Dear Men: How to Rock Sex, Dating, and Relationships With Women

The kids are almost out of the house. And there's this quiet, low-grade dread that when they go … you'll both be left staring across the table at someone you believe you love but barely know anymore.
That dread is well-founded. Couples are 40% more likely to divorce after kids leave home. Divorce rates for Americans over 55 have doubled since 1990. And roughly half of all divorces now happen to couples who are 50+ — right in this window. The empty nest isn't just an emotional transition. It's a relationship reckoning.
But there's a surprising and uplifting twist here: research also shows that couples who do the work don't just survive empty nest syndrome — they thrive. Studies show that folks in tended marriages report higher closeness and intimacy after the kids leave. The difference between couples who split and those who catch fire again? Those that see it coming and take action.
Here we speak honestly about what they see in men who sensed flatness in their relationship for years and didn't act. Men in near-sexless marriages telling themselves it's "fine." And men who finally did the work — and found themselves having the best sex of their marriage in their 50s, feeling closer to their wives than they ever have. As one put it, "I didn't even know this was possible. We're having more fun now and being more sexually adventurous than either of us could ever have imagined!"
We also cover a truth that as a culture we don't always like to talk about: The fastest way to reignite your relationship is not always couples therapy.
---
Work with us
Ready to go deeper than the podcast and take action? Jason and I will help you break old patterns and transform your sex & love life for good. To see if you're a fit for our flagship program, Pillars of Presence, book a call here. Start anytime. (https://evolutionary.men/apply/)
---
Memorable quotes from this episode:
“We haven’t really had a relationship since the kids were born.”
“We’re close to if not at the border of a sexless relationship.”
“I can feel my partner slipping away.”
“I’m not willing to spend my life in something this stuck.”
"I don't just want it to be good; I want it to be fucking amazing!"
"She knew I was never going anywhere. But once that changed — she started relating to me differently."
“This is one of the main places men can step up.”
“There’s this gap I want to bridge.”
“Is this it? Is this the rest of my life?”
“The sooner you get on top of this, the better.”
“One of the fastest ways to polarize your relationship is to deepen your relationship with healthy men.”
“Deep brotherhood changes us. We make bolder choices; we recover from challenge faster; we feel more connected to ourselves.”
“What’s actually happening in my marriage NOW?”

Have you been through some sh*t? Or maybe you’re in it now.
If you feel stuck, or that there’s stagnant energy in your system that needs some unblocking, Breathwork can be a way of getting MOVING.
It can help you to finally let go.
Perhaps you’re not getting what you want in sex and intimacy, or maybe you just feel empty a lot of the time and don’t know what to do about it.
Or maybe you could write a PhD on your “issues” but you know you need to go beyond talking about it.
Whether you’re still knotted up with sexual shame, or you’re married and trying to figure out why it's so hard for you to lead his wife, or you’re dating going into freeze — or you’ve got patterns around money and finance, the root cause is often the same:
Unprocessed "stuff."
Carrying around tension is like walking through life weighed down by a backpack full of rocks. You don't always realize it's there until you're freed from it.
Plus, women are magnetically drawn to men who are relaxed and grounded in their bodies. That relaxed, open state doesn't just happen, and it's not something you're born with. There are things you can do to get there.
When it comes to processing trauma, shame, or just general stuckness, talking has limited efficacy. That's part of why you may not have gotten the results you were looking for through talk therapy or couples counseling. It's usually when we work the body (hi, somatic therapy) that we truly experience breakthroughs. Or as my guest, Luke Adler, puts it:
"The beauty of breathwork is that you add tremendous fuel and bypass the mind."
Memorable quotes from this episode:
"We men have been acculturated to be thickened up."
"It made clear where things were really working in my life and where they weren’t."
"Whatever system is stagnant — it’s going to move."
"People’s pace needs to be honored."
---
Work with us
Ready to go deeper than the podcast and take action? Jason and I will help you break old patterns and transform your sex & love life for good. To see if you're a fit for our flagship program, Pillars of Presence, book a call here. Start anytime. (https://evolutionary.men/apply/)

Ever felt obligated to "take the next step" in a relationship -- for example, becoming exclusive, moving in together, getting married, buying a house, having children, etc.?
Was it what you really wanted, or was it just what your partner or others thought you should be doing at that point?
Millions of people quietly make alternative life choices and relationship choices -- but we rarely talk about them. Enter Amy Gahran and her book, Stepping Off the Relationship Escalator.
In the world of sex, dating, and love relationships, the cultural norm is the "relationship escalator" -- it's the familiar rom-com plotline where you date, become monogamous, put a ring on it, get married, buy a single-family home in the suburbs (don't forget the white picket fence!), have children, and then only "win" at marriage if you stay together until death parts you. You never get to acknowledge attraction to anyone else, and you both avoid questions around emotional closeness with anyone outside your relationship.
Here, we talk about what it looks like to get OFF the relationship escalator.Here are a few concrete examples:
You want kids, and your partner doesn't. Instead of breaking up, your partner and their close friend become co-parents. You all cohabitate.
You've gotten divorced, but you're still close friends with your ex-spouse. They buy the house across the street and you hang out all the time. You've become close with their new dating partner.
After living alone and realizing you feel lonely and isolated, you choose to move back in with housemates -- and you're happier than you've been in a long time

