Stronger Marriage Connection

Reviving Intimacy in A Sexless Marriage: A Path Back To Connection | Ralph Brewer | #176

• Utah Marriage Comission • Season 4 • Episode 176

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We sit down with Ralph Brewer to unpack what really sits underneath dead bedrooms, infidelity, and the quiet insecurity that many men carry into marriage. We talk straight about anxious attachment, “Mr Nice Guy” patterns, and how secure, connected couples protect intimacy by building a full life instead of clinging tighter.


• Ralph’s turning point after discovering an affair and becoming a single father
• why sex and intimacy become the biggest pain point for many men
• anxious attachment patterns and pairing with avoidant partners
• novelty, long-term monogamy, and why desire often drops without intention
• nice guy codependency, covert contracts, and hidden manipulation
• boundaries as attraction, without swinging into being a jerk
• how avoidance, control, and compartmentalizing can feed infidelity dynamics
• why men isolate after divorce and what it costs mentally
• building brotherhood and male friendship as a stabilizer
• quick wins like fitness and hygiene, plus the deeper vulnerability work
• scheduling sex, date nights, and getting kids out of the bedroom
• secure independence, self-regulation, and taking ownership of your choices
• where to find Ralph at helpformen.com and Dad Starting Over

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Dr. Dave Schramm: 

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Dr. Liz Hale: 

http://www.drlizhale.com/ 

Welcome And Why Intimacy Matters

SPEAKER_05

On today's episode, Dr. Liz and I welcome Ralph Brewer to the show. In his own marriage, Ralph experienced just about everything: infidelity, divorce, and suddenly becoming a single father of three. But instead of spiraling downward, he started noticing patterns in what many other men were going through dead bedrooms, difficult divorces, and feeling lost in modern relationships. From fixing the Mr. Nice Guy trap to understanding attachment and insecurity, Ralph now helps thousands of men rebuild their confidence and direction through his courses, groups, and popular website, helpformen.com. Ralph Brewer is the founder of Help for Men and creator of Dad Starting Over, two platforms supporting men through divorce, struggling marriages, and relationship breakdowns. He's the author of five books, including his best known title, The Dead Bedroom Fix, which has earned hundreds of five-star reviews on Amazon. Through coaching programs, courses, and his private brotherhood community, Ralph offers practical tools and mentorship to help men rebuild their lives, relationships, and self-worth. We hope you enjoy the show. Hey there, friends. Welcome to another episode of the Stronger Marriage Connection Podcast. I'm Dr. Dave here at Utah State University, alongside Dr. Liz Hill, our psychologist, our therapist, we're aiming to bring you the very best that we have in research and resources, along with a few tips and tools to help you create the marriage of your dreams.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, we're going to be here.

SPEAKER_05

All right, Liz, today's topic. I'm super excited to dive into this. We know that one of the most painful struggles in marriages, whether you've been together five months or 50 years, points to emotional and sexual intimacy. Well, our guest today has experienced it all: marriage, infidelity, divorce, and becoming a single father of three. But he pushed through and studied and learned and rebuilt his life. And today he's helping thousands of men through some of life's biggest challenges. Welcome to the show, Ralph Brewer. Thank you for having me, guys. I appreciate it. All right,

Affair Discovery And Starting Over

SPEAKER_05

Ralph, before we get going, I want to hear a little bit about your story. Can you talk to us a little bit about your story? I know a lot of the work you do today seems to grow out of your own personal experiences. Can you share a little bit about what led you into this work and how your journey shaped the mission behind Help for Men?

SPEAKER_02

Sure. I'm about uh 13, going on 14 years ago now. I was married, had three little kids. Their ages were a year and a half, just turned six and just turned nine. And we were on vacation in sunny Florida. And to make a very long and painful story short, on day one of my vacation, I discovered, oh my gosh, my wife is having an affair with another man. And yeah, talk about a vacation ruiner. Yeah. So yeah, I can laugh about it now, but that was a very, very difficult time in my life. And it was, I mean, to say I was just totally caught by surprises, understatement of the year. I mean, I was just your typical boring dad on vacation with his family, and just, you know, I knew what tomorrow was going to bring and the next year and the next year, right? And then suddenly life said, not so fast, mister. And I tried all I could to keep the family together. You know, I did all the things that a lot of guys do in such cases. You know, a lot of men think uh if if a guy's in the middle of his marriage and he thinks everything's fine, and I put you pull him aside and say, What if you were to discover that your wife was having an affair? A lot of guys say, I'll throw her stuff out in the street and you know, I would, you know, divorce her immediately and go to an attorney. But no, what happens most men is they say, Can we not do this? Can we keep the family together? I'm scared. I'm I don't know, this isn't what I wanted. And I tried all of that, and basically the ex-wife's uh response at the time was, no, we're done here. And uh living in Kentucky at the time, and in Kentucky, it was basically you're separated, you just need to be so for about 60 days, if I remember right, and then you can officially divorce. And so 60 days later, I had little divorce papers in the mail, and then short time after that, we were divorced. It was boom, boom, boom, just like that. And my uh ex was going through, you could call it a midlife crisis, whatever you want to call it, however, you want to frame it, but she was going through something, and she'll be the first to tell you that too. And uh, it involved a lot of emotional disconnection, obviously from her ex-husband, but from the children as well. So that left me with the kiddos a lot of the time, and to be kind of the stabilizing, grounded force in their life. And that was very tough on me. And I was also going through career changes. I needed to make more money because over half of our income just went out the door. So it was a lot all at once. And uh I was trying to find ways to cope with this and how do I deal with this? And thankfully I didn't go to things like drugs, alcohol, and all of that. But what I did do is I kind of went back to some of the stuff I used to do when I was younger, pre-marriage and pre-kids, and some of that involved music. I got back into playing guitar again and writing. And I used to love to write as a kid. Got away from that completely after marriage and kids. And so I started a blog and I called myself the dad starting over. And I started writing on all kinds of stuff. And it got some attention, some emails here and there from guys saying the same thing, going through the same thing. And I would write on starting over with finances and physical fitness and parenting and my thoughts on marriage. And then whenever I spoke about, believe it or not, sex and marriage, my thoughts on sex and marriage, that got more attention than anything. Sex sells, right? And to the point where somebody suggested I write a book on the topic because they really liked what I had to say on this. And people would pay me for my time to talk to me and all kinds of things. So it started growing and growing, and eventually I wrote a book called The Dead Bedroom Fix. And the first edition of that came out in 2017. And I put some Facebook advertising behind it and it took off and it blew up. So much so that I wrote a second edition three years later, and then another edition after that, five years after that. And said, Did I do the math right on it? Yeah, I think so. And so it's done really well. The Dead Bedroom Fix is how most people know me from that one book. But I've since then written four other books, and all of those other books combined don't equal the sales of that. My very first book, The Dead Bedroom Fix. So for whatever reason, we can get into this, I know we will. The topic of sex and marriage or lack thereof is the number one pain point for the men that I talk to out of everything that they've endured. I mean, they've gone through divorce, they've gone through whatever it may be, illness, death of a parent, and all these other things, but they always want to talk about the sex and marriage. It's the number one thing. And so if I put out any material online, videos and articles, still to this day, number one thing by a long shot.

