Chris Bentley (1:57)

Talk a little bit about what you got with the Help Brotherhood. I know you got a couple of books. Why don't you show that to the audience?

Ralph Brewer (2:03)

Sure. This is my latest book. It's called the Complete Guide to Starting Over As a Man. I always have to look at the subtitle. I always get it wrong. I wrote it. I always get it wrong. This is my latest book, but this is my most popular book that I've ever written. And this is the third edition of the Dead Bedroom Fix. A lot of people know me from this. I've sold a few hundred thousand copies of this, self published, so I'm proud of that. But Rebuild is my latest and greatest.

Chris Bentley (2:28)

Talk a little bit about your story, so I know you're pretty open about it. So you got divorced, you got some betrayal, you kind of started over. Talk a little bit about that, and then we'll go into more about what you got going on.

Ralph Brewer (2:40)

Yeah, my whole origin story, as it were, is that almost 14 years ago now, I went through a really rough time in my life where it involved divorce, infidelity, and starting over as a single father to three little kids. And it was very traumatizing to me, and I had a very difficult time coping. And part of my coping strategy was to write. So I would get online and write about my experience as a dad starting over. And I have social media accounts under that name. And I had a way back in, you know, years ago, I had a blog called dad Starting over. And it got some attention, not much. And then somebody suggested that I write a book on some of my experiences. I wrote on a variety of different topics as a dad starting over. I wrote on finances, raising kids, health and fitness. And I wrote about sex and marriage that of all the topics I've ever written on, is the most popular because sex sells, as you know. And so what somebody suggested I do is write a book about my thoughts on sex and marriage and starting over as a dad and what I saw in the dating world. And that's what I did. And the book was called the Dead Bedroom Fix. And that really took off for whatever reason. And so much so that a third edition just came out last year of that book. And that allowed me to, because of the popularity of that, it allowed me to write more books, start the men's community, start putting out a lot of videos and content online for a lot of people to take in. And it seems to be doing well.

Chris Bentley (3:59)

So one of the things that you talk a lot about is sexless marriage. And I have some people that I know that are in that kind of category where they're married, they have kids, and, like, their significant other doesn't even, like, disrobe in front of them.

Ralph Brewer (4:21)

Sure.

Chris Bentley (4:21)

Like, it's just gotten to the point where they may not like each other. Like, I don't want to give out anybody, just, like, real business, but it's usually somebody like the. The relationship has soured. They've gotten to the point where they just don't like each other. You know, sex Isn't an option. Nudity in front of each other isn't an option anymore. They just don't like each other. And then we've had a couple people on the show that you know are dudes and they have support groups that get involved in. I won't say what exactly it is, but I'm sure people can get the idea like they end up, you know, either cheating or having a relationship behind other. Other partners back. Or maybe they enter into like an open relationship with the other partner, very common. Or they end up a situation where they end up sticking together no matter what because they're trying to raise the kids or their significant other doesn't work and they don't want to have a divorce and having to pay her or him. Tell me a little bit about all these different scenarios because I've seen a lot. I just usually like, really don't say much. But I know some. Some friends of mine or people that I know that are in these kinds of relationships where they don't want to get a divorce because of the kids or they don't, you know, they may have or they haven't, you know, or currently doing some sort of something behind, you know, their significant other's back, whether it be alone or with somebody else, which is still cheating, in my opinion. So like, kind of talk to me about, you know, some of the myths, some of the, like reality, some of the stuff that. Because I know that you have a group that you help. So kind of talk a little bit about kind of what you're seeing now as like a sexless relationship.

Ralph Brewer (6:15)

So what we have noticed over the.

Chris Bentley (6:17)

Years, or marriage, I should say, excuse me.

Ralph Brewer (6:19)

