Unlocking the Secrets to Reviving a Lifeless Marriage with Ralph Brewer

The quiet ache of a cold marriage rarely starts in the bedroom. It starts when a man trades identity for titles, chases approval, and forgets how to lead himself. We sit down with Ralph Brewer—best-selling author of The Dead Bedroom Fix and founder of Help For Men—to cut through noise and name what actually rebuilds connection: self-worth, boundaries, and a steady, values-led presence.

Ralph shares his own rock-bottom divorce story and the years-long rebuild that followed, then maps the most common patterns he sees in men: anxious attachment, Nice Guy tendencies, and a belief that effort alone earns intimacy. We break down why the honeymoon fades, why scorekeeping kills desire, and how leadership works without macho bluster—making decisions, setting tone, and responding to feedback without getting defensive. You’ll hear why “get jacked and she’ll want you” is a half-truth at best, and why deep work on identity beats cosmetic fixes every time.

If you’ve felt like a stranger in your own home, this is a clear path forward. Define your values beyond titles. Lead yourself daily. Build alliances that keep you honest. From there, intimacy—emotional and physical—has a chance to grow again, or you’ll find the strength for a clean break with your self-respect intact.

Key moments in this episode:

02:02 Guest Introduction: Ralph Brewer 

06:36 Understanding the Dead Bedroom Phenomenon

15:02 Addressing Childhood Influences on Adult Relationships

20:54 The Importance of Men's Work

23:34 Understanding Men's Ignorance and Codependency

27:52 The Role of Community in Men's Healing

32:37 The Never-Ending Process of Healing

34:26 The Power of Community and Mentorship

37:47 Final Thoughts and Call to Action

How to reach Ralph:

Website: https://helpformen.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/realhelpformen/

IG: https://www.instagram.com/realhelpformen

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@realhelpformen

Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/help-for-men/id1759966446

Gifts: https://helpformen.com/revolutionaryman

Chapters

• 0:00 Sleepless Doubts And A Call To Action
• 1:19 Mission: Raising Purposeful Men
• 2:02 Guest Intro And Rock-Bottom Moments
• 5:56 Divorce, Identity Shifts, And Rebirth
• 9:40 Defining The Dead Bedroom Problem
• 14:03 Leadership, Attachment, And Intimacy
• 18:42 Self-Worth, Childhood Scripts, And Patterns
• 23:30 Midlife Breakdowns And Losing Yourself
• 27:16 Programs, Offers, And What “Fixing” Really Means
• 32:02 Codependency, Boundaries, And Hard Truths
• 37:28 Healing As Identity Work, Not Just Fitness

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:00

So let me ask you, have you ever found yourself lying awake at night wondering, is this really what marriage is supposed to feel like? Maybe you've done everything right. Maybe you've provided, you stayed loyal, you even showed up, and yet somehow you end up by being a stranger in your own home. Like your needs don't matter, like intimacy has gone silent, not just in the bedroom, but everywhere else too. So if you've ever found yourself questioning your role in your relationship and wondering how you can reclaim confidence and connection, then I think this episode might be for you. So take a moment now and hit like, subscribe, and share the show with men in your life because it's just this kind of confirmation or conversation that we have that starts to change lives all around the world. And so with that, let's get into today's episode.

SPEAKER_00: 0:48

The average man today is sleepwalking through life. Many never reaching their true potential, let alone ever crossing the finish line to living a purposeful life. Yet the hunger still exists, albeit buried amidst his cluttered mind, misguided beliefs, and values that no longer serve him. It's time to rely on yourself for greatness. It's time to become a revolutionary man. Stay strong, my brother.

SPEAKER_02: 1:18

Welcome back, my friends. I'm my name is Alan DiMonzo. I'm the host and the founder of the Revolutionary Man movement, and we're here to challenge men to reclaim purpose, to rise with integrity, and to live a life that truly matters. And before the break, we touched on something that too many men silently suffer through. And that's a slow erosion of connection and confidence in our relationships. And maybe it started in the bedroom or maybe it started with self-doubt. But now, you know, it really feels like we're stuck in a story that we probably didn't write. And so let me ask you what if the relationship struggles have less to do with your partner and has more to do with your leadership? And what would change if you stopped waiting for validation and started owning your path moving forward? Well, I have to tell you, today's guest knows this terrain intimately. And Ralph Brewer is a founder of Help for Men, and that's a global coaching program. And he's helping men navigate the emotional records of dead bedrooms, divorce, and relationship breakdown. And he's also the best-selling author of the Dead Bedroom Fix and has been featured in Forbes News Nation and New York magazine. And so Ralph has helped thousands of men stop people pleasing, start leading, and finally fix what is broken with confidence, with clarity, and of course with purpose. And so, welcome to the show, my friend. How are things today?

