Men's Silent Struggles: Overcoming Loneliness and Rejection

0:00 Shame is a really big thing in in our world, in the men's world, a lot of guys is society as a whole. There's a lot of messaging around. You're a bad boy for thinking that you're a bad boy for doing that tamper down your masculinity, a lot of urges that you have sexually and otherwise, bad, bad, bad. And so he's filled a lot of he's bracing himself constantly. I guess I'm bad. I need to convince everyone else that I'm good, and that's not good. Hello, welcome to Real Men Feel where we drop the mask and had conversations that most men are not having but that all men can benefit from. I'm your host, Andy Grant. Today's conversation is for any man who has ever felt rejected, disconnected, lonely, confused in his relationship, or like the life he built suddenly has stopped making sense. My guest today is Ralph Brewer, a coach and advocate for men for navigating marriage struggles, dead bedrooms, divorce, dating and rebuilding life after deep personal pain.

0:50 This is one of those topics that so many men live through, but very few men talk about honestly and openly. And when men do talk about it, the pain often turns into silence, shame, bitterness or isolation. Not here. Let's do it. Hello Ralph and welcome to REAL MEN Feel thank. You for helping me, I appreciate it. And we're just talking, it's it is today on a recording day. It is International Happiness Day. So hopefully we'll bring a little more joy into the podcasting world today. There you go. But unfortunately, most of your work is not around joy and happiness. No, no, I would like to say it is, but no, it's not all rainbow and sunshine, that's for sure. Yeah, 'cause you've got a big body of work around helping men rebuild after betrayal, divorce, a relationship collapse of any sort. So does that mean you suffered some sort of a relationship and that brought you to this work?

1:44 Did I ever, yes, going on 14 years ago, I endured a not so nice chapter of my life that would involve infidelity on my spouse's part and divorce and becoming a single father to 3 little kiddos. And I had to kind of rebuild myself from the ground up, so to speak. Which what I've learned over the years is that's kind of a common thing for guys is we don't really wake up to a lot of the inefficiencies and not so nice things in our life until we have that little face down in the gutter moment, if you will. And that was mine. It was literally one day I was very normal, blah, boring, but secure guy in a very blah, normal, boring relationship. And then the next day that all just ended just like that boom, boom. And then a short 60 days later I was divorced.

2:26 And it's like, wow, that was what just happened. So it's a lot to contend with and I had a difficult time coping with it. What part of that chapter as you used, What was the hardest thing to even admit to yourself? It will it took a while that I wasn't necessarily at fault for all of it, but that is something that is very common in my world amongst guys that are your codependent Mr. Nice Guy types, which I definitely was and still am to a degree, was that taking ownership of a lot of stuff, which is in part good to take ultimate ownership because you have ultimate control. But it can go it can go too far, that's for sure. That's what I've seen from a lot of guys that I work with, which is, you know, I've worked with some guys, for example, we can go into what is I do and everything, but like worst case scenario, a man says I've caught my wife in her fifth affair and you're like, well, writing's on the wall.

3:15 Home girls got a problem, dude, you know, it's this, it's not your fault. She's whether whoever she was with, she probably would go down this road. She's got issues. And a lot of men take ownership and say, no, I'm sure it's me. I'm not alpha male enough. I'm not tough enough. I'm not the man she needs. So of course she goes out and finds that elsewhere. That was, in essence, my mindset for years. It was just really tough for me to come to terms with that. I didn't have control over this. I think there's a little subconscious thing of we all want to have control. We want to see things as black and white. We don't want to see that, you know, you can be a a good person and you can be a loving person. You can still get hurt and people can do bad things to you. And that was difficult, I guess, for me to come to terms with. Was there a particular moment that you decided to turn your pain into service?

4:02 Probably as a result of going to therapy, which opened my eyes to, I remember the therapist who was a woman telling me, Ralph, you are a like, like every other man that I talked to. You just don't hang around guys ever. You just like, you just worry about your kids and your job and their family and that's all you do. And she's just like, when's the last time you just went to hang out with somebody? Well, a couple of years ago I was like, yeah, that's not good. You need to hang out with other guys. And it's very important for your mental health. And she said, I have somebody that can that you can talk to. He's another client of mine. He was telling me his story and it's very similar to your story. And I was like, you need to talk to this Ralph guy. He's another client. And I said give him my number.

