Why Sexless Marriages Hurt So Damn Much (and What It Really Means)

What is it about that that is so damn popular? Why did so many people buy the book? Why is it that I can post like a meme, for example, or a, um, a Twitter— I, I post on Twitter, which I have a very small audience. You can go to DadStartingOver on Twitter. Please give me a follow, twitter.com or x.com/dadstartingover, all one word. Um, and you'll see that I, I tweet on there usually in bursts, like 5, 6, 7 at a time per day. And, uh, I will take a screen capture of that tweet and then put it elsewhere, like on Facebook and YouTube community, and sometimes TikTok. I'll make a little video out of it or whatever. And sure enough, those are doing well. But if one of them does like really, really well, like reaches millions of people, it's about— drum roll— sex and marriage. Or lack thereof. From the male point of view, the complaining about I'm not getting enough. If I had to encapsulate that theme, that's it. That's the most popular thing I've ever talked about and continue to talk about to this day. Why, why, why? Jack says it's relatable. Okay, so a lot of guys can relate to the whole not getting enough thing. Now let's keep peeling back layers of the onion. Why? I'm sure guys could relate to, my car broke down. I'm sure guys could relate to, oh shoot, I forgot to put the garbage out again. You know, a lot of little life things. But why is this one thing in particular kaboom? You know, a lot of guys can relate to parenting issues. I've talked about parenting stuff, barely moves the needle when I talk about parenting. I could talk about health and fitness, important. There's a lot of health and fitness talk out there, isn't there? Plenty of YouTube channels show that it's a popular topic, but coming from me, eh, I don't know, it's interesting but not that much. Even the topic of divorce, eh, not that much. Oh yeah, let's talk about the old SEX. Well, hello, people boom, explode, and just come out of the woodwork and want to talk. And like I say, you get a post that gets 2 million people looking at it, it's like, holy crap, I'm onto something here. That's what I've been saying for the last 8, years since I wrote the first edition of that book. Wow, I'm on to something here. Why? It's, it's tapping into something, isn't it? It's that sexual intimacy between people is so damn important. And this is something a lot of people don't like to hear, but let's talk this through, shall we? Please feel free to put things in the comments. If you whittle it down to the most basic biological, psychological, whatever you want to say, basis for why two people get together. Let's strip away all the romance and all that stuff. All that stuff is great. I'm a lovey-dovey dude. Maybe you don't know that. I'm a schmoozy, cuddly, lovey dude. I love that kind of stuff. But I'm also aware enough to say, why is it that two human beings get together? Well, Mother Nature takes over. You see things you like, whatever it may be. They act a certain way that you like. Why? Why? What's the whole purpose of this? Why is the brain spinning with all these feel-good chemicals? Why is the body reacting in a certain way? Because Mother Nature wants you two to get together and make some babies. That's basically the— if you whittle it down, the whole purpose to all this, all this being relationships. Well, but Ralph, some of us take birth control. Some of us don't want to have kids. Mother Nature doesn't care. It still goes through the same mechanism, the same process. Me likey this person, fall in love. You're chemically drawn to each other. And it, for many of us, it becomes kind of a quasi-addiction. You wake up thinking about them, go to sleep thinking about them. You need that connection with them, otherwise you feel terrible. You go through withdrawals, which some of us experience, you know, after a breakup. And then for some of us, that very biological fundamental thing that drew us together, whether we consciously know it or not, that bonds us together, that allows us to grow further. Yes. As a couple, that is like a, a keystone to the whole thing, isn't it? And then that's, I was gonna say suddenly, it's usually not suddenly. I know a lot of guys like to frame it that way, but usually with a little bit of digging, you realize this has been going on for a while. Slowly but surely it whittles away to the point where even when the man— we're talking about men here— even when the man is caught up in what we call the family machine, he's so busy with kids and work and the logistics of the home and maintaining the home and keeping the wife happy, and next thing you know, birthdays and anniversaries and holidays, and he's caught up in that machine. And it, in it, that acts like the machine acts like a fog over a lot of issues in the relationship. Let's be honest, you just don't have time or energy to deal with deal with certain things, and sometimes that certain thing is the physical intimacy between the two people. But there's a tipping point where it goes from, yeah, we'll deal with that later, to holy crap, we got a problem here, something's wrong. And usually it's the dude— in the examples that I hear— the dude that is the one to go, oh, timeout, what's going on with us? What is this, dude? It's been like weeks, months, holy shit, years since we've done it. Usually you don't get to the years part and have a sudden epiphany. Usually it's the— for a lot of men, it's like month, 2 months, maybe like, you know, I don't know, after so many years of marriage. A common thing is the introduction of children. So you have like a, um, very understandable— I'm not saying this is bad, this is perfectly understandable— good thing is to say, you two, don't, don't be having intercourse after the child comes into the picture. Give it at least