SPEAKER_01: 2:35

Things are very good. Thank you so very much. Thank you for the wonderful intro there. I should have you follow me around. That was really good.

SPEAKER_02: 2:43

Man, Ralph, I gotta tell you, you're doing some amazing work. And I really grateful to get this opportunity to spend a little bit of time with you today. And as you know, here at the Revolutionary Man, we always talk about everyone of us being on our own version of our hero's journey. And so my first question for you is tell us about that death and rebirth moment, that moment when you knew things had to change. What did you do about that and how'd that shape you into the man you are today?

SPEAKER_01: 3:06

That is how common that is in our world, isn't it? It seems a man doesn't really wake the f up, as we say, until he hits his little rock bottom moment or his holy poop moment, as I often say. And for a lot of men in my world, that comes in the form of divorce. Or it may come in the form of discovering something not so nice about your spouse, infidelity or something like that, which subsequently usually leads to divorce. And it's just a giant, oh, identity crisis. And it calls into question a lot of things because a lot of us as men identify ourselves or form our identity around what we do for others and our titles in the workplace, our title is husband, our title is father, provider, whatever it may be. And when that is suddenly the rug is pulled out from underneath us, we're very unstable and we don't know where to turn next. And a lot of men have a very acute sense of abandonment and everything else when those moments hit. And that was my story. About 13 years ago now, went through a not so nice divorce. There was infidelity involved, there was little kids involved. It was just ugly. And but I tell you what, like a lot of men that have been through what I've been through, at the time, just hell on earth. It's one of the worst things you can imagine. It's just an acutely emotionally traumatic moment, series of moments, let's be honest. And you wouldn't wish that on your worst enemy. And then years go by, and you know what I say, and what a lot of men say is, I'm glad I went through something like that. Because of that, that was the put the brakes on and go the other direction. Make a left turn instead of a right for once in your life, type of thing. It's and for a lot of men in our world, it's a lot of setting aside a lot of the nice guy codependent behavior, rediscovering what it is about us that we liked in the past that we set aside about ourselves. Because why? New roles, husband, father, blah, blah, blah. I'm setting aside the things that brought me joy, that brought me a little joie de vive, a feeling of uh joy of life. And so you rediscover those things, and then eventually you get to the point of forgiveness for your ex-partner. And then you get to the point of rebuilding yourself and helping others. And that's basically my story with what it started off as dad starting over, which was a name that I put a lot of content on, or still do to this day, a lot of videos and articles and everything out there. Written books, my most popular book that you mentioned, The Dead to Bedroom Fix. Out of all the things I've ever talked about, that's the one subject that seems to move the needle more than anything. Surprise, the old S E X, right? But that's the acutely painful thing for a lot of married men that I've learned over the years. And it was for me as well in marriage number one. I am remarried, been with my wife now for as a couple for about a decade now. We do have a child together. I have four children all together. So I have seen every facet of this, every chapter of the typical man's story of rebirth, of divorce and everything else, been there and done that, my friends, from dating again to getting married again and everything in between. But I've written and done videos all along the way, and it seems to have struck a chord with a lot of people.

SPEAKER_02: 6:00

Yeah, I would say for sure your work is phenomenal in helping men, especially after something as life-changing as divorce. I know for me, I experienced something like that as well in and around the 30th year, and I had married my high school sweetheart, and it was definitely something painful because it wasn't something I that I had planned on doing. And so I think for a lot of us we have these ideas of what this is gonna be about being married, and yet we have no roadmap, we have no plan. And so we get into it, and like you said, the children come along and we lose a bit of who we are and what was our driving force. And so I know you focused some of your work on the dead bedroom. So let's go a little bit more and dive into that, explanating, explaining what you mean by that. I think we have an idea, but I'd like to get your take on it.