Amy Gahran has interviewed hundreds of people who are off the escalator and are engaging in creative relationships of all kinds. If you've ever wondered what else was possible, listen to this.
Memorable quotes from this episode:
"More is possible."
"You have options. And even if you want to keep doing what you're doing, make it a conscious choice."
"Cultivate the skill to re-negotiate because I can guarantee that at some point you're going to need to."
---
Amy's site: https://offescalator.com/

“A common pattern we see is that the sex has dried up.”
In millions of marriages around the globe, one partner is starving for intimacy, and the other feels confused, frightened, frozen, or all three. The sexually guarded partner doesn't know how to open, and their partner feels stuck, unhappy and alone.
So what can they do?
Here we explore exactly that, with a focus on a woman partner who may be terrified of engaging in sexual healing. We explore the origins and root causes of this pattern, as well as sexual intimacy, emotional intimacy, love, commitment, and connection.
We talk about the phenomenon of: “I’m so flooded now that we have kids that it’s really hard for me to have the bandwidth to connect physically with anyone.” And: “Our lack of physical intimacy started bleeding into a lack of emotional intimacy."
\We also talk about the prevalence of sexual trauma, whether from childhood or adulthood or both, as well as how to heal from it.
Hint: One of the best ways to move through it is as a woman is not with a love relationship partner, but with other women.
Sisterhood is powerful medicine.
Mentioned on this episode:
Violet's program for women: Love Integrated (https://loveandlegacy.circle.so/LoveIntegrated)
Violet & Jason & Luke's program for women: Heart of Shadow for Women (https://heartofshadow.com/women/)
DM 1: Pain in Pleasure, Pleasure in Pain
DM 348: ‘I wish we had sex more.’ (ft. Violet Lange)
DM 325: What if *every* woman had a self-pleasure practice? 
DM 265: What if she's got a sexual trauma background? How do you help? (ft. Violet Lange) 
DM 227: How a woman can reclaim her erotic essence (ft. Violet Lange)
Memorable quotes:
“It can be very easy for a woman to avoid these conversations.”
“Couples are complex systems.”
“If you can’t talk about sex and what’s coming up there, you start to close off other conversational doors.”
“He’s starving for intimacy, and I don’t just mean physical sex.”
“There’s a deeper layer of healing and connection that wants to come forth.”
“‘The closer we got, the less interested in sex I became; it was easy to just focus on planning the wedding.’”
“I funneled all my energy into work ... and if I’d had kids, I would’ve funneled it into them.”
“There’s a leaning in so that you, as a unit, — you and your partner — are generating energy.”
“I can’t live a full life and exclude this part of myself.”
“I’m ready, and I’m scared.”
“It’s about having a partner who expresses herself so that you really trust her.”
“We, as humans, and especially women, are incredibly capable of change and healing and growth and renewal.”
“Here I am; I’m alive!”

Have you ever felt like you've done everything right — therapy, journaling, the inner work — and yet you were still kind of... stuck? Like you intellectually understood your pain but couldn't actually move it?
That's where Sara found herself after a 10-year marriage ended; a year of talk therapy later, she still wasn't where she wanted to be. She felt alone in a battle with the voice inside her that said she was a failure, unlovable, and destined to repeat the past.
So she did something most people would never, ever do — and it changed everything.
It involved the kink world — but not in the way you might think. Here, we get into how she set it all up, why she chose to do it the way she did, what it felt like in the room, and — most importantly — what shifted as a result.
This episode is a reminder that healing doesn't always look the way we expect, and that sometimes the bravest thing we can do is feel it all, all the way through ... in community.
---
Work with us
Ready to go deeper than the podcast and take action? Jason and I can help you break old patterns and transform your sex & love life for good. To see if you're a fit for our flagship program, Pillars of Presence, book a call here. Start anytime. (https://evolutionary.men/apply/)
---
Memorable quotes from this episode:
"It had been about a year of talk therapy, and I was thinking, 'Why am I not where I want to be?'"
“What if I meet someone horrible and think they’re amazing?”
"These were thoughts like, 'You’re not good enough. You’re not special. You’re never going to find love. Nobody’s ever going to love you. You don’t deserve to find the perfect partner for you.'" 
"I wanted to be pushed. I wanted to be a bawling mess."
"I want to feel like I was letting go to a new extent."
"Is this really the idea?? Do I really want to do this?"
"I did this thing, and I survived, and I was in control."
“I chose that pain and I chose to let go of that pain.” 
"Things just became a little easier — of forgiving myself. Not having to be as perfect. Not having to be completely ready."
---
Mentioned on this episode:
DM 231: Her journey from vanilla marriage to BDSM and kink! (ft. Sara)
Want to get in touch with Sara? Email me: dearmenpodcast at gmail dot com