4:43 And so I talked to him. Steve I believe was his name. And Steve and I spoke for like 3 hours just sharing war stories and back and forth. He was completing my sentences. It was kind of creepy. Like how did you know all this? He's like, dude, there's a whole world of guys like you out there, like you and I going through this. Like really? That opened my eyes to I'm not alone. Oh, cool. I don't have a whole lot to be embarrassed about. There's a bazillion other guys going through the same thing and I'm want to reach out to them, learn from them, read about them. And that kind of started me down the road of writing my writing on my own. I, I created a blog under the name of Dad Starting Over, which is a social media handle that I still have to this day is very popular, Facebook, YouTube, so forth. And my writing got some attention and it got to the point where somebody suggested that I write a book.

5:29 And so I did. And I don't know what happened, but I knocked it out of the park with my very first book. I've written 5 #1 The very first one I did has outsold all the other four combined and then some. I'd so in that book was about, of all topics, sexless marriage. Because I learned early on in my blog writing that was the only thing that got any attention. I could write about my finances and fitness and starting over and parenting. I was like, just snore. Nothing, crickets. Nobody responded but as soon as I said here was my experience as a man going through a dead bedroom relationship in my marriage and my now ex marriage and what happened as a result in Fidelity Boom I got some attention and then somebody said I should write on the topic. So I did and that book was called The Dead Bedroom Fix and a lot of people know me from that book. They don't know about all the other stuff with me starting over in divorce.

6:14 They just know me from the guy talking about sexless marriage stuff. So fortunately that got a lot of eyeballs on me, which allowed me to do other things and write more books and start putting out material and video format and everything else. Started a a men's support community, started a larger brand called Help for men and you guys can learn more at helpformen.com. That's where we have everything now, including our our brotherhood group, which is our private support community for men. And I've been at it for shoot over a decade now and it's been amazing. I love it. I love what I do. Nice. Could you imagine loving all that stuff 11 years ago? No, yeah, not at all. No. Like, you know, I think back to me 14 years ago, before everything, before the poop hit the fan, so to speak. And it just a totally different human being. I mean, night and day, my interest, my, my, everything. And if you had pulled me aside then and said here's what's in your future, I'd be like, what?

7:08 Why? I don't. That ain't me. I don't do any of that kind of stuff. I'm just a little introverted dude who does marketing work for different companies and stuff like that. It was a creative kind of guy. And so to say that I'd be on microphone, even though I have some radio in my background, it's kind of cool to bring some of those skills back into this and be on microphone on camera and men's group and doing seminars and speaking and writing books is like, no, that was not in the cards at all. So when in your own experience or experience working with other men, when they lose our relationship, is it the loss of the woman, the family or more of who they thought they were? Like what? What's the toughest hit on? I think it probably comes in stages. I think it's first it's I love my wife.

7:51 That's why I married her. That's why I have a lot of love towards her. I'm still madly in love with her. That's what a lot of guys say. So you lost your partner. It feels like you lost a limb and that that that really sucks. And the very first reaction is for a lot of guys, even if you catch her cheating and everything else, for a lot of guys, the first reaction is must put limb back on body like something's missing here. This is not good. I, I am going through withdrawals. Basically it's like a drug withdrawal. And then it kind of sinks in like my family's not a family anymore and I'm watching my kids hurt and like that, that sucks. And then I think later on it sometimes takes years into The Who am I? What am I now that my role as husband is gone and I'm now like a basically a part time father. What do I do on those days where I'm home alone? Like what do I want to do?

8:34 I don't even know anymore. I've been just, I've been defined by my roles and what I do for others and what I do for these kids, what I do for this family I've been with the phrase I often uses. I've been stuck in the family machine for so many years and I gets dictated everything. I get up in the morning, I do this and this for the kids. I go to work for 8-9 hours. I come back, do this and this for the kids and go to sleep. And that's been going on for a decade plus it seems for some of these guys even longer. And now all the sudden just pull the rug out from under you. And what's left? I don't know. And this scares the hell out of me. Or for some men, it's kind of exciting, I bet. I think that's rare. That's really rare for the guys I talked to to look at it as a blank slate opportunity in life. But it takes some coaxing and some working with other men for them to realize, yeah, this is kind of an exciting, fun time to kind of redefine yourself. Makes sense.

9:21 It wouldn't be my first reaction, but I've had that response to enough bad things that you realize, well, eventually, you know, there there's, there's some trivia, some gold and everything we might go through. But there you go, you lose a child or whatever it may be, you lose, lose a loved one. I mean, let let's take for example, the absolute worst case scenario, which you hope that doesn't happen to anyone ever. Let's say you lose a child, child passes away or something. Is there any positives that can be gained from that? Well, initially, no, it's hell. I can't imagine going through something like that. But I have known people who have endured that and said as a result, I have now dedicated myself to helping others going through the same thing. Maybe your child passed away from some kind of horrible disease or something. And I've devoted my life to raising money for medical research to help eradicate this so I can help others.