like 8 to 12 weeks before you guys attempt that, just for healing purposes. And mother needs to rest, and the body's going going through a lot of changes. It's just not happening, so Dad, get off of Mom, right? And the guy's like, sure, you got it. Well, sometimes that physical disconnect there leads to a further disconnect, which leads to 6 months, year, year and a half, and the guy's like, this is not good. Um, so that hurts. So basically anybody who does anything— going back to why the book and the topic is so popular— anytime you have anything that is acutely painful, as we say, something that hurts, that's something that sells, so to speak. And people love to peel back the scab, so to speak, again and again and again. They love to talk about that pain. People go pain shopping on the internet. They love to commiserate with others, to talk about how much something sucks, how much it hurts. Go to any discussion forum, the most active discussion forums are about, doesn't this suck? The economy sucks. Job sucks, stress sucks, depression sucks, sexless marriage sucks, whatever it may be. People love to commiserate about that. And, um, I happen to write a book that happens to be one of the biggest pain points for men. You know, it's right up there with death, loss of jobs, and things like that. The loss of sex in the marriage is that huge for a lot of men, especially those men, like I mentioned, The, the neurodivergent types— ADHD, autism spectrum, OCD, what else? Obsessive— I already said OCD— obsessive-compulsive, dyslexia falls under that as well, Tourette's. I don't know if you guys are aware, those are all neurodivergent conditions, and they all seem to share a lot of traits in common. Like, for example, people on the autism spectrum, the majority have also ADHD. So anyway, um, those guys tend to be very, very sensitive to this kind of stuff, and they tend to be— not always A lot of them kind of hypersexual. They need that connection, that dopamine hit. They need that. So to them, it's extra, extra painful when their drug goes away. Here's the, the thing though, for a lot of those people, those men, there's an extra layer of complexity on top of this. And that layer of complexity is, um, shame. A big thing, especially in some of your more All religious-based conservative societies is there's a lot of shame involved in sexuality, in male sexuality in particular. There's a big message in a lot of circles of we need to control these dudes, they get out of hand, um, they may commit, you know, crimes via their sexuality. I'm trying to avoid a certain word that for some reason social media doesn't like and they will penalize you for saying it. Starts with an R. Obviously it's a horrible, terrible thing and anybody does that should be punished forever and ever. But that's a very, very small, small portion of men that commit such, such acts. Yet we all seem to be paying the price for those few dudes, don't we? And so we're all told, like, don't go down that road. Okay, okay, let me temper my sexuality so I don't become this violent, awful creature. Even though that may not be in some of us, we, we act as if. On top of that, um, it's once we are married, paired up with somebody, and we have children— that's the huge next, next step— we are told again and again, either directly or indirectly, we have a lot more important things to worry about than whether or not— whether we're getting it on or not in the bedroom. Um, that's like the least of your concerns. We got to keep this kid alive, keep this wife alive, keep this roof over our head. Sir, if you are— this is the message that we get from a lot of people, just look in my comments on my social media pages, sir, if you are so concerned with that, you got a problem. You could be a sex addict. You could be some kind of deviant crazy person who needs to get your priorities in line. Shame, shame, shame, shame on you for even having those thoughts. And so men are like, well, shit, I guess I better temper my urges, or at least hide them from everybody. I don't want everybody to think I'm some kind of monster. So they hide them or they push them down. What I've seen is when you, you know, try to think of like a Oh, like a bubble, like, like a, yeah, air or something, a fluid-filled sack of something. And you got a bulge over here and you push down and sure enough it pops up over here. So if you try to suppress something as strong, biological, ever-present as a sexual desire here and push it down here, it's going to pop up elsewhere. And what we've seen is it pops up in terms of men getting addicted to things like pornography Or even going to things like sex workers, which is huge, you know, like OnlyFans and those types of pages. That's sex work. It's been around forever since the beginning of time. It's just that it's getting more prevalent thanks to technology. Um, so we suppress, doesn't do anything, it just pops up elsewhere. Men go nuts. That, that pressure has to get released in some way. Uh, and yes, affairs. I know men hate to hear this, but every piece of data that we have seems to indicate that men, yes, since we've done such studies, um, tend to commit infidelity more so than women. Doesn't mean men are bad, men are evil, whatever, but I think some of that tendency in long-term monogamy towards a lessening of sexual connection with their spouse probably, um, contributes to that, wouldn't you say? So anyway, um, we could suppress We could shame, we could hide it. All this stuff leads to not very good behavior. And from what I've seen, on top of all this, the dead bedroom thing, the sexless marriage thing, is what we call the canary in the coal mine for deeper issues. It's usually not just the sex. This is something a lot of men don't like to hear. But guys, if you're already pissed off and throwing your