SPEAKER_01

And is it the lack of sex in marriage? What is that? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

From from a male, heterosexual male point of view, after the honeymoon phase passes, after we have children and everything else, the average dude will say, most guys will say, it's all right, I guess. It could be better, all the way to, oh no, we don't touch each other anymore. And this really makes me depressed and it makes me question everything. And I don't know where what I want to do with my life. Do I want to keep with this? I have children, I have the jobs, we've intertwined our lives. I can't just leave, and it's a very difficult subject.

SPEAKER_01

You mentioned a vacation ruiner finding out about your wife. I can only imagine. Was it accidental? Did you accidentally come upon it?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it was the old laptop, you know, texting and all the good stuff. It was Facebook messages were left up, and it was enough to go, what is this about? This doesn't make sense. And when I approached her with it, boom, the bomb went off and that was it.

SPEAKER_01

I did not deny it. I appreciate that because that can be crazy making.

SPEAKER_02

It's just Oh no, there was denial at first. Oh, the you know that's par for the course for these things. It's not usually like you got me. It's usually like it's not quite what you see, and then what what we call trickle truting, a little bit of little truth comes out a little bit of a time, and then kaboom. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Well, it certainly didn't ruin your life. We're we're impressed with what you've done with it, and and reaching out and making a difference for us. You you kind of found yourself again. It sounds like you lost yourself in Scepter and we hear a lot about women doing that. Men also.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, that it seems to be the the the what seems to happen is a lot of men kind of coast through life. You get caught up in what I call the family machine of kids and job and work and day in, day out, and then it takes some kind of holy poop moment, as we call it, to go, oh, I need to wake up to realize that this is not sustainable, this is not good. It could be job loss, the loss of a loved one, whatever it may be, yeah, all the way to wife, your partner says, uh, I don't want you anymore. And that makes you say, well, when you lose your job as a spouse and now you're a part-time father, who the heck are you? That's a big life questioning moment for a lot of guys. Uh gosh.

SPEAKER_01

So when you started talking with Matt and who were going through something similar, these struggles and patterns, if did you begin to notice, um, what did you begin to notice in regards to patterns in their marriage relationships?

Anxious Attachment Meets Avoidance

SPEAKER_02

I am a patterny kind of guy for sure. And that's something that you after a while you go, huh, they seem to all be a certain way, they being the guys that I talk to. So how I have over a decade plus of doing this have kind of categorized the men that approach me. It's not all men, it's not the majority of men, but men that find my material and say, I need help and join my group and so forth. We could talk about that more. I call them, I categorize them as anxious men. So they're filled with a great deal of anxiety, they're temperament, they're very anxious people, and they are very anxious in their attachment to their partner. So they're the ones that need a lot of reassurance. They're the ones that are, are we okay? They're the ones that are very sensitive to the emotions of their partner. She's, she seems to be something's wrong with her. I need to get to the bottom of what's wrong with her right now and fix this. I can't, my day is I can't go on in my day seeing that my wife is a little bit upset, that she's having an off day. This, and it drives their partners nuts. Now, ironically, who do they tend to partner up with? The polar opposite. The person we call the avoidant individual. Now, most avoidance, any psychiatrist, therapist will tell you, are men. Most avoidance are men. So the men are the ones that are rolling their eyes going, no, I don't want to talk about this anymore. Can we just exist, please? Can I just eat my meal? Can I just watch my football game, please? All this drama constantly. Well, the men that I talk to are the ones that are the dramatic ones. They're the ones that are always reaching out for reassurance. And they want a lot of physical love and connection that makes them feel better about themselves. They're very insecure at baseline. A lot of childhood trauma and so forth. So they get with a woman who's puts on the act, so to speak. We say it's an act. The women feel it genuinely at the beginning of the relationship, the old honeymoon energy. And the men love that first couple of years or so of the relationship and they want more of it, more of it. And when they see it naturally start to dip a little bit, especially after children and everything else, and age and perimenopause or whatever it may be comes to the picture, the men freak out and they don't like it and they don't take it very well at all. The men have very little in terms of coping skills and so forth. And I raise my hand and I say, that was me, to a T, which is probably why I attract all those men to my material. They see, like, hey, brother, somebody that can understand me. And we all get together and work on this. And basically, the gist of everything that I do is how to become a more secure man in a relationship.

SPEAKER_04

Very cool. We'll be right back after this brief message.

Why Desire Drops In Monogamy

SPEAKER_03

And we're back. Let's dive right in.

SPEAKER_01

So let's go back to the dad in bedroom, as you so beautifully coined that. When couples find themselves in a long-term sexual disconnect, what do you think is really going on underneath the service of the relationship?

SPEAKER_02

I think it's uh when you look at it and you put it in terms of like it's like a jigsaw puzzle with a lot of different pieces. A big chunk of the puzzle is just our natural inclination as human beings. We know for a fact, men and women both, and it could dare say be argued more so the ladies respond very positively in a sexual way to novelty, newness. And when the newness wears off, naturally the sexuality goes down. Men have a proclivity to we want a lot of sexual variety, things like pornography and sex workers, praise on that. It's multi-bazillion dollar interests for a reason. And we know, and it seems to be surprising to a lot of people that women are susceptible, maybe even more so, to the novelty response, if you will. So women on average are more likely to say, I'm not happy and my sexuality, my sex drive is down. My uh spontaneous sexual desire is next to nothing within a long-term monogamous relationship. Pull her out of that relationship into the dating scene, the uncertainty of the dating scene, maybe a brand new relationship, and she will experience a heightened sexual energy. So there is something that is not so nice, if you will, quote unquote, about long-term monogamy, is that it is not necessarily conducive to hypersexuality, definitely not what you see in the honeymoon phase, and definitely not what you see when you're out on the market for men and women both. So we have to contend with that. And we have to say it takes work to keep that energy going. And for whatever reason, a lot of people are very averse to that. And some will say there's even the messaging out there of the more work you have to put into it, all that does is illustrate that you guys weren't meant to be. Because if it's work, it should be natural. It should just be day in and day out, 24-7, lustfulness for each other. You should feel that energy. And if you don't, even if you are in your 50s and 60s, oh, it's just it's just not meant to be, it you it's time to move on to somebody else. And that's very unfortunate because you've just thrown out 99% of all long-term monogamous relationships. So that's a big chunk of it. And the other is just a lack of skills. We uh a lot of us, I can talk and or from the perspective of the guys that I work with, when you ask about their mom and dad, not a lot of love and affection there. And when you look at her mom and dad, oh, definitely not any love and affection. A lot of guys tell me, I don't, I don't think I've ever seen my wife's parents ever kiss, hug, say I love you, or anything. Just very cold relationships. And I say, Well, that's what your wife sat back and watched for the very formative years of her childhood and beyond. So it's no wonder that she's kind of the same way. So you have a lot to contend with there when it comes to keeping the spark alive in a typical marriage.

