What Do You Do When She Leaves Your Relationship or Marriage for Another Man?

A simple, scary question with a complex answer: What do you do when the woman you love is with somebody else?

I’ve been talking with some people at another web site that tries to help people out of divorces and I’ve been getting a huge number of questions from them over the last few weeks. The most common one by far is “My wife left and is now seeing someone else (or is having an affair and refuses to stop). How can I win her back?” No big surprise, right? Do you want to know what IS surprising?

It’s not the answer to the question by a long-shot; indeed, the possible answers to that question are few and simple:

1. Stop abusing your wife

2. End your substance abuse, gambling, or fidelity problem and try to make a life with your wife instead of feeding your addiction

3. Read “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” and learn how to evaluate and manage relationships, communicate well with your wife, and find out whether you can fire up her attraction mechanisms beyond the point the other guy has created to get your honeymoon going again so that she is only interested in you.

One or more of those answers will take care of almost all cases. It won’t always take care of the case where the other guy has created so much attraction that you can’t get her attention to let her see your improvement; attraction is a sword of MANY sharp edges ; "double-edged" doesn't begin to describe how many ways it can work for or against you. But the big question isn’t what you should do to bring her back…

The big question, and the very first one you should ask, is WHETHER you should bring her back!

That’s right! I’ve spent hours and hours cruising relationship and marriage help web sites, and everyone is frantically begging for help to bring their spouses back (and being advised on how to do it by others who are apparently in the same boat, giving a strong appearance of “the blind leading the blind,” at least as far as the forum threads and blogs go), but nobody is asking whether it’s the right thing to do! Indeed, they label somebody who acknowledges such severe problems that no marriage ever should have happened, let alone be possible to save, as a “quitter” and a “loser.” Give me a break!

Right now, a great many of you are having a knee-jerk and responding, “Of course it’s the right thing to do! She’s his (or MY) wife!” If you stop to think about it, there will be some cases where it may not be!

For instance, what if you are the host in a codependent pair, and she is a substance abuser that has sucked the life out of you for years with the cost of feeding her habit, legal and medical costs, worrying you sick, making you feel responsible for all her bad choices and leaving you no room to enjoy anything about your life, let alone what you have earned?

What if she’s not a substance abuser, but still codependent and has kept you working 16 hours a day every day of the week just to keep her out of a jam?

What if she’s a spouse abuser, and married you to have someone to punish because the person who traumatized her is not available, and you were both available and easily manipulated into taking and holding the job of whipping boy?

What if she’s always exhibited a fidelity problem because she’s a gold-digging hussy that married you for your money and has just moved on to somebody with more money, or because she’s spent all you had?

What if she’s always exhibited a fidelity problem because she has a self-esteem problem that she refuses to address, and would rather seek the attention and approval of other men because it’s easier and more palatable than to admit the reason she feels crappy about herself is that she hasn’t done anything in her life to feel good about?

What if the two of you got married because she was pregnant, never did get along and weren’t happy, but comfortably numb and unhappy, and she was just the first one to wake up and realize that you never should have been married to start with and wasn’t rejecting you, but making the same move that you should be making to rectify that age-old mistake?

What if she wasn’t pregnant, but the two of you just were young and lonely and desperate, thinking that nobody else would have you, and latched onto each other thinking a bad marriage would be better than being alone?

What if one or both of you were trying to escape your parents’ abuse and married the first person that came along that provided a way to get out of the house, thinking it couldn’t possibly be worse than home but not realizing that if it was almost as bad you’d still need better?

What if you’ve had such philosophical or value system differences that you’ve always fought and never been happy together and really don’t know why you ever got married or stayed married, because you have no compatibility beyond breathing air?

What if you have compatible values, but your tastes are so different that you have never been able to find a way to spend quality time together, and sleeping, sex, and an occasional trivial conversation are all you really share?

What if you’ve suddenly become disabled somehow, and she’s the one who thinks she’s the victim, ignoring the fact that you haven’t let yourself become a victim and are still a great husband because she’s just too enthralled with the drama and attention? Or just too stinking bigoted to give you a chance to show you that you’re still worth having around?

There are a hundred more scenarios like that, but surely at this point you get the picture. The first question that needs to be asked when things look like they are breaking up isn’t how to stop the break-up...

It’s whether there is any reason for you to expect to be happy with that person if the relationship were to continue!

If there is no expectation of happiness, why continue? There is no productive purpose in trying to save a marriage when the underlying relationship that defines every aspect of that marriage is not a happy one and has no history or chance of being a happy one. The whole purpose of marriage is to bind yourself to a person for your mutual benefit – love, nurturing, friendship, watching each others’ back, companionship, exclusive (and hopefully therefore safe!) sex, etc. -- is it not?

On the other hand, if you have been truly happy, and have just drifted apart, there’s a most excellent chance that you can get things back on track, especially if things have just been in a rut and one or both of you have become “maritally bored.” It’s not at all rare for women to have affairs, leave home, and even file for divorce as a way of communicating to a man that he’d better straighten up and act like a man and be strong, fun, and interesting like he used to be instead of the “chronically beer-swilling remote-jockeying couch potato who never pays any attention to her” that he’s become. And it’s easy to tell the difference…

A woman who’s completely done with you moves on immediately and completely. The divorce papers are delivered with a restraining order, and there are instant barriers up everywhere. You have no contact with her, or even any way to contact her directly.

A woman who’s done with all parts of you except your checkbook still strings you along keeping you in approval-seeking mode and continues to be a drain on your resources, and may accept phone calls, go to dinner, etc., but you’ll notice that you pay for everything, and she keeps having money trouble that you need to bail her out of, even if she makes better money than you. She’ll also be chipping away at your self-esteem to get you deep into approval-seeking mode, making herself physically unavailable while talking about the future and getting back together, etc., trying to make you so utterly desperate for her attention that you’d spend your last dime trying to buy it while she’s out partying with others and secretly (or not) living it up at your expense.

It’s the woman who leaves or files papers, but continues to talk and especially to say things like, “I still love you, but I’m bored/not ‘in love with you’ (how I hate that convoluted expression!)/I can’t be with you right now/I can’t go on like we are and you’re going to have to show me you can change some things/etc.,” that has acted badly to get your attention and is wanting to come back home to the guy she wants to live with. She will tell you what it takes to win her back, and if you speak “feminese” you’ll hear her when she does and know exactly what to do.

Like when she says she loves you, but the guy she’s having an affair with makes her laugh, or is spontaneous, or anything about him that you are not, she’s giving you the laundry list of things you need to fix. Those things are not said to create competition or belittle you, but to communicate what is missing from your marriage. If she’s moved out and/or filed for divorce, and talking about the things you used to do together or the way you used to behave toward her, she’s telling you what she misses and what it will take to bring it back. And she may not “say” anything. She may ASK you if YOU miss things from the past to TELL you that SHE does!

But again, you have to speak “feminese” to understand, because she probably won’t just say, “you used to pay attention to me and make me feel special,” she’ll refer to things you did by asking if you remember them, like picking her a bunch of wildflowers, or cooking supper on the night that she had to work late, things that demonstrate how you did what she missed, and you have to be able to connect the dots to see what she’s really saying, because women never state what to them is “the obvious.” And more often than not, they will make these statements in the form of a question; “Do you think our marriage is good?” is in fact a statement that she thinks there’s a problem that she wants to talk about, and the next thing that comes out of your mouth could quite literally make or break your marriage.

Do you know what to say when asked a question like this, or why you should say it? Do you see how if you say something that rebukes her attempt to enter into a negotiation about the state of your marriage, that one act will be all she needs to give up? Or to take drastic action to wake YOU up so you can get things on track? The stakes are high at this point, so high that you MUST take responsibility for effective communication; failure to do so will cost you in more ways that you can imagine.

How do you learn to speak “feminese”? The same way you learn how to evaluate and manage relationships and learning how to be that alpha male that every woman wants and your woman will be thrilled to have, by downloading your copy of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” at http://www.makingherhappy.com before you do another thing, and especially before you take any more relationship advice from somebody whose own marriage is on the rocks, because this information has worked for everyone who has ever used it, and it will work for you, too.
In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

Relationships and Marriage Take Work, but not As Much As You Think, IF You Work SMART!

If your natural personality is such that you can’t attract and/or keep someone in a mutually fulfilling and enjoyable relationship with you, you need to spend your time and effort on self-improvement, not honing your hunting or acting skills and trying to learn a new way to fake it.

Well Gentlemen (and Ladies!), I’m on fire again. It never ceases to amaze me how people will believe that the hardest and least effective of all options available is the only option when they have a problem. I keep running into people who want to argue that relationships take a lifetime of hard work if they are going to amount to anything, and it’s therefore easier to have affairs or just put up with problems.

Never has so much time and energy been expended shoveling such a load of crap!

Indeed, if a little work is done on the front end, a good relationship can be almost maintenance free if a couple gets in tune and is well-matched.

Well-matched. What is that? Quite simply, if your values and tastes are similar, interests and ambitions are compatible or even complimentary, and you speak anything close to the same language, you’re well-matched. Being together is then natural, because your personalities and motivations are also compatible and possibly even complimentary. You cooperate instead of competing, and it feels good to be together, so much so that you look forward to it. Being well-matched isn’t a product of reinventing yourself; it’s the product of being yourself during the dating period so that you attract someone with whom you are compatible and therefore don’t have to walk on eggshells and jump through hoops to get along with them. Been there? Done that?

So you say, “What if I’m myself and nobody wants to be with me after the third date?” or “I’ve been married three times and none of them lasted longer than a year!” That’s where the work comes in! Not in faking your way into having someone keep your company, but by going through a self-evaluation and self-improvement period, and the thing that may need improved the most is your criteria and method for choosing a mate, not anything that makes you the person you are.

You may need to hone your evaluation skills. I’ve counseled clients who are really great people, but they tend to make very bad choices in a mate, being attracted to some trait that has a high probability of bringing with it something destructive, such as being attracted to the excitement of risk-taking behavior, which can be a mark of an achiever or someone bent on self-destruction, and they don’t make the effort to find out which. Or being attracted to someone who is very involved in charities, which often brings with it a tendency to be unavailable too much of the time and a heavy guilt element that dampens them and the relationship. You may be hung up on a particular type of woman, like the codependent that is constantly getting into trouble so that somebody can save her.

You may need to determine who you really are so that you can identify someone who is compatible with you in terms of your values, tastes, etc. Some people reach middle age and later without ever knowing who they really are, what they want from life, what they want out of a marriage, partner, or job, etc. You can’t pick a compatible partner if you have no idea what you’re trying to match them up to.

You may find that there are things about you that can be improved, maybe even easily. You may need to do whatever is necessary to gear up and truly become somebody that you can be proud of and that other people will enjoy being around. Sometimes people don’t get enough direction, mentoring, and exposure to the right things to choose appropriate and attainable goals, achieve, and develop the necessary self-esteem to attract people or even enjoy being around others.

You may indeed find that what needs the most improvement isn’t your self, but your self-image, and that you’re “bottom-feeding” because you can’t believe that a good woman would have you. Shyness and any other mild form of social discomfort is a huge symptom of self-esteem deficit. Drug companies want you to think that you need a pill to meet people, while bartenders recommend alcohol, but the truth is that except in the most unusual of circumstances, all you need to do to feel at ease with others – of either gender -- is to feel good about being yourself. It’s really that simple. And when you make these genuine changes, there is no stress to try to maintain a façade.

Whatever you find as the problem, the solution will require REAL change, not a repackaging, not an illusion, not a smoother act or a better line. Not a magic bullet or wonder drug, but a real, workable, and easily-sustainable solution. The good news is that you will enjoy the change process and the result, because it will make you feel better about yourself, which must happen before others will feel good about being with you.

I know this sounds simplistic, but folks, I can show you more real-world examples of this working than you can imagine, and I challenge anyone to present a genuinely happy couple that is faking anything to get along or a genuinely happy person that is faking anything at all. One of your fellow readers just went through this exercise, and went from being near divorce proceedings after his wife moved out of the house and negotiating visitation rights to having her moving back in the house and making plans for family relocation and career change in a little over a week! (And there have been several of these guys getting these dramatic results. It’s not an isolated incident or one those cases of “results not typical, yours may vary” you see disclaimed in fine print.)

They were well-matched, and still loved each other, but had both picked up bad habits since their son had been born and couldn’t stand being around each other because it was too stressful to try to be somebody they weren’t. He was being overly accommodating and she was trying to tolerate it because she didn’t want to hurt his feelings by rejecting his favors, and the stress was getting to both of them. What’s sad is that he had every reason to see her as unappreciative of his accommodation, and she had every reason to be bored with his seemingly wussy attitude, because neither knew the real story.

He made a decision to be strong and decisive again, and return to the alpha male behavior that was natural to him in years past, and BOOM! She was instantly back into attraction, stress was eased for both of them, and life was suddenly very good, because they were doing what came naturally and it worked. No faking, no worrying, no wondering how long they could endure keeping up the façade.

A little work on the front end to become or realize that you are someone you enjoy being and whom others enjoy being around will save you a lifetime of having to live under the stress of living a lie and feeling inadequate. The same goes for finding someone that you really enjoy being with, and especially TALKING with – you have to have something to do to pass the time between sexual encounters!

Having a strong self-image and finding a good fit in a relationship makes you feel confident and worthy of the attention of others, and also makes you feel that the burden of proof, with regard to worthiness, is on everyone else. You know you’re worth having and can afford to wait for a good match instead of doing what everyone else does and settling for what’s available at the moment, scared to death that if they get away there will never be another chance. That sort of independence is one of the greatest feelings a human can feel, and you can’t appreciate just how good it really is until you’ve felt it.

Finding a good relationship isn’t about being liked, or being popular, and your quest to find a good relationship should be spent as a time of self-assessment, not assessment by others, as well as a time of exploration, during which candidates will be presenting themselves to you for you to evaluate. If you’re not attracting the kind of people that you feel good being around, it doesn’t mean that you’re bad, or inferior, or any kind of depressing crap like that. It means that you need to either get a more realistic image of yourself or grow a bit to mesh with the kind of people you like, and personal growth is ALWAYS a good thing, something to make you feel like you have achieved something worthwhile.

There is no downside to getting your self and your self-image squared away; just do it, because you can be supremely happy with others only if and when you are happy with yourself. The same goes for loving and respecting yourself, which must come before you can extend those feelings toward others or they can extend them to you. Sounds like it’s all about you, doesn’t it? Well, it is, so get busy.

Or maybe you’d like to be one of those old guys who has worked the same job for 40 years without promotion, sits around watching TV when he’s not working, and can’t figure out why he never seems to enjoy anything and nobody wants to spend any time with him because they’ve all grown while he’s remained stagnant. No? I thought not. ‘Nuff said.

Improvement, like life or a great relationship or even a marriage, is a journey, not a destination. Yes, here we go with another travel adventure metaphor, because it’s entirely accurate. You need to know where you are and where you want to go to plan the trip, and your travel guide for this trip to a great and lasting relationship and total understanding of women, which will hopefully be a very long one, is “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage.”

It shows you how to figure out where you are by evaluating yourself and your relationship, then takes you down the right roads to understanding and communicating with each other and doing all the great and fun things that keep attraction alive, and therefore restart and/or keep the honeymoon going. Go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy right now, because it will get you where you want and deserve to be.

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

An Eye-Opening Confession About Bad Relationships and Marriage from the Comfortably Unhappy

One of your fellow readers offers a compelling confession of her 15 years of being comfortably unhappy – nearly half her lifetime! Look to see if you see any part of yourself in her confession…

A very dear friend in London wrote to me confessing having spent nearly half her life in this condition before she finally broke free of her husband, a philandering, abusive, substance-abusing codependent wussy parasite who thought her purpose in life was to provide for him and his was to take advantage of it. Meet Heather:

David....sorry but I read your lesson about “Comfortably Unhappy” from yesterday, and do you realise that was me for a long time before I contacted you, comfortably unhappy? You could use me as a perfect example of how not to do what I did and waste years of your life.

I was evaluating how long I was truly unhappy and you know what I came up with..............I was with [him] for 15 years.......at 7 years I had an affair with an older man (gosh how I wish I'd run away then, but things wouldn't have led me to the other things I have today, like my career, if I'd done that, so it’s ok really!!) and I'd been miserable for a good year before that so and the friendship with the guy had been growing through that time where we were meeting each other in a plutonic way before we got it on so to speak and that means I was comfortably unhappy for 8 years David......why I stuck it for so long I do not know and all that happened is things got worse and worse even after I stayed after the affair as his possessive controlling behaviour escalated so how do we explain why people dont 'wake up' to what's going on for so long.............

I mean I didn't properly think about leaving when I was caught in the affair at that time it was easier to stay in the comfy situation than change everything, and I felt awful for the hurt I'd caused [my ex] despite the fact I knew the reason I had done it was because I was being taken for granted and treated like a maid even back then. Is that weird or what?!!

I think after embracing the change I had this time I'd be the first one to say if you’re not happy, run! Do whatever it takes! Just don’t waste life.

Life is a precious gift that is far too short already and the only thing I have grieved for through all of this isn't my failed marriage or my lost childhood love/sweetheart. It’s my wasted years of my life that I cannot ever get back, years literally spent being comfortable but unsatisfied and unhappy in every way.

Do you think if people realised how much you actually kick yourself afterwards they would wake up and sort out their own situations now, rather than waiting and waiting and watching the years of their life ticking away until they can't take it anymore?!!!!

Just my thoughts on the newsletter and if you want to use any of them feel free.......

Heather

Guys, it’s no different for us. We get in a rut, we spend years seeking a woman’s approval, or looking to her for our self-esteem when we should be looking to ourselves and she has none of her own, let alone any to give us. We mistakenly think that things get stale and boring because that’s the way they are supposed to be, and that’s the price we pay for sex, and then the sex stops, too, but we look at the calendar and think that we’re better off putting up with it and having an occasional affair than to give up half or more of everything we’ve earned and a big chunk of our future earnings to get out of it and have a life. What a load of crap that turns out to be!

For starters, unless you are with some kind of parasite or predator, or someone with whom you are grossly mismatched and never should have married, life doesn’t have to be like that at all. The truth is that she probably got bored at the same time you did, or even before, if she’s like most women, and would love for things to be fun and exciting again. Women are nesting creatures, right?

They don’t like crises that cause major changes in their life (like divorce!) any more than we do, even though you will see them craving the adrenaline it causes to combat their eternally-tormenting boredom. It is foolish, not to mention catastrophic, to let a little drama convince you that the average woman would destroy her household and her marriage just to get a little adrenaline rush. According to the best information I’ve been able to find, only one in two thousand is that insanely damaged.

And no, it’s not easier to have an affair than to fix things with your wife if you have the foundation of a good marriage. That’s a myth that I’d like to strangle somebody for propagating, not because I think everybody should be married, but because it’s simply not true and has ruined so many marriages that could have been fixed. What does it take?

It doesn’t take much at all! It takes knowing whether you have the foundation for a good relationship, which is a matter of answering a few questions that I have for you. It takes knowing how you and your wife differ as man and woman, and using those differences to enhance your relationship instead of allowing them to remain points of contention, competition, and frustration.

It takes learning three simple rules that govern all communication with a woman, and using them to hear things she’s been telling you for years that you never knew you were being told. It takes shedding the “nice guy” programming that you’re drowning in, and getting back to being the “real guy” that your Y-chromosome has set you up to be, strong, competent, fun, and feeling good about yourself.

It’s the easiest process a man can go through, because it’s a return from your current unnatural self to your natural self, and a process that gives you the answer to questions you’ve spent a lifetime thinking you’d never see answered, like “What do women really want?” and “What makes women tick?” not to mention “Why did she just get mad at me for answering her question???”

So what do you say? Are you comfortably unhappy? Are you ready to learn things you never thought possible to know and enjoy your life – and your wife – like you never thought possible? Start the new year right! Go now, right now, before you do another thing, to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and see just how easy enjoying a great life can be!

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

Women and Affairs in the Real World, and How to Protect Your Relationship and Marriage

A reader shares some shockingly revealing ads from real women looking for real men, as well a man who targets them, and Gentlemen, you really need to understand this…

There are several of you who have moved out of incompatible, irreconcilable marriages who are now dating who send me examples that are useful to those of us who are still married, especially ads by married women looking for thrills and the men who target them. Rick, a very astute reader and now friend, has contributed in the past, and every time he does, it’s an eye-opener, just like today. Check him out:

Hey David,

As usual, the above newsletter [“12/05/09 - Why Do Women Have Affairs? Knowledge is Powerful Preventive Medicine In Protecting Your Relationship and Marriage”] is true to its hard-hitting form. Please allow me to provide (yet more) proof that what you say is the truth. I was on my online site earlier this evening when I saw this married woman had looked at my profile. Check out how she describes herself:

"I am a recently separated, and soon to be divorced, fun lady. I do not have any children and am ready to sew my wild oats (since I never had the chance before). I want to find someone who is only interested in having a good time. I'm not ready for a relationship so if that is what you want, do not reply. Am interested in some physical love. Husband could not satisfy my needs and I need someone who can.”

Now look at what she wants:

“I just need someone who is willing to go out with me and have a good time. I want you to show me what I have been missing all of these years - out on the town and in the bedroom. If this sounds like something for you, please respond.”

Another textbook example of how boredom, left unchecked, can doom a marriage. Gentlemen, please buy David's book so that you don't become another statistic! Do it for YOU.

David, Let me say for the record, that I have not, nor will I ever get involved with a married woman. However, there are plenty of men who will! Take a look at this Personal Trainer's confession:

I'm a lonely wife's dream, and hubby's worst nightmare.

In 30 years in the training business, I've probably had affairs with more than 40 married women. Most of them were in their 30s, married eight to 10 years, with kids, and their husbands weren't paying attention to them. They felt neglected. They didn't feel attractive. Their husbands had become preoccupied with work.

In the beginning, I was scared about having sex with my clients. I was a shy, overweight kid and didn't go to the prom, so I didn't have much confidence at first. Then I got this physique and I discovered that I had this ability to charm women, and I made up for lost time. When I was 17, I put my first ad in a small paper, saying I was looking for clients to train. I had just won Mr. Bodybuilding Teenage New York State, and in my ad I was looking lean and ripped.

The first day a woman called me and said, "Do you really look like this?" She asked what my girlfriend thought of my being a trainer, which I thought was strange. (I now know that when a client starts asking what my girlfriend thinks of my training, she wants to know if I'm available.) She told me she was married, that her husband traveled a lot for work and was never home. She said she found that being so sedentary had made her put on some weight.

The next day I went to her house. I'd spent a lot of my savings and gotten some help from my mom to buy a really nice dark blue warm-up suit and brand-new white Adidas sneakers so I would look like a professional trainer. When the woman opened the door, she was wearing a black negligee. I went home and told my mother and father, and they forbade me to go back. My parents canceled my ad and said, "This will probably be a problem the rest of your life."

It happens all the time now. The wives today feel they have just as much right, and drive, to have a playmate as their husbands do. It's natural to want to have sex with your trainer. Remember that training is very hands-on. I'm touching them, motivating them, encouraging them, listening to them, relieving their stress and channeling their energy in a more positive way. Just as their husbands used to do at the beginning of their marriage. I'm trained to get inside their heads and push the buttons that will motivate them. But I'm also in their heads in other ways. They connect with me emotionally. It's very important for a trainer to be a good listener.

I once had an interior-designer client who was very beautiful. Like every client, she started opening up about her life; women do the same thing with their hairdressers and trainers. "My husband isn't attentive to me, he used to be so passionate," she explained. It was her birthday and her husband had forgotten. I suggested we have lunch, and she said, "How about dinner?" And that's where I went wrong. For a couple of months after that, we would work out, go back to my place and have sex. I would whisper sexy thoughts to her when I was spotting her at the gym. And then it ended. We got caught by the husband. He wound up calling me up and crying like a baby, asking me to stay away from her.

I don't feel bad about having had affairs with married women, because they were feeling neglected and they just wanted to be loved. One woman said to me her husband had never looked into her eyes when they made love. He couldn't have been that smart, because women love the eye contact. I come from a very passionate, Italian family. When I make love to a woman, I like to have spontaneous sex. I like to do it in the elevator, on the beach, underneath the table in the restaurant. I like to make them feel young, mischievous, alive. If they can have a taste of it again, they can realize they haven't lost it.

I'm 47 now, and over the years I've learned to watch out. I realized I couldn't be sleeping with everyone's wife in town. Number one, you start sleeping with them and they want to stop paying, and I make $150 an hour. I was never paid for sex. I would never do it for that. Because for me it would ruin it. I like to make love to please someone. When they say, "I feel like a real woman again," it's the same thing as when I train them and they tell me how terrific they feel because they fit in clothes they haven't worn for 10 years. The high of training is the same high as making love. I've written a screenplay about it all, called "The Trainer." It's "Shampoo" for the 21st century.

That was pretty self-explanatory.

Take care,
Rick

Rick’s right. That is indeed painfully self-explanatory. If you’re not being a good husband, there are others standing in line, or waiting in the wings, or crouched in the bushes waiting to pounce, to have all the benefits of being married to your wife but none of the responsibility or drama. And once a woman hits a certain level of boredom, she will come unglued with the same lack of inhibition that you feel when you get too aroused to say, “No,” to sex or to stop when she says, “No,” to you.

Make no mistake. This reaction is primal, biological, and has nothing whatsoever to do with love or the lack thereof, and if you’re not giving your wife a reason to enjoy being with you, somebody else is or soon will be giving her a reason to enjoy being with him. Period.

There is no emotion, logic, or “morality” that will interrupt this process once it has started, and if you knowingly allow it to start, you have nobody to blame for it but yourself when it is complete and at best, your wife is confessing and asking you to work things out with her and get your marriage back on track, or at worst, she’s announcing that she’s leaving you for him, and taking everything you own with her as punishment for putting her through the trouble.

So what do you do to prevent it? Be a man! And be a husband. A real husband, one who makes her feel alive, engaged, challenged, understood, and appreciated, as she tries to make you feel, not some guy who goes to work and sits with a remote control and a beer in front of the television all evening while she tends the kids and spends the rest of the evening in some Internet chat room – being hit on by these other guys! Get a clue!

And believe it or not, you’re a lot more likely to need much more than a clue to know what being a man and a husband are really all about. Even if you’re lucky enough to grow up with a good role model, which most of us weren’t because our fathers didn’t grow up with a good role model either, the examples we are barraged with daily – bungling, wussy beta pseudomales who somehow trip over themselves and fall into the arms of success by complete accident if at all – are there in your face constantly to confound and corrupt any legitimate concept you may have. But you still have a chance…

There are a few of us around who have not succumbed to all this wussy crap that’s been shoveled at us since the 1970’s, or have succumbed but learned from our mistakes and awakened from that wussy slumber, who can be that role model for you. A very few of us even have the writing, teaching, and training skills to help. One of us that I know of has even researched what seemed to be the right formula, tested it on hundreds of women and couples, and has made it available for you with little more than a few mouse clicks. Ummm, that would be me. ;-)

It’s called "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” and it’s all that, and more. Go to http://www.makingherhappy.com/ and download your copy and see for yourself. Rick did, as did many others, and now they own their lives; join them.

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

The REAL Dangers of an Affair Ending Your Relationship or Marriage

Nearly every heterosexual man thinks about an affair at least once in his life, if for no other reason than because women are so available and so alluring when there’s trouble at home. But before you consider an affair as even momentary relief from a troubled or stale marriage, you’d better read this, because it’s really not worth the risk, especially when fixing things at home can be so easy…

I don’t know if there’s something in the water, if it’s the change of seasons, or just the subject matter of the last couple of days, but the women reading this newsletters are really getting active again, and mostly with confessions! Meet Maggie:

Dear David,

My husband showed me your newsletter about the women having their contest and I have a similar story of ruthlessness and recklessness that I think you’ll find interesting if not useful. I have a best friend, Carol, that I have known since I was old enough to have a friend and we grew up together. All through school she and I were joined at the hip. What one did the other did as well and there seemed to always be some kind of competition between us even though we were best friends. After high school went our separate ways, but later on we became close again.

It was at this time that I found out some of the things that she did while we were not talking. She is what you describe as a predator and a real drama queen and will do what it takes to get what she wants and really does not care who it hurts. The lengths she will go to are nothing short of amazing. There have been times she has even scared me, and that is not easy to do.

At this point I will add we did not stay friends again very long. I have changed a lot and I hope became a better person and that the people who knew me before can see the difference. I am no longer so competitive or one of the biggest drama queens and I have no need to look for men everywhere I go. I’m married to the most amazing man I have ever known, thanks to you.

Ok back to my story. One night Carol had gone out with friends for a drink after work. She met a guy at the club and they seemed to hit it off really well. I have nothing against meeting in a bar, but with all the drinking that is going on and all the crazy people it’s not my idea of a great place to meet a man. Anyway, he asks her if she would like to leave with him and she did. After a little while she found out that he was not that great, but she did keep seeing him for short time. Sometime during their affair he told her he was married and she really got mad and decided she was going to teach him a really hard lesson about cheating.

She talked him into taking her back to his house when his wife was out of town. So like an ass he took her there, had s’ex with her in their bed and that just set him up. She had what she needed to totally wreck his life. She waited until she knew his wife was home and told his wife that not only was he having an affair with her, but they had sex in her bed.

Now to me that is really vicious and sickening!! The only reason she wanted in his house was to wreck his life by making sure his wife knew they has sex in her bed. The very bed in which he “made love” to his wife.

I guess you can see why we are no longer friends. I can not allow that kind of drama and destruction in my life and I refuse to lower myself to her level.

I hope this will be of some help. Maybe you could share this with your readers and let the men and woman know that there are people who only live to hurt others.

