In this conversation, Ralph Brewer examines a recurring theme in his audience comments that women lack accountability, especially when confronted with criticism about appearance or attitude. He describes two informal social‑media experiments where he asked men and women how they would respond if a partner said they were not physically attracted or had a bad attitude. The results showed a stark gender split: roughly 87‑90% of men responded positively, indicating willingness to change, while over 90% of women responded dismissively, telling the partner to "go fuck yourself." Brewer repeated the experiment with neutral wording and obtained similar outcomes, suggesting a cultural pattern rather than wording bias. The discussion then shifts to possible explanations, including a claim (attributed to Jordan Peterson) that women absorb negativity ten times more than men, and observations that women may feel overwhelmed or defensive, especially as mothers. Brewer also explores the distinction between love and attraction, noting that many men seek to regain their wives' attraction by improving physical fitness, while women often look for external reasons for a loss of sexual interest, rarely attributing it to themselves. Throughout, Brewer emphasizes that his audience is not representative of the general population but reflects a subset of people seeking relationship advice. The conversation highlights the perceived accountability gap, its impact on intimacy, and the importance of honest communication and self‑care in maintaining attraction.
Chapters
I've seen a lot of trends come and go in my comments. You know, I post a lot of videos, hundreds and hundreds of videos and articles and so forth, and you'll see comments and you start to see trends. You know, for a while there it was all wives are borderline, you know, the borderline personality disorder thing that came and went. You don't see that much more. Now we've moved on to narcissist. And one that I hear a lot of is the accountability thing, which is women just don't have accountability. Oh, God forbid a woman, you know, say, yeah, you're right, I'm a little at fault here when it comes to this. You know, these stereotypes don't just fall from the sky. There's something to that when men say that it's tough for women in our lives to say— it seems from our perspective, it's tough for women in our lives to say, I'm sorry, I apologize, or God forbid, yeah, you're right, my bad. We don't hear that very often as men. We don't hear that very often.
I'm wrong.
Yeah. And I did— I don't know if you saw, I did some videos, one of which went pretty viral. It got like 7 million views or something like that. And it was I did two videos where I said, one for men and one for women, what if your partner came up to you and said, I don't like how you're looking physically, I'm not turned on right now, this is not working for me, you need to do something about this. And I said, one for men, one for women. And the men, 87— I'd like tabulated all these— 87% of the responses are what I would call positive in nature, which was like, oh shit, I better work on this, I don't want to lose my wife. What do I got to do? Sorry about that, yada yada, hit the gym. You know, men take it their mission to lose a bunch of weight. And then 90+ percent of the women said, go fuck yourself, I don't have to do anything. And that was very alarming to a lot of people, like, oh wow. And then the excuse was, well, and this is perfectly valid explanation, well, Ralph Brewer, how you worded the two videos, what they weren't exactly like. Um, it could be argued I was a little nicer to the, to the men, but But on the women's side, I accidentally threw in the bit about, you know, ever since we've had children, you've really let yourself go. And women said, oh, that's what a way to push a button in women. You shouldn't have said that. So I said, okay, cool. So I waited like 6 months and I redid the experiment and I made the videos exactly the same. I didn't make any mention of babies or anything like that. And the results were pretty much the same. Women saying, go fuck yourself. We don't have to do anything. I was like, well, that's not good. Let's do a different one about attitude. Ladies, your attitude stinks. Men, your attitude stinks. And the men, your attitude stinks didn't really get much of a response at all, good or bad. It was mostly positive, like, well, I guess I better shape up, because I think men are used to hearing that. Like, you're kind of a grumpy asshole, cut it out, mister. But the women were, again, go F yourself. I don't, don't you realize I'm overstressed? I'm over this. I'm way overwhelmed as a mother. I really don't need to hear from my husband. You got a shitty attitude. So, you know, you can take that little comment and shove it, mister. So we're like, well, does this point to a lack of accountability on the part of the women? Is that a cultural thing? What do you think's going on here?