So what we've noticed over the years, and I say we because I have a team of gentlemen that work with me as well at Help for Men, is that we have noticed a pattern of behavior amongst the guys that come to our group. A lot of the guys, not all of them come because of the result of this book, the Dead Bedroom Fix. So that shows that they have a problem with maintaining intimacy in a long term monogamous relationship. Then we have guys that are going through the divorce, guys that have never had any kind of luck in relationships, period. It's all kind of relationship y focused. But we've noticed that there is a common trait amongst a lot of the guys. And psychologists would say, of which I am not one, but psychologists would say they exhibit what is known as an anxious form of attachment to their partner. So they are always the one pursuing. They're always the one Looking for reassurance from their partner. Are we okay? You seem a little off. Is everything okay? They want a lot of touch. If you're a man, your love language, as they call it, the most common love language, number one, is touch for a man. That gives them the sense of validation and reassurance that she's still this woman. And not coincidentally, these men match up with women who psychologists call very. Who are very avoidant in nature. They don't like that real close connection. They don't like being vulnerable. They don't like going to the marriage counselor. They don't like to sit down with their husband and talk about stuff. These, these anxious guys are the type that say, I have a book that I want you to read with me wife. It's all about repairing marriage. And the wife's like, no, just stop. Yeah, I have this podcast that I listen to and listen to with me. No, a lot of women hearing that say, that guy sounds great. He sounds like he's invested in the relationship. Well, not if you're an avoidant woman, it doesn't. If you're an avoidant partner, to be fair, in fact, most people who are anxious in relationships are women. So a lot of people hear those things. But the characteristics of constantly reaching and needing reassurance, and they say that sounds kind of feminine in nature. And there's a reason, because most of the time it's the women doing that. But in our world, in the male self help world in general, it's a lot of anxious guys. They're anxious in their temperament, they're filled with anxiety, and they're also very preoccupied and anxious in their attachment to their romantic partners. That goes all the way back to childhood. All these issues come back to childhood. How you were raised, what you saw with mom and dad, that very much has an impact on how you form relationships and bond to romantic partners down the line. And we see it again and again and again. And we. I toyed with the idea years ago of, let's just focus on the dead bedroom thing. That seems to be the number one topic for people. Let's kind of go down that. Just hone in on that topic. But it turned out that those guys had so much in common with the divorce guys, who had so much in common with the guys who never had any luck with relationships, the guys who were abused in relationships. And the commonality amongst all of them is the childhood issues. It always goes back to that. That's what we see again and again.

Chris Bentley (9:08)

You touched on a lot of stuff there. One of the biggest things that I've seen is that there's just a lot of temptation. There's just a lot of other people out there. Right. And that excess ability of getting another partner or having some sort of affair on the side or another partner or however you want to cut it up as very easy today. Like, you download an app, you could go online. You can. There's a ton of different stuff out there right now. And how can I phrase this so it doesn't sound really bad, because I spent a lot of time thinking about this kind of stuff, is that I think a lot of women take advantage of guys that go online and do this kind of stuff because they look at that person, they're like, oh, the way he's writing or the way he acts or the way he's doing something, I could take advantage of that.

Ralph Brewer (10:11)

Sure.

Chris Bentley (10:11)

That person. And I know that's not something that is very nice or anything like that. It's just kind of the way it is. Right. And I've also noticed, and you can correct me if you're wrong, if I'm wrong, but in Today's age of TikTok and Instagram, I think a lot of women think that getting married is the solution to life. Like, if I just get married, men too, things are kind of like, the chips will kind of fall in their place. You know, work or work out or I won't have to work because my significant other makes more money and he or she will lavish me and whatever I want. And I could just sit at home and vacuum. Right. You know, like, I'm not trying to put anybody, you know, any of the genders. I'm just saying in generality, that's what I've seen. And then what happens is they do get married. They do have a great, you know, ceremony. Everything kind of goes along until they reach like a certain year or a certain mother. Something kind of happens and they go, you know, like, I thought this was going to be the solution. It's just a lot of work.

Ralph Brewer (11:22)

Yeah.

Chris Bentley (11:23)

And I liked it when I was single and I go hang out with my girlfriends, or maybe now I still go out and hang out with my girlfriends and my significant other, you know, you know, my husband or whatever takes care of the kids or whatever, or stays at home. And I've seen a lot of that where it's just. They think that the be all, end all is getting married. And that's kind of like cleaning the slate. Everything will be so much better because the spouse will fix all the holes that are in their life. And it's really like from what I've seen, magnifies the holes in their life.

Ralph Brewer (12:00)

Good way of putting it. It doesn't fill the void.

Chris Bentley (12:02)

Right?