Sincerely,
Maggie

Yikes! That’s a great story about a whole lot of mistakes that didn’t need to be made. The guy in that story had several choices, and he made the wrong one at every turn. The affair was a bad idea from a lot of different angles, and bringing a woman he barely knew to his wife’s home was insane! While all of this was happening, he could have been fixing his relationship with his wife so that there was no allure in an affair, or at least safely getting out of the marriage without the additional “combat stress” of having been busted in an affair giving her a lot of pisstivity and legal leverage, but instead he was setting himself up not just for a permanent end to his marriage, but a punishing end at that!

I’ll be the first to admit that his marriage may have been one that never should have happened in the first place; indeed, the hardest message I ever have to get across to anyone is that some marriages are doomed before they begin and the best thing you can do when you find out you are in such a marriage is to get out of it, hopefully with cooperation and some dignity, and move on. But this guy didn’t even look at his relationship to see what could be fixed, if anything, before setting himself up to be slaughtered.

And that’s the real rub, Gentlemen. Affairs are a loaded gun pointed at your head. If you’re having trouble, do what men do in times of crisis: find out if it can be fixed, and fix it. If it can’t be fixed, talk to your partner and agree that it can’t be fixed, and move on like friends, or at least civil adults, before getting entangled in another relationship. You owe that to yourself, to your wife or girlfriend, and to any woman that you might have a relationship with instead of your current partner.

The only way to look clean is to be clean, and it’s mighty hard to look clean when you have an angry concubine giving the sordid details of your affair to your wife. You must admit that she’d also be a lot more likely to forgive the mistake of marrying her when you shouldn’t have than to forgive the mistake of you taking up with another woman while she still has a claim on you established by the vow you took to be her husband.

And only a fool would think that something like this could never happen to him. I’ve heard stories of girlfriends calling wives out that made me wonder how the guy even survived, including more than one where the girlfriend and the wife got together to get revenge on the husband. They’re social in nature, remember? Think about this…

You enter into an affair with a woman for some stress relief, and she decides she wants you to leave your wife, which you don’t want to do for whatever reason. The girlfriend tells the wife about the affair, and the wife wants to hurt you because you cheated and the girlfriend wants to hurt you because you wouldn’t leave your wife for her. Do the words “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” or “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” ring any bells?

Yes, I am indeed trying to scare the living crap out of you. I’ve seen this with my own eyes as friends went through it and heard stories from people that had every reason to be telling me the truth that made me wonder how, with such stories floating around, anyone would ever get married. And I don’t want any of you gentlemen writing to me with a story such as these later because I failed to sufficiently warn you of what kind of trouble you might work your way into. I’ve got your back, so to speak.

So here’s the deal. Affairs will get you bankrupt, maimed or killed, if you’re lucky. They can lead to a lifetime of slow and painful torture if you’re not so lucky, and only a fool depends on luck for his outcomes. Your outcomes are largely the result of your choices, so choose well…

So how do you fix it? Glad you asked! Everything you need to know is waiting for you in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and you should download it right now at http://www.makingherhappy.com/ and get started. Life is short, and windows of opportunity fleeting; every minute you fail to make a good choice is a minute you leave someone else to make a bad choice on your behalf, or that will impact you badly, so make your own choices, good choices, at your first opportunity.

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

Why Do Women Have Affairs? Knowledge is Powerful Preventive Medicine In Protecting Your Relationship and Marriage

Why do women have affairs? For the same reason most men do: because there’s nothing exciting them at home. What excites them may be quite different from what excites us, but boredom is even harder for them to handle than for us, so don’t expect them to handle it – do something about it before it happens!

I had a wonderful phone call from an old friend (I’ll call her Dina), and I do mean OLD – we went to grade school together and have kept in touch ever since. We had a mutual “crush” in the third grade, became good friends, and eventually got to be so much like brother and sister that “hooking up” was never a thought, let alone an option, for either of us. She got married in the middle of college, had three kids, and the kids are grown now and she and her husband, Danny, also a long-time friend, are left with a great big empty nest and each other. They’d had a major problem develop a few months prior, and she called to give me the details of how things were back on track and better than they had ever been.

Like so many other couples, they had been so involved in their kids that they had grown apart and while they still love and respect each other, their life together was much more like that of casual roommates than a married couple. They didn’t have much to talk about, didn’t sleep together often – I’m really talking about sleeping here; he fell asleep on the couch most nights watching TV, and had “intimate relations” a couple times a year. OUCH!

That’s a lot of problems for two people to deal with, especially when you bring the causes into the mix. Their intimacy was severely hampered by occasional prostate problems he suffered, lack of personal interaction, different interests and schedules, “empty nest” syndrome – the couple had defined a huge portion of who they were as “parents” so when the kids were gone they had overwhelming feelings of lack of purpose and loneliness from the hole that was left in their lives -- and it finally caught up with them.

Dina had been particularly taken with a new employee in her office, a manager, her new boss (yes, that’s about as cliché as it gets, but remember that things become cliché because they are so common), and was working late both for the extra money and something to do. She enjoyed working for him, because he was a strong leader, good motivator, was genuinely interested in his employees’ welfare, and had a great sense of humor. He was also married and quite bored, being in a similar situation to Dina.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see what came next, does it? Look at the boss. Strong leader, an alpha male characteristic. Good motivator and great sense of humor, both traits indicative of above average communications skills and very ANTI-BORING. Leadership and motivational skills coupled with his position as her boss put him in a position of defining authority for her frequently. Genuine interest in employees’ welfare coupled with good communications skills is intimacy waiting to happen.

He tripped her attraction triggers nine ways from Sunday, and in her mid-forties, she’s still quite physically attractive, intelligent, a good conversationalist, and has always been playful and a little flirtatious, so she tripped his, too. They finally succumbed to the temptation and immediately knew they had done something that they shouldn’t have done and couldn’t undo. Dina called a few months ago to tell me about all of this, and I went to visit them.

She disclosed all of this, and we went through all that had happened over the years (the same process described in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” for determining if you are with someone who is a good match for you, a critical step in fixing any major problems in mature relationships – if they’re bad for you, why fight to keep things together???) and she knew beyond any doubt that he was the man for her and that they had slowly and surely grown apart as they focused too much on their kids and careers and not enough on each other.

She knew she had to tell Danny what had happened, for a number of reasons, and asked me for advice. I gave her a copy of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” and told her to go through it with him, to help him prepare for the news he was about to get and be better able to understand what had happened. She was scared, but he was and is pretty level-headed, so she agreed.

When he got home, she showed him the book and told him I had written it and wanted their evaluation of it, which was true (I’m always interested in reader feedback on any of my books), and over the days that followed I got letters and phone calls from him about various things, and when it was obvious that he had a good grasp of what attraction is, and how powerful a force it is in a woman, especially when she is bored and vulnerable, I told Dina it was time to find an opportunity to confess, which she did within a couple of evenings as they were discussing part of the book. She kept a small digital recorder handy waiting for the discussion so she could send it to me, and e-mailed a recording to me with some notes.

He had read a passage in the book talking about how women get bored and can literally lose their ability to reason and control of their actions when somebody restores that feeling and he said, “Man, that sounds like a recipe for disaster. If you were to get caught up in something like this, I wouldn’t like it, but I don’t think I could blame you, at least not any more than I would have to blame myself.”

Being a bit more direct than most women, and a lot more direct than I was accustomed to her being, she looked him dead in the eye and said, “Danny, it has happened, just once, and I knew the minute it was over that it shouldn’t have. I love you, and I’m taking responsibility for this. I didn’t choose to let you grow away from me, but I didn’t choose to prevent it either. I didn’t know what was happening, and thought it was something that just happened to everyone when they’d been together as long as we have, and didn’t think it would be a problem. I want you, and nobody else. I want to grow very, very old with you. I can’t promise you that I can live long enough to do that, but I can certainly promise you that we can keep this from happening again for as long as we are alive, and you know we can, too. I’m not going to ask for your answer now, because I can see you’re in shock and need time to think things through. You tell me when you’re ready to talk about this.”

He said to her, “I’m ready now. I’m no fool. I know why you did it. We’ve been sitting here talking about it for weeks. I’ll share the responsibility with you, because I’m just as guilty of ignoring both of us as you are. I knew things weren’t right, but didn’t know what to do about it. I love you, we’ve raised three kids and paid off two mortgages together, and frankly, I’m sick to death of the way things have been going. We’re in a rut, and we’ve got a tow-truck here in this book. It may be awhile before I can be with you without thinking of another man being with you, but as long as I know that we’re working on this together, I’ll get over it. I’m going to Randy’s (his brother) for the weekend to do some fishing and get my mind right, and when I get back, we’re going to take back our marriage.”

Dina was weirded completely out. Danny got up, threw some stuff in a bag, kissed her on the cheek as he went out the door, sent her a couple of text messages while he was gone that just said, “Thinking of you…” and came home Sunday night and went to bed. Come Monday morning, he woke her up with a kiss and a smile, and said, “This is it, Kiddo. Time to get back to being us. I’m going to go cook us some breakfast while you shower.”

Danny’s always been pretty much a “take-charge” kind of guy, and he did. He took what was in my book, added it to what he already knew of Dina, and had her swept completely off her feet in about three days. They still have occasional problems; Dina transferred to another department for obvious reasons, and didn’t enjoy the job as much as she did because she was working for her old boss, who was a bit weak and disinterested, and Danny occasionally has a nightmare about her affair, but they’re on track, regularly intimate, and haven’t had any discussions of the affair in several months now. Dina’s now found another job, not to leave the company where the affair happened, but to find something to do she can enjoy. Things are looking up all around.

There was a lot that went into saving their relationship. It took knowing that they were right for each other – highly compatible -- and that their 22 years together was a good investment that they needed to keep. It took knowing exactly what happened and why, so that there were no grudges, feelings of guilt or betrayal, or especially unworthiness. It took knowing how to fix the problem, choosing to fix it, and following through on that choice, too.

These things came from my book, some personal coaching to help them get through the emotional upheaval at times, and their knowledge of each other. The biggest thing required was the commitment to do what was necessary to fix the problem, which was much easier to make when they had read "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and therefore knew that it not only COULD be done, in their case it SHOULD be done, what would be required, and that it was worth it.

Affairs can be avoided if you’re proactive, and they can often be overcome if you’re not, as long as you know what to do and just do it. I can give you all you need to know in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” but learning it and doing it is up to you. I strongly recommend the proactive approach, because the obvious emotional upheaval of an affair can be devastating, and it’s a risk of sustaining permanent damage that you don’t have to take at all. It’s rare that the easy way out is the best possible way, and you should always take advantage of such an opportunity, because it doesn’t come around that often. Your easiest and best way out of this situation is waiting for you at http://www.makingherhappy.com, so go get it and get started, because life’s too short to do things the long and hard way (unless of course you’re talking about sex!)

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

So She Says She Has a Headache: The Oldest Lie in Relationships and Marriage

A reader asks about the age-old lie, “Not tonight; I have a headache,” and its other iterations. He may not like the answer, but if he’ll accept it he can fix the problem, which is not her; it’s him.

I’ve wondered for a long time why I seldom receive a letter on this subject, because in the research phase of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” it was one of the first things to come up: the ages-old lie, “Not tonight, Dear. I have a headache.” It has other iterations, such as cramping, nausea, too tired (an extremely common one and easy to fake), menstrual discomfort, etc. Sometimes these complaints might be legitimate issues; at others they won’t. There is a pretty good way to know the difference, and a fool-proof way to eliminate the bogus ones. We’ll discuss all that in a minute, but first, meet Randy:

Hey David,

I have run into a stone wall with my wife and was hoping you might be able to shed some light onto a problem that is driving me straight to the sofa. It has to do with what else, sex. I know women think that is all a man thinks of, but how can you not when you never get it!

Every time lately I want to have sex with my wife she always has a reason that we can not do it. I have heard them all at this point, I am on my period, I have a yeast infection or bladder infection, I am too tired I have had the kids all day. Hey I am not a heartless SOB, but enough is enough how can a woman have a problem all of the time? I need some help here, how do I get her back in the bed with me and have sex instead of fighting for half an hour and ending up on the sofa every night?

Randy

My reply:

Randy, Buddy, let’s talk. There are two possible reasons for your wife’s behavior, those being that she’s really having that much trouble and that she’s not having that much trouble but it’s easier to fake something than to argue and fight about sex. It’s simple logic. She’s complaining of a problem, so the problem either does or does not exist. If the problem exists, there should be some signs of attempted remedy, and if not, she was bound to slip up sometime.

When she claims she has a headache, is her behavior consistent with having a headache? Taking some form of pain reliever, wanting you to rub her neck if it’s tension or taking antihistamines or decongestants if it’s sinus or avoiding bright lights and loud noises if it’s a migraine?

Incidentally, last I heard, the AMA was still saying that the average person has 6 headaches a year. That’s really ironic because that’s also the number of times the average couple who has been together longer than two years has sex in a year. (That is, of course, if they’ve not discovered "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage", in which case they’re having sex several times per week to several times per day!)

Is she saying she’s too tired for sex and then going to sleep? Or is she claiming she’s too tired and then sitting on the phone with a friend, sitting at her computer, or watching TV for another two hours? Are there wrappers from feminine hygiene products in the trash can when she claims to be having her period?

Is she going to the doctor and/or drugstore and bringing home prescription or over-the-counter treatments for bladder infections or yeast infection when she claims she has one?

The point is that there is behavior that can be logically expected if someone has a genuine ailment, especially if it’s frequent. If their actions are contradictory to their words, they’re faking it to avoid sex. There is no other explanation.

Now the big question, why would she want to be avoiding sex?

There are very few people who don’t enjoy it, and their problems are pretty severe. If she has enjoyed sex with you in the past, it’s unlikely that she would have developed one of these major problems (like being raped) without you knowing about it. That leaves only one conclusion.

She’s no longer feeling attracted to you! Get this:

The slow-down of sexual activity a year or two after your marriage may seem normal because everybody complains about it and there’s a chemical change that stops forcing you to want it constantly, but it’s actually the first major symptom in the slow decay of a relationship. It doesn’t mean the relationship is over, but it’s now, not when you or she gets busted in an affair or somebody gets served divorce papers, that is the best time (other than before trouble starts, as a preventive measure) to start learning what you’ve needed to know all along and doing what you should have been doing all along to set things right while it’s still easy to do so. At this point, her feelings are still mostly positive, right?

Loves you? Maybe, even probably.

Loyal to you? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on whether someone else has created attraction for her and she’s responding to them. A woman will have sex with a man to whom she is attracted, and will not with a man to whom she is not attracted, at least not without resentment. It’s just that simple. There is also a strange tendency for people having an affair to refuse to have sex at home because they’re having feelings of fidelity for the person they’re involved with. So what do you do?

First, you forget about trying to find out if she’s sleeping with another man or who he is. That is irrelevant, and nothing good can come from finding out. She’s living with you, and that’s all that matters. Any woman would rather feel attraction for a man she’s living with, especially if she loves him, than any other man on the planet. It makes for a nice, tidy, secure, and enjoyable environment that is not possible under any other scenario. That is your edge. Don’t blow it by making accusations and digging around to find out something that you won’t want to know afterwards anyway. And finding the other guy to tell him to back off is the biggest wuss move of all, because you’re acknowledging his presence and even his superiority. If you handle this right and your wife has any character at all, she’ll end up confessing sometime in the future anyway, or else her past will come back to haunt her. Forget about it.

Second, start creating attraction for her. You apparently did it for her at one time, or she wouldn’t have married you (even if she married you because she was pregnant, she slept with you – drunken daze notwithstanding – because you created attraction for her), so you have to bring it back, which is nowhere near as hard as creating it for a stranger, for a variety of reasons that I won’t get into here, but are fully explained in the book that will tell you how to create attraction for her, “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage.” She lives for it, yearns for it, and wants you to be the one creating for her, of all the men on the planet. Give her what she wants!

Take care, and keep in touch,
David

Gentlemen, that feeling you get that you would describe as “I’ve just got to have her,” is the same feeling women get when in the presence of an alpha male who creates sexual tension for her by flipping switches and withdrawing in a “two-steps-forward-one-step-back” dance that can go on for minutes to days. They’re not visually stimulated like we are with the human physique; it’s alpha behavior that gets them fired up more than anything, the confident, cocky, almost swaggering arrogance of a man who knows he can do anything balanced with the intellect to do what he chooses (it doesn’t matter whether you can do everything, only that you can do what you aspire to and need to do), the authority to pull it off, and the sense of humor to make it all enjoyable.

Putting on the act won’t do it, at least not for long. You might get away with it for a date or two with a stranger, but with your committed partner, it’s got to be you, the REAL you, not just an act you can put on and constantly be stressed out over the possibility of having her see through it. Help is instantly available if you’re ready to be the man you can be.

“THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” teaches you, as it has taught thousands of men, what you need to know and helps you to incorporate it into the real you, making you that confident alpha male you takes care of business and has fun in ways that drives women wild with desire.

It also teaches you the difference in how you communicate and how women communicate so that when she tries to tell you what she wants you’ll be able to hear and understand it. Believe it or not, many women have reported having affairs and getting caught in them so that their husband will see the example that “the other man” sets, because she’s tried to tell him and the message didn’t get through! The boyfriend wasn’t a boyfriend, he was the illustration in a “how-to” manual she tried to give him!

And, since women need love for security and attraction to feel alive, it teaches you what attractive behavior is, and the personality that causes it to happen naturally, the alpha male personality, and how to develop it so that you can enjoy the confidence that it brings you in all walks of life, not just in your relationship. It’s not just about relationship improvement, it’s about MALE improvement, about being a real man, and doing the manly things that real men do, and loving every minute of it.

The coolest part is that the manly things that manly men do and women love to see them do are fun! They’re things that men just naturally do, but in that idiotic fiasco of the 1980’s when women said they’d like for men to be more sensitive and men took that to mean sensitive INSTEAD OF manly and not sensitive IN ADDITION TO being manly, as the women wanted (they never state “the obvious”), men have just stopped doing and turned into a bunch of wusses.

Kill that inner wuss and let your inner manly man and inner naughty boy come back out to stay. I’ll teach you how. Click over to http://www.makingherhappy.com, download your copy of "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and let’s get started, because life is just too short to spend it being a wuss, not to mention celibate and on the couch!

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

Temptation Is All Around, So Don't Push Your Luck If You Value Your Relationship or Marriage

Men often forget that there are just as many temptations laying in wait for women as there are for us. If you let them get bored, they’re vulnerable, so don’t push your luck – or your limits…

I hope you’re having a great week. I’m having a busy one, between counseling/coaching appointments and putting the final touches on some new content for the MakingHerHappy web site, but it’s rewarding to do a good job in helping people through their problems and to close in on goal achievement, so I’m pumped, not complaining.

You may remember this recent edition in which a woman who left me a note while changing her subscription address saying that she had told her husband she was having a problem with marital boredom and had passed on newsletters for him to read saying that they directly addressed their problem, and he ignored them. It was quite a story, and you should read it if you missed it.

You may also remember this article in which a group of women were so bored they were holding an on-going contest to see who could manipulate their husband into buying the biggest gifts (and I’ve been told that there has been a recent development in that story, where somebody got busted, and I’ll be getting you details of that soon, when the story has unfolded and the lessons are obvious!). If you missed that one, you should catch it, too, because it’s a one-of-a-kind learning opportunity.

I mention these because the woman who left the note about her husband ignoring her prompting has written about the follow-up article to the contest, another article you should go back and read if you missed it, because it details a bunch of married women getting bored and hustling drinks and collecting phone numbers in a bar in a different contest that ended up putting one of them in the hospital due to a rape and beating, and her marriage and life are now irreparably damaged. Once again, meet “P.”:

Good Grief......here we go again.......

2 weekends ago I spent a weekend away in a big city with an old neighbor of mine (yes...female). We spent 2 nights there. One of the nights we went to a bar and had a blast. Guys buying us drinks, showing interest, and paying attention. I was really enjoying the attention part of it, particularly since the 2 men who asked me to leave with them were 24 and 32 -- more than 10 years younger than me. That's an ego boost. They knew I was married, I had on my ring and was not out to get laid. But I did have fun and enjoyed the company.

I can see how lonely women can get wrapped up in this kind of thing...it was fun! It made me feel good about myself, knowing SOMEONE was interested. Our husbands need to be that someone though. One thought that went through my mind that night was "maybe I should give this guy my cell phone so he can talk to my husband and tell HIM what he wanted to do to me....."

I do think this is dangerous, and could be playing with fire, just like that lady's friend.

P.

She makes an excellent point, in that men often mistake a woman’s expression of having fun as a “green light” that isn’t there, and things get out of hand and she gets hurt. It’s also not uncommon for a woman to go out for a drink with friends and get swept off her feet by some stranger, and in the throes of attraction does things that both she and you will have a hard time living with once she wakes up and realizes what she’s done (or even the thoughts she has while she is resisting the temptation), and there is no amount of blaming and finger-pointing that can fix such a problem.

She also points out that she (and in truth, every woman) wants her husband to be the one she has fun with and who makes her feel pretty, sexy, appreciated, and special. Think about this, guys…

We marry for life, they marry for life. We are afraid of sexually-transmitted diseases, they are afraid of sexually-transmitted diseases. We are afraid of meeting a psycho on a date, they are afraid of meeting a psycho on a date, not to mention being beaten and raped. The majority of us are uncomfortable meeting and trying to date strangers, and so are they, most of them even more than us. When it comes to fidelity, we may not be identical, but we’re a lot more alike than we are different. And something else you need to realize…

Attraction is a biological drive, not a logical one. It’s difficult to mentally override it, and there is a point where it becomes impossible, where a cascade of neurotransmitters in the brain, your brain and her brain, cause inhibition to fail and logic to be faulty, and hence, rational, responsible choice to be impossible and self-validation, no matter how self-destructive the behavior, to become standard operating procedure.

And again, all the finger-pointing and blaming in the world will not fix what happens if either of you get to this point. It is not a matter of morality, but of chemistry.

Whether you think it’s fair, moral, or anything else is irrelevant. The simple fact is that when you’re in a committed relationship, if you expect fidelity you have to do what is necessary to facilitate it. So does she. If you’re bored, it’s because she’s letting you down, and if she’s bored, it’s because you are letting her down. You can argue about that until you’re blue in the face, but it won’t change the simple fact that that’s how the world – and the human mind – works, so you’re only choice is to deal with it or try to survive the aftermath.

Would you care to wager on which choice is easier and has the greatest chance of success? I thought not…

And to those of you who are sitting there saying, “He talks too much about boredom, it’s just not that big a deal,” let me be quite blunt: boredom kills. Do you think for one second that people who do things that significantly endanger their life do so because they really enjoy it? Does the man who jumps out of a perfectly good airplane do so because he knows there’s no chance of parachute failure? Does the guy who drives a minivan or a station wagon as fast as it will go do so because he really needs to get somewhere that fast? Does the social drinker who always ends up drunk and in trouble at parties do so because they like the taste of the booze and like waking up in strange places, or in jail?

No, they do it because they’re bored and looking for something, anything, that will give them even a moment’s relief. Just as the man or woman who gets too little attention at home takes a chance on wrecking their marriage and their life by carrying on an affair. Nobody gets away with it. Even those few who don’t get caught still have to deal with the guilt and the fear of getting caught – psychopaths and sociopaths notwithstanding, of course. (People with no moral compass have no fear of getting caught at anything because whatever they got caught at would be somebody else’s fault by default.) So before you’re too quick to say, “It can’t happen to me,” bear in mind that everybody else who has ever been on either end of an affair “knew” that it couldn’t happen to them, too.

So what do you say? Are you ready to step up and make things better? Or are you going to keep your head in the sand and keep telling yourself that what I’m talking about is something OTHER men and women do, and something OTHER men and women have to deal with. Do you realize that you are implying with such nonsense that neither you nor your wife is human?

You are human, the top of the food chain on this entire planet, and that’s something to aspire to, not apologize for. You’re the top of the food chain because you have the power of volitional choice, the ability to think and make a decision that improves your life, making us the only species of life that continues to develop past the point required for bare survival. We don’t have to wait for evolution to raise our standard of living. We can do it ourselves, simply by making good choices and acting upon them!

And more to the point, you can do it yourself.

So start here. Go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage." Read it, put it to use, and make the success that those before you are enjoying now your own. Then you’ll know, beyond any doubt, that if your wife leaves the house, she’s going to be in a hurry to get back to you, and you’re going to enjoy having her there.

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

What is Your Partner's REAL Motive for Having You in Your Relationship or Marriage?

What is your partner’s REAL motive for having you around? The answer lies in their words and actions…

Another lovely morning with a big country breakfast, a huge mug of coffee, and a whole bunch of friends trying to find a way to make their lives together better. For me, that’s a great way to start a day, pleasure and productivity.

A quick note before we begin today’s lesson: One of you sent me a link to an article that is revealing, revolutionary, and for some, downright scary. Entitled “Mommy’s Little Secret,” it describes, among other things, statistical evidence that 10% of children in the western hemisphere think that their father is someone other than who their biological father really is, if you know what I mean.

DNA evidence is causing all manner of revelations of infidelity, and it’s so bad that the courts are now trying to figure out when people are legally bound to tell fathers and “duped dads” (the one who is paying the bills thinking it’s for his own child) and when they’re not. I strongly recommend you read this article, even if you KNOW it doesn't apply to you; even though it was published in 2002, it's still relevant and accurate and may apply to one of your friends who hasn't heard yet.

As for today’s lesson, one of your cohorts said this in response to the issue where I talked about men using guilt and pity tactics to try to obtain sex, the article titled “Sex for Pity’s Sake,” which you can access in the archive.

Meet Tanja K.:

In my eyes women who use guilt or pity for sex are pathetic.....my hubby and I have been married for almost 22 years and there's what real married for love partners call give and take....my hubby is like my kids, spoiled to death and well adjusted...2 in college and 2 in grade school, if you get my drift, sex is our way of being one with each other, and trying new thing together, is what makes our marriage so to die for, so if you got out of me somehow that I use guilt or pity, you better find some new info about real women, not this new age “I'll sleep with you if you'll pay for my hair cut, or my college ed”....those are the women that make good men say dumb hurtful things....my hubby has been my prince from day one, if he's guilty of anything it might be that he hasn't taken time to find friends to have fun with, besides me, but then again, neither have I, our kids have made our life busy and full....hope you find a real women w/real moral values....

Tanja

Tanja’s beef is with women who prostitute themselves, not honestly as professionals, but as surreptitious gold-diggers; those parasites who land a man to be kept, provide means to create and maintain babies and/or self-destructive habits, and use guilt, pity, and sex to keep the man engaged and thinking everything is peachy. Google “toxic wife” for some extreme stories that will stand your hair on end, and if it looks familiar, don’t fly off into denial. Investigate and analyze the evidence. Gentlemen, we should all protect ourselves against such a woman; fortunately for us, they are the minority.

There are many kinds of relationships that can exist between a man and a woman, but this kind, especially in its most extreme variant, the codependent relationship, is the most destructive. One partner sucks the life out of the other and wastes it in destroying themselves, effectively rushing both of them to ruination and even an early grave. How can you tell if you’re in one of these?

It’s not that difficult. Indeed, detection is the easy part; accepting the truth and acting upon it is where most people fail.

First, take a look at who is contributing what and how much to the relationship, and how those contributions are being distributed. If you’re working your butt off and she (or HE! – it can go both ways, Ladies, as you’ll see in my next book) is spending it faster than you can make it, possibly on things that you find you secretly resent, such as a lot of extras for her and the kids, like eating out a lot and designer labels on all their clothes while you have holes in your shoes and take a cheese sandwich and store-brand soda to work for lunch, that’s a big red flag.

There’s no need to keep a detailed score; it will either be equitable because the relationship is committed and tight or completely lop-sided because one partner is using the other, depending entirely on whether the partners truly love each other or one is using the other. I have a story from one of you that just came in within the last week or two from a client-turned-friend that is an excellent example, and I’ll try to get it together for you ASAP. And as you will see, your status will be obvious if you merely open your eyes to what is happening around you, regardless of what is being said. “By your works shall you be known” is one of the greatest bits of wisdom to come from the Christian Bible, a tactic that has been working for well over a thousand years, right? Professing love and devotion is easy; faking it is not.

Next, take a look at language. Even the best liars screw up from time to time, usually when they are either too relaxed, too stressed or have had a drink or two and their guard is down. A partner who really loves you will tell you so for no apparent reason, and their body language and actions will confirm it. One who is indeed NEEDING AND USING you and not loving you will say that they love you in order to get you to tell them that you love them; the statement “I love you” is indeed the question, “Do you love me?” – a plea for confirmation that their ploy is still working. When it comes, it sounds forced, like the ritual “I love you” that ends all too many phone conversations with that hint of whining or desperation that makes what should be a profession into an interrogation.

You can also learn a lot from the nature of compliments and explanations that inappropriately follow or replace declarations of love. A woman who says, “I love you because you make me feel safe,” can be saying that she loves the feeling of being protected, not you; anybody with an alpha personality and a weapon (or a large bank account) could make her feel the same way. So can anyone who doesn’t place any demands on her for love and commitment.

Gentlemen, good women don’t need a caretaker any more than good men do. They’re “all grown up,” strong, independent, intelligent, and sexy, not a clingy, needy, neurotic ball of insecurity looking for someone to blame their entire miserable existence on or pay their way. Being able to take care of themselves, they want a real man who can take care of himself, to form a true synergistic partnership, in which the partners can achieve more together than the sum of what they could achieve separately.

Good women are looking for a man to SHARE their life with, not GIVE them a life or all the trappings of a life. And there are plenty of them around, but they may not be looking for a man because while they would immensely enjoy one, they don’t need one. So they may not be obvious to you when you first see them. You have to explore, and evaluate. Remember that for the rest of your life.

