Ralph Brewer warns newly divorced men against jumping into hookups, saying the anxious need for sex after a dead-bedroom marriage usually backfires into drama and legal trouble. He argues that even tough guys need real connection, and rushing intimate relationships before healing leads to unhealthy dynamics. His advice: pause, heal, and find community support first.
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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. Jason from YouTube says, what do you think about hooking up? He puts parentheses, not dating. After the divorce goes through. Well, I'll tell you what, mister, let me preface all this by saying this. I tend to attract to my material, not all of you, but the majority of you, a type of dude that we call kind of an anxious guy, really working on his relationship, really hanging on tight, trying to research and decipher, determine how this relationship broke down and how to be a better dude, really working on himself. Some of this has very positive repercussions. Work, work, work, they get better. Um, you know, take this anxious mentality combined with being a dude, combined with being Mr. Fixer and everything, and some really, really great things can happen as a result, right? Well, when you're newly divorced and you're Mr. Anxious, there's just a storm of bullshit going on in your head. It can be argued, and this is my argument, not the best time to bring other human beings into your world. Now, especially for vulnerable intimate relationships, right? Now, the argument from a lot of dudes is intimate schmintimate. I'm just trying to get laid, dude. Like, I can bring a chick home, slam the bejesus out of her, and send her on her way, and I'll— I don't ever have to talk to her again. It's like, okay, I guess if that's your world. Not the healthiest thing in the world, be quite honest with you, but Whatever, right? As long as you're two consenting adults and you're both on the same page, then who cares? I'm not one to, you know, belittle you for that. But here's the thing, going back to the Mr. Anxious Dude thing, those dudes— it's not a knock against them necessarily, it's just what I see— tend to fall for women pretty fast, pretty easily. What was I'm just in it to get my needs met because I was in a dead bedroom marriage for so many years. I'm gonna go out and get laid, goddamn it. Very quickly becomes, okay, well, I met this chick and I know I said I wasn't going to get in a relationship, but she's different. Hear me out, dude. I've heard this countless times and I'm just on the other end going like, oh God, here we go. He's like, no, no, you understand, she's a good woman. Her dude cheated on her, left her. She's got 29 kids. She's— I'm like, oh God, here we go. It's bad. And I hear that again and again and again. So some people jump right into the deep end of the pool when it comes to relationships, and more often than not, it ends up kind of in a not-so-good scenario for the dude. He's broken, she's probably broken. That's how they got together. Two broken people getting together, even if they just want to have at it and have sex and be done with it, it usually ends up more than that. A lot of guys like to pride themselves on, I don't get attached, and I'm able to, you know, keep that disconnect. I don't catch the feels, as they say. And a lot of those guys are just flat out wrong. They're just trying to out macho their pain or whatever. And it's like, yeah, dude, you're a human being. We tend to want to bond with other human beings and come together with them. Even the most alpha male tough dudes has a chick on the back of his motorcycle, right? And it's just what we do. So you're playing with fire, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. Some men are able to navigate that. From what I've seen, the majority of my audience cannot. Um, with that being said, what percentage of guys don't listen to my advice? The ones that say I need to get laid, probably 100% of them don't listen to me, and probably 100% of them come back and go, all right, you had a point, maybe, uh, maybe I should have waited a little bit. And then they tell me the horror stories of the crazy that ensued. This woman ended up, you know, 2 AM on my front door screaming and yelling, woke up the kids, I had to call the police, and all this other stuff. And they realize, oh God, I need to stop this nonsense, I don't need to be involving myself in that crazy world. Time out, by the way, that was me, my world. Um, not necessarily the showing up at my door screaming and everything, but some not so good stuff. So anywho, I speak from experience.