Ralph Brewer (12:02)

Yeah. So it's, I talk to a lot of men who are in really what we call dysfunctional, unhealthy relationships. And this guy, he doesn't mean to, but he'll really sell me on the fact that he got with the wrong woman 20 years ago because it's 20 years of just awfulness. And he's just telling me all these stories and I'm getting wide eyed and I go, I got to stop you. Of all the human beings on the planet Earth, why did you select this woman to be your wife? And every man, almost every man says the same thing. There was very little drama at the beginning. She was just like one of the guys. It was just, you just get married, it's just what you do. That's all the thought that they put into it. And for her it's must get married, must make babies, must get married, must make babies. Neither of them say, we were a great intellectual match. We were a great emotional match. We went through a lot. I saw them go through a lot. I loved how they conquered a lot of the difficulties in life. That was a person I could really look up to. For a lot of guys, it's, she treated me nice, she didn't run away. And it's what you do, you get married. It's what my mom and dad did. It's what my grandparents did, strangely enough. Okay. Mom and dad happy? No, not really. Grandma and grandpa? No, not really. They're just carrying on in the tradition. It's usually after divorce that they finally wake up and say, yeah, if I'm going to do this again, I'm going to do it right. And they tend to put their spouses to be through the wringer, so to speak. And the women are the same. In fact, it could be argued that women have a lot more writing on marriage given that if they're still childbearing age, it means a lot to find a man, get pregnant by a man, you hope you cross your fingers, the man sticks around, helps you take care of the kid. So we have a lot to learn from women when it comes to vetting your candidate. And a lot of guys haven't learned that lesson usually until it's too late.

Chris Bentley (13:45)

What I've also noticed is going back to what you talked about with the childhood issues, I had a terrible childhood and my girlfriend right now, she had even A worse childhood. Right. And she talked me into going to therapy. And originally I was like, therapy? I'm a dude.

Ralph Brewer (14:03)

That's awesome.

Chris Bentley (14:04)

Like, we don't do that kind of stuff, you know, Like, I worked for the government and, like, therapy or psychologist or psychic psychiatric person or therapist, anything like tug and tongue.

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Chris Bentley (15:18)

Anything like that was looked upon as. As a bad thing because you had top secret.

Ralph Brewer (15:22)

Yeah.

Chris Bentley (15:23)

So somebody would, you know, I could compromise me for doing whatever. Right. But that therapy actually worked out really well. And I think that's why a lot of these men groups are really, really coming on now. Because it's just a lot of men that are like, look, like I have a problem. And then you say, hey, like, you know what, Chris? I had the same problem.

Ralph Brewer (15:44)

And I go, been there, done that.

Chris Bentley (15:46)

That's crazy. And I'm like, well, if you have that problem, and I'm sure more people have that problem, and then I go and, like, we go and say, hey, like, we have this problem to somebody else. And they're like, bro, like, we don't do that. And you're like, what?

Ralph Brewer (16:03)

They're not of that culture. They're not part of that. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Bentley (16:05)

Like, hey, man, like, we don't do that kind of stuff. Like, you know, man up. Like, we're gonna do that. And you're like, oh, I thought everybody did that. No. And you're like, huh? And you just like, you know, you just man up kind of deal like, you know, men are men, right? Yeah. So you're like, oh, well, like, you know, whatever it is, whatever addiction that they're going through or whatever addiction that. That you have, and then you come across somebody else that has the same addiction and then somebody else, it's like, no, dude, we don't do that. It just changes, either through therapy or just through another guy, but it just changes a lot of stuff. And I've seen it with. There's some Christian groups out there, men's groups. I've seen just some regular. Like yourself, you just have a regular group that just, you know, supports a particular group of men, which I think is fantastic. But what do you see in the future? You know, like, do you see things really changing? Do you see a lot more of the same in terms of this, you know, dead bedroom? You know, like a situation where you get married, everything was going great. Now you have, you know, some kids or you don't have kids, whatever the situation, now you're just. You're just stuck. Do you see things getting easier or do you think it's good? You know, obviously we have Internet and groups and different stuff. Do you see things changing where guys become more selective? Do you see things just where guys get more therapy and they say, you know, like these guys that, oh, relationships don't work for me. Well, it's probably because, like, you're broken and then you're trying to find another broken person, and then you're two broken people. And it's just like, took the words.

Ralph Brewer (17:51)

Out of my mouth. Right.

Chris Bentley (17:52)

It's like sandpaper.