Such a woman, one who is looking for someone to share a life with instead of someone to take care of her, will enjoy watching you being strong and taking the lead, instead of depending on you to do it, and you’ll enjoy doing it with her, instead of resenting the whining and pressure. And she will hold your feet to the fire, constantly holding you to the standard “if you can’t stand up TO me, you can’t stand up FOR me.” Good women very seldom actually need you to stand up for them, but they need to know that you’re able to so that they can respect you, since respect is a prerequisite of both love and attraction.

If you feel like you’re being sucked dry by your partner, you’re in the wrong relationship, unless of course the only time you feel that way is in the bedroom while she’s…well, you know. And if she does happen to be really proficient at “well, you know,” don’t let that cloud your judgment and cause you to excuse or ignore things that you’ll look back on at retirement age and think, “What the hell was I thinking???” Good sex, even great sex, can be a lot easier to find than a good mate. So don’t let the fear of scarcity of sex put you in a position of real scarcity of self-esteem, self-respect, home, retirement savings, a life, etc. Think with your head; that other thing that whispers in your ear from the vicinity of your trousers makes some REALLY bad decisions, and you know this.

I like what Ron White says about women. The following is paraphrased: “Marry an ugly woman with a brain and some character. You can take a little nip here, a little tuck there, and next thing you know, she’s pretty easy on the eyes. But you can’t fix stupid.” Nor can you fix conniving, entitlement-minded, and deceitful. Those are problems that go too deep to fix.

You can assess yourself, your partner, and your relationship, as well as have great contacts to help you get out of a bad relationship and find a great woman if you have to, with the information in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage.” Download your copy at http://www.makingherhappy.com right now, read it, and get things on the right track. If they’re already on the right track, use the rest of the book to stoke that attraction boiler and kick things up to the stratosphere where problems just don’t happen! The woman in your life can be a ball and chain or a ball of fire, and the choice is entirely yours. Choose well, and choose NOW!

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

Mistakes Create Distractions, and Distractions Create Mistakes, Especially in Relationships and Marriage

Sometimes what looks like the easiest thing to do for a relationship problem ends up creating more trouble than you can imagine. Let’s take a look at some options and what really makes sense…

I once got a note from my buddy Ken that I’m sure many of you will find amusing, especially if you noticed the same mistake he did:

Hi David

I found it interesting reading the header on this email. I have read in the past that one of your pet peeves are emails that you get with improper punctuation and sentence structure. It is a pet peeve of mine also. So when I read the header of this email I had to chuckle.

I’m in a mood to bust chops of anyone who deserves it today, so I figured I’d start with you. No hard feelings, it’s all in fun my friend.

By the way, my wife is moving back in at the end of September.

Cheers

(I did this several years ago. For those of you who weren’t around or didn’t notice, the title read “What Is Does Your Partner REALLY Keep You Around?” but was supposed to read “Why Does Your Partner Really Keep You Around?” Let’s look at what happened, because there’s a lesson in it…)

My reply:

Hi Ken!

What can I say? BUSTED!!! LOL! I started using one title (What Is Your Partner’s Motive for Keeping You Around) and decided to change it to “Why Does Your Partner REALLY Keep You Around,” and got interrupted by a phone call. Not an excuse by any means, but rather an example of what happens when you’re distracted. Can you imagine the mistakes that we make and never find out about while we’re having relationship troubles? Yikes! In fact, I think we just scored the topic for tomorrow’s newsletter! Thanks for the inspiration!

Congratulations on your progress! Keep me posted!
David

I didn’t mention to him that the verb “are” doesn’t agree with his subject, “one,” because I was distracted by the lesson I was formulating for you folks! Indeed, I just noticed it. Distractions, distractions. What’s a guy to do except have a good laugh. ;-)

So think with me here for a minute; have you thought about the distractions relationship problems can bring, and the problems those distractions create?

What happens when you have trouble? It can make you bored, depressed, nervous, fearful, frustrated, maybe feeling dejected, rejected, disconnected, etc. All of these feelings require huge amounts of mental and emotional energy, especially for a man, since we are wired for problem-solving, right?

What’s the most popular quick fix? An affair, right? But does it fix anything? Maybe it temporarily relieves some of the negative feelings you have about your wife, or yourself, but they simply get replaced with other distractions, don’t they?

During a new affair, you feel relieved, thrilled, excited, etc., which makes you daydream about meeting up with your lover, and juggling your schedule and telling all the lies to cover everything has you pulled in too many directions at once, causing things to fall through the cracks. And it doesn’t end there, does it?

If the affair ages, you hit that 2-3 month mark where a woman starts wanting to know the relationship is going somewhere, you know, wanting to have “the relationship talk,” and now the resentment starts setting in. You resent your partner for leaving you hanging, and resent your lover for the pressure to commit, and all that resentment mixes with new fears that start to pop up, like will the lover get impatient and expose the affair, or blackmail you in revenge for not committing to her if you break it off. Right?

What is all this commotion and distraction costing you? How many blunders have you made while you weren’t at the top of your game because you were distracted by a fight you had before you left the house, wondering if it was going to continue when you got back home, or if there was even anybody there waiting to continue it? I’ve known a lot more guys than I care to count who have lost jobs, trashed careers, made trading errors that bankrupted them, and even a few who ended up being sued into bankruptcy or in jail over their choices while distracted by a fight or an affair. We’ve all seen a suicide or murder in the newspapers over this same thing as well, right?

So how well do you think those affairs really worked for them in the end?

Guys, I’m going to ask a huge favor of those of you who have had affairs. I want each of you to go to Hotmail, Yahoo, G-mail, or any other place you can think of and create an anonymous e-mail account with bogus information that can’t be traced to you, and send me anything you care to write about your affairs without so much as initials or a nickname so that we can save those who have never been through one the hassle and risk without reward. E-mail your response to support@makingherhappy.com and then delete the account and clear your browser history, Internet cache, etc., so nothing can be traced back to you. I want to show the men (and women) who haven’t yet made the mistake of an affair what can go wrong and what they can expect when they get into one. Your experience could save more than one person the pain of repeating your mistake, and they will appreciate it.

So what SHOULD you do when things start downhill, or even reach the bottom of the hill?

The first thing to do is see if the relationship is fixable. There are problems like incompatible values and life goals that are not fixable, and others like poor communication and lost attraction that can be easily fixed. Believe it or not, the biggest bonehead that will ever be on this mailing list will be able to make this determination accurately within an hour or less, depending on how fast he reads and how long it takes him to think something over. It’s crystal clear when you know what to look for and want an honest answer enough to put your emotions aside and look at the truth for a minute, and we’ll get to that in a minute.

Based on that evaluation, you either get out of the relationship or fix it. Getting out can be achieved as friends just as easily as mortal combatants, and probably easier, for most people, but less frequently because most people don’t stop to realize that those really big problems like compatibility issues are not value judgments, but just simple reality, the result of not asking the right questions when you first got together in most cases, and getting out to have a chance at a happy life is a favor to both of you, not an insult as it is usually taken, like tossing out yesterday’s trash. But you have to know how to talk about it, and we’ll get to that in a minute as well.

If you have the foundation for a good relationship in terms of compatibility, shared values, etc., and have just fallen in a rut or have never communicated well enough to know how to excite each other, have fun together, speak to and listen to each other in a way where there are seldom if ever any kind of understandings, YOU GRAB THE BULL BY THE HORNS AND FIX THE RELATIONSHIP! And guys, it’s not just easy to do once you know how things work, it’s also a lot of fun! What?

Yes, it’s fun to learn be able to understand a woman. It’s incredible fun to see the things that you’ve seen a million times before and know what they really mean this time. It’s fun to know that you’re probably the only guy you know who knows everything you know!

It’s fun to be able to flip her attraction triggers on and off like a light switch, dialing the attraction up, then easing back a bit to tease her and let her savor the anticipation before ramping it up higher. And you know it has to be fun to watch her getting more and more excited and anxious until she can’t wait any longer and pounces on YOU! I can tell you from personal experience and that of many of my readers that there is a lot of fun to be had on this planet, and that certainly ranks in the top few!

So yes, there is a clear path to follow: Evaluate, and then either acknowledge your mistakes and move beyond them to try again in a different relationship or acknowledge your mistakes and remedy them within your existing relationship. In the end, it’s really that simple over 99% of the time.

Results require action, action requires a plan, and a good plan that brings successful action requires solid information. If you’re ready to be a man and get things in your life back on track, go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and get started. Life is short, and it’s getting shorter by the second, so make what you have left of it count.

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

Cheating in Relationships and Marriage Part 3: Basic But Effective Methods for Detecting an Affair

To conclude our series (part 3 of 3) on affairs and cheating, let’s look at some ways of finding the truth without being too obvious about looking for it.

Now that you have a better and hopefully thorough understanding of the nature, causes, and appropriate action to take in dealing with an affair, let’s talk about how to detect one. These methods are not fool-proof and should not be used in isolation, but if you should see multiple symptoms the odds increase to the point where confronting your partner and trying to resolve the problem (or proceeding with divorce preparations if you decide that you simply cannot continue the relationship) is entirely appropriate.

The most significant indications of a woman having an affair are fairly sudden changes in behavior, especially frequent breaks in any established routine. Routines are established by things becoming a priority, and they are displaced by something else becoming a higher priority. Routines develop gradually over time as people and situations evolve, or suddenly when something suddenly enters someone’s life and affects them radically, causing a shift in their priorities.

Among the things you can look for to change is her level of neediness. If she has a history of acting needy and seeking your attention and then suddenly doesn’t seem as if she needs you to cater to her or cover for her, it’s far more likely that someone else is doing it than she just woke up one morning and found her independence under her pillow, a gift from the Tooth Fairy’s cousin. The same thing goes for your presence or attention.

A sudden change in her emotional displays in your presence is another telltale sign. Women will get emotional with you when they have excess emotional energy that they need to bleed off, whether it’s positive or negative (remember our previous discussions on emotional scales and the creation of drama to alleviate boredom). If she’s suddenly detached, there’s either a bottle of some new tranquilizer in the medicine cabinet or she’s found a new outlet for her emotion.

A sudden change in her attention level -- catering to you, gifts, etc., is often a sign of a guilty conscience and an effort to try to conceal her interest in another. (Men are generally bad about this one too, buying roses or jewelry at non-holiday times to appease their own guilty conscience, and women watch for this, so if you give a “legitimate” non-seasonal gift, make sure you clearly express the reason so that it is not misconstrued.)

Need I mention suddenly becoming secretive? Women naturally have a tendency to give us much more detail about what’s happening in their lives than we are comfortable hearing; I’ve personally listened to a half-hour melodrama of the trials and tribulations of a cat belonging to a woman I never met and didn’t want to know because it came up in a conversation that a woman I know had participated in during the day, and I had made the mistake of asking “How was your day?” to a woman who naturally interpreted the question as “What happened during your day?”

If that openness suddenly stops, she’s limiting information to try to limit your opportunities to catch her in a lie. She may even try to make up for this by answering questions with questions, trying to change the subject to YOUR day so that you will do the talking. The same thing goes for refusal to answer questions, asking why you want to know before answering, and if she gets defensive over a question that she hasn’t had a problem with in the past, like “Did you have a good workout at the gym today?” she’s busted.

Sudden guarding of cell phones, computers, and other communications devices are a HUGE signal as well. In short, anything that limits your access to her communications infrastructure or any information source that would only be incriminating if she was in fact having an affair is a big red flag.

Hesitation before an answer to an obvious question, or repeating your question back to you before answering, is a classic sign of someone needing to stall while they decide whether to lie and to formulate a lie. Obviously, asking someone to recite the presidents of the United States in chronological order including their years of office might cause someone to pause before they answer, but a simple question like, “Why did you not answer your phone all afternoon?” doesn’t require a lot of thought if they in fact did not hear it ring, left it in their desk while they were in a meeting due to departmental or company policy, etc. They were there, whatever happened, and the answer is readily available if they want to share it with you; else they need a few seconds to try to figure out if they’re busted, whether they should try to lie their way out of it, and then make up what they hope is a convincing lie.

As an aside, there is a recent three-part series of newsletters from a few days ago in my newsletter archive concerning lying and its impact on relationships and marriage, and the last edition in that series is about techniques for lie detection, if you missed it. The following links will take you to those newsletters:

Part 1, Faking It Until You Make It

Part 2, A Reader Response to Part 1 with Additional Advice

Part 3: Lie Detection, Confrontation, and Correction

I probably should turn that series into another free report, along with this series on cheating, and I may do that as soon as I can make some time. ;-)

Suddenly picking up a habit of being critical of your every move is a bad sign, especially if you find her moving from critical to angry at every turn. Women tend to seek validation for their emotions, and as Lenin is famous for pointing out, “A lie told often enough becomes the truth,” so if she can find enough reasons to be angry at you, even if she has to contrive them, she can justify her attraction to another man and her infidelity. That’s not to say that any anger she feels will be because of an affair; it could be a legitimate issue or it could be boredom starting to build up a good head of drama. But if this symptom is combined with even one other, you need to be taking a hard look around you.

If you find her talking about somebody new frequently but without much detail, look out, especially if you say something like, “Wow, he sounds really interesting and like somebody I’d enjoy talking to. How about introducing us?” You can imagine how awkward a situation that might be, and she will resist being put into it. Don’t be surprised if you hear something like, “Why do you ALWAYS want to push your way into my friendships? Why can’t you just let me have my own friends?” when you have never before mentioned being introduced to any friend of hers. Otherwise, her social nature will press her to be a social conduit and make the introduction.

The biggest telltale sign of all for most women is no sex at all, and seeming defensive or even angry at the mention of it or any advance. Some even go so far as to stop allowing you to see them in anything more alluring than an old sweat suit at bed time; it’s like she’s being “faithful” to someone else. You may also notice that the only time you see her looking like she wants male attention is when she leaves the house – without you. And if she comes home from “a long day at the office” or evening out with fresh make-up, fresh perfume, and especially with an underlying smell of fresh soap, don’t be surprised if you also find the back of her hair wet, especially at the back of the neck, where she’s been in the shower after being in someone else’s bed.

Jumping in the shower immediately upon returning home is also a big tip-off unless she’s been to the gym and has an established aversion to the showers at the gym. Speaking of the gym, a sudden interest in the gym, not by itself but coupled with one or more of these other symptoms, is at least grounds to start watching more carefully or even start talking.

Detectives and courts use much more sophisticated means, including electronic surveillance, checking phone records, cross-matching receipts with schedules, etc., but those techniques are for building evidence for a divorce or criminal prosecution; what I’m describing here is more than adequate for recognizing you have a problem and confronting a delinquent spouse. Then there’s the big question…

What do you say to her when you confront her? That's waaaay too much to try to include in a free newsletter, and I’ll guarantee you that the stereotypical threats or begging aren’t the answer any more than demanding to know who the other man is so you can tell him to stay away would be. Indeed, threatening the other man is the biggest wuss play of all, and the stupidest move, because the problem is between you and her, not you and him.

So you’re going to have to read "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" to learn how to handle that. It’s going to take a lot more than simply calling her on it, including some skillful communicating and some specific references to events in your own past with her. You’re also going to have to be able to pick them out appropriately and express how you recognize them as errors and are prepared to do better and lead her into a better future.

Or, if you’re really smart, you can read it today and keep these problems from ever developing so that you never have to experience the pain, frustration, and for some of us, sheer terror of seeing your world come crashing down around you. Either way, you need to read it, so go to http://www.makingherhappy.com right now and download a copy. Sure, you can very likely fix it if it breaks, but it’s a whole lot easier to keep it from ever being broken in the first place, so get it done now, while it’s easy and fun!

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

Cheating in Relationships and Marriage, Part 2, What To Do When You Know She's Cheating

Part 2 of a 3-part series: A man writes to me because he knows his wife is cheating and wants to know what to do about it. Good question! Do you know what to do? Better yet, do you know what causes it, and how to avoid it?

To continue our series, we’re going to talk about what to do when you know she’s cheating. That may seem a bit out of sequence at first glance, but if you learn this first, the odds of you handling the worst-case scenario correctly are better if you happen to be one of the unlucky few who discover an affair in progress as a result of reading tomorrow’s edition on how to detect an affair.

This letter describes a scenario all too familiar to need an introduction. We’ve all either lived through it or watched someone we know live through it. Meet Kyle:

Hello David,

I am writing this letter in hopes you can help me to understand how a woman can change so much after 6 years just by making a new friend. A couple of months ago my wife met a woman at a high school football game and they fell right into being best friends. It quickly came to the point that they are together at least three nights a week and are always on the phone with each other for hours a day. I have never been the kind of man who cared if Cindy had friends to hang out with or not and I really believe it’s a good idea for a woman to have other women to share things with, but I also believe there is a line into each other’s personal relationships that should not be crossed.

Allison, my wife's friend, is also a married woman and her marriage is on very rocky ground. She would frequently go out of town for entire weekends and has been begging my wife to go with her so they could “have some time to be alone and talk,” like they don’t do that all day long while her husband and I are at work and three evenings a week. I did some detective work of my own on these trips out of town and was not at all surprised at what I learned. Allison was traveling several hours to spend the weekend (pretty much in bed) with a man she had met months ago.

She wants my wife to go with her because the man she was seeing has a friend that wants to “spend time” with my wife. I also found out the two women, at the age of 39, had not been going out to dinner as I was told, and were in fact spending hours sitting in local bars flirting with other men and acting like they had just come of legal age and could buy drinks for the first time. Now besides being dangerous and possibly causing a car accident, the two would flirt and carry on with the men in the bar to the point I was sick to my stomach. Yes, I did follow them out a couple of times just to see what level Cindy would let things get to.

Last night Cindy told me that she and Allison would be going out of town next week to spend some time with friends of Allison in Nashville. That is straight into the arms of other men, and I am sick about this. What I need to know is how to break up these two women without losing my own wife. Allison is the worst kind of woman, always wanting men’s approval and willing to sell herself to get it and do whatever they ask to keep it. I see my wife falling down that hole and I am not sure if I can still reach her to get her out of it. If I try to talk with her about it she just laughs and tells me my imagination is working overtime. I know for a fact this time she is being set up to spend the weekend with another man and I have the conversation recorded.

How should I handle this? I could leave it up to Cindy, but this would not be the first time she has been in the arms of another man since we’ve been together. I love her and have forgiven many things most men would have never put up with, but if she does this again I am gone. I would like to be able to stop this from happening if I can so what do you suggest?

Kyle

My reply:

Well Kyle, you’re in a jam and a half. Do you know how you got there? I do. No mentally and emotionally healthy woman who is feeling attraction for a man she’s living with is going to be sucked into this situation; she won’t risk losing what she has if it’s working. About the only chance you have of this not being the case is if she’s so emotionally damaged that she would be seeking all men’s approval like her friend Allison, and you make no mention of that.

I hate to break it to you, but you’re being a wuss or ignoring her needs, and she’s either looking for excitement elsewhere or testing you to see if you’ll be a man and step up to the plate. It’s going to be very difficult for you to know which because you don’t have the communications skills to pick up on the hints and signals that would tell you. Otherwise you would have already picked up on everything she gave you that would have told you that you weren’t being enough of the alpha male and creating variety, mystery, excitement and authority in her life that protects her from boredom, her worst of all antagonists. That’s two strikes against you right there. Then we have to address her problems as well…

It doesn’t appear that she’s necessarily in an approval-seeking mode, more like thrill-seeking, but she’s lying to you about what she’s doing. Why is that? Is it because she lacks the self-respect and respect for you to tell you the truth, or because she’s tried to tell you the truth and you’ve been so deaf to it that she gave up? The fact that she’s had other affairs really doesn’t give a clue, because the affair is the symptom, not the cause, and multiple affairs are often symptoms of the same cause.

Then we have the issue of why you are still together if she’s had other affairs? Did you work something out that has since failed, or are you just a doormat who let her back in the house after she had her fling? I see that you say that this is the last straw and that’s understandable, but have you considered whether the last straw should have been several straws before? Have you considered that forgiveness in the past may have set the standard for future expectations and behavior?

Right now, you’re in more trouble than any other reader who has written me, not because of where you are, but because there are so many unknowns in your equation. I’ve helped several snatch their relationship right out of divorce court, and helped others find their way to it by helping them see that they were hopelessly mismatched or with a parasite or a predator who was sucking them dry of life (and assets) with their abuse, but in the face of all these unknowns, I can’t answer your question.

A real man would immediately stand up and tell her that he knows what she’s up to and that she can stay at home and be part of the family as they work out their issues or she can leave and never come back, but without knowing whether she is worth keeping, you can’t know if you want to do that. Until you can sharpen your communications skills to the point you can correctly interpret the things she tries to say to you, most of which will be either non-verbal or verbal but indirect, you can’t assess how she feels, because you can’t understand what she’s saying and can’t know if she’s telling you the truth. You have too much work to do before the decision can be made. You also must reach a level of communications competence for her to see that you are hearing and understanding her before she’ll think it’s worth the trouble to tell you everything again that she has already told you many times in the past and try to work with you. But these are merely obstacles, not barriers. You can easily navigate them with a little help.

In “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” you’ll find a fairly extensive system for determining whether your relationship with this woman is worth saving, a great course on how to communicate with all women, including a lot about how to distinguish between truth and lies (see also this archived article on lie detection), and the low-down on attraction – what it is, how it works, how to create it, and equally important, how to kill it, and why its absence from your relationship breeds affairs and divorce. Go right now to download it at http://www.makingherhappy.com. There’s no excuse for waiting, because it’s fully tested and guaranteed to work, so go get busy and start getting your house in order.

Take care,
David

What else can I say? ;-)

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

Cheating in Relationships and Marriage, a Symptom, Not a Problem

Part 1 of a 3-part series: Many people think that cheating in a relationship is a major problem. It is in fact NOT a problem at all, but a SYMPTOM of a real and much bigger problem. Fix the problem and the cheating goes away, at least as long as the problem doesn’t come back. The questions are “What’s the problem?” and “How do I fix it?” I will answer both…

I’ve had more than the usual number of e-mails in the last couple of weeks asking about detecting and dealing with affairs, as well as casual “cheating,” in sexual and other forms. It’s time we go through a series of lessons on how to detect, understand, and stop affairs and cheating, and we start today.

I have some readers who really, really make me proud to have them onboard. I’m proud to have anyone onboard who has the sense to realize they have a problem and the guts to look for an answer, but in addition to that, there are a few of you who don’t just blindly grab whatever is said and follow instructions like some sort of robot. Instead these special people take my lessons and advice and think about them, and abstract from them other lessons, some which are parallel, other which are advanced concepts from the basic points I provide, and it’s always delightful when I receive one of them.

For example, ponder this question that came in response to the “What Do You Do When You Know She’s Cheating?” article which we will revisit tomorrow as part of this series:

“Is it cheating when she spends hours every day talking to people on the Internet rather than talking to her husband? It sure feels like it.”

This guy gets a big “high five” for seeing past the end of his nose and making the connection. Why?

It is a form of emotional abandonment, and that’s why it feels like cheating. She’s spending a disproportionate amount of time with other people and unavailable to you. However, this isn’t the problem; it’s only a symptom of the same problem that causes what we think of first when we think of “cheating,” an affair.

She’s bored because he is no longer tripping those biological triggers that make her feel attraction for him and make her want to spend that time with him getting that “swept off her feet” feeling. There’s no longer anything interesting or fun about talking or being with him. The only difference is that for some reason, whether her value system, opportunity, or whatever, she’s seeking intimacy and/or adrenaline rushes in e-mail, a chat room, or on the telephone, or being absorbed in some form of hobby or volunteer work that gives her a reason to be around other people where she thinks she has a better chance of escaping he boredom instead of being caught up in a sexual affair.

This doesn’t mean that she is or is not looking for an affair, or that there is anything wrong with having a hobby, but it does mean that if she is spending a lot of time away from her husband and sees nothing attractive about him, she is vulnerable to an affair, whether she wants it or not. And make no mistake; the answer is NOT to start hammering on her trying to control her time like a dictator or to start whining like a wuss that she spends time with everybody but you. And for crying out loud, DON’T start telling her how much you NEED her. That’s the kiss of death. The dictatorial route might be VERY TEMPORARILY effective, but if it is, it will be VERY short-lived. The correct answer?

He needs to trip her attraction triggers and get on the same wavelength with her in communications so that she’ll be focused more on talking to him and having fun with him and much less (if any at all – some women need more social connectivity than others no matter what is going on at home) on chat room companions or phone buddies. Of all the women in my test panel, every one of them admitted to spending too much time on the phone and in chat rooms before their husbands started applying what they learned from my book, and all found themselves not even being tempted when their husbands got back on track. Indeed, they freely admitted that their time spent outside of their marriage felt like they were “settling for less” in the absence of the man they thought they married.

Her primary reason for being in the chat rooms for inordinately long periods is to combat that terrible boredom that grips women when their man isn’t creating enough attraction for them, which is good news for him, because it means he certainly can fix it, UNLESS SOMEBODY IN A CHAT ROOM HAS CREATED ATTRACTION ALREADY, in which case he will have to compete with the new guy and while not impossible, it is VERY difficult to catch up.

Women will focus on sources of attraction and protect them, even from family and friends. I cannot overstress this. But as I’ve told you before if you’ve been with me for a while, because the chat rooms, excessive phone use, and affairs, both emotional and purely sexual, are all symptoms of the same problem, BOREDOM, solving that problem eliminates ALL of the symptoms that are or may become present.

And yes, she probably did try to tell him about it at some time in the past, but he couldn’t hear her. When she said, “Do you think everything’s okay with us?” he had no idea that she was in fact making the statement, “I have a problem with what’s going on between us and want you to talk with me about it.” He just said, “Yes, it’s fine,” and she thought, “Well you insensitive jerk! Well, if you don’t want to talk to me, I can sure find somebody who does!” Questions are statements and statements are questions; men state, while women negotiate (see my free “Break-Up Busting 101” report or my book, “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” for more on this).

Let me be perfectly clear on something here, spending a few minutes a few times a week to check in on friends by phone, e-mail, instant messaging or in chat rooms is not cause for alarm; even a little while each day is not excessive. Women are social creatures and if they become cut off from the rest of the world, as is common in new relationships and with young children, she will find a way to maintain a social circle, no matter what.

HOWEVER, if the majority of the day that she has available to spend with you is spent avoiding you and seeking the company of others, it’s a problem, and no different than if she’s disappearing every evening to socialize or even have sex with someone else. Luckily, it’s a problem you can fix, and if you haven’t let it run on to the point that she’s done with you (which WILL happen if some other man creates attraction for her – it’s a double-edged sword, and a powerful one!), she’ll be more than willing to let you -- or even help you – to fix it.

There are exceptions, as always, starting with the chronic/serial cheater who has so little self-esteem that they are constantly seeking approval from any and all available sources and will commit any feat of self-destruction and take any risk to get it. There are also psychopaths and sociopaths, parasites and predators who seek opportunity at any cost, and it doesn’t matter how much you give them, nothing is enough. But don’t be alarmed…

There are some very important things about these people that you can recognize and some more that you must know. First, there is a common thread running through all of them that you can easily spot: an entitlement mentality. They feel it is their right to cheat, and they will get very angry with anyone who would even suggest otherwise. And that sense of entitlement permeates everything they do; you’ll see a lot of situations where they are expecting you to do something for their benefit when there is nothing in it for you, and will often use guilt to make it happen.

What you must know about these people, all of them, is that they are almost always unsalvageable. The mental and emotional defects or damage that make them like this is beyond anything you can help. They don’t WANT to change. They want the rest of the world to suit them. Even those with abysmal self-esteem will often prefer to keep seeking self-esteem through the approval of others rather than its one authentic source, personal achievement, because it is far easier to flirt and drum up anything from a smile to an affair than it is to work and achieve something – they feel entitled to the easy way out.

So should you identify your spouse as one of these people, you may make an effort to wake them up and get them to step up and be a worthy spouse and deserving part of your family, but if they do not do it, DO NOT get it in your head that this is because there is something WRONG WITH YOU. You have made a mistake, but they, their attitude, and their choices are the problem, not YOU, because they have gone somewhere besides you for resolution.

If you get your own self-esteem up to a comfortable level, start enjoying your life, having fun and being fun to be around and she still insists that affairs are necessary, point out that self-esteem repair did wonders for you and could do wonders for them. And if they reject that most self-evident of truths, cut them loose, else they will suck you dry and leave you in a heap while they continue to bounce from jugular to jugular, feeding on the lives and resources of others looking for something that will make them feel good about themselves but requires no effort, no commitment, or anything else on their part. Luckily for the human race, such women – and such men – are a minority, and easily spotted once you know what to look for.

Most women are not hard to live with, but it can sure seem like they are when you don’t understand them and can’t comprehend their needs, which in turn seem complex, but are in fact extremely simple, no matter how dramatic or complex they make it seem. You know from your life’s experience that most things that seem mysterious and complex when you know too little about them are ridiculously simple when you learn what you need to know.

What’s more, when you start understanding women better and communicating better with them, they respond with nurturing, loyalty, and intimacy on a level you cannot imagine until you’ve seen it. This is because of a biological drive to respond on an unconscious level and because they consciously know they’ve got a “one-in-a-million man,” one that every woman dreams of having and few ever find. Keep repeating that: “Biological, not logical…biological, not logical…” It’s not a choice, it’s a million year old biological program. So…

If you want to be the happiest man alive, learn the simple things you need to know about her and communicating with her, put that knowledge to use, and nature will take its course; making her happy will make you happy every time. It seems like forbidden knowledge; Sigmund Freud, the great psychologist, is famous for saying, “The great question... which I have not been able to answer... is, "What does a woman want?

Well, I didn’t figure it out either, at least not without some help. I asked a bunch of women, nearly 200 of them, and made them prove to me that what they told me was accurate by putting it in the hands of their own husbands and boyfriends and checking the results. We refined it, retested it, and it is indeed accurate, and is working for everybody who is using it. Unlike everybody else in this business, I don’t get refund requests; I get questions and testimonials.