SPEAKER_01: 6:47

In essence, a sexless marriage. Most people, the timeline for a relationship is in the early stages of the relationship, what we call the honeymoon phase. If you're like most healthy couples, it's very what we call hot and heavy. You're very physically and emotionally connected, and men are just the happiest as can be. And it's Mother Nature doing what it's supposed to do. It's getting you two to bond together and hopefully procreate, make some babies. That's what Mother Nature wants us to do. So it puts us, both of us, in the old honeymoon phase, which is we're at our best behavior, where the we put our best mate characteristics forth to make the other person hooked and say, Yes, this is mine. I want to pair up with them and make children and all that good stuff. And inevitably, if you don't have the skills and the know-how and the temperament, personality to put some work in to stay connected, invariably Mother Nature also does another job, which is, okay, you two are done now, you can go your separate ways. And a lot of us watch that separation slowly happen over the years, and the intimacy dies down, and we call it the old dead bedroom or sexless marriage. And there's some when does it officially become a sexless marriage? I guess technically it's 10 times a year or less, is what some of the therapists say. I say it's whenever you think it's substandard. Some guys are like, I'm cool with once a month. Man, that would be amazing. Me and the way I'm my and how I'm engineered, that's perfect for me. Other guys say, if it's not at least three times a week, forget it. I lose my mind. So it's all over the place, and there's no right or wrong there. There's a lot of men are you mentioned right up front. You put in the hard work, you've been a great father, you've been a great husband, you've been faithful, you've sacrificed a lot, and you watch a wife slowly drifting away from you. And we have this erroneous assumption that because I've checked all these boxes, I'm supposed to get the prize at the end of physical connection. Ideally, yes, but no, life doesn't work that way. There's a lot of other little things you have to do to stay connected. And if you don't, and here's the thing, it's a it takes two to tango. She has to do things as well. It's not just all on the dude. And but I wrote a book that is for dudes because invariably the only thing we can control is ourselves. And uh that seems that's the one thing a lot of men have a problem with in my writing and stuff. If there are opponents to what I have to say, it's a lot of men crossing their arms and pouting, saying, What about her? I said, Well, you can sit back and cross your arms and pout all you want and see how far they get you. I save you the time. It ain't gonna work, dude. She's not gonna eventually go, I see he's upset. Let me go ahead and completely change my personality and change everything about me and suddenly get turned on. It doesn't work that way. You've also talked about the concept of leading that that has a lot to do with this. It's not the be-all and end-all. You can't necessarily lead every human being into acting the way you want them to. But there are some, and it sounds politically incorrect, old-fashioned, if you will, but there are some roles to the man, the masculine role. 100%, which includes something like setting the tone in a relationship and leading in some ways. And if you drop that and just set it aside, we see a whole lot of problems happen in relationships, one of which is the reduction of intimacy between the couple. We see that all the time. And a lot of men can relate to that simply because no one ever showed them how to do it otherwise. That they sat back and watched their mom and dad have a very meh relationship. Grandma and grandpa were together for 60 some odd years. You have no idea what their bedroom was like. You don't want to know what their bedroom was. That's that's a very uncomfortable thought, isn't it? But now, at older age, you're you sit back and go, no, they weren't the most romantic people either. Grandpa did his own thing and he spent a lot of time fishing and at the hardware store and all these other things. And grandma was in the kitchen and hanging out with her girlfriends. And yeah, come to think of it, they weren't really that intimate, whatever that means either. And so we had a front row seat for that's how couples are supposed to act. And unfortunately, that doesn't equate to a whole lot of sexiness.

SPEAKER_02: 10:38

And you bring uh up a ton of uh points there, and I just like to touch on a few of them. You're absolutely right. This idea of leading and taking a leadership role does put the onus on us men to change and do things that that we are in control of, but that doesn't necessarily mean that everything is going to change on the other side. However, I'm sure in your doing the work that you do, as I do in my area, that's not the idea of it. We don't do something out of that selfish gain because if I change, then I'll get more sex or I'll have more of this. That might be the outcome. And hopefully, as uh the healthy relationship evolves and changes, that might come back online. But the more important part is about are you really reclaiming who you are? Because nothing's worse than being in a relationship where you're so codependent that you lose who you who what aspects are. And that wasn't the story of my first marriage for sure. But today it's a different story. I'm so blessed to with to be married to the individual that I am, and that she will come right out and tell me, Alan, I need you to lead. Man, I don't know if on the first time she said that to me, I that felt like a dagger right in my heart, not from uh because I that she wanted that she was upset or hurt, but she just was it was more of an ask, I need you to do this. And when I stopped to think about, how more powerful can you be asked to be given a task to show up that your spouse wants you to lead and is asking you to do it? So I could have chosen to say, Well, I'm not gonna, and then what does that lead for a relationship? Or we can take it and actually lead and then get into it. What are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_01: 12:15