Ralph Brewer (17:53)

We see it all the time. Yeah. So let's start with marriage. We already see the writing on the wall. The marriage rates are going down and the fertility rate or baby making rate is also going down. So fewer people are getting together and making babies. Not good for the economy, necessarily. Not good for society overall. And depends on who you ask. But what it is good for in a lot of therapists. I speak to a lot of therapists and psychologists and they all agree with me. What we're seeing is who's left. If this person says, I'm out of the marriage game, forget it. And this woman says, I'm out of the marriage game, forget it. Then who's left? People that are genuinely want to work on the marriage. They come from a good background. They're like, this is for us. We want to raise kids in a good, stable, healthy home. Therapy. They're not averse to therapy. They want to go together, they go separately, whatever it may be. Now we have, albeit a much smaller number of people, but a smaller, healthier number of people. I'm all for it. I think it's great. I'm not going to tell people, if you don't get married, you're a pariah, social pariah. What good are you? That message is out there from a lot of people, especially to a lot of men. I remember being in a corporate meeting years ago and they were talking about who to promote within the company to some middle management position. They were talking about a guy named Matt at the time, and I was like, I like Matt. I think he's cool. I was the marketing dude. And one guy at the table said, yeah, but he's like 37 and not married. And the other guy went, ooh. And I was like, what does that matter? He goes, well, it means a lot. You know, it shows stability. It shows. So they worried that if you got this single guy who's out on the prowl, maybe distracted by things, he won't settle down, so to speak, and he won't be a great manager within this company. I guess I think that's still out there, but I think it's slowly going away. And I see people are far less averse to therapy than what they used to be. Therapy is kind of a normal thing these days. It's just part of our culture. People go talk to the therapist, they go to the marriage counselor. We see that, and I see it. It shows up in my newsfeed all the time. There's popular shows now where you see real couples talking to a marriage therapist. It's very popular right now. So I see positive things for marriage overall. I guess it depends on your definition of good things. What I see as far as good is who is left good for them. They seem to have the tools in the toolbox to make it work. But that number, I think is going to dwindle and continue to dwindle because we have a lot of people are going to realize, maybe I'm not really wired for this one person from now until the end of time. And you know what? They're probably right. They're probably not wired for it, and that's okay.

Chris Bentley (20:31)

Yeah, I know there's a lot of talk in, like, the pickup community. I've been in that community before. I want to really talk too much in depth about that, but interesting world, isn't it? Right. But the thing about what they said was that. And it's very true, is that we come from a society of tribal, and in that tribe, we'd all look after each other's children. Wives. We'd have multiple wives depending on where you're at in the tribe. And there wasn't a situation where, and I really hate to say it, but religion came in and said, hey, look, you know, this is how you have to live. Right. And then because we're wired as men to be different and tribal, I think a lot of our natural.

Ralph Brewer (21:29)

I don't know, tendencies.

Chris Bentley (21:30)

Yeah. End up ruining a lot of our relationships.

Ralph Brewer (21:35)

So in other words, us men tend to be wired in a certain way and it may not be conducive to a healthy long term relationship, I believe so. You're right. There is an aspect of male sexuality which is we like variety. And there are things like pornography that take advantage of that.

Chris Bentley (21:52)

Right.

Ralph Brewer (21:52)

What? You know, it taps into that part of the male brain. I can sit here on my phone and go scroll, scroll, scroll and see girl after girl. It doesn't have to be like straight on porn. It could be like Instagram, TikTok. And as soon as the algorithm picks up that you like this, any guy will tell you, look at this, it's girl after girl in bikini. It's. We have a natural proclivity for sexual variety, for sure. But if you're. Now I'm being very. Oh, what's the word I'm looking for? Maybe more traditional. I don't consider myself necessarily traditional, conservative kind of guy, but there are some tenets to it which, if you follow, tends to result in a happier, healthier home. And one of those is keep your eyes off the other women and you keep your eyes off the other guys and focus on each other. As soon as you start drifting and look at others, for most of us it's game over. There are some people who are able to navigate the world of open relationships and they can do so, and they can do so for decades. I think they're in the minority, God bless them if that makes them happy. If both are on board with it and they're cool with it, who am I to say they can't do that? But I've spoken to plenty of people who are like, so the spark was gone. We decided to go down that road. And when you know it, she ran off with somebody else, she fell. You're opening yourself up to that possibility. It's, it's difficult. No one said that this was supposed to be easy. I think there is this underlying theme of, well, it should be easy.

Chris Bentley (23:15)

That's what they think.

Ralph Brewer (23:16)

And if it's not, then that means something's. Wrong. We should just divorce. We should just break up. Like, you've just thrown out like 99% of marriages. If you go down that road, it takes work.

Chris Bentley (23:26)

It's 100%. Any relationship takes a lot of work and then a lot of it. I found because I'm in an over a two year relationship now, that you have to weather some storms.

Ralph Brewer (23:41)

Absolutely.