So now it’s your turn to know what happy men know and most men will never know. This seemingly “forbidden” knowledge awaits you at http://www.makingherhappy.com in an instantly-downloadable and easy-to-read e-book (on screen or on paper!) called “"THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” and it’s fully guaranteed to work for you, so now you have a choice: you can let things ride and continue to gradually decay, or you can choose to take charge and make things better than you’d ever hoped they could be. Choose well, because she’s watching…

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

Real Men DO Need to Understand Women to Have a Great Relationship and Marriage

I received a lot of responses to Dhaliwal’s assertion that “real men don’t even try to understand women,” and they’re right; on that issue, he still has a lot to learn!

I generally try to avoid controversy and controversial subjects because controversy, by its very nature, means dealing with a bunch of differing opinions, which is counter-productive at best. Personally, I have zero tolerance for opinions and those who know me will tell you that I don’t form them, share them, or listen to them. “Give me the facts or get out of my face and go get them” has been my motto for many years, and it has served me well.

However, once in a while a subject will pop up that is interesting enough to get people involved and they speak up not about their opinions, but their real-world experience, which obviously can differ and make for a great discussion as everyone compares what happened to them and each other and looks for whatever lessons can be learned from the collective experience. This is such an occasion.

One of the few things I took exception to in Dhaliwal’s “How Feminism Destroyed Real Men” (see the August 20 article in the archive) was his assertion that “Real men don't pretend or even try to understand women.”

Real men don’t pretend anything, and I’m not really even sure how that ended up in that sentence because it seems unrelated, but, in my experience and some readers’ as well, the idea that real men don’t even try to understand women is somewhere between absurd and preposterous. How can you ever know “too much” about any person you’re in any kind of relationship with?

As I mentioned before, he’s young and still has a few things to learn, and this appears to be one of them. Before I give you the short version of why that is true, check out what some of your fellow readers had to say. Let’s start with Gene, an ironworker from New York City who has read "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and stopped a divorce and turned the relationship completely around:

Hi David!

That Dhaliwal guy is a bit of a punk, isn’t he? I mean, a lot of what he had to say made sense, but the reason my wife was going to leave me pretty much came down to I didn’t know enough about her. It was when I showed her that I had learned the things about her that made her different from me and took those things into consideration that she decided to come home and give us another try, and I kid you not, we’re honeymooning again. I had that same punk attitude that he has, not thinking it was important to know anything about her as a woman. Maybe he’ll learn before his wife kicks him out.

Gene

So understanding women isn’t important, but it saved Gene’s marriage? I can’t reconcile the two thoughts; can you? Check out Sarah:

David,

I can see Dhaliwal and his wife having one of those relationships where they are jumping back and forth from bed to fights to bed. His independence is hot, but his disregard for understanding a woman’s basic needs is cavalier and foolish. We don’t expect and don’t want a man to pander to us because being that much of a wuss is very boring and a huge turn-off. But we do try very hard to learn about the others in our lives and about men, and it does help, sometimes even for the wrong reasons. I’m sure you’ve noticed that there are more women leading men around than men leading women these days, and a lot of that is because we understand men better and know what to do to get the upper hand. The trouble is that we get the upper hand and then find we don’t want it, and punish or drop the man because he let us have it in the first place.

Sarah

Excellent points; the words “cavalier and foolish” crossed my mind as well. Given the choice between a heated relationship with lots of conflict and a hot relationship with lots of cooperation and excitement, which would you choose? Let’s hear from Gwen:

Good morning, David,

Thanks so much for your newsletter. I read it during my morning break every day and it usually makes me smile because I learn a lot about men and myself.

I want to comment about Nirpal Dhaliwal’s idea that real men don’t try to understand women. As a woman, I spend a huge part of my day managing relationships with everybody I know, and that requires knowing about all the people I know. The more I know about them, the better we get along, because I can empathize when I know how they feel, I can anticipate their responses to things when I can recognize how they feel, and when I know what they like, want and need it makes it easier for me to give something meaningful of myself to them without having to put myself out inordinately, which one cannot do if she knows a lot of people and has a lot of relationships to manage. His picture looked young to me too, and as you do, I hope for his sake and his wife’s that he wises up with age.

Be well,
Gwen

Are you getting the idea guys? In a nutshell, knowing what women want and need isn’t to enable you to dote over them and pander to them. It’s to know how to better communicate and cooperate with them, how to provide what they truly need from their relationship with you without having to spend all that time and energy guessing and without having to endure all that drama, punishment and testing when you guess wrong.

And it just so happens that when you know that one of the things a woman wants from a man is for him to be bold enough to be himself in her presence, YOUR life suddenly becomes a whole lot easier and more enjoyable.

When you know what she means when she says, “Fine!” and nothing else, you can realize that there is a misunderstanding in the works and make a move to correct it right then, before it festers and she grows angrier thinking that you intended something other than what you really did and that you’re a mean, abusive jerk because of it.

Yes, I could list a hundred more advantages of knowing what a woman wants and needs and knowing how to communicate with her, but this newsletter is already too long for some of you to read at your coffee break. The bottom line is that you do need to know, and since you don’t speak “girly-ese,” you don’t know.

But I know how you can find out, in language you can understand because it was written by a guy – ME – under the direct supervision of over a hundred women! Interested?

Cool! Go to >http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and get turned on and tuned in and drop out of the program, the one the media has been shoveling for decades that makes it somehow wrong for a man to enjoy being man. Start turning your relationship around and kicking it up to notches seen only with the Hubble Space Telescope, right now. Never put off until tomorrow the success you can enjoy today! (That’s pretty catchy, huh? Write it down and put it on your bathroom mirror and recite it several times while you shave in the morning.)

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

Flirting: Dying Art and Key Ingredient to a Great Relationship and Marriage

Do you flirt with your partner? If not, it’s no wonder she’s bored! Flirting is the gateway to attraction, fun and excitement, and in a woman’s eyes, a mark of a real man!

Before we start, I want to remind everybody that my free Break-up Busting 101 course is still available, so get it and pass it around before I remove the link at the bottom of this newsletter. If you haven’t read it, I strongly suggest you do so, because the primary causes of break-ups are not affairs and other problems; those are merely symptoms of other underlying problems, like boredom and gross incompatibility.

Knowing how these root causes of problems work and how to cure them can keep you out of trouble even easier than they can get you out of trouble, and spending a half-hour or so to read that report is definitely worth everyone’s while. And my free and highly-informative “What Women REALLY Want” report is still available, too! Use the link at the bottom of this newsletter to download it as well.

Today, we’re going to talk about a dying (and for the vast majority of you reading this, DEAD) art, flirting. In a world seemingly bent on instant gratification, speed dating and speed seduction techniques appear to have supplanted good old fashioned flirting in the dating world, and believe it or not, that’s a bad thing, and losing the knack of flirting in a committed relationship or marriage is even worse, an invitation to absolute disaster! Why?

Flirting is a series of steps before seduction. It ranges from general poking and chiding a woman to get her smiling to a playful way of ambiguously using naughty but nebulous innuendo to ease into seduction later. Joking about “floppy drives and hard drives” in a way that can be construed as talking about arousing a man instead of speaking directly of the arousal is an. But why is it so important and why would you want to do it with your wife or girlfriend of many years?

For the same reason you would want to do it if you were single! First, flirting is extremely complimentary without being a wussy, kiss-ass kind of maneuver. It says, “I noticed you, and want to have fun with you.” Women live for stuff like that to break up or escape the boredom of their lives, and appreciate it when ANYBODY does it for them. So if you’re not the top flirt in her life, you can bet that somebody else will be applying for the position whether she awards it to somebody else or not.

Do you want to take that chance, especially when neutralizing that risk requires you only to do something that’s totally fun and leads to a “heated exchange” (damned spam filters! LOL!) in the bedroom? I should think not!

(You will see me mentioning female boredom until you’re sick of hearing it, but it is a HUGE problem, one that we were never told about growing up and one that women think we already know about, so you need to be an expert on fixing it if you want to get along well with women, let alone live happily with one or more of them.)

Second, it can be used to transition from almost any mental state to a playful mood, which is extremely beneficial in waking up your partner’s “urges,” since the leap from flirting to seduction is a simple transition from ambiguously naughty to directly naughty.

If you’re not flirting with your girlfriend or wife, you’re causing both of you to miss out on a whole lot of fun, both inside and outside the bedroom. It is truly the gateway to fun and excitement, and one of the easiest ways in the world to stir up attraction if done correctly, and in case you haven’t heard, it’s attraction, not love, that keeps the sheets warm, worn and wrinkled; love is what keeps you sleeping on the same sheets and talking the next morning. (And again, the relationship emotions are often very misunderstood, thanks to programming and poetic liberties, and you can get the facts and truth concerning them in that free “Break-Up Busting 101” report I mentioned earlier.)

Relationships start going stale and sour when things like flirting and naughty play start to wane. Maybe you got lazy, maybe you got stressed out, maybe you forgot how, or maybe you just did it naturally at that time and really didn’t understand how important it was and what it was that you were doing that really flipped her switches. In any case, it’s fixable…

All you need to know is waiting for you in my e-book, "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," which you can easily download right now at http://www.makingherhappy.com, and start reawakening fun and excitement that neither of you have felt in too long. Or maybe you’d like to waste a few more years of your life waiting for things to get better on their own? They don’t just get better; you have to DO SOMETHING about them to MAKE THEM BETTER, and this is your best shot, so take it.

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

Women and Affairs in the Real World, and How to Protect Your Relationship and Marriage

A reader shares some shockingly revealing ads from real women looking for real men, as well a man who targets them, and Gentlemen, you really need to understand this…

There are several of you who have moved out of incompatible, irreconcilable marriages who are now dating who send me examples that are useful to those of us who are still married, especially ads by married women looking for thrills and the men who target them. Rick, a very astute reader and now friend, has contributed in the past, and every time he does, it’s an eye-opener, just like today. Check him out:

Hey David,

As usual, the above newsletter [“07/22/09 - Why Do Women Have Affairs? Knowledge is Powerful Preventive Medicine In Protecting Your Relationship and Marriage”] is true to its hard-hitting form. Please allow me to provide (yet more) proof that what you say is the truth. I was on my online site earlier this evening when I saw this married woman had looked at my profile. Check out how she describes herself:

"I am a recently separated, and soon to be divorced, fun lady. I do not have any children and am ready to sew my wild oats (since I never had the chance before). I want to find someone who is only interested in having a good time. I'm not ready for a relationship so if that is what you want, do not reply. Am interested in some physical love. Husband could not satisfy my needs and I need someone who can.”

Now look at what she wants:

“I just need someone who is willing to go out with me and have a good time. I want you to show me what I have been missing all of these years - out on the town and in the bedroom. If this sounds like something for you, please respond.”

Another textbook example of how boredom, left unchecked, can doom a marriage. Gentlemen, please buy David's book so that you don't become another statistic! Do it for YOU.

David, Let me say for the record, that I have not, nor will I ever get involved with a married woman. However, there are plenty of men who will! Take a look at this Personal Trainer's confession:

I'm a lonely wife's dream, and hubby's worst nightmare.

In 30 years in the training business, I've probably had affairs with more than 40 married women. Most of them were in their 30s, married eight to 10 years, with kids, and their husbands weren't paying attention to them. They felt neglected. They didn't feel attractive. Their husbands had become preoccupied with work.

In the beginning, I was scared about having sex with my clients. I was a shy, overweight kid and didn't go to the prom, so I didn't have much confidence at first. Then I got this physique and I discovered that I had this ability to charm women, and I made up for lost time. When I was 17, I put my first ad in a small paper, saying I was looking for clients to train. I had just won Mr. Bodybuilding Teenage New York State, and in my ad I was looking lean and ripped.

The first day a woman called me and said, "Do you really look like this?" She asked what my girlfriend thought of my being a trainer, which I thought was strange. (I now know that when a client starts asking what my girlfriend thinks of my training, she wants to know if I'm available.) She told me she was married, that her husband traveled a lot for work and was never home. She said she found that being so sedentary had made her put on some weight.

The next day I went to her house. I'd spent a lot of my savings and gotten some help from my mom to buy a really nice dark blue warm-up suit and brand-new white Adidas sneakers so I would look like a professional trainer. When the woman opened the door, she was wearing a black negligee. I went home and told my mother and father, and they forbade me to go back. My parents canceled my ad and said, "This will probably be a problem the rest of your life."

It happens all the time now. The wives today feel they have just as much right, and drive, to have a playmate as their husbands do. It's natural to want to have sex with your trainer. Remember that training is very hands-on. I'm touching them, motivating them, encouraging them, listening to them, relieving their stress and channeling their energy in a more positive way. Just as their husbands used to do at the beginning of their marriage. I'm trained to get inside their heads and push the buttons that will motivate them. But I'm also in their heads in other ways. They connect with me emotionally. It's very important for a trainer to be a good listener.

I once had an interior-designer client who was very beautiful. Like every client, she started opening up about her life; women do the same thing with their hairdressers and trainers. "My husband isn't attentive to me, he used to be so passionate," she explained. It was her birthday and her husband had forgotten. I suggested we have lunch, and she said, "How about dinner?" And that's where I went wrong. For a couple of months after that, we would work out, go back to my place and have sex. I would whisper sexy thoughts to her when I was spotting her at the gym. And then it ended. We got caught by the husband. He wound up calling me up and crying like a baby, asking me to stay away from her.

I don't feel bad about having had affairs with married women, because they were feeling neglected and they just wanted to be loved. One woman said to me her husband had never looked into her eyes when they made love. He couldn't have been that smart, because women love the eye contact. I come from a very passionate, Italian family. When I make love to a woman, I like to have spontaneous sex. I like to do it in the elevator, on the beach, underneath the table in the restaurant. I like to make them feel young, mischievous, alive. If they can have a taste of it again, they can realize they haven't lost it.

I'm 47 now, and over the years I've learned to watch out. I realized I couldn't be sleeping with everyone's wife in town. Number one, you start sleeping with them and they want to stop paying, and I make $150 an hour. I was never paid for sex. I would never do it for that. Because for me it would ruin it. I like to make love to please someone. When they say, "I feel like a real woman again," it's the same thing as when I train them and they tell me how terrific they feel because they fit in clothes they haven't worn for 10 years. The high of training is the same high as making love. I've written a screenplay about it all, called "The Trainer." It's "Shampoo" for the 21st century.

That was pretty self-explanatory.

Take care,
Rick

Rick’s right. That is indeed painfully self-explanatory. If you’re not being a good husband, there are others standing in line, or waiting in the wings, or crouched in the bushes waiting to pounce, to have all the benefits of being married to your wife but none of the responsibility or drama. And once a woman hits a certain level of boredom, she will come unglued with the same lack of inhibition that you feel when you get too aroused to say, “No,” to sex or to stop when she says, “No,” to you.

Make no mistake. This reaction is primal, biological, and has nothing whatsoever to do with love or the lack thereof, and if you’re not giving your wife a reason to enjoy being with you, somebody else is or soon will be giving her a reason to enjoy being with him. Period.

There is no emotion, logic, or “morality” that will interrupt this process once it has started, and if you knowingly allow it to start, you have nobody to blame for it but yourself when it is complete and at best, your wife is confessing and asking you to work things out with her and get your marriage back on track, or at worst, she’s announcing that she’s leaving you for him, and taking everything you own with her as punishment for putting her through the trouble.

So what do you do to prevent it? Be a man! And be a husband. A real husband, one who makes her feel alive, engaged, challenged, understood, and appreciated, as she tries to make you feel, not some guy who goes to work and sits with a remote control and a beer in front of the television all evening while she tends the kids and spends the rest of the evening in some Internet chat room – being hit on by these other guys! Get a clue!

And believe it or not, you’re a lot more likely to need much more than a clue to know what being a man and a husband are really all about. Even if you’re lucky enough to grow up with a good role model, which most of us weren’t because our fathers didn’t grow up with a good role model either, the examples we are barraged with daily – bungling, wussy beta pseudomales who somehow trip over themselves and fall into the arms of success by complete accident if at all – are there in your face constantly to confound and corrupt any legitimate concept you may have. But you still have a chance…

There are a few of us around who have not succumbed to all this wussy crap that’s been shoveled at us since the 1970’s, or have succumbed but learned from our mistakes and awakened from that wussy slumber, who can be that role model for you. A very few of us even have the writing, teaching, and training skills to help. One of us that I know of has even researched what seemed to be the right formula, tested it on hundreds of women and couples, and has made it available for you with little more than a few mouse clicks. Ummm, that would be me. ;-)

It’s called "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” and it’s all that, and more. Go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy and see for yourself. Rick did, as did many others, and now they own their lives; join them.

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

Why Do Men Have Affairs, and How Do You Stop? More On Protecting Your Relationship and Marriage

An obviously troubled man writes to ask how he can STOP having affairs and get his life together. Let’s see what we can do for him – and YOU!

Guys and gals, lightning has struck! I have for you today proof that men can recognize and admit that they do not like having affairs, and do indeed want a stable, monogamous relationship, possibly even enough to do what is necessary to make it happen. Only time will tell whether this man has the courage of his convictions, but I’m sensing a very genuine desire and sense of priority in his words, and his language indicates that he’s going to step up and take charge of his life. Meet James:

Good morning,

My name is James and would like to share with you problems in my relationship.
It’s been ten years now with ma girlfriend. The problem is I love her but I’m having affairs.

I’m so insecure, jealous coz I think she’s doing the same thing, I don’t trust her at all.

I would like to overcome my problem and stick to one partner, get married, give ma seven year daughter all the support she can ever get.

I don’t think I’ll cope if she have an affair.

I’m OUTGOING, spend most weekends out with friends, on drinking spree,
Come weekdays, I’m a darling.

The problem has affected our sex intimate life, we get intimate once in a while.
She has feeling and will end up having an affair.

Please help.
James

This is obviously a man who is bottoming out, realizing that he’s at a crossroads, and is deciding that he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life the way he’s spent the last ten years. I call that a damned good choice, based on what he’s written about the last ten years. My response:

Hi James,

I cannot help you while you’re pursuing affairs, but if you’re truly ready to stop and straighten up, listen to reason, and get your life on track I can definitely help. Before you can do anything, you’re going to have to identify the reason you are having affairs and eliminate it.

If you’re doing it because you have no self-esteem and are trying to substitute the acceptance and approval of other women for the genuine self-esteem created by achievement, then you’re going to have to start creating real reasons to feel good about yourself and stop thinking that chasing other women is going to make you feel any better about anything. Approval and acceptance must come from within, not from somebody else.

If it’s because you are bored, or because your wife is bored and the two of you aren’t intimate, then you just need to get back in tune, learn about how to create attraction and communicate effectively, and nature will quickly take its course and get you to where you need to be. That’s not hard to do, but you need to know how and you need to want it to make it happen.

Unfortunately, your weekend “drinking sprees” point toward low self-esteem, because a man who feels good about himself doesn’t spend every weekend poisoning himself and looking for cheap thrills with other self-destructive people; a drink or two is no big deal, but you’re describing a binge, and you know as well as I do that repeated bingeing is self-destructive behavior. A man who feels good about himself spends that time enriching himself with his hobbies and enjoying time with the ones he loves, not abusing himself and, potentially, those around him.

Low self-esteem makes you very unattractive to any woman who spends any time around you, and causes you to seek approval, acceptance, social confirmation, etc., from women, who may find you charming and witty when both of you are drinking or drunk, which is a huge red flag in itself, but after they sober up and see that you’re swimming in your problems instead of solving them, they quickly move on and the affair ends.

You have some pretty serious work ahead of you, and my book, "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," can help you if you read and apply it. Its primary purpose is to deprogram you from all the wussy crap that the media and other idiots have heaped on us over the last forty years or more and let the real man within you come out and take over, a man who is competent, confident, attracts and understands women, and is the kind of man that every woman wants to live with, a man-caught in a self-amplifying cycle of self-improvement instead of a death-spiral.

I’d suggest you give it a try before you become an alcohol-related death statistic, because all that is really in front of you is a series of choices to live a better life. The decision is the hard part; following through is easy once you’ve committed to change, because you get to see results and feel good about them, which in turn motivates you to achieve better and better results. Self-esteem-building becomes a self-perpetuating cycle that replaces the cycle of approval-seeking and self-destruction you’re caught in now.

Take care, and keep in touch,
David

I saw a purchase notification from James within 24 hours, and I fully expected it. Why? Because he’s not in denial about his situation; he’s accepted it and admitted that he is the cause of his own problems. When people finally face the fact that what they are doing isn’t working and start asking for help, they usually go through with fixing it.

There are two exceptions. The first is that group of people who define “help” as having someone do everything for them instead of providing the information and support they need and then getting out of the way and letting them do what needs to be done so they can own their own achievement and feel good about it.

The second is that group who are looking for validation of their mistakes instead of solutions to their problems, and they will engage you in conversation on the premise of wanting help, but they don’t want to talk about a solution; instead, they want to talk about what they did and why they did it and how you must understand such-and-such. If you hear the words, “But you don’t understand…” the next thing out of their mouth will be some kind of plea to ignore the reality of their bad choices and tell them that they were justified for screwing up, they’re still a “good person,” etc. Don’t waste your time with them.

So if you’re ready to admit that things aren’t the way they should be and that you are ready to take an active part in the solution, that, Gentlemen, is where I come in. I’ve done the research with hundreds of couples to find out what makes for good and bad relationship and how you can evaluate your own, what women want and what truly makes them tick, and how to easily return to that natural male behavior that flips their attraction switches and turns up the heat, saving them from their primary enemy, boredom. Do you realize what this means to you?

Do you remember the story about the man who found the bottle, rubbed it, and out came a genie, who granted him one wish, and he said he wanted a bridge from Los Angeles to Hawaii so he could drive his wife, who was afraid of flying, there for a vacation? When the genii said it was too big a request, the man said, “Then I guess I just want to know what makes women tick,” and the genii said, “Hmmm…tell me more about this bridge.”

We were all taught through such jokes and stories growing up that this is something that we would never know, yet here before you is the opportunity to know, once and for all, that most mysterious and seemingly forbidden of all things. Indeed, Sigmund Freud, the renowned psychologist, is famous for saying, “The great question... which I have not been able to answer... is, ‘What does a woman want?’” That conundrum being solved, the question now is “Do you have the sense and the guts to reach out and grab this knowledge that evaded even the likes of Sigmund Freud and put it to work in your life?”

Like James, you now have a choice before you. Are you going to continue to sit there in the dark picking up a few crumbs from this newsletter every day, or even worse, in denial about the cause of your problems and looking for someone else to blame? Or are you going to secure for yourself and your family the next best thing to the keys to the universe, the knowledge that will put you on the road to being all that you can be, in your eyes and hers?

That should be the easiest decision you ever made in your life, so jump over to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" right now, before you do another thing, because as they say in The South, “Time’s a wastin!” and life is definitely too short to waste it.

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

Why Do Women Have Affairs? Knowledge is Powerful Preventive Medicine In Protecting Your Relationship and Marriage

Why do women have affairs? For the same reason most men do: because there’s nothing exciting them at home. What excites them may be quite different from what excites us, but boredom is even harder for them to handle than for us, so don’t expect them to handle it – do something about it before it happens!

I had a wonderful phone call from an old friend (I’ll call her Dina), and I do mean OLD – we went to grade school together and have kept in touch ever since. We had a mutual “crush” in the third grade, became good friends, and eventually got to be so much like brother and sister that “hooking up” was never a thought, let alone an option, for either of us. She got married in the middle of college, had three kids, and the kids are grown now and she and her husband, Danny, also a long-time friend, are left with a great big empty nest and each other. They’d had a major problem develop a few months prior, and she called to give me the details of how things were back on track and better than they had ever been.

Like so many other couples, they had been so involved in their kids that they had grown apart and while they still love and respect each other, their life together was much more like that of casual roommates than a married couple. They didn’t have much to talk about, didn’t sleep together often – I’m really talking about sleeping here; he fell asleep on the couch most nights watching TV, and had “intimate relations” a couple times a year. OUCH!

That’s a lot of problems for two people to deal with, especially when you bring the causes into the mix. Their intimacy was severely hampered by occasional prostate problems he suffered, lack of personal interaction, different interests and schedules, “empty nest” syndrome – the couple had defined a huge portion of who they were as “parents” so when the kids were gone they had overwhelming feelings of lack of purpose and loneliness from the hole that was left in their lives -- and it finally caught up with them.

Dina had been particularly taken with a new employee in her office, a manager, her new boss (yes, that’s about as cliché as it gets, but remember that things become cliché because they are so common), and was working late both for the extra money and something to do. She enjoyed working for him, because he was a strong leader, good motivator, was genuinely interested in his employees’ welfare, and had a great sense of humor. He was also married and quite bored, being in a similar situation to Dina.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see what came next, does it? Look at the boss. Strong leader, an alpha male characteristic. Good motivator and great sense of humor, both traits indicative of above average communications skills and very ANTI-BORING. Leadership and motivational skills coupled with his position as her boss put him in a position of defining authority for her frequently. Genuine interest in employees’ welfare coupled with good communications skills is intimacy waiting to happen.

He tripped her attraction triggers nine ways from Sunday, and in her mid-forties, she’s still quite physically attractive, intelligent, a good conversationalist, and has always been playful and a little flirtatious, so she tripped his, too. They finally succumbed to the temptation and immediately knew they had done something that they shouldn’t have done and couldn’t undo. Dina called a few months ago to tell me about all of this, and I went to visit them.

She disclosed all of this, and we went through all that had happened over the years (the same process described in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” for determining if you are with someone who is a good match for you, a critical step in fixing any major problems in mature relationships – if they’re bad for you, why fight to keep things together???) and she knew beyond any doubt that he was the man for her and that they had slowly and surely grown apart as they focused too much on their kids and careers and not enough on each other.

She knew she had to tell Danny what had happened, for a number of reasons, and asked me for advice. I gave her a copy of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” and told her to go through it with him, to help him prepare for the news he was about to get and be better able to understand what had happened. She was scared, but he was and is pretty level-headed, so she agreed.

When he got home, she showed him the book and told him I had written it and wanted their evaluation of it, which was true (I’m always interested in reader feedback on any of my books), and over the days that followed I got letters and phone calls from him about various things, and when it was obvious that he had a good grasp of what attraction is, and how powerful a force it is in a woman, especially when she is bored and vulnerable, I told Dina it was time to find an opportunity to confess, which she did within a couple of evenings as they were discussing part of the book. She kept a small digital recorder handy waiting for the discussion so she could send it to me, and e-mailed a recording to me with some notes.

He had read a passage in the book talking about how women get bored and can literally lose their ability to reason and control of their actions when somebody restores that feeling and he said, “Man, that sounds like a recipe for disaster. If you were to get caught up in something like this, I wouldn’t like it, but I don’t think I could blame you, at least not any more than I would have to blame myself.”

Being a bit more direct than most women, and a lot more direct than I was accustomed to her being, she looked him dead in the eye and said, “Danny, it has happened, just once, and I knew the minute it was over that it shouldn’t have. I love you, and I’m taking responsibility for this. I didn’t choose to let you grow away from me, but I didn’t choose to prevent it either. I didn’t know what was happening, and thought it was something that just happened to everyone when they’d been together as long as we have, and didn’t think it would be a problem. I want you, and nobody else. I want to grow very, very old with you. I can’t promise you that I can live long enough to do that, but I can certainly promise you that we can keep this from happening again for as long as we are alive, and you know we can, too. I’m not going to ask for your answer now, because I can see you’re in shock and need time to think things through. You tell me when you’re ready to talk about this.”

He said to her, “I’m ready now. I’m no fool. I know why you did it. We’ve been sitting here talking about it for weeks. I’ll share the responsibility with you, because I’m just as guilty of ignoring both of us as you are. I knew things weren’t right, but didn’t know what to do about it. I love you, we’ve raised three kids and paid off two mortgages together, and frankly, I’m sick to death of the way things have been going. We’re in a rut, and we’ve got a tow-truck here in this book. It may be awhile before I can be with you without thinking of another man being with you, but as long as I know that we’re working on this together, I’ll get over it. I’m going to Randy’s (his brother) for the weekend to do some fishing and get my mind right, and when I get back, we’re going to take back our marriage.”

Dina was stunned. Danny got up, threw some stuff in a bag, kissed her on the cheek as he went out the door, sent her a couple of text messages while he was gone that just said, “Thinking of you…” and came home Sunday night and went to bed. Come Monday morning, he woke her up with a kiss and a smile, and said, “This is it, Kiddo. Time to get back to being us. I’m going to go cook us some breakfast while you shower.”

Danny’s always been pretty much a “take-charge” kind of guy, and he did. He took what was in my book, added it to what he already knew of Dina, and had her swept completely off her feet in about three days. They still have occasional problems; Dina transferred to another department for obvious reasons, and didn’t enjoy the job as much as she did because she was working for her old boss, who was a bit weak and disinterested, and Danny occasionally has a nightmare about her affair, but they’re on track, regularly intimate, and haven’t had any discussions of the affair in several months now. Dina’s now found another job, not to leave the company where the affair happened, but to find something to do she can enjoy. Things are looking up all around.

There was a lot that went into saving their relationship. It took knowing that they were right for each other – highly compatible -- and that their 22 years together was a good investment that they needed to keep. It took knowing exactly what happened and why, so that there were no grudges, feelings of guilt or betrayal, or especially unworthiness. It took knowing how to fix the problem, choosing to fix it, and following through on that choice, too.

These things came from my book, some personal coaching to help them get through the emotional upheaval at times, and their knowledge of each other. The biggest thing required was the commitment to do what was necessary to fix the problem, which was much easier to make when they had read "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and therefore knew that it not only COULD be done, in their case it SHOULD be done, what would be required, and that it was worth it.