Or you could have taken it in the direction of having your feelings hurt, that she was exposing a deficiency in yourself, and you're like, oh man, now she doesn't. The very anxious take on the whole thing, a very insecure take is when your partner says, Hey, I need you to do this, you get very defensive. What do you mean I need to do that? I am I not good enough as who I am. I thought I was doing that. Or you can be like, pause, let me think about this. This makes me feel a little upset. What is it that upsets me about this? But it hits me below the belt, and maybe I'm not leaving. You know what? She's probably right. Yeah, thank you for telling me. Appreciate it. What uh that is in itself, in your reaction, a way of leading, a way of being masculine, of just, I hear you, cool. Thanks for letting me know. Appreciate it. But or you may completely disagree with whatever she brings to the table. It may not be a disagreement about leadership or whatever. It may be, I think you're falling on this. You go, I okay, I can see where you're coming from, but hear me out. And that's a very adult back and forth. I talk about the anxious thing. After so many years of doing this, you start noticing patterns within people. And I tend to attract, and you probably do too, to your material, a certain subset of men. And those are men that have what we call a very anxious form of attachment to their partners, they're very insecure, codependent, the Mr. Nice Guy types, to use Dr. Glover's term from No More Mr. Nice Guy, for those guys that don't know the book. That's who comes to our material. And a lot of this stuff is pretty new to them, and a lot of this stuff is they're still feeling it out, they're still trying to figure this out, that, and they're making mistakes or stumbling here and there, and they're regrouping. It's very tough to put on a new suit, so to speak, and really act it out. And it takes years. If you've been for probably decades a certain way to suddenly go, no, I'm gonna be Mr. Masculine tough guy now and Mr. Leader, it doesn't work that way. You gotta you learn by doing, and you have to do it again and again. And if you have a partner that goes, hey, buddy, you're falling asleep at the wheel here a little bit, you gotta be the tough guy to say, I hear you loud and clear. Thank you, wife. That's awesome. And it is awesome of her to say that. She could have just been resentful and she could have been quiet and she could have been steaming, and then she could have years down the line slid divorce papers across the table and said, That was one of the thousand things that made me not like you anymore. Here you go. A lot of men hear that. And what do a lot of couples, men and women both say this when the person eventually blows up? Why didn't you tell me you were upset about that? So many. So she has given you a gift. I'm a little upset or a little perturbed about something. Here you go. I see nothing wrong with it. And in fact, it's we got to toughen up a little bit. That's one of those if you want to be in a long-term monogamous relationship with somebody and keep it going, not just the sexy, but the connected part, whatever that may mean for you, you gotta have those difficult little moments like that.

SPEAKER_02: 14:54

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's a it goes back to another core of their work, and that's really about understanding about self-worth, right? And so when we go back to the idea of that it's not really about sex, but it's about our self-worth. If we can have a higher vision of who we are, then it does help us. And so let's talk a little bit about how you frame that in your work with men.

SPEAKER_01: 15:17

Having a higher vision of who I am. Where does the where does that low vision of themselves come from? Because a common term that I use with a lot of men is dude, you just don't like yourself very much. That's the source of everything. You just don't like yourself very much. And some guys have a very emotional come to Jesus moment with themselves where they go, yeah, I don't. And why is that? And we deal back layers of the onion. I'm not a therapist, I'm not a psychologist. I've been around enough to know patterns in this. And where does it all start? For every guy, it starts in the same place. It's not that woman who just dumped you, it's not those five chicks that cheated on you before that. Keep going back and keep going back. It's little Billy, little Joey when they were a kid. They sat back and watched mom and dad who did some not so good things with them. And it made it be no fault of mom and dad. They didn't know any better either. You go back in their past with their moms and dads. They didn't they were not so great either. And then it's a generational thing. So you sat back and watched a mom who shamed you for certain things. You watched a dad who was very very avoidant and distant when it came to emotion. And when he when you had a little sniffle moment, he said, Hey, dry your eyes. Don't be a wuss or whatever. So you take that in. You take all these little lessons in, and it builds weight today, which is an adult in front of you who says, I don't like me. And I feel bad when I feel this. I feel bad when I feel that. I feel bad when somebody says this to me. Unfortunately, that's the tools we got in our toolbox or lack thereof, I should say. And you have to recognize that, start from the ground and go, that's the cards I've been dealt. But I don't necessarily have to use the card metaphor. I don't have to keep this hand. I can send it back to the dealer and go give me five more. But a lot of men go, that's what I've been dealt, it's who I am. It's what it's what am I going to do? There's a lot you can do, but it's not so simple, is it? It's not so much of going, nah, I'm a super confident, love myself kind of guy now. No, it takes some work. It may mean therapy for some people. That's a godsend for them. It may mean joining a men's group and talking to a bunch of other dudes from around the world about this kind of thing. May mean just having a couple of guy friends. It may mean, I don't know what, whatever it is, you gotta, you've been going right all these years when you're uh at the crossroads. It's time to go left and try something different. But that's way easier said than done, especially when you're 50, 60, 70, some years old. And those are the guys that I talk to a lot of. The ones that they're menopausal wife, we hear that one a lot, says, see you later. I don't I I've lost that connection to you. Kids are out of the house, the old grade divorce, that's becoming more and more common, and they're left going, I don't know what the hell to do now. And uh, when that part of their life leaves, their wife and their role as husband, they're go, I don't have any friends. How often do we hear that? I don't have any friends. That's sad, dude. I don't have any hobbies, I don't have anything. I go to work and I come home to wife, we do our thing every day, and now she's gone. Maybe she passed away, God forbid, whatever it may be. So a lot of us have to work at the very foundational stuff of our identity, our values, who we are. When all else is gone, what are we deep down inside underneath all this nonsense? And that's the tough work. And some of that may involve going all the way back, like I talk about your childhood stuff. That is something a lot of men are very resistant to because it sounds like psycho BS. Yes, psychological BS, not psychopathic, psychological BS. It's just something that, oh gosh, they roll their eyes and go, Oh, go back to my childhood and cry about mommy and daddy. No, that's everything, dude. I've been at this a long time. Pretty much a hundred out of a hundred guys, when they come to me with this kind of stuff, I go, So what was your dad like? And you just sit back and go, Oh, wow. What was mom like? And sometimes it's so sad because the men have no idea. Yeah, my mom used to hit us every now and then and stuff. She was a Latina, and that's what Latinas do. They take their shoe and beat you, and how bad we talk. Oh, bloody eye, bloody nose and black eyes and stuff like that. But my friend did too. And wow, okay, you know, those kind of stories. And yeah, that has a that has a major impact on who we are as adults for sure. And I have my own baggage from my childhood. I didn't get into the mess that I got in. I just had a happenstance. I didn't marry who I married and befriend who I befriended and so on and so forth. It all ties together. And the good news is you don't have to, again, you don't have to play the cards you've been dealt. It's you can send it right back to the dealer, and I think that's what we're doing.