10:05 And I now run a support group for so it can lead to positive things for sure. But obviously there's going to be, no matter what your horrible calamity maybe is going to be a grieving period. And that's where a lot of guys need to say, give yourself some grace and say you're going through it and it's going to be tough. And don't, you know, don't hesitate to raise your hand and say little help here, which is something a lot of guys do not like to do. Yeah. So speaking about like guys resistance asking for help, what why does the notion, you know, what is the notion of just suck it up, man up? What does that actually cost men? Mental health, I mean emotional and mental health of suck it up, just do your job. Obviously there's a grain of truth to that in terms of society tends to appreciate and reward a man who gets the job done, gets things done. And I think we kind of ingest that over time and we we push aside the play and the joy in our life and bring in responsibility and bring in roles and things I do for others.

11:04 And people are like, thank you, thank you, thank you. This is what we need out of you. And we're and that is we're hammered over the head. You're in, you're out since we're kids of that's what men do. Something's broken in the house, you fix it and you apply that same kind of principle to everything in life and it doesn't leave you much room for emotional much of anything. And so the the way emotion works in human beings is that we can't selectively repress. I can't say suppress freaking out and and and having a a negative reaction to horrible things that happen in my life, but keep the joy and excitement. It's like, no, it's a it's one volume, not for everything. So when you turn something down, repress, repress, a lot of guys report later in life, I feel very flat.

11:47 I don't get much of A joy of much out of anything. And that can technically slip into depression, sure. But for some it's just a a flatness and she's like, it's fine. You get a raise at work or a promotion, it's like big deal, no biggie. Something your kids do, something great, wonderful. You don't get the same kind of oomph that you used to get out of things. And that's not a good thing. But we frame it all in terms of maturity and that's not really fair. In in all the men you've worked with, are there some most common unhealthy relationship patterns that that men go through without realizing it? In the men that I work with, by virtue of me, my personality, the material I put out there, the books and videos and so forth, I attract a certain subtype of men to my material.

12:35 In my defense, it's not that they are so unique to me. It's really when you look at men who take in relationship oriented self help material tend to fall under this category in general and that is kind of anxious guys filled with a lot of anxiety, overthinking things, always trying to fix things. Very preoccupied is the term psychologist use. I'm not one of those preoccupied with the health of the relationship. What is my partner, my spouse, my girlfriend, always thinking that she seems to be upset, must fix. Now. It's a very codependent mindset that is really common in my world amongst men. And lo and behold, they tend to attract and be attracted to the polar opposite opposites.

13:16 Attract is a very real thing and they tend to attract them. Women who we can categorize as being very avoidant in nature. Now they represent the minority of women. The minor, the majority of women in relationships, as far as insecurity is concerned, are what we call anxious. And their attachment, well, in my world, the genders have been flipped. Now we have women going. I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to go to a therapy. I don't want no, I don't want to read a book or listen to a podcast. Just stop already. Leave me alone. And here's Mr. Anxious. You need some kind of reassurance that everything's cool with him. He's like, no, no, no, I want you to listen to this. We need to go talk to somebody. Hey, Wi-Fi. I was just I was just read a book about relationships and I want to talk to you about stuff. And she's just rolling her eyes saying, can you just stop, please? And that bleeds over into the old sex realm too. Of course, he wants a lot of reassurance and to reach out in touch, physically touch.

14:03 And she's very averse to touch. I don't like that you're intruding upon my space. Avoidance are typically very independent to nature. And again, this sounds very masculine in nature. A lot of guys are like, wife, just let me alone, let me drink my beer and watch my football game, please. Where are you going? What are you doing? Can you just stop already? Stop nagging me. But again, we see the the the inverse with these guys. That doesn't make them feminine in any way, shape or form. There's nothing feminine or masculine about being an avoidant or being a an anxious individual. But that's what we see is a lot of anxious guys who unbeknownst to them, are in a very codependent relationship that is very unhealthy. And because of the fact that that's what they saw probably growing up as a kiddo, they think that's normal. That's just the way relationships are, right?

14:44 And it takes being around healthy people, being around a support community, maybe a therapist or whatever it may be to tell them like, actually, no, that's not good. And what your spouse just did there was very not good. That's not nice. You deserve better than that. And they kind of have to have that hammer in their head over and over and over again before it kind of sinks in. That's really tough. We're reprogramming a lot stuff that's been around for in some of these guys for decades. So are there any tips for an anxious man to really see the difference between genuine loving relationship and his own cravings or neediness for validation and affection? Is it only spotted from a a third party witness?

