chatting with live here tomorrow at, uh, 11:30 Is that right? No, 10:30 AM Eastern time, Eastern US time, 10:30 AM Eastern time. Tune in here to Facebook, YouTube, uh, we're gonna be on Twitter as well, I don't know, uh, live and, um, speak with Lauren and myself, ask some questions, all that good stuff. We would love to have you. All right, well, Mr. Joe, I'm patiently waiting, but you know, you may be busy. You may be actually, you know, living a life and doing more important things than chatting with me. But all kinds of questions. Um, but as you can see, that's, you know, a lot of guys are like, uh, eye-rolling, like, wife has anxiety over this and that and everything. You know, sometimes you just need to take a timeout and just put yourself in their shoes and say, you got a mom, you got kids, all this other stuff. Of course she's gonna wig out about things like that, like major career changes with her man. You know, and then you look at it further, like maybe she has a father or people in her past that have done such things and everything went to shit. Um, you know, who knows? And, um, try to better understand where they're coming from with this kind of thing. Much like you would be a little insecure too, a little bit worried too, if your wife came to you with some kind of major holy shit change in life. Um, if there's nothing else, ladies and germs, any other questions? Anything at all? Please don't be shy. If not, I'm going to call it quits. It's been about an hour, but I appreciate all of you. Thank you so much for joining me today. HelpForMen.com, check out the Brotherhood. HelpForMen.com/join. We would love to have you. Try it out for a month or two. If you don't like it, cancel, no biggie. Uh, you're not gonna have to chase us down for money or anything, or chase us down to cancel your, your membership. It's very easy to do. But I'll tell you what, one thing that works in our favor Says a lot about our group is that, uh, almost 3/4 of our membership started off as monthly and then converted to lifetime members. So they paid a big chunk up front and said, I don't want to do monthly payments anymore, but I don't want to leave. Here you go. They pay once, done. That's 3/4 of our members have said, I want to be a lifetime member. Pretty cool, love it. So it says a lot about our group. We're very proud of our group. The number of members that we lose on a monthly basis, mostly to cards that get declined for whatever reason, Very small amount, very well below the industry average as far as online memberships are concerned. We got a good thing going today. We would love for you to join us, the Brotherhood, at help4men.com/join. Let me put that up there one more time. All right, ladies and germs. Uh, oh, Joe is following up with the— his career thing. Yes, I do understand the change is immense, but I would be working while doing the other training. I would never go off and leave without income coming in. But yeah, that sounds— I mean, right away I'm like like, oh, that sounds— how are you gonna have time for family? How can you do the train to be a pro pilot while working full-time as a diesel mechanic? Maybe these are questions that have come up from the wife. Do you have a good answer for that? I mean, something's got to give. It sounds like somebody's going to burn out pretty quick. Is, uh, started following you after getting separated, says Eric. You made a post about creating traditions with your kids, in particular Taco Tuesday. Taco Tuesday is a hit with mine. Any other recommendations? Oh man, the world is— whatever you want to do. Every Friday you guys go out for pizza and movies. Every Saturday morning you wake up and make pancakes. All kinds— these are all food related, aren't they? It's very American of us. No wonder we're so obese. Um, but, uh, all kinds of little things, you know, get creative with Do you ever use ChatGPT or something similar? An AI program, an AI learning language model, chat agent as they call it. Ask these kind of questions of it. You'd be surprised it comes up with pretty good ideas. So hey, ChatGPT or whatever, give me some ideas for good routine things, special occasions to do with my children as a single father or something like that. Taco Tuesday is an example. There's a good prompt and it'll come up with all kinds of cool ideas. It scours the internet in seconds, it comes back with all kinds of neat ideas, presents it to you. People don't use that ChatGPT enough. Um, and then we have Jared saying, dealing with resentment from wife's past behaviors that are fixed. Another example of— what do you mean, Jared? What you talking about? Give us an example. Because if you came back and told me like, yeah, she's a serial killer and she killed 100 people in her past, okay, that's hard to get past. If she's like, yeah, she's, you know, committed infidelity 5 times in the past and I just can't get over it, Understandable. Most people can't. That will color a relationship going forward. I don't care who you are. Um, versus, you know, maybe she was an alcoholic and she's been 20 years sober. Cool. Yeah, good for her. Um, that's maybe a little bit more forgivable, if you will, than those other two examples I gave. I don't know, all kinds of questions there. But, uh, you know, the dealing with resentment thing, you know, I talk to people who've gone down the road of my spouse committed infidelity, and any kind of therapist will tell you the same thing. You guys are going to work it out and you're going to move past this. Cool. And they will turn to the, the victim and just say, at this point, you have to move past this and realize they made a giant mistake. We're going to move forward and working together, coming back together. And then to the cheater, you're going to be patient with this person because it's going to take a while for him to get over it. It's not going to be like snap your fingers, forget about it. They're still gonna have bad days and weeks and months potentially. You're gonna have to be really, really patient as they work through the pain of all the bullshit that you did to them. Yes, you hurt them and they're gonna lash out at you and all. You're gonna have to deal with it. So, uh, that's one example of dealing with resentment. Your past— but you're talking about your past, so her resentment is towards you from wife. Okay, uh, your past behaviors with sex and expectations. So you were, um, were you needy? Were you kind of needy to the point of being extremely unhealthy about the whole world of sex and your expectations around it? Were you forcing things? Were you making her do things in her mind that were wildly uncomfortable and unhealthy? I don't know what kind of past behaviors are we talking. Help us out here. What's going on, mister? And, uh, you know, if she's just like, I don't know if I can get past this, whatever this is for her, she has every right to say that. She has every right to say, I don't, I don't know if I can do this anymore, dude. And you have every right to say— and what you should say is, I get it, I'm not going to force you to forgive me. You know, hold a gun to her head, you got to forgive me, darn it. It doesn't work that way, does it? You're like, I understand you need your time, and you may never get there. I get it. The best I can do is just show you via my my actions that I'm a new dude. So sit back and watch. And if you say you sat back and watched, um, the past 2 years and it's still not enough, I don't know what to tell you. Nothing more I can do about it. That's really all there is to it. Um, but, uh, ladies and germs, it's officially been over an hour. Once again, every time I'm about to shut down, the messages come up. So I'm going to really shut down once and for all. If you guys want to reach out to me one-on-one, you can do so. Go to help4men.com, go to coaching in the menu. You could always email me, ralph.b@help4men.com. Ralph.B as in boy at help4men.com. That's my direct email address. Or you can submit a little story or question to dearDSO.com, dearDSO.com, and I'll create a video out of it. And also for the podcast, but be as detailed as possible. And that's so we can give you a good answer back to your issue. All right guys, thank you all so very much. I appreciate you. And, uh, guess I'll catch you on the next one, which is tomorrow. That's 10:30 AM Eastern time tomorrow with Miss Lauren the Advocate. Be right back here. All right guys, have a good one. Take it easy. See you later. Thanks guys.