SPEAKER_01

I love that thought that if it's this difficult, something must be wrong, right? And yeah, it's just that is just how it is. That's part of part of such is life. Such is life, part of nature. Yeah. Excuse me.

Nice Guy Codependency And Covert Contracts

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, Ralph, you said that many men feel like they've done everything right, but their relationship still isn't working. What do you think are some of the most common mistakes men make when they try to fix their marriage on their own?

SPEAKER_02

Well, the men that I speak to are very codependent in nature, which means they try everything out of what we call the nice guy book of rules. Nice guy is like a slang term for a very codependent man. There's a book called No More Mr. Nice Guy by Dr. Robert Glover. If you haven't spoken to him yet, he'd be a great person for your podcast as well. He's a friend of mine. We're actually doing an event together here in a couple weeks in Louisville, Kentucky. And his book, No More Mr. Nice Guy, is probably one of, if not the best-selling self-help book for men, period, ever. And that's how big of an issue this is. A lot of guys saying, everyone throughout my whole life is telling me you're such a nice guy. And yet I can't get a girl to save my life. And when I do get a girl, they just walk all over me, and the level of intimacy is next to nothing. And you know what? When you drill down, it permeates all facets of their life. They're also the guy that's not very well respected at work. They're also the guy that friends, you know, he does a lot for friends, but he doesn't get a lot of return. And it really bugs the heck out of them. And that nice guy, codependent thing, is basically a guy with zero boundaries, never sticks up for himself, never says what it is that he wants. He's very shameful, especially about his sexuality, a lot of shame around sexuality. I dare not ask or say what it is that I want in the bedroom. That's that's filthy. And I've been told that that's an that's no bueno. You don't do that. So a lot of guys kind of neuter themselves in a relationship. And so when they see the relationship kind of go south, what do they do? They double down on everything that they think they're supposed to do. They double triple down on the nice guy behavior. So they will take over every chore in the house. They will say, wife, you just sit there and do nothing. I see that you're overwhelmed and you're very anxious and you're very stressed out. Let me do everything. Like literally everything, everything. And they will no wife, we don't have to do anything in the bedroom either. I I know that bothers you. And next thing they know, years go by and he's he's the worker, the maid, the best friend in the world, the caregiver and everything else. And he's like, How come it's not working? And it's like, well, dude, that's not how life works. You don't allow people just to walk all over you and do whatever it is they want to do, and you just have no say in anything. And they say, Well, that's what I've been told. I've been told again and again, be a nice, sweet, overly agreeable, accommodating guy with no boundaries, and the world will reward you. It's like, I'm sorry if that's what you think you've been told, but that's not how life works. And that's the energy they put into, quote, fixing a relationship. You know, when the wife says, I love you, but I'm not in love with you anymore. Well, let me triple down on being super Mr. Nice Guy, and then you'll love me, right? Because that's how this works. It's uh what Dr. Glover calls in his book a covert contract. I'm not going to tell you exactly what it is that I want in return. I just expect it from you. So when I'm a super sweet, nice giving, no boundary having guy, I expect sexuality in return. I expect this romantic relationship in return. I'm not about to tell you what exactly it is that I want, but when you don't give it to me, nice guys can also be very no um emotionally fluctuating guy. A lot of women will in their lives will tell them, You're so sweet yesterday, but today you're just pouting and stomping all over the house and being a real you know what, and what's going on with you? And he won't tell her. You just cross his arms and continue being upset. That's your very typical nice guy.

SPEAKER_01

It's just such a great reminder. It it's not unusual for men to bring that book into marriage therapy. You know, they're oh yes, oh yes, very I I learned about it, I'm sure, from clients first off. Yeah. That nice guy behavior is a hidden problem for a lot of men. It seems like Ralph, from from your perspective, what does that look like inside a marriage? Um, you gave us one example. Can you think of anybody else you've you've worked with? How it can actually really hurt rather than help a relationship. And maybe given what women could be aware of, please.

SPEAKER_02

Well, the most extreme example. This is something, and I don't know if you've run into this much in your in your show with your guests and so forth, but we're seeing it more and more. And I just did a video on this, is why it's top of mind. But this is from A to Z. This is Z as far as extreme examples. The wife comes to him and says, Um, husband, what do you think about an open marriage? And he's like, Oh, oh boy, oh no. And he's number one, scared. I this is not what I want. I love my wife. I don't want her to be with other men. Number two, he's if he's honest, a little excited about it. Oh, now I get a conga line of women. Yay, this will be great. What he doesn't say is and this applies to all these kinds of situations. That's an extreme example to illustrate the point. But it is, who are you at baseline? What are your values? What is your identity? If you're a guy who's like, no, strict monogamy is very important to me, then say that. No, wife, strict monogamy is very important to me. And if you're veering away from that, perhaps we need to rethink this relationship and maybe we need to go our separate ways. You'll never ever hear a nice guy say something like that. It is, what do I need to do to keep you around, wife? If it means going completely against everything that I've ever stood for, fine, I'll do that. So take that same mentality and apply it to every other facet of your life. Again, this applies in the workplace and everywhere else too. You just end up invariably in a spot so many years later going, How did I get here? This isn't what I wanted, usually after divorce or something like that. Now that you've been stripped of your title of husband and father, now you're a part-time father and you're not a husband to anybody anymore. Who am I? What am I? What do I stand for? How did I get here? I basically let everybody else dictate every direction of my life. And now I don't know who I am. And they have to go back to the drawing board. And it's scary, but at the same time, it's it can be real exciting. But if you're a very codependent person, you're very lost. Very lost.