SPEAKER_02: 19:33

I completely agree, man. Again, beautiful response there. You just touched on drop so many truths there. And it the one that really resonates with me because of I'm in the stage in my life where you know the it is a little, I'm a little bit older, and some of the men that I work with are in that 50, 60 age bracket. And it is when divorce or separation happens at an age for a man, that can be it's so hard on them. It's all it's just as bad as ending a career, like retiring. And because we don't have a you know, you at least with retirement, you can have a go-to, some other hobby or something else to give you some meaning and purpose. But if your whole life is basically friendless, or you have two dudes that you hang out with once in a while, and everything is surrounded in your relationship, it can be so devastating for guys, and it's hard for them to get out of that. And I agree with you. Anytime we've done any work, we did a whole series on family identity and the connection and the relationship between mothers and sons, and fathers and sons, and siblings, and all of that. And it was really eye-opening for the guys to get an understanding of just how this has impacted their lives, and you're absolutely right. We tend to marry our mothers in some aspect, and so if we can understand what how that's happening, then we don't have to be our fathers. We can be something different if we're conscious enough. And unfortunately, light gives us hints along the way, but yeah, unfortunately, we need a two by four before we finally wake up to actually do this work. And I think that's why men's work is so prominent today. The work that you're doing is so important, and the work we're doing, it's really about helping us men get back and try and fix the marriage. And that we say fix that, fix the marriage, but we tend to go at it from a poor perspective. And so let's talk a little bit more about your program and how it is that you help men do that.

