In this solo segment of the Dad Starting Over podcast, host Ralph Brewer first promotes the Help for Men Brotherhood—a paid community offering forums, Zoom meetings, coaching, courses, and his books—to men feeling isolated, divorced, or stuck. He then addresses a listener, Adnor, who worries that asking a partner to attend counseling might become an ultimatum. Brewer explores the underlying fear that a partner may only agree to therapy to keep the relationship status‑quo, not out of genuine desire to change. To illustrate, he recounts a case of a self‑identified “alpha‑male” husband who mechanically performs affectionate gestures after counseling, lacking warmth, which fuels his wife’s resentment. Brewer emphasizes that authentic change in such personality patterns is slow, often requiring years of repeated practice, and that both partners must be patient and committed to the long haul. He advises men to evaluate whether their spouse’s participation is sincere, to persist in finding a competent marriage counselor (highlighting the rarity of truly good ones), and to understand that counseling is a multi‑year process rather than a quick fix. Throughout, he balances promotional messaging with practical relationship guidance, urging listeners to join the Brotherhood for support while offering concrete steps for navigating counseling dynamics.
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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 helpformen.com/join. I look forward to seeing you in the next member meeting. Adnor from YouTube says, with respect to seeking couples counseling or getting my significant— significant, pardon me, other to get individual counseling, it seems like it would not be great to have this be part of an ultimatum where either that or we split. It would not be great to have this as part— so, okay, so let's back up here. Adnor, uh, you're talking to your gal. There's just all kinds of problems. You finally have the heart-to-heart where like, hey, we both know this ain't working. This is— this has been, you know, chaos and nonsense for years. Um, pardon me. Uh, it seems that they would do it just to kind of kick the can down the road versus them really— okay, so this is a really good point, Adnor. What you're saying is if I tell them we need to go get help and then they do go get help with you, counselor, joint counseling, separate, whatever, there's always that thought in the back of your mind— correct me if I'm wrong, Adnor— there's always that thought in the back of your mind where you're like, the only reason they are doing this is to kick the can down the road, keep this relationship machine humming along. They don't genuinely want to change. They don't genuinely want to fix things. They don't genuinely have desire for me and for the relationship. They don't love me in that way. They're just doing that to keep the status quo. Am I, am I right, Adnor? It's difficult to communicate with these things. You're always waiting for the next comment and response. But did I kind of nail that? I'll continue that line of thought, and I've talked about this before. Um, it's not exactly fair to your wife. I don't know your situation exactly. Probably go back You've said your name here. I didn't share your name with the people in the video here, but, um, I could probably go back and look at some of your posts in our group. Adnor is a member of our private group, the HFM Brotherhood. Uh, I could probably go back and get a flavor for what it is you're talking about or a better feel for your situation. He says, right. Okay. So, um, it's not exactly fair to the person who's being preached at, talked to by the other person. I'm not saying what you're saying is bad by any stretch of the imagination. So Here's the situation. Um, I will, I will flip the genders and give you a real world example so we can kind of wrap our mind around this. A lady reached out to me and we chatted. We had a one-on-one session. Happens once in a blue moon. Ladies reach out to me, they want the male perspective on things. And she was with, and I've mentioned this before, excuse me if you've heard this story, um, very quote unquote alpha male tough guy. And he's always been Alpha male, tough guy, which often what goes along with that is kind of an avoidant, I'm not really a very emotional romantic guy in that way. I'm more of your alpha male tough dude, you know, firing machine guns in the air, drinking whiskey out of the bottle kind of guy. That's my thing. And to some women, that's like, oh wow, that's what I like. I like that hyper-masculinity. I like that aloofness. I like that strong guy that I can depend on kind of dude. But unfortunately, give and take here, yin and yang, uh, positive and positives and negatives that go along with that. One of the negatives for this gal that talked to me was this guy doesn't have a romantic bone in his body. Um, he, you know, if we're sitting next to each other on the couch, he does not put his arm around me. He does not hold my hand when we're walking. He doesn't do, you know, fill in the blank here. We went to counseling. He was okay to go to counseling. He's like, sure, whatever you would like. And they go and the counselor's like, You have to kind of, you know, walk before you run. You have to get into the habit of doing these kind of things. Mister, when you sit down with