15:25 I think that's a big help and I think that comes from that's basically how we learn period about anything, whether it's relationship wise or otherwise. It's just to sit and watch, sit back and have a front row seat for how this goes down. And unfortunately in childhood, we're right there with mom and dad, grandma, grandpa, extended family. And if you come from from a family of a lot of generational dysfunction, that's bad. So we have to kind of rewire that, if you will. And what a lot of psychologists and therapists would say, and this is probably where they come into more so than what myself and my group does, is we need to work on you becoming a more secure individual, liking yourself, realizing that you're filled with a great deal of shame. Shame is a really big thing in in our world, in the men's world, a lot of guys is society as a whole. There's a lot of messaging around. You're a bad boy for thinking that you're a bad boy for doing that tamper down your masculinity, a lot of urges that you have sexually and otherwise, bad, bad, bad. And so he's filled with a lot of, he's bracing himself constantly and he goes, I'm bad.

16:18 I need to convince everyone else that I'm good. And that's not good. So we need to kind of reprogram that. And invariably what happens is if you have a guy who's working on himself, and it usually starts with the superficial shallow stuff, let's say he's a man who's 100 lbs overweight and he loses a lot of weight instantly. I feel better about me. Instantly. People are telling him, look at you, you should be proud of yourself. And he's walking taller and he starts wearing better clothes and he becomes more confident. He's literally standing taller. And he decides to hit the gym and put some muscle on. And people are like, you know, squeezing him by the arm saying, look at you, Hercules. And he's like, that sometimes is enough, so to speak. It's not enough technically, but in their mind, it's enough to go, hold on a second.

16:59 I have some value here. So as their sense of worth goes up, even if it's the silly superficial stuff, their patience for all the BS, as we say in the relationship, goes down. So what used to be a I guess that's fine, yes, dear suddenly becomes no and the wife's like, well, what is this? This isn't good. Sometimes that's a good thing. He's finally sticking up for himself. Unfortunately, a lot of guys stop there. That's the easy thing, you know, push and pull things, lose weight. Stop shoving crap in your mouth and you tend to lose weight and look a lot better. But that's just again, the superficial stuff. You you should do that regardless if you're in a relationship or not. Be healthy, look good. Why not? But it's all the stuff up here in the in the old noggin that need to work on that little in you know, I'll say injured boy.

17:44 What's another word for it? Damaged kid from from the past that you need to work on that stuff. That's where your therapist and psychologist come into play. Group work and all the good stuff where you're comparing yourself to others and you start sharing advice. You're helping others. You you learn by helping others, teaching others. They in turn teach you. You have a lot of little aha moments. Helps expedite the process to work with others, that's for sure. You, you mentioned the dead Bedroom and that was your first and most popular book. Can you can you expand on on what that is and how it affects men? It's what it sounds like, sexless marriage. You guys aren't getting it on anymore and it is. I'm not joking. Out of all the things out there that I've ever spoken about, and I speak to other people who create content online and they can attest to the same thing. You can talk about all the things in the world under the umbrella of relationship stuff or built becoming a more secure guy.

18:38 Sex and marriage or lack thereof is the number one pain point for men worldwide. It seems guys that are in monogamous relationships. So it shows that it's not that uncommon for a guy to be in a long term monogamous relationship and say it's most guys say not completely dead, but to it. But it's the passion non existent, the feeling of emotional connection in that way, non existent lustfulness on her part towards me gone died years ago. It seems to be out of obligation when we do the deed with each other and that turns them off even more. It seems to be the only time I get any kind of rise out of my wife is after three glasses of wine. And when I take her on a trip to Aruba. It's the only time it seems to be like any kind of the old girl back not good.

19:22 So that is again the number one pain point for men all over the world that are married. So that's why when I wrote a book about it, it kind of exploded. And when I put out any kind of video, I, when I post them, we have them scheduled. I'm like, I know this one's going to hit big. And sure enough, it's the millions, you know? And the one I posted that I thought was really, really important, I put a lot of time into gets like 10,000 views or whatever. But sex sells, as you know. And when you combine that sex with the pain and the feeling rejected and all that, it is a big, big nuclear bomb as far as content and hitting a nerve is concerned. So is there a a very unsexy first step to take for someone that wants to resolve the dead bedroom? I think, and it's a step that a lot of you are very codependent Mr. Nice Guy types don't like to take, which is a very honest inventory of where you're at the relationship. And that does take a third party to step in, so to speak, whether you and the wife are in the same room or not, or if it's just you one-on-one to look at things from a 30,000 completely detached 30,000 foot view of your relationship and go, dude, that's not good.