SPEAKER_01: 21:26

Yeah, we have our uh private group that we call the Brotherhood at helpformen.com. And you can learn more at helpformen.com slash join. We actually have a special, and I was looking it up here while you're talking, so I want to make sure that I have the page. We have a special page set up just for your listeners. You can go to helpformen.com slash revolutionary man, all one word, helpformen.com slash revolutionary man. And there you see some offers. We have some a freebie, a free uh dead bedroom fix course, no charge whatsoever. And you also get a copy of my book, an ebook version, PDF version of the book at no charge when you take that. And then we have discounts on coaching with myself one-on-one and discounts on the brotherhood, which is our community for men. And we get together in private forums, we get together in live Zoom meetings, we get together in person, we're having our sixth annual conference in the States coming up next year. We're having our fourth annual one in Australia coming up later this year. And what else do we do? We have all my books at no additional charge. All of our meetings are all recorded. We have over a thousand hours of meetings. So we have a giant catalog you can listen to of past meetings and search through them on your podcast app and all kinds of stuff. If you like audio, you're gonna be in Seventh Heaven with our group, the Brotherhood. But as far as here's what we've seen: fixing marriages is the oof, that's a big, I guess you could say, what's the word I'm looking for here? Powder keg, uh can o' worms, because it's invariably it's not so simple. It's not a there you go, flip a switch, your marriage is fixed. It's you hear these stories. What's the common phrase we often hear? I read your book, and Ralph, I swear this is the dead bedroom fix, they'll say. And I swear everything is great except for the sex. She's a great woman, she's a great mother, we get along great, blah, blah, blah. Okay, hear that often. Usually complete BS. And he may not even know it. And you listen to the man, you listen to stories, and you go, time out. Explain that again. What happened the other day? And you listen, you go, that's not good. And he's not? No, that's what she said to you is pretty bad. What she did was pretty horrible, or what she did there is pretty suspicious. That's have you ever considered another man? Oh, my friend says the same thing, but no, there's no way she would ever do that. My friend, she's showing a lot of signs here. And then you realize a lot of these men just completely have no idea. They're just ignorant. They're not dumb. They just literally have no idea. They have no role model for what a good, healthy, long-term relationship looks like because their childhood was a wreck. Their mom and dad were the most loveless couple ever, or dad took off, mom took whatever it may be. And it's usually, like I say, a generational thing. So with those guys, it's not so simple of you just need the man up and your woman will turn around and be amazing. Sometimes we hear flat out mental illness on the part of the wife. One of the most blatant examples of this that I have heard, and I quote this often just as a super extreme example. The man will say things about his wife, and I'm wide-eyed going, What you're describing to me sounds something like paranoid schizophrenia. And he's like, Yes, she has been diagnosed with that. I'm like, okay, that's something to lead with. Maybe you should tell me that up front. That's a pretty huge thing, dude. Yeah. So why are we talking here? And he says, Because I'm really thinking about it and I read your book and everything. And I think if I get six-pack abs, it will do, it will bring about something in her to cause her to really turn things around and change and take her mental health seriously and blah, blah, blah. So he is convinced that if he just becomes a super alpha male Greek Adonis looking guy, that she will be like, oh, you know what? Mental illness, let's set that aside. I'm now your devoted wife. I'm like, sir, you have a lot bigger things to worry about than six-pack abs, for goodness sakes. That's not good. This, it's a much deeper thing. Your poor wife is mentally ill, my friend. And she's been in inpatient care and she's been this and this. She's harmed herself. She's done all these things. And and some of these men just have the codependency. Woof, talk about runs deep. They're just like, no, I'm pretty sure I can fix this. I can fix this. And that's a very man thing combined with a very codependent thing. I'm a dude. I've read your book. I'm very energized. I know I can fix this. And sometimes I'm sorry, no, you can't. And that's not a weak thing. It's not a your less than thing. It's not an anti-marriage thing. That's how a lot of men take it. We have a lot of men in our world are very religious and conservative in nature because they're very hang on to their marriage. They take marriage very seriously, which is great, but it can go too far. And I've talked I've spoken to some men who it's caught my wife in her fifth affair. What are you doing, dude? I don't, I my, I take my vows very seriously. I don't just give up on this. And I met with my pastor and I met with this person and that person, and they all agree. My pastor had something similar in his past, and he and his wife work through this, or whatever it may be. Okay, go on. And then the wife also has a drug problem. Also, dude, it's only so much you can do here. Now we could be mean and call them a simper or whatever the term is these days for a weak man. It's just a guy who just has a lot going on up here. He doesn't know any better.

SPEAKER_02: 26:23

Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 26:24

He's not weak. He's just ignorant, I guess you could say. He needs, he's has he's had a lot of negative examples in his life up to that point. And he, and if you listen to him, he doesn't have a whole lot of men and strong men in his life to lean on. He's put a lot of onus of his mental health and everything on the shoulders of his wife. And obviously that's very shaky ground. And he's scared. He's a scared little kid. He doesn't know where to go next. And that's okay. It's all right. There's a lot of guys been there, done that, dude. I had one guy tell me years ago that when he went through what he went through, it was like being abandoned in the oh, the old like JC Penney's or one of those stores when we were kids, Macy's or whatever, that just has everything, these giant stores. And you're looking at something, you turn around and mom is gone. And you're in what's that moment of panic? Where the hell did mom go? And you're looking around at strangers, everything. That moment of what do I do next? Oh my gosh, I've been abandoned. I'm scared to death. He said it's like that. I was like, it's exactly like that. That's exactly what it is. And that's scary. That's what a lot of these guys are facing, and they don't want to face it. Because without her, no matter how broken, for lack of a better term, she may be in our relationship, is at least it's familiar. At least I know what's going to happen tomorrow. At least I have my title of husband and father. At least I have all this veneer, if you will, of facade, if you will, of normalcy, of comfort. And I can't let that go. Because without that facade, what do you have to do? You have to face what's really going on in here. And that's scary. And without a support group around you, that's extra super duper scary for a lot of guys.

SPEAKER_02: 27:58

Yeah, absolutely. I was just sitting there thinking about, and that's that pivotal moment. Really, it is their death and rebirth moment. But what they've rebirthed is this idea of this insecurity piece. And so the only gentleman only has one thing to hang on to, and that's what he's got with his wife. And then the other thought was coming through as you were talking about that. Was going back to some of the work we did with some archetypes, and it's really sounds like for lots of us, lots of us men, we get stuck in this hero aspect. So this is the immature masculine. And it's a bit of a leap to get to that more of that warrior aspect where you're there and you but you have set some healthy boundaries, you have some respect for it, you understand where you are in life, but we don't always get there. And I don't think you can get there for reading a book and but doing things on your own. You get there through being in community, being in around with other men to help with that guidance and be mentored through it. Because if we don't have that, then I think we stand up by staying stuck and and I don't have any, and I haven't have yet to have that deep of uh conversation with any of the men in our groups, but I totally can relate to some similar stuff like that, where we get caught in this the immature masculine, I call it aspect of our lives, and it's helping them see the the transition that needs to be made. And then that's where you said it's not gonna happen overnight. As I tell all the guys, this is gonna be messy. It's gonna be messy. You're to start to change and evolve. And believe it or not, she probably likes and is okay with why it was before and may not like the change that's happening, but it is for the better, anyways. And so it's just about leading, it's about being consistent, showing up consistent, doing what you need to do. And eventually things start to happen and start to roll. And so we're really starting to talk about helping men move from this opportunity of where they're either being completely rejected, whether that's through divorce or through a betrayal and being broken, but it's really about helping them heal. And I've touched on a little bit of stuff, and so let's talk a little bit about that that idea of what it means to heal wounds for.