Chris Bentley (23:43)

And you have to be committed no matter what. So even though that storm may affect you and you're maybe emotionally upset, grieving, whatever the situation is, whatever that happened, at the end of the day, that's still my person.

Ralph Brewer (24:00)

Now you have, but at the same time, you need boundaries.

Chris Bentley (24:01)

Right. I agree too.

Ralph Brewer (24:03)

So if you're the type that says infidelity is a boundary for me, if I detect that they've snuck off with somebody else, I'm out of here. Good for you. That's your boundary. But you got to stick to it. So when push comes to shove and you see that, you go, oh, man, I fell in love with this person. I've been with them for years and years. But that's part of my value system. That's who I am. That's my identity as a. Whatever you want to call yourself, a conservative man, whatever it may be, and stick to it. If you don't stick to your values and your identity, which is covered in my book Rebuild, people tend to walk all over you, take advantage of you, and you just go whichever way the wind blows. The next thing you know, your life is chaos and you're like, how did I get here? You didn't stick to who you were from the beginning. So there is the thought of no matter what, you stick with this relationship. But there's a certain subtype of people who match up with others who take a lot of advantage of that.

Chris Bentley (24:50)

I believe so.

Ralph Brewer (24:51)

You got to be careful.

Chris Bentley (24:51)

Yeah, I believe so. That's what I was saying in the beginning. I think there's a lot of, I won't say the particular gender, but there's a lot of people out there that are looking for a certain type of person to take care of them.

Ralph Brewer (25:06)

Sure.

Chris Bentley (25:06)

And that's going to have these boundaries that are going to be flexible because of their looks or who they are. And they just know, hey, look, like I'm going to walk over all over this person. I don't really care. I'm going to have my bills paid and if I want to go do something on the side, like, I'll just go do that.

Ralph Brewer (25:27)

And it may surprise you. I'm assuming you're speaking of, there's a lot of women who do that kind of thing. It may surprise you. The genders flipped.

Chris Bentley (25:34)

Oh, I believe so.

Ralph Brewer (25:35)

I feel that quite a bit.

Chris Bentley (25:36)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I see that. Talk to me a little bit about your support group and how that works.

Ralph Brewer (25:45)

It is an international group. As of right now, we have just over 800 members. We meet primarily online in the form of private discussion forums, live zoom meetings. But we do get together in person for annual conferences in the US as well as Australia, and we hope to make those more frequent. Instead of just once a year, we have courses that are available to our members. We have over at this time. We add to it every day. But as of right now, we have over 1400 hours of audio content for our members to listen to because men love audiobooks and love podcasts. So we record all of our meetings so you can listen back to the meetings kind of in a podcast format. All of my books are available to members at no extra charge. So you get all of the books in ebook as well as audiobook format. And what else do we do? Coaching. One on one coaching with myself and other guys on the team. So we have a lot of benefits and at $27 a month, you get your money's worth. And in fact, most of our guys, what they do is they join for a few months and then they end up becoming lifetime members. You can pay a one time and don't have to worry about any kind of monthly fee and then you're in for life. So that almost 70% of our members are lifetime members. So that says a lot about our group. And we're a very welcoming group. We are what they call a safe space, meaning we have a lot of guys that come in. You have the ability within the forum to post anonymously if you want to. A lot of the new guys post anonymously because they're embarrassed. Here's my story. Wife chijami, da da da. And we always say the same thing, dudes. We've heard it all. I don't care what it is. We've heard it. Crazy sexual kinks to wife cheated to whatever it may be.

Chris Bentley (27:18)

Or I went through it.

Ralph Brewer (27:19)

No shame. No shame whatsoever. Been there and done that. That's the value of the group.

Chris Bentley (27:23)

I think that's the value of the brotherhood.

Ralph Brewer (27:25)

There you go. Yeah.

Chris Bentley (27:26)

Of men's group in general. Ralph, if somebody was interested in learning more about the brotherhood, about your books, what you got going on, where would they find you?

Ralph Brewer (27:35)

HelpForMen.com is our main website. You can jump right to the join page@helpformen.com join to join up with the Brotherhood. Or you can find the Brotherhood in the menu or on the website itself. All my books are available there as well. You can link over to. They have links to Amazon, Apple Books, Audible, all that good stuff. But helpformen.com is your source for everything. We also have a lot of free videos and we have some courses on there that are free as well as some articles.

Chris Bentley (28:03)

Ralph, I appreciate you being on the show.

Ralph Brewer (28:05)

Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

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