Affairs can be avoided if you’re proactive, and they can often be overcome if you’re not, as long as you know what to do and just do it. I can give you all you need to know in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” but learning it and doing it is up to you. I strongly recommend the proactive approach, because the obvious emotional upheaval of an affair can be devastating, and it’s a risk of sustaining permanent damage that you don’t have to take at all. It’s rare that the easy way out is the best possible way, and you should always take advantage of such an opportunity, because it doesn’t come around that often. Your easiest and best way out of this situation is waiting for you at http://www.makingherhappy.com, so go get it and get started, because life’s too short to do things the long and hard way (unless of course you’re talking about sex!)

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

What Do You Do When She Leaves Your Relationship or Marriage for Another Man?

A simple, scary question with a complex answer: What do you do when the woman you love is with somebody else?

I’ve been talking with some people at another web site that tries to help people out of divorces and I’ve been getting a huge number of questions from them over the last few weeks. The most common one by far is “My wife left and is now seeing someone else (or is having an affair and refuses to stop). How can I win her back?” No big surprise, right? Do you want to know what IS surprising?

It’s not the answer to the question by a long-shot; indeed, the possible answers to that question are few and simple:

1. Stop abusing your wife

2. End your substance abuse, gambling, or fidelity problem and try to make a life with your wife instead of feeding your addiction

3. Read “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” and learn how to evaluate and manage relationships, communicate well with your wife, and find out whether you can fire up her attraction mechanisms beyond the point the other guy has created to get your honeymoon going again so that she is only interested in you.

One or more of those answers will take care of almost all cases. It won’t always take care of the case where the other guy has created so much attraction that you can’t get her attention to let her see your improvement; attraction is a sword of MANY sharp edges; "double-edged" doesn't begin to describe how many ways it can work for or against you. But the big question isn’t what you should do to bring her back…

The big question, and the very first one you should ask, is WHETHER you should bring her back!

That’s right! I’ve spent hours and hours cruising relationship and marriage help web sites, and everyone is frantically begging for help to bring their spouses back (and being advised on how to do it by others who are apparently in the same boat, giving a strong appearance of “the blind leading the blind,” at least as far as the bulletin board threads and blogs go), but nobody is asking whether it’s the right thing to do! Indeed, they label somebody who acknowledges such severe problems that no marriage ever should have happened, let alone be possible to save, as a “quitter” and a “loser.” Give me a break!

Right now, a great many of you are having a knee-jerk and responding, “Of course it’s the right thing to do! She’s his (or MY) wife!” If you stop to think about it, there will be some cases where it may not be!

For instance, what if you are the host in a codependent pair, and she is a substance abuser that has sucked the life out of you for years with the cost of feeding her habit, legal and medical costs, worrying you sick, making you feel responsible for all her bad choices and leaving you no room to enjoy anything about your life, let alone what you have earned?

What if she’s not a substance abuser, but still codependent and has kept you working 16 hours a day every day of the week just to keep her out of a jam?

What if she’s a spouse abuser, and married you to have someone to punish because the person who traumatized her is not available, and you were both available and easily manipulated into taking and holding the job of whipping boy?

What if she’s always exhibited a fidelity problem because she’s a gold-digging hussy that married you for your money and has just moved on to somebody with more money, or because she’s spent all you had?

What if she’s always exhibited a fidelity problem because she has a self-esteem problem that she refuses to address, and would rather seek the attention and approval of other men because it’s easier and more palatable than to admit the reason she feels crappy about herself is that she hasn’t done anything in her life to feel good about?

What if the two of you got married because she was pregnant, never did get along and weren’t happy, but comfortably numb and unhappy, and she was just the first one to wake up and realize that you never should have been married to start with and wasn’t rejecting you, but making the same move that you should be making to rectify that age-old mistake?

What if she wasn’t pregnant, but the two of you just were young and lonely and desperate, thinking that nobody else would have you, and latched onto each other thinking a bad marriage would be better than being alone?

What if one or both of you were trying to escape your parents’ abuse and married the first person that came along that provided a way to get out of the house, thinking it couldn’t possibly be worse than home but not realizing that if it was almost as bad you’d still need better?

What if you’ve had such philosophical or value system differences that you’ve always fought and never been happy together and really don’t know why you ever got married or stayed married?

What if you have compatible values, but your tastes are so different that you have never been able to find a way to spend quality time together, and sleeping, sex, and an occasional trivial conversation are all you really share?

What if you’ve suddenly become disabled somehow, and she’s the one who thinks she’s the victim, ignoring the fact that you haven’t let yourself become a victim and are still a great husband because she’s just too enthralled with the drama and attention? Or just too stinking bigoted to give you a chance to show you that you’re still worth having around?

There are a hundred more scenarios like that, but surely at this point you get the picture. The first question that needs to be asked when things look like they are breaking up isn’t how to stop the break-up...

It’s whether there is any reason for you to expect to be happy with that person if the relationship were to continue!

If there is no expectation of happiness, why continue? There is no productive purpose in trying to save a marriage when the underlying relationship that defines every aspect of that marriage is not a happy one and has no history or chance of being a happy one. The whole purpose of marriage is to bind yourself to a person for your mutual benefit – love, nurturing, friendship, watching each others’ back, companionship, exclusive (and hopefully therefore safe!) sex, etc. -- is it not?

On the other hand, if you have been truly happy, and have just drifted apart, there’s a most excellent chance that you can get things back on track, especially if things have just been in a rut and one or both of you have become “maritally bored.” It’s not at all rare for women to have affairs, leave home, and even file for divorce as a way of communicating to a man that he’d better straighten up and act like a man and be strong, fun, and interesting like he used to be instead of the “chronically beer-swilling remote-jockeying couch potato who never pays any attention to her” that he’s become. And it’s easy to tell the difference…

A woman who’s completely done with you moves on immediately and completely. The divorce papers are delivered with a restraining order, and there are instant barriers up everywhere. You have no contact with her, or even any way to contact her.

A woman who’s done with all parts of you except your checkbook still strings you along keeping you in approval-seeking mode and continues to be a drain on your resources, and may accept phone calls, go to dinner, etc., but you’ll notice that you pay for everything, and she keeps having money trouble that you need to bail her out of, even if she makes better money than you. She’ll also be chipping away at your self-esteem to get you deep into approval-seeking mode, making herself physically unavailable while talking about the future and getting back together, etc., trying to make you so utterly desperate for her attention that you’d spend your last dime trying to buy it while she’s out partying with others and secretly (or not) living it up at your expense.

It’s the woman who leaves or files papers, but continues to talk and especially to say things like, “I still love you, but I’m bored/not ‘in love with you’ (how I hate that convoluted expression!)/I can’t be with you right now/I can’t go on like we are and you’re going to have to show me you can change some things/etc.,” that has acted badly to get your attention and is wanting to come back home to the guy she wants to live with. She will tell you what it takes to win her back, and if you speak “girly-ese” you’ll hear her when she does and know exactly what to do.

Like when she says she loves you, but the guy she’s having an affair with makes her laugh, or is spontaneous, or anything about him that you are not, she’s giving you the laundry list of things you need to fix. Those things are not said to create competition or belittle you, but to communicate what is missing from your marriage. If she’s moved out and/or filed for divorce, and talking about the things you used to do together or the way you used to behave toward her, she’s telling you what she misses and what it will take to bring it back. And she may not “say” anything. She may ASK you if YOU miss things from the past to TELL you that SHE does!

But again, you have to speak “girly-ese” to understand, because she probably won’t just say, “you used to pay attention to me and make me feel special,” she’ll refer to things you did by asking if you remember them, like picking her a bunch of wildflowers, or cooking supper on the night that she had to work late, things that demonstrate how you did what she missed, and you have to be able to connect the dots to see what she’s really saying, because women never state what to them is “the obvious.” And more often than not, they will make these statements in the form of a question; “Do you think our marriage is good?” is in fact a statement that she thinks there’s a problem that she wants to talk about, and the next thing that comes out of your mouth could quite literally make or break your marriage.

Do you know what to say when asked a question like this, or why you should say it? Do you see how if you say something that rebukes her attempt to enter into a negotiation about the state of your marriage, that one act will be all she needs to give up? Or to take drastic action to wake YOU up so you can get things on track? The stakes are high at this point, so high that you MUST take responsibility for effective communication; failure to do so will cost you in more ways that you can imagine.

How do you learn to speak “girly-ese”? The same way you learn how to evaluate and manage relationships and learning how to be that alpha male that every woman wants and your woman will be thrilled to have, by downloading your copy of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” at http://www.makingherhappy.com before you do another thing, and especially before you take any more relationship advice from somebody whose own marriage is on the rocks, because this information has worked for everyone who has ever used it, and it will work for you, too.

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

What Are You Looking for in Your Relationship and Marriage, or Are You Looking At All?

Great things are where you find them, especially in relationships, marriages, and opportunity in general, but you have to be looking for them to see them. Believe it or not, that’s a lot more a matter of attitude than opportunity, luck, or providence…

I’m swimming in testosterone right now (Saturday afternoon, July 4), because there’s a hundred pounds of pork ribs in my smoker that is going to feed an army of hungry “good people” shortly, and I smell of hardwood smoke and burning pork fat, which where I live, is a very powerful aphrodisiac! No matter where you live or what your life is like, find a reason to get together with others at least once a month and practice these rituals of cooking over fire, communing and telling stories, all of which have evolved from the ancient hunt. It awakens something primal and wonderful for which there does not seem to be any substitute.

Since everything is looking good in the smoker and it will be awhile before time to greet family, friends, and neighbors, I sat down to check my e-mail and found a couple of starkly contrasting pieces that screamed out “NEWSLETTER!!!!” So while I usually do this late at night based on some experience of the day, I’m doing it early today while the message is still at the forefront of my mind and easy to share with you.

The first thing I saw was a notice that a reader named Ryan had ended his subscription to this newsletter. Ryan had subscribed eleven days prior, and his comment describing his reason for cancelling read:

“NOTHING OF VALUE”

Just below it was an e-mail from another reader, and I about laughed myself sick when I looked up his subscription date and found that it was the same day, and he submitted the following:

Hello David,

Thank you! Your book is awesome! All of your readers of your daily email should sack up and buy your book. Sometimes that macho crap gets in the way and we limit ourselves from learning more about the women in our lives. We do often think that we should naturally know everything....after reading your book I knew that I didn't know much!

My marriage came to an end a while ago and my ex was always turning to "relationship experts" like Dr Phil and John Gray just to name a couple. Yes being the good man (or trying to) I read their books. Although they had some interesting ideas, none of them had an impact on me the way your book did.

I have been in a new relationship with a woman now for about a year. I did not want this relationship to turn sour like all the other ones so I decided to be proactive and read your book. WOW! Over the past couple of weeks since I bought your book, I started to take control and the results have been amazing. I have not had a problem with self confidence or had a problem attracting women through out my life, but after a while things would always change. I could not sustain the attraction. This woman is amazing and I did not want to sabotage this one too. Your book is the bomb dude and I will direct as much attention to you as I can!

One of my buddies asked me this weekend why I was so happy and I told him I wish that he could feel for 5 minutes what I feel everyday now. My beautiful woman is into me like no one’s business and looks at me in a way where I feel her love, even when we are not together. After almost a year we are more in love today than ever before. Thank you David for doing what the so-called "relationship experts" could not.

Rock on Dude,

Mike

P.S. By the way...I packed her stuff up and we went for a picnic this weekend when she got home from work. The results are too X-rated to put here...lol. Later!

(The picnic Mike refers to in the post script is a surprise outing I describe in the "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” wherein after you have learned how to read your partner and pay attention to the little things about her, like what she never leaves the house without on a day trip, weekender, etc., you come home a little early from work or send her off on an errand so you can have the house to yourself for an hour or so and prepare a picnic, day trip, weekend outing, etc. – just any kind of surprise trip to shake things up and give her a break from routine, then pile her in the car and announce the destination after you’re under way, or even better, upon arrival. It’s a wonderful exercise in attraction-building and adventure that every woman appreciates.)

The stark contrast in the findings and underlying attitudes of these two readers is stark and significant. One was looking for answers and found them, and I’m still trying to figure out what the other one was looking for, but it quite literally took them exactly the same length of time to report their findings; my e-mail is updated every three minutes and these two came in together.

I wish you could have been here when they arrived, too. I’m hyper-analytical. You could probably count the original thoughts I’ve had in my life on your hands and feet, but I can extract the cause and effect relationships from any situation near-instantly and accurately, and it’s ruthlessly automatic. Everything I see or hear first causes me to visualize, then analyze, then look for parallels once the cause and effect is known and logical deductions and projections that can be made from them. (That’s why you never find opinion or theory in my newsletters or books!)

So when these letters hit me, the immediate question was, “What else do men miss because they aren’t looking for it, or are looking somewhere besides at their partners to find it?”

Think about that. Is there something that you wish you and your partner shared, or could share or do together, that you have just assumed she wouldn’t be interested in or do? Are you right now or have you recently made the mistake of involving others in the problems of your life or relationship because you assume that your partner won’t want to discuss it, or resolve it?

Parenthetically, NEVER, EVER discuss intimate family problems with anyone outside your household unless they are a professional problem-solver who is both competent and paid for their confidentiality. Aside from the fact that it’s unlikely that they are emotionally-unattached, rational, and experienced enough to get to the root of your problem and help, when personal relationships end badly, all information that you have given a former friend, coworker, etc., or even a relative that you can’t really cut off, becomes a weapon to embarrass and hurt you with.

People do horribly hurtful things that cannot be undone when they are angry, and the things that go on between you and your spouse – YES, I am talking to both men and women here – are fodder for a quick-tempered and later-regretted revenge. Don’t tempt fate by arming people you care about with information about other people you care about. I see it every day, and it NEVER ends well.

Getting back on subject, do you have any idea how many missed opportunities to deepen and improve your relationship and your life occur as a result of assuming that your partner won’t be interested? Or how many affairs are started because of that? How many misunderstandings it generates?

Don’t be like Ryan, oblivious to the potential of what’s in front of you. If there’s something lacking at home, don’t go outside to find it (and if you ultimately do decide to go outside your marriage, end the marriage first) before making absolutely sure that it’s not sitting there undiscovered right under your nose at home. Talk to your partner, and listen – or are you able?

I’ll go to my grave preaching this sermon. Effective inter-gender communication is not something that we are born well-suited to even do, let alone do competently. It is a skill that must be developed, not a talent determined by a gene. For those of you who have seen the “Men State, Women Negotiate” excerpt from "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" in my free “Break-Up Busting 101” report, you know that as complex as it all seems, it pretty much boils down to the ruthless exercise of three simple rules that anybody can follow.

The question is “What are you looking for?” which begs the other question, “What is motivating you to look for anything?” Are you like Ryan, maybe looking for validation for your past mistakes so that you can blame somebody else for leaving you, or are you like Mike, realizing that you wouldn’t be reading this if everything was perfect, and that something that appears logical, people are using with success, and is guaranteed to work is worth a try, and therefore taking action and getting outstanding results?

Only you can make that choice, and I dare say that it is inevitable that you will be held accountable for it, if by nothing else, the state of your own life and that of your family’s, so choose well…

I don’t want to get too carried away with coincidences, but if you want to be “like Mike” (to those of you who saw the movie, I swear that’s his real name!), just do what he did. Download your own copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and get busy. It took him 11 days to write that letter. How quickly can you turn your life and relationship around?

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

What Happens When Women Don't Get What They Really Want in Relationships and Marriage

In case you might be thinking that everything at home, while mundane and boring, is really going okay, take a look at what may be happening behind your back if you failed to listen when you had the opportunity…

You might remember in the June 20, 2009 edition, my buddy “Rick” sent us something that one of the ladies on his dating site had sent him, which demonstrated perfectly how women want a real man. Well, he’s sent me another, and this one is equally revealing, as you will see:

Hey David,

Thank you so much for featuring my email in your newsletter. It's an honor and a privilege to help get the truth out.

Please accept the following as a symbol of my appreciation as well as education for your readers:

I had another woman look at my online profile. What makes this one different is that she's a not-so-happily MARRIED woman. Look at how she describes herself:

"I am a mother of two small children and a wife of 6 years. Hubby acts like he is not interested in me because he is always online when he is not at work. I enjoy reading, cooking, baking and spending time with my children. I also enjoy the few private times I have with hubby."

As bleak as this looks, this is a double feature. Now look at what she wants from a man (you may have to edit this!):

"I am looking for someone who will make me feel as if I am a woman and not just a mother and housewife. I would like to find someone who will make me blush and get all hot and wet at the same time. Someone who will help me find out what really turns me on and who is willing to quench the flames of a horny and over-sexed woman. I am at the age where hubby can not keep up with me and my demands...Can you?"

Looks like she wants an Alpha Male to me! David, this is a textbook example of what you said about how a woman feels, and what she'll do if she gets bored and loses her attraction. As you know all to well, this happens a lot more than it should. The overriding lesson here is the same in your daily newsletters: be a MAN, and learn how to satisfy your woman! If you don't you'll pay a heavy price down the road. This is about a lot more than just sex, this is your life! Make the most of it.

Thanks again, and keep spreading the truth.

Sincerely,

Rick

Any questions? I have a few! Starting with “Do you think this woman’s husband has any idea that she’s advertising on a public web site saying that she wants the attention of another man because he ignores her for his computer and can’t keep up sexually?

How many times do you think she tried to tell him it was coming to this and he either didn’t understand or didn’t take her seriously?

And when she succeeds in finding someone else and he finds out about it, who will he blame?

And then what will happen?

Gentlemen, every woman reading this today will vouch for every word I’m telling you. If you’re spending all your free time with your computer, your car, your job, your buddies, or anything else and she’s not getting any of it, she’s not happy. And if she’s not saying anything to you about it, she’s tired of being ignored and has given up. She’ll be looking soon if she isn’t already.

What’s that? You don’t ignore her? Well, if most of your time is spent without her, I beg to differ, but even if you don’t, she may be feeling ignored because she’s tried to tell you that something was missing and you didn’t get it.

No, she wouldn’t just come out and say, “Something’s missing and I’m not happy.” Women don’t do that. She would have ASKED, “Are you happy with the way things are between us?” or something along those lines, which for a woman is more of a statement than a question. And if you assumed it was only a question and just said, “yes,” without asking her if SHE was happy, you just shut her down and ignored her without even knowing it.

That’s one of a thousand pitfalls that can lead to affairs and divorce; a missed signal, a misunderstood look, phrase, or protocol, a question taken as a question instead of the statement made by asking the question, for example, are all very small things with a very big and very negative impact to a relationship or marriage.

But how would you know? Or her? Neither of you are born knowing that men and women use the same words to communicate but use them in entirely different ways with very different protocols. And there are not many people around who have figured this out, and of the few of us who have, very few of that number have ever written it down and offered it to the public. Of the few of those who exist today, and I’m talking about a scant handful, most offer a bunch of opinion and theory without having ever really tested their advice on a large scale.

So the information supply is small, the majority unreliable, and most people, especially men, don’t even know they need it. I recently read a statement by a professional counselor, directed at me, stating that he thought that deception was the basis of a good relationship, because in lying to his wife he had made up for her disrespecting him. Can you imagine?

I know some of you who frequent a particular anti-divorce web site have seen it, too. He’s the same one who says I can’t be an effective or competent counselor because I give SPECIFIC advice instead of the nebulous vagaries he and his peers use to run up a bill. I'll put my success record up against his or anybody else's any day. And yet our species continues to multiply. It’s just that the divorce rate continues to increase faster than the population size.

So let’s get back to you. Do you know what your wife is doing when she’s on the computer and you’re not around? Do you know what she’s doing when she’s out of the house and you’re not around? I know exactly what mine is doing at all times. She’s looking forward to being with me! And if you’ll ask any of my readers who haven’t found themselves faced with gross incompatibility problems and had to leave a bad marriage that couldn’t be fixed, you’ll find that they will give you the same answer.

So what can you divine from that? Two things. First, that my book will help you determine whether you are in the right or wrong marriage, and second, if you’re in the right one, it will help you make it better than it’s ever been and you’ll always know what your wife is doing every minute that she’s away from you, looking forward to the next time she’s with you, not looking for someone else to fill the void that you have left.

Where do you start? Start at http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage." Read it. See where you’ve made mistakes and then take the information provided and fix them. And then watch what happens as you and your wife start looking forward to every minute you spend together. It’s a feeling like no other.

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

Boredom Can Creep in After YEARS to Destroy Your Relationship or Marriage

It may only take a few weeks, or it may take years, but sooner or later virtually every couple falls prey to boredom, unless you understand a few basic things about attraction and intimacy and can avoid it. Once lost, you can get it back if you act in time, but it’s far easier and loads more fun to keep it going, like an eternal honeymoon, instead of watching the slow decay of something wonderful and then having to go through heroic efforts to heal the wounds.

This edition could rightly have been part of my “Want Women Want” free report, because one of the biggest things that women really want is to avoid being bored, but the issue and message here is bigger than that. In case you’ve only been following for a short while, boredom is a woman’s most dreaded state, and is at the most negative end of her emotional range, like fear, anger, and frustration are at the negative end of men’s emotional range.

Interestingly enough, the physical manifestations of either gender being at the negative end of their emotional range are the same: extreme agitation, tendency to be entirely illogical and act out of desperation, physical symptoms like sleeplessness, nausea, tremors, etc.

Boredom’s effect on women is grossly misunderstood by most men (and some women as well) because it doesn’t affect us the same way, so for future reference, Gentlemen, imagine the feelings you would experience in losing your job, having difficulty getting another, watching the bills pile up, and suspecting that your wife is about to leave. Those feelings build up over time and eventually can make you entirely unstable. Those sensations of depression, desperation, fear, agitation, etc., that you would feel under those circumstances are what a woman feels as she gets more and more bored.

Borrowing from medical terminology, “acute boredom” is a short-term severe problem with an immediate symptomatic cure usually gained from radical treatment: a fight, usually over nothing. “Chronic boredom” is a bigger problem. It develops over months or even years of very gradual decline in the excitement level in a woman’s life caused by routine, lack of “adult time,” career stagnation, and watching her partner grow apathetic, fat, lazy, and desirous of spending evenings drinking and channel surfing too much and talking with her too little. Yes, months or even years, and when it builds up enough pressure, fights won’t cure it, and affairs and divorce start slipping into the picture as options, options that look dangerously alluring and even rational when a woman gets too far gone.

The following letter caught my attention, not because of the decay of the relationship or its resurrection after reading and applying what’s in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” but the amount of time it took for the relationship to fade! Meet Karen:

Dear David,

I have been in a love relationship with my best friend for seven years now. I have always tried to take care of myself and be attractive to him. Last year I began to think that maybe we should have just stopped our relationship at being friends and never become lovers. I found myself looking at other men and wishing that Jack had some of the qualities I found so attractive in them. I made one last attempt at talking and trying to tell him that we were no longer attractive to each other and one way or the other something would have to change or we were over.

He came across your website and bought your book a short time later. Within a few days I noticed a big difference and within a month I was not living with the same man I was thinking of leaving the month before. I was living with the guy I fell in love with 7 years ago! No one could prepare me for the changes not only in Jack, but myself as well. “Taking it to the next level,” whatever that would be, wouldn’t begin to cover what happened to us over the next couple of months, and we’re getting married this weekend, after living together seven years and almost losing it all!

I can not understand why anyone would pass up the chance to have the kind of relationship like what we have after reading your book. The words “thank you” seem so little compared to what your book as done for us. My whole life is right out the dreams I had as a young woman.

Karen B.

Well Karen, dreams do come true, but you usually have to take charge of making it happen like you and your husband-to-be did, and congratulations for doing so!

Folks, what kills me about this letter is that most relationships die of boredom somewhere between a few minutes and two years, yet this one survived six years before the couple started drifting. Some would blame something once known as “the seven year itch,” and I couldn’t argue with that, but these days I mostly see people who either make it or don’t very early in the relationship.

Indeed, I’ve been working with couples who have been together as long as 57 years, and the most common thread in all of them is boredom. What’s shocking is how quickly a woman can build up a head of steam after all that time and start moving for separation; one went from “status quo” to out of the house in four days!

I spoke with her in a counseling session, and she said that she still loved her husband deeply, but after 37 years of marriage, the idea of him disappearing into his study to spend the remainder of the evening with his carving hobby until bedtime even one more time was too much to bear, and at 61 years of age, she was ready to start over if that was the only way to escape the nightly abandonment and boredom. I will never forget her saying that she felt like she was already a widow. The problem has been resolved and they are again happy and reengaging one another, but it was a VERY close call.

Let me be clear; I’m not saying divorces happen that fast, it’s that couples report settling into routine, losing excitement, get lazy, and the magic goes away that fast, even though they may remain committed to each other (or the institution of marriage, the kids, or whatever they cling to in order to hold it together) for decades, like my grandparents did. Karen says they had fun and excitement for six years, and then trouble started.

Boredom is insidious, covert, unpredictable, and deadly to your relationship, and it can slip in unnoticed the minute you drop your guard, just as it did with this couple. The trick is to know the opponent, and know how to guard yourself against it, which in this case is by remaining aware of each other’s needs, lives, excitement level, and having fun and growing together in ways that keep you close, intimate, excited, etc.

As Karen said, what’s in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” is information for men about women, but a lot of it is also information that women aren’t aware of about themselves and men! It can do you both a world of good to read it, because it will let you keep the home fires burning bright instead of having them go out and having to rebuild and reignite them in the dark and under duress later. Do yourself a favor and go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy right now, because life is definitely too short to spend it bored and doing all the ridiculous things people do to fight boredom (like affairs, or weekends in a therapy retreat!), especially when you have such an option that is so easy and affordable as this.

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

The First and Most Important Step in Having a Great Relationship and Marriage

The first step in any great relationship of any kind is being well-matched. If you are not well-matched, you may be able to survive together, but the odds of being happy together are slim to none; if you are, you’ll find you can conquer about anything! This is one of those “must read” issues, so dig in…

Today I want to again talk about something that seems to be so logical that it would be self-evident to all, but obviously is not practiced by many, the first step in having a great relationship. Those of you who have been banging your head against the wall after receiving advice from someone claiming that “any relationship can be saved regardless of circumstances” will want to pay particular attention to this issue, because this edition may be addressing your biggest relationship or marriage problem. (And “Dr. Frank,” this is one you should pass along to your friends in that “wasteland” we were talking about, where you’re recruiting men for my boot camp, because it addresses them specifically.)

That first and most crucial step in any great relationship or marriage is being well-matched to your partner.

Yes, some of you are right now saying, “Duh!” but others are saying, “but can’t you learn to love someone?” Here are the facts and truth of the matter:

When you first meet someone, the emotion that pulls you together is either attraction or need (or in rare cases lust, but lust is seldom responsible for keeping two people together long enough to get married, unless they’re incredibly reckless or needy), which are both independent of love; indeed, need is in fact mutually exclusive of love – you cannot love someone that you need, because (in a nutshell) need actually makes you resent them as the object of your dependence, and fear their power to leave and remove the thing you need from your life. Fear is a partner to hatred, not love.

This in itself is a complex and difficult concept for most to embrace, and if you find yourself wanting to argue with it, see Lesson 3 in my free “Break-Up Busting 101” report, entitled “Love, Need, Lust and Attraction – Do YOU Know the Difference?” or skip to the similarly-titled section of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” and gain an effective understanding, because it is both factual and crucial. We’ll address need first because it’s easier to see, then we’ll get into attraction and love.

Need never develops into love, and sooner or later, the other person (unless they are hopelessly codependent) gets tired of neediness and moves on. There is nothing you can do about this, especially telling them that you need them and can’t live without them. That is the very drain, pressure, and stress that they are trying to get away from, and your fight for independence is going to take too long for them to wait around for you to complete it, if you can; most truly needy people, those who would be called parasites because they take from their partners without giving anything significant in return, spend their life moving from host to host because it’s just easier for them to find a new host than to evolve into a non-needy person of independence.

In short, if the person you are with is telling you it’s over because you are too needy, take the hint and grow up, become self-supporting and independent, and you’ll find that people enjoy being around you for the long term. Make no mistake, fighting this break-up is only going to make things worse, because you are severely mismatched; a chronically needy person cannot coexist with an independent person who resents neediness. You got away with it for awhile because you were somehow charming, physically attractive, wealthy, funny, or something, but now that the cat is out of the bag and it’s known that you’re a needy wuss, you have two options: find another host or evolve so that you can enjoy another’s company instead of needing it. It’s harsh, but it’s really just that simple.

Someone asked once why I didn’t talk about a case wherein the woman is the needy one. I didn’t because I didn’t realize how common it might be for a man to be trying to save a relationship with such a woman, wherein he is independent and she is the needy one. But lo and behold, I have run across them, and the “cognitive dissonance” within the men is overwhelming. They fight between wanting to get away from the stress of being stuck with a needy person and wanting to try to “salvage their investment in their marriage.”

The only hope for you if you are in this case is to help your wife understand that what she is feeling is need, not love, and that she needs to develop some self-esteem before she can love either of you. Try to help her develop some self-esteem, and if she insists on living in denial (“Why can’t you just love me as I am?” and such questions are infallible evidence of such a problem) in spite of your efforts to get her to acknowledge her problem, seek counseling, etc., you have two choices: Get out or go down with a sinking ship. You can either lead her out of it, put up with it, or leave, and you won’t have be able to lead her as long as she’s in denial. ‘Nuff said.

Now, on to the more complex case, where attraction was the reason for you to come together. Once attraction has brought you together and you’ve had your initial episode of “physical exploration and gratification,” there should be a period where you get to know each other, find that you have common interests, philosophies, values, etc., and come to value each other – love develops. This is the source of the friendship, respect, loyalty and commitment required for long-term relationships to survive, while attraction is where all the fun, excitement, and energy come from. There are several possible scenarios that arise from the various permutations of these two emotions between two people.

The most obvious two are having both love and attraction, in which case you can be together happily and feel like you’re in a never-ending honeymoon (the ideal situation, right? And it can be sustained for a lifetime if you are aware of its requirements and constituents, and we’ll get back to this in a few minutes), and having neither love nor attraction, after events have eliminated them both, in which case the relationship must end, because even though lost attraction can usually be easily rekindled, lost love just doesn’t happen. Peoples’ values and personalities just don’t naturally move radically away from some baseline and then go back there.