20:29 And how long has that been going on for? And if you hear, oh, I don't know, ten, 20-30 years, you're like, oh, dare I say the majority? I hate to say that, but it's probably true. I don't have any data to back this up or anything. Just my knee jerk reaction is the majority of men that I work with, which means they get to the point of they are so frustrated that they're paying a stranger on the Internet to talk to me one-on-one and join my group and everything else. By the time they get to me, I'm like the majority. I would say your relationship from day one was a mess. You have two very insecure people that got together and they probably had no business getting together. And often you will hear. So how was the relationship at the early stage? It's all right.

21:11 And, you know, did you get along with her family and everything? It's all right. I guess, you know, just a lot of, you know, shoulder shrugging. Well, what is it about her out of all the human beings on the planet Earth that you agreed? I'm going to make her my wife and start a family and like make like the biggest decision of your life with why her? Because you really don't seem very excited about the woman. Because by the time they're talking to me, they really don't like her at all. And they well, the guys will say she liked me and she didn't run away like the five other girls before her. And when she saw the real me, she stuck around. So I said, that's it. She's the one. And it's like, I can see your point, but there's a lot more to it than that, it seems. And this is more illustrative of the audience that I talked to versus audience or the society in general. But it would seem in my world, the women are far more pragmatic about relationships than what the men are. The women are like, he's got to be a good father. I need to know that I can depend on him. He's going to be dependable and etcetera and all these other things all combined.

22:09 Then I go to the man and he's like, she didn't run away and I like her. OK. He's like a little bit we we can take a page from the book of the women for sure. As far as vetting our romantic partner candidates are concerned. It's a big honking deal. And for the majority guys I talked to, they did not approach in that way and they're paying the price. 1020 plus years and three or four kids later, unfortunately, who wants to hear that? Like this is a hopeless cause, dude. And but I'm telling you that some of the stories I've heard are just horrible infidelity. I'll didn't even begin to cover it. Financial infidelity, sexual infidelity, emotional infidelity, abuse, flat out emotional and sometimes physical abuse. It's not good and it all stems from a guy who doesn't like himself very much at all. And he needs to realize that.

22:55 And before it, until he realizes that he's never going to get out of that mess. Even if she divorces him, which happens more often than not, it's around. We know that statistically around 70% of the divorces that are filed, to be exact here, to be fair, are filed by women. So chances are if I'm talking to a guy and it's like I'm going through a divorce, it was the wife that said I'm out of here, I'm done even if that's the case. So he's got that mess out of the way. He's still got all the stuff going on up here that subsequent relationships which he will get in they they may not believe it, but they will most likely probably quickly too. If he's like most guys, I talk to you, he's going to repeat the same patterns over and over again. And that is a major mind F, if you know what I mean to a lot of these guys like, oh, wow, I just got with my ex-wife all over again. What the heck is going on with me? What's going on?

23:39 Sometimes they need to do that. That's their holy poop moment where they finally go all right, I need to work on me. What's going on here? I had such moments in in my, I guess you could say rebirth or rebuilding process of of old me to what I have now. Yeah, you have got to go through it. In your rebirthing or in the way you see other men go through it, how do they address their pain and hurt without becoming those bitter, angry, blaming men? You know what, I, I tell you, it seems like almost 100% of them have to dip into that, well, a little bit. I, I get it's a normal human response to lash out. And what better way to lash out at the person or hurt you, the woman, than to try to hurt her metaphorically as much as possible. And how best to hurt her is to say you are such a damaged individual because of who you are. You're a woman.

24:35 And the fact that you're a woman means you are this bad thing, that bad thing, blah, blah, blah. And these men commiserate on the Internet, as you know, and this can go on for years where they just all get together and talk about what was me. The women are everything that's wrong in our lives. And it seems every guy that gets cheated on and everything, drugs or the coals and the divorce has to kind of dip into that, well, a little bit. And there's a lot of content out there that he can dip into YouTube. You can spend years on YouTube watching videos from guys that say women suck and men rule. It's all over the place. So it seems like they all have to go through some of that, but it leads them down a not so good path and they end up hurting people or they end up getting hurt themselves and they're just like, this isn't good. This isn't me. What is this? And the fog clears from all the basically the trauma that they endured. It's a trauma response.