SPEAKER_01: 30:01

Well, it probably varies man to man, doesn't it? Situation. It sounds like a cop-out, but it really is very different. It all begins with the really deep stuff, such as your identity, who you are, figuring out who the hell you are, what your values are as a man. It's not just what your title is as a man. I'm a dad. Okay, that's cool. Anybody can be a father, anybody you can biologically create another human being. Most of us can. Anybody can be a vice president of sales of Acme Company. Anybody, these this isn't who you are. Those aren't your values. That's not your real deep-down identity. Let's dig to the core of exactly who you are, what you stand for. That's the core of all this. And it may not necessarily, for your more insecure men, who you are may not necessarily follow a template for what a lot of people out there say is your ultramanly kind of alpha male type of archetype, if you will. And that's okay. If you're, excuse me, hit my microphone. If you're a guy who's dude, I really like sewing. We got a guy in our group who's big into sewing. He likes and he makes a lot of do I have one back here? I don't. Like bags and things. And he'll he'll have a he has a machine that does the embroidery and it puts your logo on there. So if you have a bag, you want a bag made that put like a bunch of goodies in or whatever, swag bag, you can make one of those, whatever. That's his thing. Um, a lot of people may say it's a feminine thing. I like sewing. He's I don't give a shit. That's who I am. It's like good for you, dude. That's awesome. That's a very micro example of just it's very tough for these men because there's so much shame involved in who they are and they don't like themselves an awful lot. And there's a lot of conflicting messages out there, and there's a lot of bullshit out there about be a super duper man, which means stepping on the necks of women, which means talking down to the weaker dudes out there instead of lifting them up, which means putting on a little bit too tight t-shirt and getting the big sleeve tattoos and all these things, which are awesome if you're into that. Hey, whatever. But a lot of men think it stops there. I did it right. And nope, still haven't. You're still the same scared little dude inside. So it it takes a lot of so, whatever it is that gets you to that deep, deeper understanding of exactly who I am, what are my values, what's my identity, and all this, that's in my mind what healing is, and that's where it begins. So, whatever it takes for you to get there, if it means you end up put in jail because you were drunk face down in the gutter somewhere, and that's your moment, and it all starts from there, then that's what it is. Well, this guy over here gets the divorce, while this guy over here just got fired from his job, and he's like, I don't know what to do if I'm not the head of IT of company, and all my skills are now outdated. And oh my gosh, who am I exactly without this job and without this title? That's where it all begins. So healing, are we ever 100% healed? Any of us? It's always an ongoing thing, isn't it? Day to day. You have bad days, you have bad weeks, horrible months, but you keep going and you keep going and you learn and you're a little bit better, and you help other people, and you realize it there's no such thing as perfect here. Some we talk about the a lot of insecure men that I deal with. You can always tell the guys that are really insecure because what really touched them the most in my book was the one chapter devoted to physical health. Because that's a shallow surface level. I can do that. I can go to the gym, I can cut my calories to 1800 a day. I can go to the gym seven days a week, and then a year later, look at me, huh? And nothing. Then they realize it's still not quite rich. Damn it, the wife still doesn't want me. Damn it, I'm still that scared little kid. Damn it, I still had a panic attack the other day. Damn it. You haven't healed, have you? But if you would have asked him nine months ago, he's like, Look at me, I'm completely new, dude. Yeah, good for you, man. You look great. You look amazing. Yeah, you're turning heads. Even dudes are like, look at that guy. Yeah, but still, it's not quite there yet. And in fact, just as an aside, that chapter is also the one that pisses off guys the most because they think that's a very shallow thing and that shouldn't matter. It's how you look and how you carry yourself and your confidence does, in fact, matter. Yes, looks and everything else do matter. That's a kind of a shallow aspect of the whole mating gate, but that's not the whole thing. Always both guys, I'm like, guys, the guys that throw down the book in disgust, keep going. Guys that are like, yay, I'm stopping here. No, keep going. There's more to it than just the one chapter on looks. It's just the one that seems to be the most uh superficial and impactful to your insecure guys, one way or the other. It's interesting how that works. So I guess long-winded way of saying the healing, it doesn't ever stop. But and I think because that work is so deep and it's so complicated for so many men. Depends on where you're at in life.