Now, the other two are a bit trickier to deal with. We’ll talk about the harder of the two first, the case in which love is lost but attraction survives. It is common for people under tremendous pressure that they ultimately cannot handle, and they degrade themselves somehow. They could then become a loser, maybe a criminal or spouse abuser, and/or possibly a substance abuser, but they still project the personality traits that trip attraction triggers.

This would typically be a marriage that started out like a story book romance, but currently one spouse is drunk or high all the time after losing a loved one, a business, or career, etc. They have lost their self-love, self-esteem, and self-respect, but have still managed to somehow remain fun, funny, sexy, or something that holds the other spouse’s attention. You can’t base a great relationship on nothing but sex, jokes, and parties, and you can’t “fix” somebody else, especially someone who won’t admit there is a problem and doesn’t want to fix anything.

You’re only choices with such a relationship are to either get this person some professional help so that they can be redeemed or move on. Again, it sounds harsh, but statistically and historically, this is reality, and if they won’t get help, moving on is your only option; having once loved someone is no reason to go down with a sinking ship that refuses to be repaired. That’s martyrdom, the ultimate form of sacrifice, the trading of valuable life for nothing of value at all, not love.

The last possibility is the one I like dealing with the most, where love is still alive and healthy, but attraction has failed; you’re in the “friends column” but nobody else has created attraction in your partner and she still loves you, but is bored and vulnerable. In the dating world, lost attraction nearly always means that you blew it and you just move on immediately, because the other person already has; the window for creating attraction opens once, and very briefly, period. However, when you’ve been together for long enough for attraction to fade, you develop a vested interest in keeping the relationship alive. You acquire memories, security, a mortgage and property, and usually children, which motivate you to try to work things out. Hence, the window that closes in seconds in the dating world can be open for months or even years when you're committed.

Men are generally pretty easy when it comes to attraction. We’re attracted mostly to physical appearance and seductive talk and actions, and if attraction is lost and must be recreated, women seldom have to do any more than correct whatever major issues have developed with their appearance, if any, and act like a woman; self-respect and self-love in a woman are among the sexiest things a man can behold, and they cause the things that trip men’s attraction triggers, such as being height-weight proportionate, good grooming and posture, smiling, having fun, etc.

Women aren’t so easy though. Physical appearance barely makes them curious, and then only for a short while, and that curiosity can be destroyed in an instant by any non-alpha male behavior, such as approval-seeking or trying to impress them, being lazy or boring, etc.

That’s not to say that it’s impossible, or even difficult, to rekindle attraction. Indeed, if you have the right information to work from, it has been proven to happen in less than a week to a sufficient degree to halt the signing of divorce papers already prepared and move an estranged spouse back into the family home. This is the failing relationship that you fight for, even if there has been an affair, because love is hard to find and to earn, and a physical affair – which virtually always happens out of boredom and means absolutely nothing unless you choose to assign meaning to it – is no reason whatsoever to abandon a proven love.

Yes, I said that, and I’m about to say it another way: a one-time physical “fling” that happened out of boredom is not proof of lost love, nor a sign of disloyalty or disrespect. It’s an unfortunate and very STUPID thing that happens when two people can’t or just don’t effectively communicate with each other and allow their attraction to fade, nothing more, and nothing less. I’m not saying that the person who does it is stupid; I’m saying that it’s ridiculous that people will let their problems go to the point that this happens before realizing there is a problem and trying to fix it.

If you’re sitting on the couch with a beer and the TV remote every night while your partner is doing something else, and you’re part of that statistic that says that the average mature couple (mature meaning having been together, married or not, for two years or more) has sex six times per year (yes, that’s once every two months on average), trouble’s not just coming, it’s HERE!

And, there’s no sense waiting for it to get that bad before taking action; a good relationship is far easier to maintain than it is to fix if it gets broken, right? What you need is a plan for evaluating and then fixing and/or maintaining it and the knowledge required to empower you to do that. Luckily for you, it’s already been figured out, tested, proven, and published, and it can be yours in the next few minutes.

It’s called “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” you can download it right now at http://www.makingherhappy.com, and it’s working for everyone who’s used it. Don’t make things rougher on yourself than they have to be by waiting. Do it now, and do it for keeps, because life is too short to do it any other way.

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

It's TOO Easy to Destroy Your Relationship and Marriage When You Don't Talk With Your Partner

A reader letter demonstrates how a simple problem with a simple solution can be blown out of proportion to a damaging level if there is no communication to address the problem.

I hesitated to include this reader letter, because it’s going to make this newsletter a few paragraphs longer than normal, but aside from the fact that there’s some really good questions and answers involved, there’s also an EXTREMELY important lesson, for both men and women, to be learned from it. Bear with me for a few extra paragraphs and I’m sure you’ll find it worth the read.

By the way, note that the reader’s question is completely off-topic, and I’m not complaining about that and don’t want you to, either, because it leads to something very useful for everyone that is absolutely on-topic. Luckily, it was easy to develop some logical, practical and appropriate advice to give her and there were several women on the support team, including another counselor, who confirmed that it was what she should be told. But, the very fact that she presented this question to me, as someone doesn’t overtly offer sexual advice to anyone, should be a clear sign to all just how important both relationships and self-esteem are to women and that when things aren’t working, they will sometimes resort to desperate measures to try to bring things back to normal.

Luckily for Christy, the question landed with someone who could give rational, tested advice with the help of a research team instead of some whacko who could have done irreparable damage to her and her relationship by offering guess-work and opinion, or in the case of some less scrupulous individuals, whatever would manipulate her emotions the most. Here’s her first e-mail, and the subject matter is a little less “family-oriented” than I usually print, but please just bear with me because the resulting understanding will be well worth stepping outside your comfort zone for a moment – after all, these are real-world issues, and they don’t go away just because people don’t like to talk about them:

David,

I'm currently on my "monthly cycle" and during this time, my live-in boyfriend and I don't have sex. I still make it a point to try and please him, but he takes advantage of the "break" and masturbates to thoughts of other women. The other women are mostly fantasy -- movie stars, porn actresses, or faceless women in general. I consider myself a very attractive and satisfying woman (and he knows it), so I think it's questionable and even hurtful as to why he currently fantasizes about women (I also think porn is reserved for single men only). Our sexual relationship is VERY healthy, so I'm at a loss. Is this okay for men to do this when they're in a happy coupling? Can this be considered mental cheating?

Sincerely,
Wishing I was the only one

My reply:

Hi Christy!

Thank you for writing. Your question is a tricky one, and the correct answer depends on some details that you haven't yet provided. At first glance, it doesn't appear that there is a problem. If he's telling you that he's fantasizing about other women, he's being honest, and most likely faithful; if he were lying about it, or had any real desire for another woman, he'd be trying to conceal that, and lying to you about what stimulated him during masturbation.

Contrary to what women are unfortunately taught as they grow up, men don't masturbate because they are unhappy with their partner; we masturbate mainly for physical relief, especially if we are health-savvy and know that lapses in sexual activity cause a build-up of DHT and minerals in the prostate gland, which causes prostate congestion, which is uncomfortable to say the least, then Benign Prostate Hyperplasia (BPH, commonly known as swollen prostate or prostatitis) and has also been shown in clinical studies to be a prime factor in contraction of prostate cancer later in life.

As for whom he's fantasizing about, men are primarily visually stimulated sexually, and it may simply just be easier for him mentally to recall the images of things he's seen on the screen, especially if the two of you generally have sex with the lights out. Even the most sexually free men have some subconscious issues with masturbation because of the way parents deal with it, and frankly, it's prone to make us quite raw and sore if it takes too long, even with lubricant, so we tend to take the quickest and easiest path just to get it over with. If you're satisfying your man and he’s being honest and open about what he’s doing, the evidence says his masturbation is strictly preventive medicine, and I would strongly suggest to you that you don't try to read anything into it.

If you are insecure with him recalling the images from porn movies (speaking of which, many couples sit and view porn films together, sometimes as a mood enhancer, sometimes looking for adventurous techniques, etc., but it's by no means something that a woman should be concerned about unless he's spending more time with porn than with you, or is burning up half his paycheck with porn movie rentals, which is an obvious sign of some kind of mental problem) as he masturbates, there are a few things you might consider, among them, having sex while you're on your period, if you can find a way that's not uncomfortable, like in the shower (unless of course your objection is that it's painful during that time), or offer him some other form of sex in addition to or in lieu of his masturbation.

The main thing is to try to find a way to make it pleasurable for both of you, don't try to read anything into it, especially any kind of shortcoming on your part or infidelity on his, and use it as an opportunity to find new intimacy in your relationship. If you allow it to impact your self-esteem, both of you will pay dearly for that mistake, and if you feed any insecurities about his fidelity over this issue, you'll send a strong signal that he can't be honest with you about some things without being punished for it, and punishing honesty can turn into a relationship-killing problem.

I hope this helps. I'm not going to publish this in my newsletter unless you feel that it adequately answers your question and you're okay with having this show up in the newsletter, with or without your first name (I never use full names when quoting readers). If we need to discuss this further to fully address your issues, please feel free to write back.

Sincerely,
David Cunningham

Now, her final reply:

Thanks for your quick reply! I'm comfortable having this in the newsletter if you choose to do so, but then I wouldn't get to read anything new tomorrow :p. I think your response was logical and it helps me realize I'm just fueling my own insecurities. I'm definitely going to buy your book!

Thanks!
Christy

Now, note the last sentence before she says she’s going to buy my book: my response was logical and helped her to realize that “she was just fueling her own insecurities.” Ladies and gentlemen, I cannot overstress how nearly all women are prone to do this, obviously some much more than others, and how all it takes to put things right is simple, honest communication. It would have been far better if Christy’s boyfriend had answered her question instead of me, but he apparently made her believe that he was too “closed off” to discuss it, or just blew it off as something “she should just get over.” WRONG ANSWER!


What he should have done when it was cursorily discussed (which they must have done because she had details that she could have only had if he had provided them, like who he was involved with in his fantasy images), was to recognize that she wasn’t being whiney, she was looking for dialog and understanding, and he should have left her an open channel to discuss her feelings and how the two of them might approach their “down time” that could be more satisfying for both of them. Women get through problems by first talking about the problem, especially the emotions that the problem generates, and then negotiating a resolution.

Refusing to take part in that process comes across to women as dismissal, and on a scale of one to ten, that’s about a seventeen for being bad for your relationship or marriage. And the ugly part is that he may not have recognized her concerns if she said something like, "And you think this is okay for a married man?" which is how a woman says, "I don't think a married man, especially MY married man, should be doing this."

The Lesson: Gentlemen, when women bring up anything that has to do with your relationship, they are concerned; they actively manage their relationships of all kinds, and work the hardest to manage the ones most important to them. Don’t make light of their concern and blow them off, because you then leave them to their own devices and assumptions, which are mainly emotionally-based since it’s an emotional issue and they are emotionally-driven, in lieu of factual information, to try to handle the situation for themselves, and this will never end well. If they were secure enough for it to end well, they wouldn’t have been concerned in the first place. They can easily grasp fact and logic when you give it to them before they have a chance to get upset and get amped up on drama adrenaline, so talk WITH (NOT “TO”) them when they want to talk instead of waiting until they force you to talk.

Ladies, until your partner has been through my book and fully understands how you view relationships and communicate, he will have little to no clue as to the importance of this subject matter because he is unfamiliar with your priorities and not skilled enough at interpreting advanced female communications protocols and techniques to read between the lines. Try to keep your emotions in check and your wits about you, and know that you have to voice your concerns, bluntly and verbosely, and looking disturbed and rolling your eyes as you omit a guttural exhale doesn’t constitute bluntly and verbosely. You must be patient, and spell it out for them. When you do this, they may still not completely understand your dilemma or why it’s such a big deal at first, but will understand that since you’re speaking bluntly when they’ve never heard that before, it must be something incredibly important and you will have their undivided attention long enough to make progress, unless they are just a complete and utter moron.

I’m sorry that it took so much verbiage to get this across, but this is such a shining example of what can happen in a communications vacuum and how easily it could be avoided that I just had to do it. Unlike some, I can’t do things half-heartedly or half-assed, and I hope that you will settle for nothing less as well. I’ve taken the same approach in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” giving you 118 single-spaced pages of solid, tested information (in normal type) when most reports and e-books in the $40 range are more like 30-60 pages of double- or triple-spaced large type; I was advised by others in the industry to keep it that short so I could “fluff it up” and turn it into a paperback later, which I found disgusting to say the least. Download your copy today at http://www.makingherhappy.com and start getting along, instead of just getting by.

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

Cheating in Relationships and Marriage, Part 3, Basic But Effective Methods for Detecting and Confronting an Affair

To conclude our series (part 3 of 3) on affairs and cheating, let’s look at some ways of finding the truth without being too obvious about looking for it.

Now that you have a better and hopefully thorough understanding of the nature, causes, and appropriate action to take in dealing with an affair, let’s talk about how to detect one. These methods are not fool-proof and should not be used in isolation, but if you should see multiple symptoms the odds increase to the point where confronting your partner and trying to resolve the problem (or proceeding with divorce preparations if you decide that you simply cannot continue the relationship) is entirely appropriate.

The most significant indications of a woman having an affair are fairly sudden changes in behavior, especially frequent breaks in any established routine. Routines are established by things becoming a priority, and they are displaced by something else becoming a higher priority. It happens gradually over time as people and situations evolve, or suddenly when something suddenly enters someone’s life and affects them radically, causing a shift in their priorities.

Among the things you can look for to change is her level of neediness. If she has a history of acting needy and seeking your attention and then suddenly doesn’t seem as if she needs you to cater to her or cover for her, it’s far more likely that someone else is doing it than she just woke up one morning and found her independence under her pillow, a gift from the Tooth Fairy’s cousin. The same thing goes for your presence or attention.

A sudden change in her emotional displays in your presence is another telltale sign. Women will get emotional with you when they have excess emotional energy that they need to bleed off, whether it’s positive or negative (remember our previous discussions on emotional scales and the creation of drama to alleviate boredom, which you can view in the archive). If she’s suddenly detached, there’s either a bottle of some new tranquilizer in the medicine cabinet or she’s found a new outlet for her emotion.

A sudden change in her attention level -- catering to you, gifts, etc., is often a sign of a guilty conscience and an effort to try to conceal her interest in another. (Men are generally bad about this one too, buying roses or jewelry at non-holiday times to appease their own guilty conscience, and women watch for this, so if you give a “legitimate” non-seasonal gift, make sure you clearly express the reason so that it is not misconstrued.)

Need I mention suddenly becoming secretive? Women naturally have a tendency to give us much more detail about what’s happening in their lives than we are comfortable hearing; I’ve personally listened to a half-hour melodrama of the trials and tribulations of a cat belonging to a woman I never met and didn’t want to know because it came up in a conversation that a woman I know had participated in during the day, and I had made the mistake of asking “How was your day?” to a woman who naturally interpreted the question as “What happened during your day?”

If that openness suddenly stops, she’s limiting information to try to limit your opportunities to catch her in a lie. She may even try to make up for this by answering questions with questions, trying to change the subject to YOUR day so that you will do the talking. The same thing goes for refusal to answer questions, asking why you want to know before answering, and if she gets defensive over a question that she hasn’t had a problem with in the past, like “Did you have a good workout at the gym today?” she’s busted.

Sudden guarding of cell phones, computers, and other communications devices are a HUGE signal as well. In short, anything that limits your access to her communications infrastructure or any information source that would only be incriminating if she was in fact having an affair is a big red flag.

Hesitation before an answer to an obvious question, or repeating your question back to you before answering, is a classic sign of someone needing to stall while they decide whether to lie and to formulate a lie. Obviously, asking someone to recite the presidents of the United States in chronological order including their years of office might cause someone to pause before they answer, but a simple question like, “Why did you not answer your phone all afternoon?” doesn’t require a lot of thought if they in fact did not hear it ring, left it in their desk while they were in a meeting due to departmental or company policy, etc. They were there, whatever happened, and the answer is readily available if they want to share it with you; else they need a few seconds to try to figure out if they’re busted, whether they should try to lie their way out of it, and then make up what they hope is a convincing lie.

As an aside, there is a recent three-part series of newsletters in my newsletter archive concerning lying and its impact on relationships and marriage, and the last edition in that series is about techniques for lie detection, if you missed it. If you wish to review, see Part 1, Faking It Until You Make It, Part 2, A Reader Response to Part 1 with Additional Advice and Part 3: Lie Detection, Confrontation, and Correction

I probably should turn that series into another free report, along with this series on cheating, and I may do that as soon as I can make some time. ;-)

Suddenly picking up a habit of being critical of your every move is a bad sign, especially if you find her moving from critical to angry at every turn. Women tend to seek validation for their emotions, and as Lenin is famous for pointing out, “A lie told often enough becomes the truth,” so if she can find enough reasons to be angry at you, even if she has to contrive them, she can justify her attraction to another man and her infidelity. That’s not to say that any anger she feels will be because of an affair; it could be a legitimate issue or it could be boredom starting to build up a good head of drama. But if this symptom is combined with even one other, you need to be taking a hard look around you.

If you find her talking about somebody new frequently but without much detail, look out, especially if you say something like, “Wow, he sounds really interesting and like somebody I’d enjoy talking to. How about introducing us?” You can imagine how awkward a situation that might be, and she will resist being put into it. Otherwise, her social nature will press her to be a social conduit and make the introduction.

The biggest telltale sign of all for most women is no sex at all, and seeming defensive or even angry at the mention of it or any advance. Some even go so far as to stop allowing you to see them in anything more alluring than an old sweat suit at bed time; it’s like she’s being “faithful” to someone else. You may also notice that the only time you see her looking like she wants male attention is when she leaves the house – without you.

And if she comes home from “a long day at the office” or evening out with fresh make-up, fresh perfume, and especially with an underlying smell of fresh soap, don’t be surprised if you also find the back of her hair wet, especially at the back of the neck, where she’s been in the shower after being in someone else’s bed. Jumping in the shower immediately upon returning home is also a big tip-off unless she’s been to the gym and has an established aversion to the showers at the gym. Speaking of the gym, a sudden interest in the gym, not by itself but coupled with one or more of these other symptoms, is at least grounds to start watching more carefully or even start talking.

Detectives and courts use much more sophisticated means, including electronic surveillance, checking phone records, cross-matching receipts with schedules, etc., but those techniques are for building evidence for a divorce or criminal prosecution; what I’m describing here is more than adequate for recognizing you have a problem and confronting a delinquent spouse. Then there’s the big question…

What do you say to her when you confront her? That's waaaay too much to try to include in a free newsletter, so you’re going to have to read "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" to learn how to handle that. It’s going to take a lot more than simply calling her on it, including some skillful communicating and some specific references to events in your own past with her. You’re also going to have to be able to pick them out appropriately and express how you recognize them as errors and are prepared to do better and lead her into a better future.

Or, if you’re really smart, you can read it today and keep these problems from ever developing so that you never have to experience the pain, frustration, and for some of us, sheer terror of seeing your world come crashing down around you. Either way, you need to read it, so go to http://www.makingherhappy.com right now and download a copy. Sure, you can very likely fix it if it breaks, but it’s a whole lot easier to keep it from ever being broken in the first place, so get it done now, while it’s easy and fun!

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

Cheating in Relationships and Marriage, Part 2, What To Do When You Know She's Cheating

Part 2 of a 3-part series: A man writes to me because he knows his wife is cheating and wants to know what to do about it. Good question! Do you know what to do? Better yet, do you know what causes it, and how to avoid it?

To continue our series, we’re going to talk about what to do when you know she’s cheating. That may seem a bit out of sequence at first glance, but if you learn this first, the odds of you handling the worst-case scenario correctly are better if you happen to be one of the unlucky few who discover an affair in progress as a result of reading tomorrow’s edition on how to detect an affair.

This letter describes a scenario all too familiar to need an introduction. We’ve all either lived through it or watched someone we know live through it. Meet Kyle:

Hello David,

I am writing this letter in hopes you can help me to understand how a woman can change so much after 6 years just by making a new friend. A couple of months ago my wife met a woman at a high school football game and they fell right into being best friends. It quickly came to the point that they are together at least three nights a week and are always on the phone with each other for hours a day. I have never been the kind of man who cared if Cindy had friends to hang out with or not and I really believe it’s a good idea for a woman to have other women to share things with, but I also believe there is a line into each other’s personal relationships that should not be crossed.

Allison, my wife's friend, is also a married woman and her marriage is on very rocky ground. She would frequently go out of town for entire weekends and has been begging my wife to go with her so they could “have some time to be alone and talk,” like they don’t do that all day long while her husband and I are at work and three evenings a week. I did some detective work of my own on these trips out of town and was not at all surprised at what I learned. Allison was traveling several hours to spend the weekend (pretty much in bed) with a man she had met months ago.

She wants my wife to go with her because the man she was seeing has a friend that wants to “spend time” with my wife. I also found out the two women, at the age of 39, had not been going out to dinner as I was told, and were in fact spending hours sitting in local bars flirting with other men and acting like they had just come of legal age and could buy drinks for the first time. Now besides being dangerous and possibly causing a car accident, the two would flirt and carry on with the men in the bar to the point I was sick to my stomach. Yes, I did follow them out a couple of times just to see what level Cindy would let things get to.

Last night Cindy told me that she and Allison would be going out of town next week to spend some time with friends of Allison in Nashville. That is straight into the arms of other men, and I am sick about this. What I need to know is how to break up these two women without losing my own wife. Allison is the worst kind of woman, always wanting men’s approval and willing to sell herself to get it and do whatever they ask to keep it. I see my wife falling down that hole and I am not sure if I can still reach her to get her out of it. If I try to talk with her about it she just laughs and tells me my imagination is working overtime. I know for a fact this time she is being set up to spend the weekend with another man and I have the conversation recorded.

How should I handle this? I could leave it up to Cindy, but this would not be the first time she has been in the arms of another man since we’ve been together. I love her and have forgiven many things most men would have never put up with, but if she does this again I am gone. I would like to be able to stop this from happening if I can so what do you suggest?

Kyle

My reply:

Well Kyle, you’re in a jam and a half. Do you know how you got there? I do. No mentally and emotionally healthy woman who is feeling attraction for a man she’s living with is going to be sucked into this situation; she won’t risk losing what she has if it’s working. About the only chance you have of this not being the case is if she’s so emotionally damaged that she would be seeking all men’s approval like her friend Allison, and you make no mention of that.

I hate to break it to you, but you’re being a wuss or ignoring her needs, and she’s either looking for excitement elsewhere or testing you to see if you’ll be a man and step up to the plate. It’s going to be very difficult for you to know which because you don’t have the communications skills to pick up on the hints and signals that would tell you. Otherwise you would have already picked up on everything she gave you that would have told you that you weren’t being enough of the alpha male and creating variety, mystery, excitement and authority in her life that protects her from boredom, her worst of all antagonists. That’s two strikes against you right there. Then we have to address her problems as well…

It doesn’t appear that she’s necessarily in an approval-seeking mode, more like thrill-seeking, but she’s lying to you about what she’s doing. Why is that? Is it because she lacks the self-respect and respect for you to tell you the truth, or because she’s tried to tell you the truth and you’ve been so deaf to it that she gave up? The fact that she’s had other affairs really doesn’t give a clue, because the affair is the symptom, not the cause, and multiple affairs are often symptoms of the same cause.

Then we have the issue of why you are still together if she’s had other affairs? Did you work something out that has since failed, or are you just a doormat who let her back in the house after she had her fling? I see that you say that this is the last straw and that’s understandable, but have you considered whether the last straw should have been several straws before? Have you considered that forgiveness in the past may have set the standard for future expectations and behavior?

Right now, you’re in more trouble than any other reader who has written me, not because of where you are, but because there are so many unknowns in your equation. I’ve helped several snatch their relationship right out of divorce court, and helped others find their way to it by helping them see that they were hopelessly mismatched or with a parasite or a predator who was sucking them dry of life (and assets) with their abuse, but in the face of all these unknowns, I can’t answer your question.

A real man would immediately stand up and tell her that he knows what she’s up to and that she can stay at home and be part of the family as they work out their issues or she can leave and never come back, but without knowing whether she is worth keeping, you can’t know if you want to do that. Until you can sharpen your communications skills to the point you can correctly interpret the things she tries to say to you, most of which will be either non-verbal or verbal but indirect, you can’t assess how she feels, because you can’t understand what she’s saying and can’t know if she’s telling you the truth. You have too much work to do before the decision can be made. You also must reach a level of communications competence for her to see that you are hearing and understanding her before she’ll think it’s worth the trouble to tell you everything again that she has already told you many times in the past and try to work with you. But these are merely obstacles, not barriers. You can easily navigate them with a little help.

In “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” you’ll find a fairly extensive system for determining whether your relationship with this woman is worth saving, a great course on how to communicate with all women, including a lot about how to distinguish between truth and lies (see also this archived article on lie detection in my newsletter archive), and the low-down on attraction – what it is, how it works, how to create it, and equally important, how to kill it, and why its absence from your relationship breeds affairs and divorce. Go right now to download it at http://www.makingherhappy.com. There’s no excuse for waiting, because it’s fully tested and guaranteed to work, so go get busy and start getting your house in order.

Take care,
David

What else can I say? ;-)

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

Cheating in Relationships and Marriage, a Symptom, not a Problem

Part 1 of a 3-part series: Many people think that cheating in a relationship is a major problem. It is in fact NOT a problem at all, but a SYMPTOM of a real and much bigger problem. Fix the problem and the cheating goes away, at least as long as the problem doesn’t come back. The questions are “What’s the problem?” and “How do I fix it?” I will answer both…

I’ve had more than the usual number of e-mails in the last couple of weeks asking about detecting and dealing with affairs, as well as casual “cheating,” in sexual and other forms. It’s time we go through a series of lessons on how to detect, understand, and stop affairs and cheating, and we start today.

I have some readers who really, really make me proud to have them onboard. I’m proud to have anyone onboard who has the sense to realize they have a problem and the guts to look for an answer, but in addition to that, there are a few of you who don’t just blindly grab whatever is said and follow instructions like some sort of robot. Instead these special people take my lessons and advice and think about them, and abstract from them other lessons, some which are parallel, other which are advanced concepts from the basic points I provide, and it’s always delightful when I receive one of them.

For example, ponder this question that came in response to the “What Do You Do When You Know She’s Cheating?” article which we will revisit tomorrow as part of this series:

“Is it cheating when she spends hours every day talking to people on the Internet rather than talking to her husband? It sure feels like it.”

This guy gets a big “high five” for seeing past the end of his nose and making the connection. Why?

It is a form of emotional abandonment, and that’s why it feels like cheating. She’s spending a disproportionate amount of time with other people and unavailable to you. However, this isn’t the problem; it’s only a symptom of the same problem that causes what we think of first when we think of “cheating,” an affair.

She’s bored because he is no longer tripping those biological triggers that make her feel attraction for him and make her want to spend that time with him getting that “swept off her feet” feeling. There’s no longer anything interesting or fun about talking or being with him. The only difference is that for some reason, whether her value system, opportunity, or whatever, she’s seeking intimacy and/or adrenaline rushes in e-mail, a chat room, or on the telephone, or being absorbed in some form of hobby or volunteer work that gives her a reason to be around other people where she thinks she has a better chance of escaping he boredom instead of being caught up in a sexual affair.

This doesn’t mean that she is or is not looking for an affair, or that there is anything wrong with having a hobby, but it does mean that if she is spending a lot of time away from her husband and sees nothing attractive about him, she is vulnerable to an affair, whether she wants it or not. And make no mistake; the answer is NOT to start hammering on her trying to control her time like a dictator or to start whining like a wuss that she spends time with everybody but you. And for crying out loud, DON’T start telling her how much you NEED her. That’s the kiss of death. The dictatorial route might be VERY TEMPORARILY effective, but if it is, it will be VERY short-lived. The correct answer?

He needs to trip her attraction triggers and get on the same wavelength with her in communications so that she’ll be focused more on talking to him and having fun with him and much less (if any at all – some women need more social connectivity than others no matter what is going on at home) on chat room companions or phone buddies. Of all the women in my test panel, every one of them admitted to spending too much time on the phone and in chat rooms before their husbands started applying what they learned from my book, and all found themselves not even being tempted when their husbands got back on track. Indeed, they freely admitted that their time spent outside of their marriage felt like they were “settling for less” in the absence of the man they thought they married.

Her primary reason for being in the chat rooms for inordinately long periods is to combat that terrible boredom that grips women when their man isn’t creating enough attraction for them, which is good news for him, because it means he certainly can fix it, UNLESS SOMEBODY IN A CHAT ROOM HAS CREATED ATTRACTION ALREADY, in which case he will have to compete with the new guy and while not impossible, it is VERY difficult to catch up.

Women will focus on sources of attraction and protect them, even from family and friends. I cannot overstress this. But as I’ve told you before if you’ve been with me for a while, because the chat rooms, excessive phone use, and affairs, both emotional and purely sexual, are all symptoms of the same problem, BOREDOM, solving that problem eliminates ALL of the symptoms that are or may become present.

And yes, she probably did try to tell him about it at some time in the past, but he couldn’t hear her. When she said, “Do you think everything’s okay with us?” he had no idea that she was in fact making the statement, “I have a problem with what’s going on between us and want you to talk with me about it.” He just said, “Yes, it’s fine,” and she thought, “Well you insensitive jerk! Well, if you don’t want to talk to me, I can sure find somebody who does!” Questions are statements and statements are questions; men state, while women negotiate (see my free “Break-Up Busting 101” report or my book, “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” for more on this).