25:20 And then they come back more to center, so to speak. So you got the pendulum swing of super Mr. Nice Guy pushover all the way to a whole alpha male, fake alpha male type guy. And he's like, all right, I recognize that it's somewhere in the middle. Here is where I need to be, but it takes a while to get there. They mentioned men that try to rebuild too fast. So what's a common mistake in attempting to rebuild too fast? The number one mistake I see amongst the men that I work with is getting into relationships too fast. So they bound the relationship. They, I mean, they, the woman, their, their wife just says divorce and they're like on the dating apps literally the next day. That's not healthy. That's not good. You're basically trying to use other human beings, these women as human band aids, as they call it, make me feel better women to the in these guys defense.

26:04 If you talk to them, they try to explain it away is I haven't had any, if you know what I mean for a while. I'm a man with needs. I'm a human being. There's all these women out there that are willing to meet me next Wednesday and get it on. I need that. It's like I understand it man to man. I get it, but at the same time you have to understand your mental makeup is you're going through a lot, dude, and you're you're going to take that energy out in the world and you're going to attract fellow broken people. Chaos is going to ensue. You're going to fall in love with one of them. No, I won't. Yes you will. And it just, it's going to be a mess and they think that they can do the casual thing and they can jump from woman to woman and everything will be fine. The sex is complicated and there's a motion involved, not to mention the whole STD thing and everything else you got to worry about. But it's just it's not that easy. And for the guys I've talked to, arguably it's a little harder than the average dude.

26:53 What complicates this even further is a large portion of my audience and probably a large portion of the men's self help world in general, are guys that we, what we call neurodivergent. So you got your ADHD. I'm on the autism spectrum and so forth. So relationships are extra difficult for them and they fall in love extra hard, extra fast and they hang on extra, extra hard. And when the relationship eventually fizzles or goes away and she dumps them, they take it extra, extra hard. There's rejection sensitivity is a thing. It's very common in the ADHADHD as well as the autism world, and we see that a lot. So dude, be careful.

27:34 You're jumping into the deep end of the pool there by, you know, putting yourself on the market. Why not just put the ladies on the shelf for a little bit? Just take a time out. It's OK, They're not going anywhere. How about 12 months? It goes by fast. Just say no relationships, no dating, no nothing. Concentrate on the divorce thing. That's a lot of time and energy there. The kids always forget about the kids got to worry about them. They're depending on daddy to remain sane and normal during all this. So maybe mom's gone off and started acting crazy and running around or doing whatever. It's really common in my world. So focus on them. Focus on the logistics of starting over your life, where you going to live and the money and the career and everything. Put the ladies on the shelf for a bit. But I'm telling you, almost 10 out of 10 guys don't do that.

28:14 It's that that draw. It is so potent and so powerful. The new relationship energy getting out there again and falling in love and getting your physical needs met. And in majority of them, their first rebound relationship fails pretty drastically. A lot of them go, OK, lesson learned And they lick their wounds and say, all right, maybe I do need to take a time out. I think it's about 5050. But still, even then, about 50% of them go on to the next one and they're on relationship 2-3 and the divorce still isn't even final yet. And they will tell me, Ralph, I'm telling you these women, no red flags, everything's cool. I said, well, here's a red flag. You just got divorced or you're not even divorced yet. So you're going to some woman off the street going I I'm not even divorced yet.

28:55 And she says, cool, let's go out and let's have sex and everything. That is in itself a red flag. A good secure woman would say, oh, sweetie, it's nice meeting you, but I don't think you're quite ready yet. And stuff like get back with me in a year or two. All right, if you want to have coffee or whatever, fine, But you and I ain't dating. That's that's all. But you're so you're finding fellow insecure people who are like, I'll take whatever I can get. Oh, it's just chaotic. I see that all the time. That's an interesting tip. I don't think I've heard that. If you don't see the red flag, maybe it's you. That's a very succinct way of putting. I love it. Why do so many men need to hit total rock bottom before looking for support or help? I think. That's a testimony to the we're caught in the machinations of life, observing, of fixing and when you're in that days just go by like nothing.

29:43 You never think about it. A week went by, have you? How many of us, when going through the trials and tribulations of our day, go, I'm going to take 10 minutes and just stop and think about things. None of us do that. I'm going to what, meditate on my life and think, no, that's a very, very small portion of us do that. That's what it takes to go like, all right, dude. For example, it's very common in my world to hear from guys post divorce, for example, that say I just had a really bad day and I've just, I'm sitting on my couch. I'm literally crying watching ATV show. This isn't like me. Like I'm like, yeah, dude, you, you endure the trauma, give yourself a break. You know, it, it, it takes a while to overcome this. Well, I was fine yesterday. I know, dude, it's, it's OK. They don't like feeling that acute anxiety, emotional distress moment and they think it must be fixed now. It's a testimony to the fixing thing. Like, OK, what's the magic formula to make this stop? It's like it's called going through it. It's just what it takes, dude, and to give yourself some grace and to pause and go, why am I feeling this right now? What's going on with me?