computer mouse down or whatever, hear me out. Let's talk this out, all right? Um, it may not necessarily— I'm not necessarily saying, you dude, you dude, you're bad, bad, bad, you need to do something better in order to earn the reward of sexual connection with your wife. Not necessarily. It could be some of you have dropped the ball in some very basic, um, rules of animal attraction between two people. I can't tell you how many women have told me that their man doesn't practice good hygiene and she's really grossed out. She tells the guy like, do this very basic hygiene thing, dude, what the hell? And he's just like, meh. I'm like, really? You know, I hear that, you know, 5, 10, 100 times. Eventually I get the picture. There's a lot of dudes out there that are kind of dropping the ball in the old hygiene department. I don't know what that's about. That's gross. Please stop. I'm talking to guys out there, but So we have that, or basic things like not staying in shape, or basic things like not sticking up for yourself, not any boundaries, whatever, dear, yes, dear, whatever you say, dear. Not attractive, these kind of things. Being a very anxious dude is one of the most unattractive, unappealing things there is. I recently did an interview which will be going up here shortly as soon as we get it edited with Adam Lane Smith. He's what I call the godfather of attachment. If you read about attachment theory online, Adam's the dude. Just Google Adam Lane Smith and sit back and prepare just for all kinds of cool content all about attachment theory. We always talk about avoidant people and anxious people and so forth, but he says that, um, that needy, anxious, hyper-pursuing, Mr. Nice Guy, boundaryless persona that some men have in relationships, by his estimation— trying to remember, I don't want to lie here— but he said something to the effect of is the most unattractive archetype for a mate, a male mate. If you want to say, how can I be the most unattractive possible? That's it. You need to put forth those. And some men do that. We just kind of fall into that pattern thanks to our childhood issues, which is what I'm getting at. Dead bedroom, you know, the little thingy up on the shelf that we're looking at going, oof, that's ugly, I don't want to look at that. Yeah, but you need to look at that. You need to pull that thing off the shelf and study it. Said, what's going on here? This is the side effect or result of a cascading series of events that probably started back when you were a little boy. Believe it or not, you sat back and watched how Mom and Dad interact with each other, which in turn— and by the way, that happened for what, years, maybe even decades? And you got a front row seat. How to act, how two people act together, how two people love each other or don't. And then you take that into your relationships in the future and it determines who you pick for a girlfriend, who you pick for a wife, what you put up with and don't put up with, what you do when things go tough, go bad, da da da. And a dead bedroom or sexless marriage is one of many, but it's probably the most painful for a lot of you guys. Thing that indicates something is foundationally broken here. Sometimes, yes, y'all just picked the wrong damn woman. That happens. Women pick the wrong damn man all the time. We're not immune to this. But keep peeling back the layers of the onion. Why did we pick the wrong gal? We're broken. We got problems. So this— I keep using the wrong hand— this book behind me, Dead Bedroom Fix. Addresses the biggest pain point for men in relationships, but I'm hoping what it is is a gateway towards a better understanding of a more holistic approach to how to become a better dude overall up here. And the rest of you too. Um, that's what I hope you get at with this. This gets you in the door of something like our group, The Brotherhood, help4men.com/join. Just go to help4men.com, click on the links to The Brotherhood. And you'd be part of a community of men that are trying to figure all this shit out. And what most of us figure out is, yeah, this started when I was an itty-bitty boy, and here I am now. But if you have that realization and you do the work to fix things, whether it's by me, Adam Lane Smith, or whoever it may be— Dr. Robert Glover, No More Mr. Nice Guy, or all of the above, which a lot of guys do, they take in all this stuff Guess what? You know, there's like a hierarchy of dudes, right? The pyramid. I often talk about the pyramid. The tippy top are those few men that do— the few men that get all the riches, so to speak. And that doesn't necessarily mean money. It could mean riches in terms of just happiness in life. Yes, women. Yes, monetary achievement. Whatever it may be. So whatever discipline you can think of, there's always the pyramid, and there's always a few that seem to get most of it. And then as we go down, the base of the pyramid represents the majority of people who get Jack shit. Don't get anything. If you are a dude who says, "Timeout, I gotta work on some stuff. Let me put some genuine effort towards getting better at whatever." Your relationships, whatever it may be. Guess what? Whatever discipline you're talking about, you're the top of the pyramid. Congratulations. Because nobody does that shit. Nobody. Everyone just says, "Nah, they're caught in the machine, the family machine, the life machine. Nah, I don't need to worry about that." So congratulations, guys watching this, because you're probably like most dudes that are proactive about trying to get better. A lot of people online telling you that you guys don't exist. I talk to you every single day, so pat yourself on the back. You're not some pitiful little whatever that you think— you may think you are. You got a lot going for you, dude. So there's your rah-rah speech for the day.