Let me be perfectly clear on something here, spending a few minutes a few times a week to check in on friends by phone, e-mail, instant messaging or in chat rooms is not cause for alarm; even a little while each day is not excessive. Women are social creatures and if they become cut off from the rest of the world, as is common in new relationships and with young children, she will find a way to maintain a social circle, no matter what.

HOWEVER, if the majority of the day that she has available to spend with you is spent avoiding you and seeking the company of others, it’s a problem, and no different than if she’s disappearing every evening to socialize or even have sex with someone else. Luckily, it’s a problem you can fix, and if you haven’t let it run on to the point that she’s done with you (which WILL happen if some other man creates attraction for her – it’s a double-edged sword, and a powerful one!), she’ll be more than willing to let you -- or even help you – to fix it.

There are exceptions, as always, starting with the chronic/serial cheater who has so little self-esteem that they are constantly seeking approval from any and all available sources and will commit any feat of self-destruction and take any risk to get it. There are also psychopaths and sociopaths, parasites and predators who seek opportunity at any cost, and it doesn’t matter how much you give them, nothing is enough. But don’t be alarmed…

There are some very important things about these people that you can recognize and some more that you must know. First, there is a common thread running through all of them that you can easily spot: an entitlement mentality. They feel it is their right to cheat, and they will get very angry with anyone who would even suggest otherwise. And that sense of entitlement permeates everything they do; you’ll see a lot of situations where they are expecting you to do something for their benefit when there is nothing in it for you, and will often use guilt to make it happen.

What you must know about these people, all of them, is that they are almost always unsalvageable. The mental and emotional defects or damage that make them like this is beyond anything you can help. They don’t WANT to change. They want the rest of the world to suit them. Even those with abysmal self-esteem will often prefer to keep seeking self-esteem through the approval of others rather than its one authentic source, personal achievement, because it is far easier to flirt and drum up anything from a smile to an affair than it is to work and achieve something – they feel entitled to the easy way out.

So should you identify your spouse as one of these people, you may make an effort to wake them up and get them to step up and be a worthy spouse and deserving part of your family, but if they do not do it, DO NOT get it in your head that this is because there is something wrong with YOU. They, their attitude, and their choices are the problem, not YOU.

If you get your own self-esteem up to a comfortable level, start enjoying your life, having fun and being fun to be around and she still insists that affairs are necessary, point out that self-esteem repair did wonders for you and could do wonders for them. And if they reject that most self-evident of truths, cut them loose, else they will suck you dry and leave you in a heap while they continue to bounce from jugular to jugular, feeding on the lives and resources of others looking for something that will make them feel good about themselves but requires no effort, no commitment, or anything else on their part. Luckily for the human race, such women – and such men – are a minority, and easily spotted once you know what to look for.

Most women are not hard to live with, but it can sure seem like they are when you don’t understand them and can’t comprehend their needs, which in turn seem complex, but are in fact extremely simple, no matter how dramatic or complex they make it seem. You know from your life’s experience that most things that seem mysterious and complex when you know too little about them are ridiculously simple when you learn what you need to know.

What’s more, when you start understanding them better and communicating better with them, they respond with nurturing, loyalty, and intimacy on a level you cannot imagine until you’ve seen it. This is because of a biological drive to respond on an unconscious level and because they consciously know they’ve got a “one-in-a-million man,” one that every woman dreams of having and few ever find. Keep repeating that: “Biological, not logical…biological, not logical…” It’s not a choice, it’s a million year old biological program. So…

If you want to be the happiest man alive, learn the simple things you need to know about her and communicating with her, put that knowledge to use, and nature will take its course; making her happy will make you happy every time. It seems like forbidden knowledge; Sigmund Freud, the great psychologist, is famous for saying, “The great question... which I have not been able to answer... is, "What does a woman want?

Well, I didn’t figure it out either, at least not without some help. I asked a bunch of women, nearly 200 of them, and made them prove to me that what they told me was accurate by putting it in the hands of their own husbands and boyfriends and checking the results. We refined it, retested it, and it is indeed accurate, and is working for everybody who is using it. Unlike everybody else in this business, I don’t get refund requests; I get questions and testimonials.

So now it’s your turn to know what happy men know and most men will never know. This seemingly “forbidden” knowledge awaits you at http://www.makingherhappy.com in an instantly-downloadable and easy-to-read e-book (on screen or on paper!) called “"THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” and it’s fully guaranteed to work for you, so now you have a choice: you can let things ride and continue to gradually decay, or you can choose to take charge and make things better than you’d ever hoped they could be. Choose well, because she’s watching…

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

Are You Happy, or Comfortably Unhappy In Your Relationship or Marriage? Your Life Could Depend on Knowing the Difference...

Settling for less and tolerating adversity because it’s easier than fixing it leads to the pathetic condition of being “comfortably unhappy.” It kills self-esteem, motivation, and hence, attraction. Don’t let this happen to you! Would you recognize it if you saw it? Let’s find out!

Today’s edition is something I touch on from time to time because it goes almost entirely unnoticed but wastes more lives than the words, “Let’s wait and see,” the deplorable condition of being “comfortably unhappy.” Yes, it sounds like an oxymoron, but as you may have seen around you, even in yourself, it is entirely too easy to get comfortable with being unhappy.

People generally dislike major changes in their life, often even positive ones (that’s a topic for another newsletter, but before you think I’ve lost my mind, stop and consider all the people you’ve ever known who responded to things going well for them by finding some way of sabotaging themselves, such as showing up late for work when they’re in line for a promotion, etc.), and will often choose tolerating things that make them unhappy rather than endure the stress of change, especially if it requires a little effort on their part, even though it’s for the better.

Once this choice is made, its effects are insidious, far-reaching, and destructive. It sets a precedent of settling for less than one deserves, which is to live as happy a life as they can earn. Then it becomes easier and easier to choose to tolerate more and more, because the choices are now becoming more radically different, between a little more nuisance, aggravation, or pain and a radical improvement if they get tired of settling and decide to make a major effort and fix what’s wrong in their life.

They get comfortable with feeling worse and worse, until being depressed, frustrated, and just plain pissed off all the time is not only the status quo, it’s the EXPECTED NORM. Feeling good is at this point abnormal, and therefore, as strange as it seems, subconsciously UNDESIRABLE! (What’s REALLY undesirable for most people is putting out the effort to change, but for the comfortably unhappy, they may not even be able to tell the difference.)

It can creep up on you over weeks, months, or even years, and will start with a single choice to settle for less: a home or neighborhood that you settle for because that’s all that’s available at the moment, a job you don’t like but is easier to keep than finding a better one, a relationship that drags you down but is easier than breaking up, dividing up the stuff in the house, and looking for better company to keep, etc. Keep your eyes, ears, and mind open, and periodically evaluate what you’re doing and those with whom you’re doing it.

When things could be better, do yourself a favor and MAKE THEM BETTER! Upgrade the job with either a promotion, transfer, or a change of employer. Upgrade the relationship by either improving it or getting out of it, thereby freeing yourself of the restraints and conflict that make you unhappy and creating the freedom of navigation required to find and engage that which makes you happy.

And most important of all, in any situation or relationship, if improvement is impossible because the other party (or parties) won’t be involved in positive change that you’re willing to work for, cut bait and find a better pond to fish in, because you’re fishing in poisoned waters, and it will be the death of you.

Great relationships are uncommon, as are great marriages, but they are far from impossible, or even difficult to find and manage if you know yourself, know your desires, and have the guts to hold out for what you want instead of settling for something you hope you might mold into what you can tolerate. That kind of behavior is precisely the reason why great relationships and marriages are so uncommon. People get insecure and attach themselves to the first person who gives them a smile, approval, acceptance, or most commonly, sex, without checking to see if the rest of the package is something they can live with, let alone enjoy. That’s a recipe for disaster.

You MUST have compatibility and attraction for the relationship to last. If you have the compatibility, the attraction can be created or recreated, but if you don’t have the compatibility, your only choice is to get out and find it. Otherwise, you will consign yourself to a competitive relationship with an adversary instead of a cooperative relationship with someone you truly love and who truly loves you, and the best case scenario there is comfortably unhappy, while the worst one is catastrophic destruction of life as you know it, and in some cases, quite literally your life; substance abuse, suicide, and murder are what some people opt for or have inflicted upon them instead of divorce. Know what you have, what you need, and how to tell if they are the same or different.

If you want a great system for evaluating your relationship, and solid, tested advice for improving it (through better communication and creating attraction, getting her tuned in and turned on to all that is great about YOU) if you find it desirable, as well as solid advice and great contacts for getting the mess cleaned up and getting back into the dating game if this relationship is too far gone to save or never should have started in the first place, it’s in my e-book, “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” at http://www.makingherhappy.com. Download your copy today, because life is too short to spend it unhappy, even comfortably unhappy.

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

Why Do Men Have Affairs, and How Do You Stop? More On Protecting Your Relationship and Marriage

An obviously troubled man writes to ask how he can STOP having affairs and get his life together. Let’s see what we can do for him – and YOU!

Guys and gals, lightning has struck! I have for you today proof that men can recognize and admit that they do not like having affairs, and do indeed want a stable, monogamous relationship, possibly even enough to do what is necessary to make it happen. Only time will tell whether this man has the courage of his convictions, but I’m sensing a very genuine desire and sense of priority in his words, and his language indicates that he’s going to step up and take charge of his life. Meet James:

Good morning,

My name is James and would like to share with you problems in my relationship.
It’s been ten years now with ma girlfriend. The problem is I love her but I’m having affairs.

I’m so insecure, jealous coz I think she’s doing the same thing, I don’t trust her at all.

I would like to overcome my problem and stick to one partner, get married, give ma seven year daughter all the support she can ever get.

I don’t think I’ll cope if she have an affair.

I’m OUTGOING, spend most weekends out with friends, on drinking spree,
Come weekdays, I’m a darling.

The problem has affected our sex intimate life, we get intimate once in a while.
She has feeling and will end up having an affair.

Please help.
James

This is obviously a man who is bottoming out, realizing that he’s at a crossroads, and is deciding that he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life the way he’s spent the last ten years. I call that a damned good choice, based on what he’s written about the last ten years. My response:

Hi James,

I cannot help you while you’re pursuing affairs, but if you’re truly ready to stop and straighten up, listen to reason, and get your life on track I can definitely help. Before you can do anything, you’re going to have to identify the reason you are having affairs and eliminate it.

If you’re doing it because you have no self-esteem and are trying to substitute the acceptance and approval of other women for the genuine self-esteem created by achievement, then you’re going to have to start creating real reasons to feel good about yourself and stop thinking that chasing other women is going to make you feel any better about anything. Approval and acceptance must come from within, not from somebody else.

If it’s because you are bored, or because your wife is bored and the two of you aren’t intimate, then you just need to get back in tune, learn about how to create attraction and communicate effectively, and nature will quickly take its course and get you to where you need to be. That’s not hard to do, but you need to know how and you need to want it to make it happen.

Unfortunately, your weekend “drinking sprees” point toward low self-esteem, because a man who feels good about himself doesn’t spend every weekend poisoning himself and looking for cheap thrills with other self-destructive people; a drink or two is no big deal, but you’re describing a binge, and you know as well as I do that repeated bingeing is self-destructive behavior. A man who feels good about himself spends that time enriching himself with his hobbies and enjoying time with the ones he loves, not abusing himself and, potentially, those around him.

Low self-esteem makes you very unattractive to any woman who spends any time around you, and causes you to seek approval, acceptance, social confirmation, etc., from women, who may find you charming and witty when both of you are drinking or drunk, which is a huge red flag in itself, but after they sober up and see that you’re swimming in your problems instead of solving them, they quickly move on and the affair ends.

You have some pretty serious work ahead of you, and my book, "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," can help you if you read and apply it. Its primary purpose is to deprogram you from all the wussy crap that the media and other idiots have heaped on us over the last forty years or more and let the real man within you come out and take over, a man who is competent, confident, attracts and understands women, and is the kind of man that every woman wants to live with, a man-caught in a self-amplifying cycle of self-improvement instead of a death-spiral.

I’d suggest you give it a try before you become an alcohol-related death statistic, because all that is really in front of you is a series of choices to live a better life. The decision is the hard part; following through is easy once you’ve committed to change, because you get to see results and feel good about them, which in turn motivates you to achieve better and better results. Self-esteem-building becomes a self-perpetuating cycle that replaces the cycle of approval-seeking and self-destruction you’re caught in now.

Take care, and keep in touch,
David

I saw a purchase notification from James within 24 hours, and I fully expected it. Why? Because he’s not in denial about his situation; he’s accepted it and admitted that he is the cause of his own problems. When people finally face the fact that what they are doing isn’t working and start asking for help, they usually go through with fixing it.

There are two exceptions. The first is that group of people who define “help” as having someone do everything for them instead of providing the information and support they need and then getting out of the way and letting them do what needs to be done so they can own their own achievement and feel good about it.

The second is that group who are looking for validation of their mistakes instead of solutions to their problems, and they will engage you in conversation on the premise of wanting help, but they don’t want to talk about a solution; instead, they want to talk about what they did and why they did it and how you must understand such-and-such. If you hear the words, “But you don’t understand…” the next thing out of their mouth will be some kind of plea to ignore the reality of their bad choices and tell them that they were justified for screwing up, they’re still a “good person,” etc. Don’t waste your time with them.

So if you’re ready to admit that things aren’t the way they should be and that you are ready to take an active part in the solution, that, Gentlemen, is where I come in. I’ve done the research with hundreds of couples to find out what makes for good and bad relationship and how you can evaluate your own, what women want and what truly makes them tick, and how to easily return to that natural male behavior that flips their attraction switches and turns up the heat, saving them from their primary enemy, boredom. Do you realize what this means to you?

Do you remember the story about the man who found the bottle, rubbed it, and out came a genie, who granted him one wish, and he said he wanted a bridge from Los Angeles to Hawaii so he could drive his wife, who was afraid of flying, there for a vacation? When the genii said it was too big a request, the man said, “Then I guess I just want to know what makes women tick,” and the genii said, “Hmmm…tell me more about this bridge.”

We were all taught through such jokes and stories growing up that this is something that we would never know, yet here before you is the opportunity to know, once and for all, that most mysterious and seemingly forbidden of all things. Indeed, Sigmund Freud, the renowned psychologist, is famous for saying, “The great question... which I have not been able to answer... is, ‘What does a woman want?’” That conundrum being solved, the question now is “Do you have the sense and the guts to reach out and grab this knowledge that evaded even the likes of Sigmund Freud and put it to work in your life?”

Like James, you now have a choice before you. Are you going to continue to sit there in the dark picking up a few crumbs from this newsletter every day, or even worse, in denial about the cause of your problems and looking for someone else to blame? Or are you going to secure for yourself and your family the next best thing to the keys to the universe, the knowledge that will put you on the road to being all that you can be, in your eyes and hers?

That should be the easiest decision you ever made in your life, so jump over to http://www.makingherhappy.com/ and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" right now, before you do another thing, because as they say in The South, “Time’s a wastin!” and life is definitely too short to waste it.

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

Women and Affairs in the Real World, and How to Protect Your Relationship and Marriage

A reader shares some shockingly revealing ads from real women looking for real men, as well a man who targets them, and Gentlemen, you really need to understand this…

There are several of you who have moved out of incompatible, irreconcilable marriages who are now dating who send me examples that are useful to those of us who are still married, especially ads by married women looking for thrills and the men who target them. Rick, a very astute reader and now friend, has contributed in the past, and every time he does, it’s an eye-opener, just like today. Check him out:

Hey David,

As usual, the above newsletter (“03/22/09 - Why Do Women Have Affairs? Knowledge is Powerful Preventive Medicine In Protecting Your Relationship and Marriage”,) is true to its hard-hitting form. Please allow me to provide (yet more) proof that what you say is the truth. I was on my online site earlier this evening when I saw this married woman had looked at my profile. Check out how she describes herself:

"I am a recently separated, and soon to be divorced, fun lady. I do not have any children and am ready to sew my wild oats (since I never had the chance before). I want to find someone who is only interested in having a good time. I'm not ready for a relationship so if that is what you want, do not reply. Am interested in some physical love. Husband could not satisfy my needs and I need someone who can.”

Now look at what she wants:

“I just need someone who is willing to go out with me and have a good time. I want you to show me what I have been missing all of these years - out on the town and in the bedroom. If this sounds like something for you, please respond.”

Another textbook example of how boredom, left unchecked, can doom a marriage. Gentlemen, please buy David's book so that you don't become another statistic! Do it for YOU.

David, Let me say for the record, that I have not, nor will I ever get involved with a married woman. However, there are plenty of men who will! Take a look at this Personal Trainer's confession:

I'm a lonely wife's dream, and hubby's worst nightmare.

In 30 years in the training business, I've probably had affairs with more than 40 married women. Most of them were in their 30s, married eight to 10 years, with kids, and their husbands weren't paying attention to them. They felt neglected. They didn't feel attractive. Their husbands had become preoccupied with work.

In the beginning, I was scared about having sex with my clients. I was a shy, overweight kid and didn't go to the prom, so I didn't have much confidence at first. Then I got this physique and I discovered that I had this ability to charm women, and I made up for lost time. When I was 17, I put my first ad in a small paper, saying I was looking for clients to train. I had just won Mr. Bodybuilding Teenage New York State, and in my ad I was looking lean and ripped.

The first day a woman called me and said, "Do you really look like this?" She asked what my girlfriend thought of my being a trainer, which I thought was strange. (I now know that when a client starts asking what my girlfriend thinks of my training, she wants to know if I'm available.) She told me she was married, that her husband traveled a lot for work and was never home. She said she found that being so sedentary had made her put on some weight.

The next day I went to her house. I'd spent a lot of my savings and gotten some help from my mom to buy a really nice dark blue warm-up suit and brand-new white Adidas sneakers so I would look like a professional trainer. When the woman opened the door, she was wearing a black negligee. I went home and told my mother and father, and they forbade me to go back. My parents canceled my ad and said, "This will probably be a problem the rest of your life."

It happens all the time now. The wives today feel they have just as much right, and drive, to have a playmate as their husbands do. It's natural to want to have sex with your trainer. Remember that training is very hands-on. I'm touching them, motivating them, encouraging them, listening to them, relieving their stress and channeling their energy in a more positive way. Just as their husbands used to do at the beginning of their marriage. I'm trained to get inside their heads and push the buttons that will motivate them. But I'm also in their heads in other ways. They connect with me emotionally. It's very important for a trainer to be a good listener.

I once had an interior-designer client who was very beautiful. Like every client, she started opening up about her life; women do the same thing with their hairdressers and trainers. "My husband isn't attentive to me, he used to be so passionate," she explained. It was her birthday and her husband had forgotten. I suggested we have lunch, and she said, "How about dinner?" And that's where I went wrong. For a couple of months after that, we would work out, go back to my place and have sex. I would whisper sexy thoughts to her when I was spotting her at the gym. And then it ended. We got caught by the husband. He wound up calling me up and crying like a baby, asking me to stay away from her.

I don't feel bad about having had affairs with married women, because they were feeling neglected and they just wanted to be loved. One woman said to me her husband had never looked into her eyes when they made love. He couldn't have been that smart, because women love the eye contact. I come from a very passionate, Italian family. When I make love to a woman, I like to have spontaneous sex. I like to do it in the elevator, on the beach, underneath the table in the restaurant. I like to make them feel young, mischievous, alive. If they can have a taste of it again, they can realize they haven't lost it.

I'm 47 now, and over the years I've learned to watch out. I realized I couldn't be sleeping with everyone's wife in town. Number one, you start sleeping with them and they want to stop paying, and I make $150 an hour. I was never paid for sex. I would never do it for that. Because for me it would ruin it. I like to make love to please someone. When they say, "I feel like a real woman again," it's the same thing as when I train them and they tell me how terrific they feel because they fit in clothes they haven't worn for 10 years. The high of training is the same high as making love. I've written a screenplay about it all, called "The Trainer." It's "Shampoo" for the 21st century.

That was pretty self-explanatory.

Take care,
Rick

Rick’s right. That is indeed painfully self-explanatory. If you’re not being a good husband, there are others standing in line, or waiting in the wings, or crouched in the bushes waiting to pounce, and once a woman hits a certain level of boredom, she will come unglued with the same lack of inhibition that you feel when you get too aroused to say, “No,” to sex or to stop when she says, “No,” to you.

Make no mistake. This reaction is primal, biological, and has nothing whatsoever to do with love or the lack thereof, and if you’re not giving your wife a reason to enjoy being with you, somebody else is or soon will be giving her a reason to enjoy being with him. Period.

There is no emotion, logic, or “morality” that will interrupt this process once it has started, and if you knowingly allow it to start, you have nobody to blame for it but yourself when it is complete and at best, your wife is confessing and asking you to work things out with her and get your marriage back on track, or at worst, she’s announcing that she’s leaving you for him, and taking everything you own with her as punishment for putting her through the trouble. It doesn't matter who's right, who's wrong, or who or what is at fault; this is what is.

So what do you do to prevent it? Be a man! And be a husband. A real husband, one who makes her feel alive, engaged, challenged, understood, and appreciated, as she tries to make you feel, not some guy who goes to work and sits with a remote control and a beer in front of the television all evening while she tends the kids and spends the rest of the evening in some Internet chat room. Get a clue!

And believe it or not, you’re a lot more likely to need much more than a clue to know what being a man and a husband are really all about. Even if you’re lucky enough to grow up with a good role model, which most of us weren’t because our fathers didn’t grow up with a good role model either, the examples we are barraged with daily – bungling, wussy beta pseudomales who somehow trip over themselves and fall into the arms of success by complete accident if at all – are there in your face constantly to confound and corrupt any legitimate concept you may have. But you still have a chance…

There are a few of us around who have not succumbed to all this wussy crap that’s been shoveled at us since the 1970’s, or have succumbed but learned from our mistakes and awakened from that wussy slumber, who can be that role model for you. A very few of us even have the writing, teaching, and training skills to help. One of us that I know of has even researched what seemed to be the right formula, tested it on hundreds of women and couples, and has made it available for you with little more than a few mouse clicks.

It’s called "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” and it’s all that, and more. Go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy and see for yourself. Rick did, as did many others, and now they own their lives; join them.

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

Use Natural "Guy Drive" to Improve Your Relationship or Marriage

Guys are naturally tinkerers and tweakers, so why don’t we channel that natural energy into tuning up and dialing in our relationships or our marriage?

I thought of this several days ago, and I’ve been stewing over it ever since. There is something that all of us do, one way or another, that is so distinctly masculine that it’s included in any stereotype of men. We just can’t leave well enough alone.

We can buy a perfectly good car, and can’t rest until we’ve customized something or souped it up. We buy a computer, and have to tinker with all the settings to try to squeeze every last ounce of performance out of it, even if it’s already so blazing fast that it’s obscene. We sharpen a knife or tool until it’s sharp, and then keep going until it will shave, and then shave cleanly, and then shave so cleanly that we can’t feel the blade taking the hair off of our forearm. We’ll shoot a 70 at the golf course and spend another thousand dollars on training videos and consultations with a golf pro to shoot a 69 next time. And the list goes on and on…

So why the hell don’t we spend any time or effort trying to “trick out” our relationship or marriage until we’re threatened with losing it??? Does that make even a little sense to you? Frankly, I find it downright embarrassing!

The masculine brain is physically and chemically configured for problem-solving and optimizing, and we’ll flat burn it up trying to squeeze one more mile per gallon or one more tenth of a second in the quarter mile out of our car, or rigging some kind of sharpening jig for a hand tool blade, or a cutting jig to get that line just a little straighter, and we’ll get down on our knees with our ass higher than our head in a public place to check the lay of the ground around the hole we want a golf ball to go into without a second thought, yet we waste this most amazing of all resources on this planet when it comes to getting along with the woman we love!

Gentlemen, that’s just insane! If you’re going to engineer something, or optimize something, make it something that really counts, and something with unlimited potential for payback, like your marriage! This may come as a shock to you, but “optimizing” a relationship or marriage can be more fun and rewarding than any other pursuit you can name! Just imagine a life that’s filled with love, fun, adventure, sex, and laughter, and devoid of eye-rolling, fit-pitching, being screamed at for something that never happened, etc. You want some of that? Yeah, I though so. Indeed, having lived with it, I can tell you with authority that you want all of it you can get.

So I’m going to keep this short today, and issue a challenge to every man alive. Use your greatest natural resource, your brain, and that wonderful thing, whatever it is, that makes us push to make things the absolute best they can be, to bring your relationship and/or marriage up to a level where both of you can enjoy it to the exclusion of all else. Once you have that done, and while maintaining it, turn your energy to your children, and your career, and any other worthwhile pursuit.

Get your priorities straight, take responsibility for the condition of your relationship or marriage, and channel your natural talents and energy where they can do you the most good. Who cares that you golfed a 69 last weekend if while you were doing it your wife was sitting with a bunch of women bitching about how inattentive you are, or worse, holed up in a hotel room somewhere with another man laughing about what a moron you are? It may not be that bad yet, and if you get on the ball right now, it will get better before it has a chance to get that bad.

And I’ll give you a leg up, too, the relationship tweaker’s encyclopedia. It’s called "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and you can download your copy at http://www.makingherhappy.com/ right now and be getting your relationship or marriage dialed in within just a few minutes. Or you can go play another nine holes or put new plugs in the hot rod while your wife is fantasizing about (or “doing”) the gardener, pool boy, your best friend – get the picture? It’s your call. Make the right one.

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

What Is Your Partner's Reason for Having You In Your Relationship or Marriage?

What is your partner’s REAL motive for having you around? The answer lies in their words and actions…

Another lovely morning with a big country breakfast, a huge mug of coffee, and a whole bunch of friends trying to find a way to make their lives together better. For me, that’s a great way to start a day, pleasure and productivity.

A quick note before we begin today’s lesson: One of you sent me a link to an article that is revealing, revolutionary, and for some, downright scary. Entitled “Mommy’s Little Secret,” it describes, among other things, statistical evidence that 10% of children in the western hemisphere think that their father is someone other than who their biological father really is, if you know what I mean.

DNA evidence is causing all manner of revelations of infidelity, and it’s so bad that the courts are now trying to figure out when people are bound to tell fathers and “duped dads” (the one who is paying the bills thinking it’s for his own child) and when they’re not. I strongly recommend you read this article; even though it was published in 2002, it's still relevant and accurate.

As for today’s lesson, one of your cohorts said this in response to the issue where I talked about men using guilt and pity tactics to try to obtain sex, the article titled “Sex for Pity’s Sake.”

Meet Tanja K.:

In my eyes women who use guilt or pity for sex are pathetic.....my hubby and I have been married for almost 22 years and there's what real married for love partners call give and take....my hubby is like my kids, spoiled to death and well adjusted...2 in college and 2 in grade school, if you get my drift, sex is our way of being one with each other, and trying new thing together, is what makes our marriage so to die for, so if you got out of me somehow that I use guilt or pity, you better find some new info about real women, not this new age “I'll sleep with you if you'll pay for my hair cut, or my college ed”....those are the women that make good men say dumb hurtful things....my hubby has been my prince from day one, if he's guilty of anything it might be that he hasn't taken time to find friends to have fun with, besides me, but then again, neither have I, our kids have made our life busy and full....hope you find a real women w/real moral values....

Tanja

Tanja’s beef is with women who prostitute themselves, not honestly as professionals, but as surreptitious gold-diggers; those parasites who land a man to be kept, provide means to create and maintain babies and/or self-destructive habits, and use guilt, pity, and sex to keep the man engaged and thinking everything is peachy. Gentlemen, we should all protect ourselves against such a woman as well; fortunately for us, they are the minority.

There are many kinds of relationships that can exist between a man and a woman, but this kind, especially in its most extreme variant, the codependent relationship, is the most destructive. One partner sucks the life out of the other and wastes it in destroying themselves, effectively rushing both of them to ruination and even an early grave. How can you tell if you’re in one of these?

It’s not that difficult. Indeed, detection is the easy part; accepting the truth and acting upon it is where most people fail.

First, take a look at who is contributing what and how much to the relationship, and how those contributions are being distributed. If you’re working your butt off and she (or HE! – it can go both ways, Ladies, as you’ll see in my next book) is spending it faster than you can make it, possibly on things that you find you secretly resent, such as a lot of extras for her and the kids, like eating out a lot and designer labels on all their clothes while you have holes in your shoes and take a cheese sandwich and store-brand soda to work for lunch, that’s a big red flag.

There’s no need to keep a detailed score; it will either be equitable because the relationship is committed and tight or completely lop-sided because one partner is using the other, depending entirely on whether the partners truly love each other or one is using the other. Your status will be obvious if you merely open your eyes to what is happening around you, regardless of what is being said. “By your works shall you be known” is one of the greatest bits of wisdom to come from the Christian Bible, a tactic that has been working for well over a thousand years, right? Professing love and devotion is easy; faking it is not.

Next, take a look at language. Even the best liars screw up from time to time, usually when they are either too relaxed, too stressed or have had a drink or two and their guard is down. A partner who really loves you will tell you so for no apparent reason, and their body language and actions will confirm it. One who is indeed NEEDING AND USING you and not loving you will say that they love you in order to get you to tell them that you love them; the statement “I love you” is indeed the question, “Do you love me?” – a plea for confirmation that their ploy is still working. When it comes, it sounds forced, like the ritual “I love you” that ends all too many phone conversations with that hint of whining or desperation that makes what should be a profession into an interrogation.

You can also learn a lot from the nature of compliments and explanations that inappropriately follow or replace declarations of love. A woman who says, “I love you because you make me feel safe,” is most likely saying that she loves the feeling of being protected, not you; anybody with an alpha personality and a weapon (or a large bank account) could make her feel the same way. So can anyone who doesn’t place any demands on her for love and commitment.