30:47 Well, I didn't get a good sleep last night. That may be a part of it. When you're tired, your your defenses are down. I just got over the flu. It's probably a part of it too. Again, my defenses are down. I've been really stressed. Oh yeah. The X sent me a 19 screen long text message of complaining about me. This that probably tapped into something there. So I can't remember what the original question was, but that is really, really common in terms of guys, you need to give yourself a break. You need to pause and think about what it is that you're going through and understand that sometimes the best way through it is to go through it. There's no shortcut to this. There's no like hitting the stop button. Actually, let me pause that. There is and it's not so good. Things, coping mechanisms, we call them.

31:27 You can pick up the bottle of liquor and get drunk and forget about a lot of things. Not good, not healthy. Now you become an addict. Potentially you could go out and meet a bunch of women and feel really great about that. We just covered that. Not good. You could overeat, good gamble, do a lot of impulsive compulsive type of behavior. Those are all masking tools to I feel bad. Let me quickly not feel bad. Get those little dopamine hit from things. Scroll on your phone for an hour or two. That's really common these days. It's really unusual, but it's very healthy these days to just time out and say what's going on with me right now, let's be honest about it. And nobody does that. Why is peer support spaces like the Brotherhood? Why is that so important and beneficial for men? Well, it's beneficial for us all, men or women. It's not a gendered thing at all. It's just that the women seem to do a lot better at that than what we do.

32:18 And one example I often give is that we will hear from men post divorce. Let's say his wife was quote UN quote bad in the bad person in the relationship. So she cheated, she ran off and spent a bunch of money. She's on drinking too much and all this other stuff. She breaks up the family, they get divorced and he's because he's like a lot of the guys I talk to, he's still attached to her. Nothing wrong with that. Obviously been with a woman for years, still an emotional attachment. So he starts kind of cyber stalking her and checking out her social media, which she's very active on. If she's like the average gal in the US today and he's watching her just get accolades and likes. She just posts a picture of her cute face and 600 likes and you look great you go girl.

33:00 And then she posts something like hey, I'm looking for some furniture cheap. Does anybody have anything? And she gets 20 people right away saying you can have my couch. I've been trying to get rid of it free, it's yours. And in other words, everyone is coming to the rescue of the damsel in distress. And he watches this, the typical dude and says immediately jumps to women or people don't care about the man. Everyone just cares about the woman. It's a gendered thing. Woe is me and everyone is on her side. She has she has lied to everyone about the situation. They don't know the truth. I'll just set everyone straight. Never works. What you're seeing is a symptom of she has spent the last so many years. If she's like the average woman building a social network, she goes out to coffee with this one. She goes out to wine dates with this one and this one and she knows this one who knows this one who knows this one. And you, if you map out her network, you're like, holy crap is a giant spider web of people.

33:52 And then you go over to the guy and he's like about a year and a half ago, I hung out with him. I text him funny memes every now and then. And this is the guy I eat lunch with at work and done probably he moved across the country. So he's away from his original family and community and friends and old high school friends or whatever. That's very common these days. So that's illustrative of community is very important just for the logistics of life people that help you out. But we know for a fact, scientifically some serotonin, for example, is, is a common chemical that we talk about the human brain, human body. It's something that we try to have hang around in the body more via the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, SSRI medications. So we know that if you inhibit the the reuptake of the serotonin, leave it in the brain for a while, people tend to feel happier.

34:41 So we have those drugs that like do that and takes the edge off as far as anxiety and depression are concerned. But but it doesn't completely 100% resolve is the need for community. It would seem that we as human beings need that community in order to feel emotionally, mentally healthy. When you remove people from other people for an extended period of time, we tend to go nuts. We tend to get a little depressed, a little a lot depressed and anxious and things don't feel right and things start spiraling out of control. Ask anybody who's felt very lonely and when they get over the hump and there is a very real hump with a lot of guys of the uncomfortability of getting over the hump of OK, I'll make myself vulnerable. I'll put myself out there.