SPEAKER_02: 34:26

Yeah, again, and I go back to that's why community is so important. I think that's why being mentored by individuals such as yourself is so critical. I think it's really important for us men as we're growing and learning that what's the we are diving into the never-ending onion. It will always have another layer to peel, to reveal, to heal, but it also requires us to be able to be, you know, truthful with ourselves and be willing to lean into it. And if we of everything that we spoke about today, Ralph, and maybe there was something we didn't get a chance to touch on. If there was something you'd want to leave our listeners with today, what would that be?

SPEAKER_01: 35:01

You you hit on community a lot, and it is something that goes against kind of this lone wolf alpha male mystique archetype, whatever you want to call it, that is so pervasive now, which is so silly. There's absolutely, positively zero wrong with raising your hand and going, need a little help here. And that is something so many men are resistant to. And that is quite frankly, if you're listening to this and you're like, Yeah, I'm an introvert. That's how a lot of guys hide behind that title. I'm just an introvert, me too. But the turning point for so many men where they went from meh to all right, now I'm getting somewhere, is in fact when they went, a little help here. Every single, and I'm not joking, every single solitary dude that I've looked up to in the past that I consider like a great man in the business world or whatever it is, you listen to the story and you're like, oh wow, that dude's seen some hard times. Oof, somebody had a dad who abandoned them, somebody was abused as a kid, somebody was a foster kid, somebody went bankrupt three times and business failed eight times, and they lost two marriages, whatever it is. And you just listen, going, oh my. But they just kept going and kept going, and they all raised their hand and said, Need a little help here. I was involved with a business community for a while there, where I wasn't in their community, but I helped them and I got to know a network of business guys, all wealthy CEO types and self-starting entrepreneurial types. And they were all part of three or four networking groups where they all got together and spoke. And that was my introduction to that world. Before that, I really I knew of getting together with people in meetings, but to purposely join a group and pay money and go to outings and then fly out to Vegas for outings and go to California for some kind of meeting. And they were just and they loved it and they couldn't stop talking about it. And I got to hear them talk amongst each other. And that was when I realized that's what successful people do. They say, I need a little help here. That's what they're all doing. Need a little help here. And they, this guy's, I want to be there. That guy's done it before. Hey, get over here and tell me how you did it. And then I'll in turn help you with how you did it. That's community. It sounds Pollyanish and it goes against some of our, it's interesting. It goes against some of our you know, more conservative guys in our group and so forth. When they hear like community is very important, they're just like, eh, I like the lone wolf on my own kind of thing better. Dude, for generations, we have realized just how important community is. It takes a village to raise a kid. I don't know who said that originally, but that's true. It absolutely does. It's not just a man and woman. How many times we've heard the whole we moved a thousand miles away from my family because of some career thing or whatever it may be, and now we're divorced and oh shit, and I'm all alone with these four kids half the time. And oof, yeah, you're not supposed to do that. You're supposed to stay close to the extended family and community that you've worked and built, and you all help each other out, God forbid. What a novel concept. But that's something we're all getting away from. That is huge.

SPEAKER_02: 37:45

Yes. Yes, we sure are. Ralph, I just want to say thank you so much. You shared some really powerful insights with the audience today. And you your talk really cuts straight through this noise that we've been also talking about today. And it gives hopefully, man, a clear path to start to reclaim the confidence, reframe the relationships, and really start leading again. So for those that are listening, what's the best way for them to be able to get a hold of you and so they can participate in your programs?

SPEAKER_01: 38:11

Go ahead and check out helpformen.com or check out the page that we have for your listeners, helpformen.com slash revolutionary man, all one word. You can see the special offers there. You'll see my information there, read articles, all kinds of stuff. You can always reach out to me. I'm on all the social media. You can see me still putting out stuff under dad starting over. You can see all the Facebook's really big, 200 and some thousand people on there. YouTube's got 130 some thousand subscribers on there. So you can find me. Just look for the bald head. You can't miss me.

SPEAKER_02: 38:40

I'm gonna make sure all those links are in today's show notes so folks can get an opportunity to reach out with you. And as we close today, I want to also challenge our listeners with this. If you're leading the life with intention, or are you just hoping that someone else is gonna rescue it? And so if you're ready to step into your power with clarity and conviction, then join me and take our free integrity challenge. Just go to members.theawakenman.net and let's get started moving forward and creating the life you've always intended to be. And once again, Ralph, thank you so much for being on the show. I really enjoyed today's conversation.

SPEAKER_01: 39:10

Thank you, brother. I appreciate it a great deal. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00: 39:24

Thank you for listening to the Revolutionary Man Podcast. Are you ready to own your destiny to become more the man you're destined to be? Join the Brotherhood that is the Awakened of Man at theawakenedman.net and start forging a new destiny today.