SPEAKER_01

This really becomes a wake-up call. It's a good call. Yeah. Thank you for that, Ralph.

SPEAKER_05

Let's keep going with that. I mean, what what do you recommend then to men or in this Mr. Nice Guys? Really, they've all they've ever known, and when it doesn't work, they just try harder to be even more nice because it's kind of like their only tool in the in the toolbox. What do you recommend to men in healthy masculinity today? What does that look like?

Boundaries Without Becoming A Jerk

SPEAKER_02

Well, I can I could tell you what the unhealthy version looks like for many men because they kind of fall into this by themselves, whether they don't need somebody like me to say, you need to become a more secure individual. We need to get to the bottom of what the heck's going on here. I suggest therapy to get to some maybe your childhood issues at the root of what's going on here. They eventually get to some semblance of that on their own, but they do so by what? They pendulum swing all the way over to the other side. So they're Mr. Overaccommodating, no boundary having dude over here. They get their heart broken, they get divorced, the wife cheats on them, whatever it may be, and he's like, oh no. And so he swings the pendulum over here to over-the-top jerk a-hole guy who unfortunately for him, and a lot of guys in that boat say, I'll be darned. Soon as I swung the pendulum over here, I do have more luck in the bedroom department with the ladies. Let's just put that out there. That's a very real thing, unfortunately. But what they what they eventually realize is that the kind of people that they are attracting to them are not the greatest people in the world. The world. A lot of very insecure women, a lot of women with a lot of baggage and chaos in their life who is attracted to that not so nice guy. In addition to that, they realize that no, there are aspects of that personality which are actually positive, which is one of got a lot of boundaries. Oh, boundaries out the wazoo at that point. They're just like, nope, don't like it, don't want it. Next. And that is attractive to a lot of people. That's a guy who sticks up for himself. There's something to that. So there's positive aspects of that super jerk a-hole guy that we can take and apply to somewhere in the middle, the healthy ground. So over here we have Mr. Codependent. Over here we have the jerk guy, but somewhere in the middle is a guy who's not afraid to flex his jerk muscles when he has to. He's also not afraid to say, I love you. This is what I want. I'm going to make coffee for you in the morning, wife. Why? Because I love you. I'm not trying to get anything out of you. I'm going to help you and everything else. I'm doing it because I genuinely love and appreciate you. Or buys dinner for a woman, not expect anything in return. Why? I just enjoy her company, is what I do. And she says, see you later. That's fine. It's her loss. I had a good time. Well, if Mr. Nice Guy says, she says, see you later. Doesn't she realize that she needs to have date number two and three for me? I just spent $300 on a nice dinner for us. It's like, no, that's not how that works. So eventually they find themselves somewhere in the middle, and that's usually where they come to a group like ours that help for men. Is like being Mr. Jerk hasn't really worked for me. Being super nice guy hasn't really worked for me either. I need some help with this. And invariably guys realize they can't do it on their own. Just like with anything else in life, any kind of discipline or anything else. It's like I need to surround myself with kind of a group of individuals that know what the heck they're doing that have been there and done that. That's with any discipline, business or whatever it may be. And that applies to this as well, the old relationship game.

SPEAKER_01

So in a sense, that Mr. Nice Guy really has strings attached. Is that fair to say?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, they're very manipulative.

SPEAKER_01

I will do all these lists of things. Yeah. I really appreciate you saying that because I don't I don't think those good guys see themselves as manipulative. So it's it's just um really refreshing to hear that true perspective.

SPEAKER_04

We'll be right back after this brief message.

SPEAKER_03

And we're back. Let's dive right in.

Avoidant Control And Infidelity Risk

SPEAKER_01

Okay, so let's come back to about female infidelity, which is a topic we don't really talk openly of what you've observed in your work and w what patterns tend to lead couples towards if drivers would you see. And is there something we can do earlier to prevent that drift?

SPEAKER_02

I what I see often in my world is a uh a very specific subset of people. Now, infidelity can take a lot of different forms and why you do it and everything else, but here's what I see. So, Mr. Nice Guy, Mr. Codependent man, he is with a very uh avoidantly attached woman. Often with these women, when you look at their background, it's I had to take care of myself. I learned at an early age that I can't trust other people with my emotions, that they're just like, uh, stop, little girl, just go do your own thing, please, get away from us, go be quiet, go over there. And she learns to take care of herself. And often these women become very successful in life. They are, they got uh they're they take care of their career, they're the straight A student, they they've learned to take care of everything, and they have learned conversely, you can't depend on anybody for anything. If you want it done right, you do it yourself. So they end up being pretty controlling individuals and they tend to match up with a guy who is very controllable. And that dynamic doesn't go very well long term. But she's a woman and she has needs. And when her physical and emotional needs aren't being met via the parameters that she has for herself, you can't be a needy person, or she's like, nope, get out of here. I don't want to be needed by anybody. I'm very independent. Yet she has a need for a connection baseline with another human being in that way. So they seem to be pretty susceptible to the old infidelity thing. So they seem to have no boundaries when it comes to that. So they are very much able to compartmentalize, which is something that we see in a lot of men in infidelity, which is I have my lover and then I have my family. And we see that with these women as well. He's the fun guy, and you're the safe and predictable, comfortable life, and you represent all of that. You both have your roles in my life. It is somewhat narcissistic. There's a lot of bleed over for a lot of narcissistic tendencies in that world. And so what these women do, or what eventually happens, is the women realize that they can't have the two worlds happening concurrently. It's just it's too much mentally to manage, it's logistically to manage, and then it's discovered and all hell breaks loose. And often these women go through that midlife crisis that I alluded to before of who am I, what am I? You know, finally I want to do things for me, is what a lot of these women say. I've been doing things for this family and for this guy and for so long. To heck with all you, I'm gonna focus on me. And it's not uncommon to see a lot of unhealthy, not so good behavior. I've heard substance abuse, wife became an alcoholic and had to be hospitalized and repeat infidelities and just did all kinds of craziness. Very almost rebellious teenager kind of behavior. That's what we see in our world. And I know that doesn't represent all, but that's the bulk of my world, is what we see over and over again. Thank you. Wow. Makes sense, actually.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. Ralph, you've you've said that some men, and maybe there's a this trend, right? They begin to feel like maybe they're they're marrying later on, or even some that begin to feel like they can go through life alone. Why are you seeing that mindset grow, do you think? And what does that mean for the future of marriage and relationships?