wife, you need to consciously remind yourself, oh yeah, sit down, put armor on wife. She likes this stuff. And you do that hundreds of times and it eventually becomes normal. Well, at the early stages of this, uh, change in the man, or the attempted change in this man Sure enough, they sit on the couch next to each other and she's kind of looking over at him and you can see he's like, oh, oh yeah, and puts his arm around her. And she's like, it was very cold, there was no feeling behind it. And it built up resentment in her because she's like, the only reason he's doing this is because we went to this counselor and the counselor suggested it. There's no feeling behind this, he doesn't want to do this, this is not natural to him. And we're walking, you know, side by side, he reaches over and grabs my hand, but I can see it's very cold and robotic to him. There's nothing to this, there's no warmth, there's nothing It's like just holding a statue's hand. It's his arm around me. It's just, it's a major turn-off to her. And I said to her, I go, that's not really fair. You want to be in this relationship or not? That's who you got. That's who he is. And to change that means a very real personality change in him, which is not going to be quick. It's going to take time. That's a very stereotypical, uh, female thing, although that's not necessarily fair, but we see it a lot in our ladies, which is It doesn't matter that you did that thing because I know deep down inside you don't want to do that thing. So a woman goes to her man and says, would you go to brunch with me? When you want to go antique shopping, you want to do all this? And the guy's like, oh God, I'd rather pull my teeth out than do something like that. But he's like, yeah, if that's what you want to do, sure, I'll go with you. Then he goes, and the whole time he's like staring at his phone or looking at his watch, and he's just not there. He's not, he's not You know, it's obvious he doesn't want to be there. And the wife says to him, could you do a better job of pretending you want to be here? I mean, come on, Jesus, dude. And the guy's like, if you're waiting for me to act like I want to be here, don't hold your breath. I don't want to be here. The only reason I'm here is for you, okay? You're asking me to fundamentally change who I am. I don't like going to brunch and antique shopping and all this other stuff. I'd rather go, I don't know, deer hunting or riding his motorcycle or insert some stereotypical male thing here, right? This is not my thing. I'm doing this for you, doing this because I love you. To expect me to put on a good face— I'm trying, you know. Dude who goes antiquing and brunching probably needs to do that a good 100 more times before it kind of feels more natural to him, and then maybe she'll be more happy with his demeanor. Same thing goes for this, that. So same thing for a wife. If I take her to this thing and she's like, okay, I'll go, You can't then turn around and go, well, we know how this is going to go. This is just going to be a bunch of horseshit, and you're going to want to go, and you're just going to sit there and stare at the ceiling, and you're going to, you know, file your nails while the lady's talking, and you're not going to be into this. This sucks. You're just doing this to kick the can down the road. You can't have it both ways, dude. Do you want to go to counseling or not? If so, you're going to be patient. I just keep preaching this to dudes over and over again to the point of annoying myself. This ain't gonna probably be fixed in 6 sessions, dude. This may be like a multiple year thing. One year after year one, you're like, I think we're making progress here. Year two, we're doing really good. You know, that's what it's gonna take. Are you in it for the long haul? Because that's what it's gonna take, dude. Um, so if, if there's hope for the marriage counseling to work, and what the Sith points out here, he doesn't believe in marriage counseling. Well, a good marriage counselor, as I often say, is worth their weight in gold. A good one. How rare are good ones? We probably find a good one in every major city somewhere, but you gotta, you know, look at the reviews if there's such a thing. I don't know, the reviews online, meet with them, and you couple after a couple of meetings, and this one's not for us, that's fine, go find another one until you get the one you like. During that process of counselor shopping, you may lose each other in the process, but you and the spouse. But anyway, um, a really good one is really good. They're a mediator, they're a go-between, they're the person that's kind of, "No, no, let this person talk, go ahead," and, "No, no, what you said was very hurtful, go ahead," you know, that kind of thing. You need that person, and, you know, I've seen this before, here are some things to try between the two of you. Sometimes it's a miracle worker for some people, really is, if it's a good person, you know, they got a good head on their shoulders. But like with any other kind of discipline or job, that's, dare I say, kind of relatively rare. You know, I don't care if it's a plumber or if it's a counselor or something, finding a really, really good one, it's tough. But they're out there, so let's not throw an entire industry under the bus just because you've had a couple of bad experiences.