35:24 I'll try to make friends. Sure, I'll go up to some random guy and go, hey, I'm Ralph, what's your name? That's really tough for a lot of guys, especially introverted and nervous kind of guys. And but once they get over the hump, maybe they join a formal group over it like mine or something around some kind of interest of theirs. They always say the same thing. I'm so glad I did that. I just feel a million times better just hanging out with guys and they don't necessarily need to have the most deep and interesting conversations, just the energy. But if you combine the energy with we're all here for a purpose to help each other, to talk about this deep stuff, to talk about that embarrassing stuff with no judgement, no shame. You look around, there's no other ladies in the in the room to make me feel uncomfortable. It's just us dudes. Holy crap, it's huge.

36:05 Men just come back and say, why didn't I do this 20 years ago? Where was this? And you know what, when you look back in history, not too far in history, we did have that naturally, guys were shoulder to shoulder working together, doing physical labor, whatever it may be. And our grandfathers and great grandfathers were very good about the fraternal organizations that was built into their world. And that just all kind of fizzled out and went away. And now I'm very rarely do I hear from a guy that even belongs to like a an informal sport league. Like the other day I heard some guy talking about I belong to a basketball league for guys that are 50 years and older. I'm like, that's awesome. You're you're in the minority. I don't hear that very often. That's great. It's like, yeah. And after where we go out for beer and hang out and da, da, da. And I've made really good friends from that. That's what it's all about.

36:47 That's community. And he will tell you, like everybody else, we feel a million times better after that. So Ralph, what's the best way for people to connect with you and everything you're offering? Is there a particular social media network you're on, active, most on or? You can find me a couple different ways that the social media accounts that I am the most active on are the ones that are branded as Dad starting over. And that's how a lot of people know me. See my bald head yapping in your news feed? That's me and I am very active on Facebook. I think I have 257,000 followers on there and then YouTube I have like 140,000 and TikTok, I'm on there as well, 120, some 1000 or whatever. So I get a lot of people seeing me there on Dad starting over. But the main hub of our organization and everything I do can be found on helpformen.com.

37:30 helpformen.com. You can jump right to the join page, click on the Brotherhood there on the website, or go right to helpformen.com/join and you can find out all about the Brotherhood. There is a small fee for joining, but with that, you get our live Zoom meetings, of which we have like 6 to 8 of those every single week, an hour or more each. And so you get to talk to me, other guys on the team about a variety of different issues. And we record all of them and we have them archived so you can listen to them from your phone like a podcast. And we have over at this point probably like 1600 hours of meetings recorded in addition to all my books and no additional charge including the audio versions, a forum which is very 2 forms actually, we use Facebook private group as well as Discord for guys to talk online.

38:12 Both very, very active. We get together in person for an annual conference in the US. Soon we're going to add an additional 1 and then in the US. So that'll make it 2 a year. And then we have one in Australia every year and then what else am I forgetting? And we have the one-on-one coaching, we have courses, all kinds of cool stuff. So check out the Brotherhood and. Finally, Ralph, what is one thing that you wish more men knew? Ask for help. That's basically it it there's a shame and talk about that shame. There's a lot of shame with saying I I I'm not doing very well here. There's for whatever reason either probably a lot of their family background origin is they somewhere somehow someone is embedded in them. Like you just don't do that. That's that's that's no good.

38:55 Girls don't like that. Other people don't like that. They see it was weak. Don't do that. Not true. Literally every great quote, UN quote man that I've ever known who has made something of himself has asked for help as part of a group, as part of a network, as part. And they will be very quick to raise their hand and say how do I do this? Or I'm having a hard time with this or whatever it may be. So don't think that you're alone or that you're weird that you shouldn't have to do that. You do. You're a human being and there's nothing wrong with asking for help. Well, Ralph, I want to thank you for turning your pain into your purpose and all the offerings and support because, yeah, there is no reason for men to go through anything alone there. There's nothing that any of us can go through that thousands, perhaps millions of men haven't already gone through successfully.

39:41 And one thing that I that didn't get talked about when I was growing up was how good it feels to help another man to be serviced. And a lot of guys, when they try to find their new mission in life and their new purpose, find a lot of meaning and a lot of sense of well-being from helping others. That was my story, yeah. Thanks so much for joining us again, Ralph. That was real, practical and a deeply needed conversation. You know, so many men are walking through heartbreak, disconnection, loneliness and rejection without the language for it and without support. Conversations like this matter so that men see that pain doesn't make you weak and that asking for help doesn't make you less of a man.

40:25 If today's episode spoke to you, share it with a friend or subscribe, leave a review, let other guys know about this. And if you want more than just listening, if you want real connection with other men, get that support, Check out Ralph's Brotherhood or my authentic AF group. Visit realmenfeel.org/group. Thanks again for listening and until next time be good to yourself.