Women as a whole, I actually heard this from Dr. Peterson, Jordan Peterson. And he said that women experience negative emotion or take in negativity at a 10 times greater rate than men. And so I do think that plays into it. But ultimately, I, I don't understand why us women are like this. And I am— I consider myself like a very goal-driven type of female. I always like to improve and constantly be trying to do, you know, what's best, trying to be the best wife that I can be for my, my husband. And I don't know if that's just because I'm just very goal-driven I don't think most females are like this. We just, we, we have a hard time no matter how soft or kind or loving you could do the whole sandwich method where you say a compliment at the beginning and then you, you deliver the blow in the middle and then the compliment at the end. No matter what, there's going to be backlash. What you guys have to realize though is that what needs to be said in your relationship needs to be said. So if there is a concern, a lot of guys, what I think is the problem is that they just won't say it. And I always say guys got to get over this. You just have to get over this. There's going to be some backlash. And women do have this false notion that we just should be loved no matter what. And I disagree with that. Now, now, of course you want to be loved. Maybe, maybe I should retract that. Let me rewind because yes, your husband should love you. However, you should also notice that attraction is different from love. He might still love you, but he cannot be attracted to you. He might still love you but not be proud of you, not be proud to have you by his side. So there's a very different, in my mind, of, hey, not only do I want my husband to love me, love me, I want him to be proud of me, I want him to be attracted to me. And, and I think that's where maybe if we had the women dissected a little bit down, of course a man should love you, no I wouldn't say no matter what, but he just might not be attracted to you anymore. And that's a whole different topic.
Mm-hmm. And that is something that I pointed out that, um, and I got a lot of backlash on this, but this is, I have to preface it by saying my audience, the people that I talk to, it is not representative of the society as a whole by any stretch of the imagination. So of the subset of people that are attracted to my material and are wound up enough to comment or actually reach out to me via direct message or email. The general theme I get is one of, hey dude, this is a— your wife is not attracted to you anymore. Um, what do you think of that? In the general reply from some of these men, and a lot of these men are what we call kind of anxious in nature, is like, oh crap, what can I do to fix? And they will research the hell out of it, read every book, podcasts, YouTubes, and everything else to try and, you know, build a bridge between he and the wife. While the wives often come to me and say, I don't get it, my husband doesn't want me sexually anymore, for example. I've checked his phone for porn. I've checked his phone for, you know, possible affairs and everything else. What a lot of these women do is look for outside reasons for why this disconnect is happening. Because in their mind, surely it ain't me.
It can't be me.
Can't be me. Um, again, that's not a representative of the general population, but that's of the women that reach out to me. That's the general message I get. And I have to tell them, you know, I'm sorry, this may be heartbreaking to you, but some of that shallow stuff matters. Looks, attitude, femininity, bubblyness, you know, are you a supportive, um, positive person to be around? Are you taking care of yourself physically? And women don't take that too well. Well, no, I've gained 80 pounds since I had the children, but you know what? That shouldn't matter. Are you trying to tell me, Ralph Brewer, that matters? Because if it does, he's an asshole. I'm like, I'm sorry, it does. It matters. And I say the exact same thing to dudes. You've let yourself go, mister. You know, the example I often give is I talk to a guy who was a Division I collegiate swimmer. So talk about top of the heap looks-wise, athletic-wise, he really looked the part. And that was a big reason why There was an initial attraction between his wife towards him. Like, wow, I got this tall, hunky swimmer guy. And then he gets married and he's like, I don't have to do that shit anymore. And gains a ton of weight and just becomes this boring schlub of a husband. And he's like, how come we don't have that much of a connection anymore? I'm like, well dude, maybe you need to go back to some of the old you. He's like, oh yeah, never really thought of it that way. You're right. And he worked out himself, lost a bunch of weight, and voilà, the wife said, I got my husband back. And that does it. How often does that happen? Maybe not that often, but it's out there. It's a story I hear quite often, but I don't hear it much flip-flopped the other way.