Men’s Isolation And Brotherhood

SPEAKER_02

You know, we see the two things I see is that a lot of men say that. I want to go through life alone, but we know statistically, when you got divorced man, divorced woman, divorced man is far more apt to remarry than the divorced woman is. And if both are remarrying, the guy does way faster. But what's interesting is the men think they can go this alone as far as their attachment, if you will, and that's the wrong term, their relationships with other men. They just set aside friendships and dude friends and everything, just no time for that. They focus all their energy on woman, that relationship, their kids, their work, and there's not a whole heck of a lot of room left in logistically in their life for guy friends. Same here. I I can, you know, I put that as a very small part of my life. And if it wasn't for my brotherhood group at help for men, I wouldn't have that very deep emotional connection with guys at that level because we all get together for that express purpose of talking about this kind of difficult stuff. Most of my real life guy friends, very kind of superficial, talk about football and basketball and get together for the occasional beer and listen to each other complain about work, and that's about it. We don't really talk about the deep stuff. So at baseline, that's kind of how we are as men. And so it's very easy for that just to kind of get shoved aside. And next thing you know, it's been a couple of years, and you haven't really had that talk about football meeting or anything at all, ever. And for some reason, guys carry that into post-divorce life. I've been hurt. I feel like the world's against me. We can get into what that's all about. I feel like nobody cares about the man post-divorce to heck with all you people. To heck with you guys, friends, tock with their. They'll still admit they have like a need for that sexual and romantic connection. They might be date and go on the tender or whatever else, but they're just like, no, I don't need anybody else. I don't need anything. And it's very detrimental to their mental health and their emotional well-being. We know for a fact that people tend to go nuts when they isolate themselves for long periods of time. And that's what some of these guys feel is genuine depression after not connecting at an emotional level with anybody, period. For years on end. It ain't good.

SPEAKER_05

Mm-hmm. Yeah, man, that's true. I've seen that. I mean, we're wired, wired for connecting. It's one of our you know, deep needs is to connect and belong and contribute and relate and attachment, right? Early on. And so it's and and you're right. Uh even the research continues to show that the men it's declined over time. Actually, research shows that men and their friends, like who they could share with, and yeah, it is virtually, it's like less than one now. It's like point something now because it's just not happening.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. We used to have fraternal organizations. That used to be when I was a kid a much bigger thing. I'm 50 years of age now, and I remember they had like all these uh friar clubs and everything else. I don't necessarily know if those guys all got together and spoke emotionally about things, but at least they had a sense of community and somebody to fall back on and a network, and that is just going away. It's just so many men just stuck in their little world of wife, kid's job, wife, kid's job, and that's it. And that's not good. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

It's not good for anyone, right? The wife, the children, and for for for both individuals, right? Both need to continue to keep their life full.

SPEAKER_02

And if you are an anxious individual, like a lot of the anxious guys I talk to, you then if you start removing a lot of these outlets for some of this energy, who do you direct it to? Your wife. Your wife becomes your best friend, your your lover, everything, all your caregiver, all in one human being. And it's even if she were the most secure individual in the world, it's too much to put on her shoulders, too much weight to put on her shoulders. And she starts to resent you because you're just coming to her for anything and everything. And that's not good for one person. It's too much for anybody to take on. And she may eventually be very overt about it. Like, you need to get out more, you need to do more, you need to and sometimes get mean about it. Like you always come to me with complaint after complaint and stuff. It's too much. And it that doesn't go overall with a lot of guys because we're convinced that no wife, you're supposed to be everything to me. We have to retrain guys like, no, she's not. She's not your mama. Yeah, she's your wife.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and that goes both ways, right? Yeah. So with it as well. I think I've had that conversation just as often, I think, with women.

SPEAKER_02

But the women tend to be better at forming that network and and and keeping friends around. And it's the friend of the friend of the friend. And we see this after divorce, where guys are like, My wife has cheated on me, she left me, and oh my gosh, it seems like everyone's coming to her rescue. It's just all these she's surrounded herself with a community of people that are all giving her stuff and selling her stuff cheap and everything else. And here I am just twilling my thumbs at home, going, Hello, anybody? And he doesn't get a text message or anything from anyone. It's like, well, dude, your wife has spent the last 10, 20 years cultivating a network. She's built out, she spread her web of people she knows and people of people she knows and kind of sort of knows, and people she's close with. And you have your friends Joe, Bob, and Bill, and that's about it. And you guys just get together once every few months, if you're lucky, over beers that you haven't formed that network. You know, welcome to man versus woman and how we how we have form our communities. Women are way better at that than men are.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, Ralph, I mean, you you've been doing this, you've been helping men. I would love to hear.

Fitness Changes And Deeper Work

SPEAKER_05

Is there a story, an example of, you know, a man that has come to you that you helped and you've seen him turn things around?

