Author, speaker, creator, and founder of Help For Men. I help men become more secure and have better relationships.
Joined October 2015
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Greetings to everyone who has just discovered yours truly! I am an author, speaker, coach, and founder of Help For Men. If you're a dude struggling in relationships, you'll probably enjoy my stuff. Check out the links in my profile. My most popular book: deadbdroomfix.com
He lists his good-guy moves. I do the dishes, I planned the Colorado trip, I've stayed loyal through the sexlessness. Doesn't that count for something? Dude, when it's look what I've done, where's my sex, you just turned sex into payment. The dishes become a down payment. Colorado becomes an invoice, due on receipt. She feels all of it.
You can be thankful for a new truck and it still won't fix your bad back. Telling Glenn to be grateful is like your smoke alarm blaring while your buddy says, "Relax, the kitchen's clean". The alarm's still screaming. It was never about the kitchen. The only way it stops is if the thing setting it off actually changes.
I often preach to men how they should put effort into building friendships with other men. Their wives should absolutely do the same.
Unfortunately, I often see her time away labeled as "self-care" and his time away with friends is "escaping from his family that needs him".
You're doing nothing wrong. Go see your friends.
Men can go without sex and not fall apart. The guy deployed nine months, the guy whose wife is in chemo. They're fine. Why? They're still chosen. She squeezes his hand, says thank you for being here. There's a reason, and it isn't him. But Glenn gets the same cold treatment. His brain lands on: I guess it's me.
Go down Glenn's list. They cook together, Sundays with her daughters, Colorado, they don't fight, she's his best friend. Who else can she do that with? She can do all of it with other people. There's exactly one thing a man is supposed to give: her wanting him like nobody else. That's the difference between a roommate and a spouse.
Everyone does the math. Nine out of ten awesome, that's an A, be happy. But sex isn't a line item, it's the headline. Lose that sliver and your grade drops from an A to an F. And you're not greedy. Greedy is prime steak wanting lobster. Glenn, you don't have the steak. You got sex four times in ten months.
Glenn, 51, married eight years, and it looks great. They cook dinner together, never fight, she's his best friend. But they've had sex four times this year, last in May, and when he brings it up she looks at him like he asked her to clean gutters. His brother said, "Be grateful, my wife can't stand me". Is he being greedy?
One of THE most common things I hear from men in dead bedroom.
Mom losing sense of independence/autonomy because of kids (avoidant women lose their minds at this point in life)
Man's work life is belittled because it's not "home with kids" therefore it is like a small vacation.
Man does a giant chunk of the domestic work, including all cooking, grocery shopping, etc. This goes against the standard trope of the "lazy husband who does nothing at home". Ironically, stay-at-home dads who do ALL the domestic labor tend to have even higher rates of dead bedrooms. But that's for another post...
A lot of guys fix their problems the easy way. They get in shape, put on thirty pounds of muscle. Some real health wins, sure. But I always say, show me a gym full of steroid muscle heads and I'll show you a gym full of guys with daddy issues. That's where a lot of it actually comes from. @AdamLaneSmith
Think about your dad. Either he hid and never protected you, or worse, he made you his confidant, badmouthing her so you both played victim. Then at 35 you get the thunderbolt: he facilitated it. She never could have pulled it off if he'd had a spine. Mom was Darth Vader. Dad was the emperor. He's the real villain. @AdamLaneSmith
Adam @AdamLaneSmith dropped a stat that reframes everything. Anxiously attached men are 33% more sensitive to oxytocin, the approval hormone. Pair that with dopamine and you get intermittent reinforcement, the mechanism behind gambling addiction. So these men are gambling addicts. The bet: will I get my wife to want me today? Will she like me today? Gambling, gambling, gambling.
Here's how the nice guy tries to fix it. He fluffs up like a rooster, sets a boundary: I'm tired of not having sex, I'm forewarning you, we will be having sex tonight. His wife says, are you out of your mind? His buddies, all divorced and sexless, tell him she's a bitch. He really thought that was the move. @AdamLaneSmith
A study followed 297 parents, then followed their grown kids into the kids’ own marriages. The more the parents fought, the more those kids fought in marriages of their own.
Then they checked how it got passed down. About half of it was what the kids remembered watching.
A man can keep it behind a closed door for eleven years. His kids still take it with them when they marry.
Adam nailed why husbands feel crazy. His wife is asking for a unicorn, and he has no clue. So he brings her a horse, a goat, a rhinoceros, a duck, and she cries harder. Why don't you love me enough to bring me a unicorn? What she really wants is the one thing a man is built to give. Safety. @AdamLaneSmith