SPEAKER_02

The one that comes to mind, and this is illustrative of sometimes it's simple, guys, and everyone hates this, but this happens every now and then. This could happen for men and women both. We hate to say that a big part of a relationship is kind of superficial and shallow sometimes. How you look. I don't know what it is, but us men just love to say, I don't have to worry about that anymore. I'm I'm married now. That's like a phrase and it applies to a lot of different things. And sometimes that applies to how we look. So a lot of men will just be flabbergasted to find out through some accidental means. Maybe he saw a message on his wife's phone or he saw people do like the online therapy thing now. So he'll go through and look at her online therapy thing. He'll be nosy. A lot of nice guys are kind of nosy and insecure in that way. And he'll see the wife complaining about how he looks. Like the man's got a big old beer belly and he doesn't take care of his hygiene. And I'm and I hate to say this as his wife, but yuck, I don't like it. And so when he comes to grope me and touch me, I'm like, ugh. And it really hurts the guy's feelings. And one such guy that I talked to, who was a uh collegiate athlete, like a real high-level collegiate athlete. So he looked like a Greek god when he was younger, and that's when he met his wife. And athletics and the physical lifestyle, whatever you want to call it, health and well-being was very much an integral part of who they were both. And when they got married and when they first were married, and then they have kids, and then he decides to heck with all that, I don't need to do that anymore. And he gained a ton of weight, and he became a completely different human being, and he just became very inactive, very just comfortable, dude. And he discovered that his wife didn't like that a whole heck of a lot. So he's like, you know what? Now I have a new mission. Time to go back to the old me. And he lost a ton of weight and he regained his energy, and he's started um reimagining who he was and going back to some of the old things that he used to be. Started swimming again. He was a collegiate swimmer. And what did his wife say? Yay, I got my husband back. Now that is an example of doing the quote easy stuff. The physical stuff is actually the easy thing. To lose a lot of weight, you just stop putting food in mouth and you move your body more. It is that simple. It's just hard to do with the willpower, and the food is very addictive and all this other things. The more difficult stuff is the mental, working on your security, working on a lot of needy behavior that you have as a guy. That's the stuff that takes a lot of time and patience on both your parts to get through. And that's the stuff that a lot of guys avoid doing because it's very, you have to be vulnerable. You got to be open. You got to talk to somebody about it. You got to join a group and talk to other guys about it. It's way easier to hit the gym, take some testosterone and everything else. And a lot of guys cross their fingers like maybe we'll call that guy John. Maybe my situation will be like John's situation. Let's hope all I got to do is lose some weight and fix it, right? For probably 95% of you, no. Um, it takes a lot more than that. But for some of you, yeah, you need to look in the mirror. Buddy, I'm sorry, but you know, you're not given the most attractive husband package here. You may be the sweetest guy in the world. You may make 500 grand a year or whatever, whatever it may be. But yeah, some of that other stuff is kind of important. And so when I wrote my book, The Dead Bedroom Fix, I devoted an entire chapter to that. Yeah. How you look and how you conduct yourself physically and everything, it matters. It also impacts your sense of confidence and how you carry yourself and how you present yourself to the world and you walk a little taller. That's attractive. You don't necessarily need to look like a Greek god and have six-pack abs and everything else. A lot of guys overemphasize the importance of that, but in their defense, it is important. And it's interesting to see guys, especially Mr. Nice Guy types, let's say they do go through the physical transformation and the wife is just all over him. And you would think, yay, mission accomplished, right? The guys are kind of like, no, I think less of my wife because of this. You weren't my loving, sweet partner when I was 50 pounds overweight, and now suddenly you are. So it was all about that. What kind of wife are you? You should be a deeper person than that. You should be my friend regardless, and my lover regardless. Like, no, sorry, dude. It's not how life works, I'm sorry to say. So that's an example of a quick win that I often mention. And I say quick, that took a month.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. But I, you know, honestly, I I I feel better, you know, when I'm eating, eating right, and I have more energy and I'm more, I guess, available and more. And your anxiety goes down. Yeah, that's true. It's it affects everything.

SPEAKER_02

We're, I mean, at a very basic biological level, what we're seeing now, this uh time span of modern-day man, is a blink of an eye on the timeline of human history. For most of human history, we were engineered or evolved to our body say, you need to be moving and moving consistently. You need to push and pull things. You're supposed to be getting up and moving. And when you don't, your brain, your body starts going a little gaga, goes a little nuts. Your anxiety goes up, your stress goes up, you don't feel so good, the heart starts clogging up. Everything just goes haywire when you stop moving and you start eating a bunch of crap. So do the opposite, and it just has these cascading series of effects down the line. Yeah, yeah, it sure does.

SPEAKER_01

It's just so interesting when the guy's going, now wait a minute, no, you're all over means. I got, I don't want that. Where were you when I was heavier? Wow, isn't that interesting?

SPEAKER_02

It is interesting. Yeah. Is it just to kind of turn that thinking around going, oh, it is respected by me when I let myself it's just this overwhelming sense of people are supposed supposed to love me for me and who I am deep down. They're supposed to see this, they're supposed to see past the superficial. They have a point, sure. But at the same time, we're talking about, you know, the the lover side of things and the lover side of things, the erotic sexual side of things, whatever you want to call that, does have a lot of superficiality to it, a lot of shallowness to it.

SPEAKER_01

I suppose so. Well, it's it's like, where do you have your power? Like cancer diagnosis. We don't have a lot of power over that. But um, our bodies, our minds, how show if we keep them, we do have power over that. So maybe it's a little more personal or offensive. I don't know.

SPEAKER_04

We'll be right back after this brief message.

SPEAKER_03

And we're back. Let's dive right in.

Schedule Couple Time Without Shame

SPEAKER_01

We certainly live in a busy world, a little similar realm with so much going on that is always buying for our energy, for our attention, time. What's your advice to couples about fitting in a sexual connection amidst how busy life is? It's important.

SPEAKER_02

There is the uh thought of scheduling sexy time between a couple is like the antithesis of romance and ugh, that just it's roboticizing something that should be organic. And I say BS. Guys, it's important that you set aside your Friday or Saturday or whatever for each other. It doesn't necessarily mean we must do the deed in the bed or else we're a failure, but at least go, no kids, you're going to grandma's or you're going to aunt or you're going to the nanny, whatever it may be, the babysitter. It seems like that is so easy for most couples to just forget about the we need uh our wee time. I always say like a date night or two a week is awesome if you can pull that off. In addition to that, also schedule very formally, I put it on the calendar, a weekend away. God forbid, you two get away for an overnight somewhere together, you know? Um I but in the defense of a lot of guys that I talk to, what they have to contend with is the anxieties of their wife towards parenting. I can't let other people watch my kids. I can't let my kids stay overnight with grandma and grandpa. What if they don't do it right with the safety of the kids? It seems that women are very uh, especially modern-day ladies, are very hypersensitive to the safety of their kids and they need to be involved, helicopter, parent, their kids, every facet of their lives. It's not healthy for the kids, it's not healthy for mom, and it's sure as heck not healthy for the couple. Um, so many guys I know, the kids sleep in bed with them every night. Up until like, oh, well, almost teenage years. It's just part of what they do. Like they got the 10-year-old laying in bed with them. And I'm like, no, no, it can be argued not the healthiest thing in the world. Sorry. You need they need their space and you need yours as a couple. And again, it's not all about just doing the deed, it's just maintaining that non-family oriented connection, I guess you could say, that you're still a couple. Whatever it is you can do to keep that going, if it means scheduling things, whatever, then yes, that's what you got to do. Again, you can't just let the whole this should happen organically. We just go whichever way the wind blows. You're just setting yourself up for failure because it could be argued, and I've said this, it seems that the timeline of a relationship, if we let Mother Nature take over, the timeline is ultra super connection at the early stages of the relationship, honeymoon stage, which is Mother Nature saying, get together and make babies. And then you make the babies, and then Mother Nature says, Job well done. You two can drift now, and you naturally start going in your separate ways. And wife naturally says, Husband, what husband? I got these 90 things in my mind to worry about. I don't even think about that anymore. And then husband's like, well, she ain't think about me anymore. And he starts looking elsewhere, like, look at the pornography takes advantage of that, you know, proclivity in men we just see her on our phone, like, oh, look, new woman, new woman, new woman. Not good. So you need to set all that BS aside and focus on each other. And what really helps that I've seen, especially from the female's point of view and her perspective, is if she has a social circle and a family network that pushes her in that way. Like, honey, give us the kids. You two need to get away together for the weekend. Yes, don't forget your husband. You're the kids are fine with us. We got this extended family, this community, we'll help take care of them. You two need to focus on each other. If you don't have that kind of culture in your family, it's really tough to maintain that

Build Secure Independence After Divorce

SPEAKER_02

alone.

SPEAKER_05

So, based on everything you've learned working with uh thousands of men uh and couples, what's one shift for men, I guess, that that could make this year that would you know dramatically improve their relationship? Is there a shift, a change that that men can do? There's probably you know all kinds of them, but are there a key few that you feel like, okay, today, here's a tip that a listener can start doing right now today?

SPEAKER_02

Well, it would be if you're if my material and everything else I do appeals to you, again, you're probably one of those anxious guys. So one tip you can do is maybe get to the root of what the heck's going on there. What caused all this? Because if you don't get to the bottom of what's going on, then you can't take corrective measures to get better and do better. And then you won't be able to identify that those little aha moments where you go, Oh, I'm doing it again. I need to take a timeout and learn and go through my little therapy things that I learned on how to cope and how to deal with this better and how to self-regulate. I don't need to immediately go to wife for reassurance. All right, calm down, dude. Everything will be cool. Get on top of that. And then recognize your it's okay to be an independent individual. I mean, there have been studies on these couples that are really sexy and connected, and how do they maintain that well into their senior citizen years? They are two very independent individuals that come together at the end of the day and everything's great. What they are not is two people that are on top of each other. No pun intended, 24-7 emotionally on top of each other, and the guy's just constantly needing her and she's always needing him, and they work together, you know, shoulder to shoulder all day long. That doesn't seem to be very conducive to maintaining that sexy. In fact, just the opposite. So we know it's to tell these anxious guys it's okay to be an independent guy. It's okay to go to the gym or go to your basketball league or whatever and do your thing. You're not a bad husband for doing that. Are you still taking care of your stuff around the house? Are you still helping take care of the kids? Are you still doing your part? Yes. Then you're good. You're doing nothing wrong, is something that I find myself saying to anxious guys all the time because they feel very shameful about anything that pulls them away into being a more independent creature. Because that's what they don't want to see from their spouse. They don't every time they see their spouse pulling away, even in a very healthy way, I'm going on a hangout with my girls for wine tonight. Oh my gosh, she's gonna cheat on me, she's gonna leave me, she's gonna meet some other guy. She's their mind immediately spins to that. So I would say get to the root of what the heck's going on because you're gonna keep repeating the same mistakes. And if it doesn't work out with your wife, which is pretty common in my world, not because what we're suggesting is bad, it's because these guys got with the wrong woman to begin with. They got with a very avoidant woman who's very insecure in her own way. We got two insecure people getting it together, trying to make it work, and it's just not gonna happen for a lot of guys, not every guy. And so that relationship dissolves. And now he's back on the market. If he doesn't address those issues, he does the same thing all over again. And then he goes through his post-divorce, uh, what do they call it, rebound relationship, and that explodes. And then he does it again with the next one. He just ends up being the anxious guy overly pursuing a woman who is at baseline very avoidant in nature, and it's never going to work. Not to the degree that he wants. So he needs to get a hold of his own securities. Put women aside. I always say put dating aside for a year after divorce. The women ain't going anywhere. Twelve months goes by really fast, and at the end of 12 months, you end up being a completely different dude than what you were immediately after divorce. You're you're kind of broken, you're kind of nutty after a divorce. It's a very traumatic experience, but you don't think that. So that independence and working on your own issues, I think, are huge. And that's just something that is very tough and it's not very specific. Men that I talk to, I talk to a lot of, I you spoke to um a guy who I spoke to as well, uh, Dr. Matt Sakreski. He's the expert in neurodivergence. Um, our worlds collide quite a bit. There's an over way there's a way bigger portion of men in my world that are neurodivergent than what you see out in the general public. While the general while the general public maybe, I don't know, 10, 20% of people are neurodivergent, in my world it's like 75%. Because they neurodivergent guys have relationship problems. And they are usually very anxiously attached, and they usually have dead bedroom situations. And uh so we see quite a bit ADHD and autism spectrum in our world. So you need to recognize that in yourself. If that's, you know, if you're looking through listening to the material like Zakreskies or whoever it may be, and you're like, that sounds familiar. That sounds a lot like me. Maybe it's time for an assessment. And the assessment may point you in directions as far as how to better cope and how to deal with things that may lead you to have healthier relationships in the future. But you got to take ownership of all this. Ultimate ownership is huge. It all rests on you. You know, bad things happened to you, wife cheated on you, and so forth. No, it's not your fault. But you do need to take accountability for why you got in the relationship to begin with, why you just kept overlooking red flag after red flag after red flag year after year. And yes, how you're coping with it when it all blows up in your face. You got to take um accountability for all that.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. So first search, search inward before turning outward.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Stop pointing the finger at everybody else. That that's the easy the victimhood thing is so common, especially on the internet these days. You I mean, go on on YouTube and you're gonna find channel after channel of men who have devoted their internet lives to complaining about women. That's all they do. It's all their fault. Those women are a bunch of you know what's they're secretly all cheating on us, they're secretly all doing this and this and this. You need to open your eyes to it and just forget women completely and live your own little independent, solo life, which is not good. And they they even call it monk mode, going into monk mode, living like a monk, that is espoused by a lot of men as a very healthy thing. No, it's not. You need a community, you need to work with other people. So there's a lot of not very healthy stuff out there that it's all about them, them. There's always a them. And in my world, the them is women. And then eventually a lot of the guys that I work with have gone through that phase, and then they go, okay, it's now it's time to swing the pendulum back in the middle here. Let's really work on it. And invariably, it's pointing at yourself and what's going on in your head. Hmm. Yeah, love it. Thanks.

Final Takeaways And Resources

SPEAKER_05

Uh, Ralph, you have written books and created all kinds of resources on your website, helpformen.com. Where can our listeners find out more about you and what you offer? And that website, I'm guessing, is the go-to place, other places?

SPEAKER_02

That's the hub for everything, helpformen.com. A lot of people know me by a social media account that I've been running for a decade plus called Dad Starting Over. I talked about my blog when I was uh very first starting out. I called that, and I called my all my social media handles Dad Starting Over. I have a successful YouTube channel, very successful Facebook channel under that name. And I've been putting out content for years on that. So a lot of people know me from that. But our main organization is helpformen at helpformen.com. And our brotherhood group is our private support community for men. That's where we get into the nitty-gritty of all this. And you guys can jump right to the join page at helpformen.com slash join, or you can just go to the helpformen.com website and you'll see all the links to the brotherhood there. We get together for private discussion forums, live Zoom meetings, we have coaching, we have courses, we get together in person. Uh, we get together in person in the U.S. as well as in Australia. Wow, all over the place.

SPEAKER_05

We'll be sure to put those links in our show notes for our listeners. Be sure to visit those. Hey, Ralph, before we let you go, we'd like to ask all of our guests a couple of questions. The first being, what do you feel like is the key to a stronger marriage connection?

SPEAKER_02

Oh, it is probably two secure people getting together for the right reasons, for the same reasons. Let's put that out there. How many people like, okay, I love you, I love you too. All right, what do we want out of life? What do we want out of this marriage? What's your goal? Do you want kids? Where do where do you stand on kids? How about work and how about nobody has that conversation? I say nobody. Most people don't have that conversation. It's just I love you, you love me. And a lot of the guys I talk to, they look at the wife go, or the wife to be and say, she didn't run away, like a lot of the women do. She seems to like me okay. She's nice enough. Good enough, done. It's like, no, it's a lot more to it than that. I mean, this is like a huge deal. It's a big business arrangement, if you will. It's a love relationship. It's starting a family. This is the biggest uh decision you'll make in your entire life, is who you intertwine your life with. So approach it in that way, from a very pragmatic way. Ironically, uh, from what I've seen, the women are better at that than the men are. Women are pretty pragmatic about their mate and who they match up with. They have good ambitions, he comes from a good family, is he going to be a good father? A lot of the men that I talk to don't approach the relationship in that way, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_05

Wow, that's that's great, great advice. What about this last one? And that's your takeaway of the day. Is there a take-home message you hope our listeners will remember from our discussion today?

SPEAKER_02

Uh if you're a guy, I end all my podcast interviews in the same way. If you're a guy, um, it's okay to ask for help. You're not a weakling, you're not a wuss, you're not less than, you're not going to be a weirdo in everybody's eyes. And in fact, if if you do get the wide-eyed, ugh, I don't know, dude, not the best friend in the world. Maybe you need to relook at who it is that you're hanging out with. A good individual, a good person, when you say, I need some help, or would you mind talking about this, they'll just drop everything and they will listen to you and talk to you. And a lot of men don't believe that. They believe that we're kind of alone in our little island as men and no one cares about us. And uh, no, in fact, if you surround yourself with the kind of people that are there for the express purpose of men helping men, you'll find that the vulnerability comes easier and you'll get so much more accomplished and you'll leave every discussion with like an aha moment of oh, I never thought about it that way. Or that's something I learned about myself, or that's interesting. That's funny. It's something that I've um when I was in the business world, I used to do marketing work for a bunch of companies. That really opened my eyes to when I worked with all these CEOs and business owners. None of them did it alone. They were all in business groups and networking groups, and they all got together with their coach and their the coaching group that they belonged to, like every week. And you realize that they were all just comparing notes and helping each other save money and saying, whatever you do, don't do this, don't hire that guy. I did, and it was a mistake. And what you want to do is hire this guy instead, and you don't want to spend money on this. And they all learn from each other. They become very efficient little business machines. That's the same way you approach life in general or this relationship game in general. Hey, guys that have been there and done that. What do you think about this? Well, whatever you do, don't do this. That's what I did. Okay, noted. And have you ever thought about this? Whoa, never thought about that before. Interesting. That's how these things work, and that's how these group groups work, and that's what we do at the Brotherhood at helpformen.com. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Man, you're doing so much good. Ralph, or so many. Liz, what about you? What's your takeaway of the day with Ralph Brewer?

SPEAKER_01

I'm just thinking about all these connections, you know, well-connected couple. It comes from very well-connected individual worlds, don't they? That we need women need other women, men need other men, and heterosexual couples, of course, we're talking. Um but uh how much it's just that um I need to have a full cup, right? To present my best to my marriage. And I love that whole idea of um just that uh manipulation a little bit. I give with strings attached. So I want to make sure that instead of being nice, I think it's great to be kind. Um, but why am I doing this kind thing? Is it for an alternative motive or just because that makes me feel good? For instance, hey, what about you? What's your greatest takeaway with what's Ralph today?

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, Ralph, this this whole uh, you know, Mr. Nice Guy thing, I just feel like that is especially I would say, especially right here in Utah, it's like, no, you know, we're raised to just be be kind and it's this outward and put aside your yourself, and you know, and I feel like that can be taken to an extreme because I think what happens is that the opposite in many men's minds is uh, you know, oh, pride and selfishness, you know, to the extreme and to being a jerk and without saying, hey, that there's some middle ground here, it's not it's not black or or white with this, and and with those nice guys, it's you know, I'll it's almost like a martyr type of a thing. You know, I'll take one for the team, I'll just keep doing this because that's what I'm supposed to do. And and eventually she may reciprocate, but she's just I can just be more kind and take care of the kids and do more and more and more of this. And eventually maybe she'll come around. And man, that's just uh an unhealthy cycle. Uh so man, that was super, super helpful. Great insights on there.

unknown

Very good.

SPEAKER_05

Well, Ralph, uh, thanks again. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for for taking time. Thanks for all the work that you do uh to help so many men uh in their relationships moving forward. We sure appreciate you coming on. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. It's been great.

SPEAKER_01

And we wish you all the best too. Very well.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, keep up that great work.

Outro And Listener Callouts

SPEAKER_05

And that does it for us. Friends, we'll see you next time on another episode of the Stronger Marriage Connection Podcast.

SPEAKER_01

And remember, it's just small and simple things that create a stronger marriage connection. Take good care.

SPEAKER_05

Thanks for joining us today. Hey, do us a favor and take a second to subscribe to our podcast and the Utah Marriage Commission YouTube channel at Utah Marriage Commission, where you can watch this and every episode of the show. Be sure to smash the like button, leave a comment, and share this episode with a friend. You can also follow and interact with us on Instagram at StrongerMarriageLive and Facebook at Stronger Marriage. So be sure to share with us which topics you loved, which guests we should have on the show next. If you want even more resources to improve your marriage or relationship connection, visit strongermarriage.org where you'll find free workshops, e-courses, in-depth webinars, relationship surveys, and more. Each episode of Stronger Marriage Connection is hosted and sponsored by the Utah Marriage Commission at Utah State University. And finally, a big thanks to our producer, Rex Polanis, and the team at Utah State University, and you, our audience, you make this show possible. The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this podcast do not necessarily reflect the views of the Utah Marriage Commission.