Gentlemen, good women don’t need a caretaker any more than good men do. They’re “all grown up,” strong, independent, intelligent, and sexy, not a clingy, needy, neurotic ball of insecurity looking for someone to blame their entire miserable existence on or pay their way. Being able to take care of themselves, they want a real man who can take care of himself, to form a true synergistic partnership, in which the partners can achieve more together than the sum of what they could achieve separately.

Such a woman will enjoy watching you being strong and taking the lead, instead of depending on you to do it, and you’ll enjoy doing it with her, instead of resenting the whining and pressure. And she will hold your feet to the fire, constantly holding you to the standard “if you can’t stand up TO me, you can’t stand up FOR me.” Good women very seldom actually need you to stand up for them, but they need to know that you’re able to so that they can respect you, since respect is a prerequisite of both love and attraction.

If you feel like you’re being sucked dry by your partner, you’re in the wrong relationship. You can assess yourself, your partner, and your relationship, as well as have great contacts to help you get out of a bad relationship and find a great woman if you have to, with the information in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage.” Download your copy at http://www.makingherhappy.com right now, read it, and get things on the right track. If they’re already on the right track, use the rest of the book to stoke that attraction boiler and kick things up to the stratosphere where problems just don’t happen! The woman in your life can be a ball and chain or a ball of fire, and the choice is entirely yours. Choose well, and choose NOW!

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

Do You "Get It" When It Comes to What Women Want in Relationships and Marriage?

Some men just don’t get it, even when their wife beats them over the head with the truth. Don’t be one of these guys, because when a woman gets tired of beating you, she won’t just stop, she’ll go away…permanently.

Today’s edition will be short and sweet because it is so self-evident that a lot of explaining won’t be necessary. When somebody buys a copy of my book, signs up for the newsletter, or ends their newsletter subscription, I get an e-mail advising me of the activity. I get to create the forms for these tasks, and rather than just notify me of activity, I also try to use them to get feedback from readers about what they need to know, what’s important to them, and even why they end their subscription to the free newsletter as quality control measures. Here’s an example that just floored me:

From: zeusXXXX@yahoo.com [mailto:zeusXXXX@yahoo.com]
Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2006 5:08 PM
To: David Cunningham
Subject: AWeber mhh_tips: This Lead Unsubscribed: zeusXXXX@yahoo.com

This lead has unsubscribed by following the link at the bottom of one of your AWeber messages, and decided to provide comments. Why did I receive this email? http://www.aweber.com/faq_messages.htm#messages6b

Name: Axxxxxx
Email: zeusXXXX@yahoo.com
Signup Date: XX/XX/XX 0X:XX PM XST

Comments:
Never signed up...EX-wife did...

I’ve sterilized the personally identifiable information to protect his privacy, so don’t be cute and try to send an e-mail to zeusXXXX@yahoo.com because it won’t go anywhere. Now, look at the “Comments” portion, which is just the field name for a blank on the form that is captioned something like “Reason for ending subscription.” He didn’t sign up, “his EX-wife did…” What can you divine from this comment?

I’ll not get into the macho inference by his choice of the name “Zeus” in the e-mail address; it could be the guy is just likes Greek philosophy. Yeah, right. (His wife also subscribes and she said he really was that full of himself, but without any good reason.) His wife signed him up for it (and according to her, she wasn’t his EX yet, but was now looking forward to it), trying to tell him that he was falling short, and giving him an example of what he needed to be doing to help their relationship.

Rather than being glad that she was providing him valuable information and taking action (not to mention being glad that she was signing him up for a newsletter instead of having an affair with the perfect example of what she wanted and purposely getting caught in the affair to show him, as many women have done and written to me about!) he slams the door on her. Hence, she is now his “EX-wife” in his mind, and soon to be in reality, when she wasn’t looking for a divorce, she was trying to save their marriage.

Notice how he emphasizes “EX;” he resents being told that there’s something wrong, and let a fragile ego, which probably contributed to the wussy attitude and behavior she was trying to get him to change, cost him his marriage. There’s no telling how much or in how many ways she tried to communicate problems to him, but like most men, he didn’t understand that he was being given instructions on how to fix things, and it doesn’t matter whether she left because he didn’t fix anything or he left because things weren’t suiting him, it’s over, and it probably could have been fixed.

All it would have taken was a little less ego and a little better communication skills, and a little effort to follow-up and make the improvements, but “Zeus” here was too busy protecting his ego to develop some real self-esteem and appreciate the fact that his wife wanted him instead of an affair or a divorce. Now, instead of a loving wife who was interested in staying married to him, he lives alone with a big neon sign that says, “Hey, I’m an idiot who can’t see past the tip of my nose!” Don’t let this happen to you!

And there’s no reason you should! “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” is filled with the benefit of the real-life experience of 118 couples who helped with the research of the original version, my own experience, and the experience of hundreds of readers who have commented and shared since. Each point in it has been tested and proven to work in 90% or more of all test cases, and if you think about that, that’s pretty amazing. That means, among other things, that 90% or more of all the women involved in this have agreed on and responded to each of these things! Can you imagine that?

Waiting until you have a crisis on your hands is the worst time to start working on fixing it. It can still be done, but it’s a lot harder than if you just get things in order and keep them that way, not to mention a whole lot more of a pain in the neck, with all the frustration, boredom, fights, affairs, etc., that crop up before the crisis is evident – often in an attempt by the wife to MAKE it evident.

So do yourself and your family a favor. Go on over to http://www.makingherhappy.com right now, before you do anything else, and download your copy of this truly amazing book. Get your house in order, and keep it that way, because life is too short to be living behind a big sign that says “OUT OF ORDER,” or even worse, “I’M AN IDIOT!”

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

Attraction in the News: Learn from the Famous and Notorious About Your Relationship or Marriage

The amazing power of attraction can bring a woman to do wonderful – or TERRIBLE – things, so learn how to wield it, competently and safely!

I’m sure that everybody in the Western Hemisphere and many of you in the Eastern Hemisphere have heard about the grand adventure and exploits of Navy Capt. and NASA Mission Specialist (astronaut, Space Shuttle Discovery) Lisa Marie Nowak trying to kidnap her lover’s girlfriend (she was married and having an affair) and eliminate her as competition (for the boyfriend) a couple of years ago. If not, the first two or three hits on Google when searching her name can tell you all about it. I got tons of letters about it and the news was lousy with it, and yet to this day, nobody seems to be understanding what made her do it.

Some say that “she loved him so much,” and that’s utter crap. Women who love men want them to be happy, no matter who they’re with. Women will kill to protect a loved one who is being threatened, but not a competitor.

Some say that she was crazy. They’re half-right.

Some say that she was obsessed. They’re also on the right track, but obsession is a symptom, not a cause.

Some say that the boyfriend was responsible. In part, but…

Others say that the husband was responsible. Also in part, but…

So what really happened, and what does it mean to you?

What happened was that her husband allowed her to become bored, and her boyfriend, a pilot and trainer in a position of authority and with alpha male personality traits, swept her off her feet in a wave of attraction, and she went nuts when she found out that feeling of being swept off her feet was at risk.

Nope, not an opinion. Cold, hard fact, and well-documented.

So what does this mean to you?

First, the obvious: If you create attraction for the woman you love, she will have that same swept-off-her-feet feeling that many women would kill for, and she’ll reward you in incredible ways, with nurturing, loyalty, fun, adventure, sex, etc., and will defend your relationship with her life. If you’re having problems, lost attraction is somewhere at the heart of it, within the core of your problems if not the entire core, and restoring it will fix things enough to create an environment where she will be motivated to work out all other problems, like communications.

Next, the maybe-not-so-obvious: If you fail to create attraction for her and she gets bored, she’s wide open to anyone else creating attraction for her, AND THEN SHE’LL BE DEFENDING HER RELATIONSHIP WITH HIM INSTEAD OF YOU! Another man will be receiving all the rewards that you would be receiving if you were being a man and a husband.

She’s going to find somebody to create attraction for her. Period. The only question is whether it’s going to be you or somebody else. And yes, it CAN happen to you, and every other man alive. Boredom isn’t such a big deal for a man, but it’s a survival threat to a woman, and they will invariably take drastic measures to relieve it if we force them to.

So what do you do about it? Do I even need to say it at this point? Okay, some of you may be reading this newsletter for the first time, so I’ll spell it out. Go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," wherein you will learn everything you need to know about whether you are with the right woman, how to really communicate with her and put a stop to all the eye-rolling and accusations of “You NEVER listen to me,” and how to create that mind-blowing, sweep-her-off-her-feet attraction that will have her going crazy for you instead of punishing you for things you don’t know you need to be doing.

Sound like a plan? You bet your ass it is, and I have testimonials to that effect that are so detailed and steamed up that if I were to try to print them, the spam filters would block the mail, but tomorrow I’ll be posting a “toned-down” version of one of those testimonials and an e-mail address belonging to a reader (Many of you will remember “Big Girl Panties” Kevin) who has volunteered to field questions about his own experiences, so stay tuned!

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

Why Should You Bother to Fix Little Problems in Your Relationship and Marriage?

Why should you want and expect to make an effort to fix a strained or distant relationship? I couldn’t even type that question with a straight face, but some people really don’t know, and actually think that it’s easier to put up with pain, frustration, boredom, etc., or the stress of extramarital affairs. Wrong! Read, and get the real scoop…

I just got the most ridiculous e-mail I think I’ve ever received. I have always maintained a policy of keeping all comments about reader mail positive, but occasionally I get one that is just so downright idiotic that it makes me want to grab the sender and shake them really hard to try to wake them up. I’m not going release this reader’s name, and I want to make it clear that I am in no way saying that this reader is an idiot; I am however, stating emphatically that what they say is something I would expect from either a moron or somebody really emotionally damaged, not from someone intelligent enough to be able to write a letter like this one.

Dear David,

I’ve been reading your newsletter for several weeks now, and I really can’t see why I should have to go through all this trouble to please my wife. We’ve been married for 8 years, and have followed the same routine pretty much since we got married. I work, she keeps the house and takes care of the kids. In the evening, I watch TV or go to the bar while she helps the kids with their homework. If I fall asleep on the couch she doesn’t bother me, and if I come home late from the bar she’s asleep in the bed and doesn’t say anything. We don’t talk much, don’t go anywhere, and everything’s fine. What’s the deal?

Bob

My reply:

Well, “Bob,” (the name has been changed to protect the ignorant), let’s look at a few things from a logical point-of-view:

You’ve been reading my newsletter for several weeks, but you say there’s no problem? You’re letter doesn’t paint a picture of you being a proactive achiever, so I’m not buying that, and I hope you’re not either.

Doing the same thing, day in and day out for 8 years, and there’s no problem? Ladies, you are cordially invited to write with your comments on this one! (Please feel free to comment on anything at any time, but I’m asking you specifically for your reactions here to help this guy see that unless he’s married to “Rain Man” he’s got a serious problem with a bored wife.)

You frequently go to the bar while she stays home with the kids, and sit in front of the TV on “non-bar” nights? Why aren’t you doing something with the wife and kids at least a couple of nights a week? No problem, huh?

You fall asleep on the couch and she doesn’t wake you up and tell you to come to bed, or throw a blanket over you, or say something about it the next day? Can you say “bored and disinterested”? But I guess that’s not a problem, either, even though that’s a recipe for your wife to be seeing other men while you’re at work and the kids are in school.

Don’t talk much? Don’t go anywhere? And you call that fine? And you think that she thinks that’s fine? At this point, I’m wondering if you’ve beaten her to the point that she sees “no beatings” as being the same as “happy marriage.”

In a nutshell, your letter describes a plea for validation, not education or improvement. I don’t know what you’re situation or problem really is, and until you come clean about all the contradictions and omissions in your letter, there’s not a thing I can do to help you, except possibly to point out a few universal truths that might motivate you to take a realistic look at your situation.

Let’s start with the old adage, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” Even if you or somebody else has damaged your wife to the point that she really would rather live the life she’s living than to see positive change, is this what YOU really want? A robot who cleans the house, cooks, and keeps the laundry and house clean and the kids out of your way? I suppose next you’re going to tell us that they based several episodes of “The Sopranos” on your life.

And how about “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”? If your letter paints an accurate picture of your home life, you’ve completely turned your back on your family except for giving them whatever part of your paycheck they receive.

Do you really think they, especially your wife and the mother of your kids, are going to go on accepting being ignored indefinitely? Women and kids both do things to get attention, even the wrong kind of attention, when you don’t give it to them freely and willingly. Do you relish the thought of coming home and finding your wife in bed with another man? Or going to a local jail to bail one or more of your kids out for shoplifting, drug possession, or worse, some kind of violetn, gang-related mishap? Get a clue, because it’s coming.

Bob, the best thing I can tell you right now is “wake up and smell the coffee.” You deserve better than the life you describe, and so does your family, and the choice is entirely yours. If your job is sufficient to pay the bills and provide you several bar nights per week without your wife working, then you’re doing well enough to do some things with your family.

You’re in a rut, and you’re not going to come out of it by just holding the wheel loosely and letting things just go where they want to go. Turn the wheel and get out of the rut. "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" is full of motivational stuff that will help you feel deserving of such a life, but you should already be feeling some sort of longing for it or you wouldn’t be reading this newsletter and writing such a letter as you wrote, so what’s your real story? C’mon, lay it on me. I can take it. Can you?

Or are you afraid that the truth will hurt too much? Maybe you’re one of those “comfortably unhappy” people. I don’t know, but together, we can find out.

Take care, and keep in touch,
David Cunningham

Folks, there’s no reason to continue living a life that you aren’t loving to live. The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging, isn’t it? Whatever has put you in trouble must be stopped immediately or inertia (that physics principle that says that an object in motion will tend to remain in motion and an object at rest will tend to remain at rest until some external force acts upon them, remember?) will just keep right on digging you in deeper.

Stop digging. If you don’t know what you’ve done to make your relationship a mess, go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage;” I’ll guarantee you that the answer is in there. Together, we can get you where you need and want to be, if you’ll just take this step in the right direction, and life is indeed too short to spend it digging yourself a deeper hole, is it not?

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

Women and Affairs in the Real World, and How to Protect Your Relationship and Marriage

A reader shares some shockingly revealing ads from real women looking for real men, as well a man who targets them, and Gentlemen, you really need to understand this…

There are several of you who have moved out of incompatible, irreconcilable marriages who are now dating who send me examples that are useful to those of us who are still married, especially ads by married women looking for thrills and the men who target them. Rick, a very astute reader and now friend, has contributed in the past, and every time he does, it’s an eye-opener, just like today. Check him out:

Hey David, As usual, the above newsletter (“12/04/08 - Why Women Have Affairs, and How to Prevent Them and Get Past Them”) is true to its hard-hitting form. Please allow me to provide (yet more) proof that what you say is the truth. I was on my online site earlier this evening when I saw this married woman had looked at my profile. Check out how she describes herself:

"I am a recently separated, and soon to be divorced, fun lady. I do not have any children and am ready to sew my wild oats (since I never had the chance before). I want to find someone who is only interested in having a good time. I'm not ready for a relationship so if that is what you want, do not reply. Am interested in some physical love. Husband could not satisfy my needs and I need someone who can.”

Now look at what she wants:

“I just need someone who is willing to go out with me and have a good time. I want you to show me what I have been missing all of these years - out on the town and in the bedroom. If this sounds like something for you, please respond.”

Another textbook example of how boredom, left unchecked, can doom a marriage. Gentlemen, please buy David's book so that you don't become another statistic! Do it for YOU.

David, Let me say for the record, that I have not, nor will I ever get involved with a married woman. However, there are plenty of men who will! Take a look at this Personal Trainer's confession:

I'm a lonely wife's dream, and hubby's worst nightmare.

In 30 years in the training business, I've probably had affairs with more than 40 married women. Most of them were in their 30s, married eight to 10 years, with kids, and their husbands weren't paying attention to them. They felt neglected. They didn't feel attractive. Their husbands had become preoccupied with work.

In the beginning, I was scared about having sex with my clients. I was a shy, overweight kid and didn't go to the prom, so I didn't have much confidence at first. Then I got this physique and I discovered that I had this ability to charm women, and I made up for lost time. When I was 17, I put my first ad in a small paper, saying I was looking for clients to train. I had just won Mr. Bodybuilding Teenage New York State, and in my ad I was looking lean and ripped.

The first day a woman called me and said, "Do you really look like this?" She asked what my girlfriend thought of my being a trainer, which I thought was strange. (I now know that when a client starts asking what my girlfriend thinks of my training, she wants to know if I'm available.) She told me she was married, that her husband traveled a lot for work and was never home. She said she found that being so sedentary had made her put on some weight.

The next day I went to her house. I'd spent a lot of my savings and gotten some help from my mom to buy a really nice dark blue warm-up suit and brand-new white Adidas sneakers so I would look like a professional trainer. When the woman opened the door, she was wearing a black negligee. I went home and told my mother and father, and they forbade me to go back. My parents canceled my ad and said, "This will probably be a problem the rest of your life."

It happens all the time now. The wives today feel they have just as much right, and drive, to have a playmate as their husbands do. It's natural to want to have sex with your trainer. Remember that training is very hands-on. I'm touching them, motivating them, encouraging them, listening to them, relieving their stress and channeling their energy in a more positive way. Just as their husbands used to do at the beginning of their marriage. I'm trained to get inside their heads and push the buttons that will motivate them. But I'm also in their heads in other ways. They connect with me emotionally. It's very important for a trainer to be a good listener.

I once had an interior-designer client who was very beautiful. Like every client, she started opening up about her life; women do the same thing with their hairdressers and trainers. "My husband isn't attentive to me, he used to be so passionate," she explained. It was her birthday and her husband had forgotten. I suggested we have lunch, and she said, "How about dinner?" And that's where I went wrong. For a couple of months after that, we would work out, go back to my place and have sex. I would whisper sexy thoughts to her when I was spotting her at the gym. And then it ended. We got caught by the husband. He wound up calling me up and crying like a baby, asking me to stay away from her.

I don't feel bad about having had affairs with married women, because they were feeling neglected and they just wanted to be loved. One woman said to me her husband had never looked into her eyes when they made love. He couldn't have been that smart, because women love the eye contact. I come from a very passionate, Italian family. When I make love to a woman, I like to have spontaneous sex. I like to do it in the elevator, on the beach, underneath the table in the restaurant. I like to make them feel young, mischievous, alive. If they can have a taste of it again, they can realize they haven't lost it.

I'm 47 now, and over the years I've learned to watch out. I realized I couldn't be sleeping with everyone's wife in town. Number one, you start sleeping with them and they want to stop paying, and I make $150 an hour. I was never paid for sex. I would never do it for that. Because for me it would ruin it. I like to make love to please someone. When they say, "I feel like a real woman again," it's the same thing as when I train them and they tell me how terrific they feel because they fit in clothes they haven't worn for 10 years. The high of training is the same high as making love. I've written a screenplay about it all, called "The Trainer." It's "Shampoo" for the 21st century.

That was pretty self-explanatory.

Take care,
Rick

Rick’s right. That is indeed painfully self-explanatory. If you’re not being a good husband, there are others standing in line, or waiting in the wings, or crouched in the bushes waiting to pounce, and once a woman hits a certain level of boredom, she will come unglued with the same lack of inhibition that you feel when you get too aroused to say, “No,” to se’x or to stop when she says, “No,” to you.

Make no mistake. This reaction is primal, biological, and has nothing whatsoever to do with love or the lack thereof, and if you’re not giving your wife a reason to enjoy being with you, somebody else is or soon will be giving her a reason to enjoy being with him. Period.

There is no emotion, logic, or “morality” that will interrupt this process once it has started, and if you knowingly allow it to start, you have nobody to blame for it but yourself when it is complete and at best, your wife is confessing and asking you to work things out with her and get your marriage back on track, or at worst, she’s announcing that she’s leaving you for him, and taking everything you own with her as punishment for putting her through the trouble.

So what do you do to prevent it? Be a man! And be a husband. A real husband, one who makes her feel alive, engaged, challenged, understood, and appreciated, as she tries to make you feel, not some guy who goes to work and sits with a remote control and a beer in front of the television all evening while she tends the kids and spends the rest of the evening in some Internet chat room. Get a clue!

And believe it or not, you’re a lot more likely to need much more than a clue to know what being a man and a husband are really all about. Even if you’re lucky enough to grow up with a good role model, which most of us weren’t because our fathers didn’t grow up with a good role model either, the examples we are barraged with daily – bungling, wussy beta males who somehow trip over themselves and fall into the arms of success by complete accident if at all – are there in your face constantly to confound and corrupt any legitimate concept you may have. But you still have a chance…

There are a few of us around who have not succumbed to all this wussy crap that’s been shoveled at us since the 1970’s, or have succumbed but learned from our mistakes and awakened from that wussy slumber, who can be that role model. A very few of us even have the writing, teaching, and training skills to help. One of us that I know of has even researched what seemed to be the right formula, tested it on hundreds of women and couples, and has made it available for you with little more than a few mouse clicks.

It’s called "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” and it’s all that, and more. Go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy and see for yourself. Rick did, as did many others, and now they own their lives; join them.

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

The REAL Dangers of an Affair Ending Your Relationship or Marriage

Nearly every heterosexual man thinks about an affair at least once in his life, if for no other reason than because women are so available and so alluring when there’s trouble at home. But before you consider an affair as even momentary relief from a troubled or stale marriage, you’d better read this, because it’s really not worth the risk, especially when fixing things at home can be so easy…

I don’t know if there’s something in the water, if it’s the change of seasons, or just the subject matter of the last couple of days, but the women reading this newsletters are really getting active again, and mostly with confessions! Meet Maggie:

Dear David,

My husband showed me your newsletter about the women having their contest and I have a similar story of ruthlessness and recklessness that I think you’ll find interesting if not useful. I have a best friend, Carol, that I have known since I was old enough to have a friend and we grew up together. All through school she and I were joined at the hip. What one did the other did as well and there seemed to always be some kind of competition between us even though we were best friends. After high school went our separate ways, but later on we became close again.

It was at this time that I found out some of the things that she did while we were not talking. She is what you describe as a predator and a real drama queen and will do what it takes to get what she wants and really does not care who it hurts. The lengths she will go to are nothing short of amazing. There have been times she has even scared me, and that is not easy to do.

At this point I will add we did not stay friends again very long. I have changed a lot and I hope became a better person and that the people who knew me before can see the difference. I am no longer so competitive or one of the biggest drama queens and I have no need to look for men everywhere I go. I’m married to the most amazing man I have ever known, thanks to you.

Ok back to my story. One night Carol had gone out with friends for a drink after work. She met a guy at the club and they seemed to hit it off really well. I have nothing against meeting in a bar, but with all the drinking that is going on and all the crazy people it’s not my idea of a great place to meet a man. Anyway, he asks her if she would like to leave with him and she did. After a little while she found out that he was not that great, but she did keep seeing him for short time. Sometime during their affair he told her he was married and she really got mad and decided she was going to teach him a really hard lesson about cheating.

She talked him into taking her back to his house when his wife was out of town. So like an ass he took her there, had s’ex with her in their bed and that just set him up. She had what she needed to totally wreck his life. She waited until she knew his wife was home and told his wife that not only was he having an affair with her, but they had sex in her bed.

Now to me that is really vicious and sickening!! The only reason she wanted in his house was to wreck his life by making sure his wife knew they has sex in her bed. The very bed in which he “made love” to his wife.

I guess you can see why we are no longer friends. I can not allow that kind of drama and destruction in my life and I refuse to lower myself to her level.

I hope this will be of some help. Maybe you could share this with your readers and let the men and woman know that there are people who only live to hurt others.

Sincerely,
Maggie

Yikes! That’s a great story about a whole lot of mistakes that didn’t need to be made. The guy in that story had several choices, and he made the wrong one at every turn. The affair was a bad idea from a lot of different angles, and bringing a woman he barely knew to his wife’s home was insane! While all of this was happening, he could have been fixing his relationship with his wife so that there was no allure in an affair, or at least safely getting out of the marriage without the additional “combat stress” of having been busted in an affair giving her a lot of pisstivity and legal leverage, but instead he was setting himself up not just for a permanent end to his marriage, but a punishing end at that!

I’ll be the first to admit that his marriage may have been one that never should have happened in the first place; indeed, the hardest message I ever have to get across to anyone is that some marriages are doomed before they begin and the best thing you can do when you find out you are in such a marriage is to get out of it, hopefully with cooperation and some dignity, and move on. But this guy didn’t even look at his relationship to see what could be fixed, if anything, before setting himself up to be slaughtered.

And that’s the real rub, Gentlemen. Affairs are a loaded gun pointed at your head. If you’re having trouble, do what men do in times of crisis: find out if it can be fixed, and fix it. If it can’t be fixed, talk to your partner and agree that it can’t be fixed, and move on like friends, or at least civil adults, before getting entangled in another relationship. You owe that to yourself, to your wife or girlfriend, and to any woman that you might have a relationship with instead of your current partner.

The only way to look clean is to be clean, and it’s mighty hard to look clean when you have an angry concubine giving the sordid details of your affair to your wife. You must admit that she’d also be a lot more likely to forgive the mistake of marrying her when you shouldn’t have than to forgive the mistake of you taking up with another woman while she still has a claim on you established by the vow you took to be her husband.

And only a fool would think that something like this could never happen to him. I’ve heard stories of girlfriends calling wives out that made me wonder how the guy even survived, including more than one where the girlfriend and the wife got together to get revenge on the husband. They’re social in nature, remember? Think about this…

You enter into an affair with a woman for some stress relief, and she decides she wants you to leave your wife, which you don’t want to do for whatever reason. The girlfriend tells the wife about the affair, and the wife wants to hurt you because you cheated and the girlfriend wants to hurt you because you wouldn’t leave your wife for her. Do the words “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” or “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” ring any bells?

Yes, I am indeed trying to scare the living crap out of you. I’ve seen this with my own eyes and heard stories from people that had every reason to be telling me the truth that made me wonder how, with such stories floating around, anyone would ever get married. And I don’t want any of you gentlemen writing to me with a story such as these because I failed to sufficiently warn you of what kind of trouble you might work your way into. I’ve got your back, so to speak.

So here’s the deal. Affairs will get you bankrupt, maimed or killed, if you’re lucky. They can lead to a lifetime of slow and painful torture if you’re not so lucky, and only a fool depends on luck for his outcomes. Your outcomes are largely the result of your choices, so choose well…

So how do you fix it? Glad you asked! Everything you need to know is waiting for you in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and you should download it right now at http://www.makingherhappy.com and get started. Life is short, and windows of opportunity fleeting; every minute you fail to make a good choice is a minute you leave someone else to make a bad choice on your behalf, or that will impact you badly, so make your own choices, good choices, at your first opportunity.

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

So She Says She Has a Headache: The Oldest Lie in Relationships and Marriage

A reader asks about the age-old lie, “Not tonight; I have a headache,” and its other iterations. He may not like the answer, but if he’ll accept it he can fix the problem, which is not her; it’s him.

I’ve wondered for a long time why I seldom receive a letter on this subject, because in the research phase of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” it was one of the first things to come up: the ages-old lie, “Not tonight, Dear. I have a headache.” It has other iterations, such as cramping, nausea, too tired (an extremely common one and easy to fake), menstrual discomfort, etc. Sometimes these complaints might be legitimate issues, in others they won’t. There is a pretty good way to know the difference, and a fool-proof way to eliminate the bogus ones. We’ll discuss all that in a minute, but first, meet Randy:

Hey David,

I have run into a stone wall with my wife and was hoping you might be able to shed some light onto a problem that is driving me straight to the sofa. It has to do with what else, sex. I know women think that is all a man thinks of, but how can you not when you never get it!

Every time lately I want to have sex with my wife she always has a reason that we can not do it. I have heard them all at this point, I am on my period, I have a yeast infection or bladder infection, I am too tired I have had the kids all day. Hey I am not a heartless SOB, but enough is enough how can a woman have a problem all of the time? I need some help here dude, how do I get her back in the bed with me and have sex instead of fighting for half an hour and ending up on the sofa every night?

Randy

My reply:

Randy, Buddy, let’s talk. There are two possible reasons for your wife’s behavior, those being that she’s really having that much trouble and that she’s not having that much trouble but it’s easier to fake something than to argue and fight about sex. It’s simple logic. She’s complaining of a problem, so the problem either does or does not exist. If the problem exists, there should be some signs of attempted remedy, and if not, she’s bound to slip up sometime.

When she claims she has a headache, is her behavior consistent with having a headache? Taking some form of pain reliever, wanting you to rub her neck if it’s tension or taking antihistamines or decongestants if it’s sinus or avoiding bright lights and loud noises if it’s a migraine?

Incidentally, last I heard, the AMA was still saying that the average person has 6 headaches a year. That’s really ironic because that’s also the number of times the average couple who has been together longer than two years has sex in a year (if, of course, they’ve not discovered "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage", in which case they’re having sex several times per week to several times per day!)

Is she saying she’s too tired for sex and then going to sleep or sitting on the phone with a friend, sitting at her computer, or watching TV for another two hours? Are there wrappers from feminine hygiene products in the trash can when she claims to be having her period?

Is she going to the doctor and/or drugstore and bringing home prescription or over-the-counter treatments for bladder infections or yeast infection when she claims she has one?

The point is that there is behavior that can be logically expected if someone has a genuine ailment, especially if it’s frequent. If their actions are contradictory to their words, they’re faking it to avoid sex. There is no other explanation.

Now the big question, why would she want to be avoiding sex?

There are very few people who don’t enjoy it, and their problems are pretty severe. If she has enjoyed sex with you in the past, it’s unlikely that she would have developed one of these major problems (like being raped) without you knowing about it. That leaves only one conclusion.

She’s no longer feeling attracted to you! Get this:

The slow-down of sexual activity a year or two after your marriage may seem normal because everybody complains about it and there’s a chemical change that stops forcing you to want it constantly, but it’s actually the first major symptom in the slow decay of a relationship. It doesn’t mean the relationship is over, but it’s now, not when you or she gets busted in an affair or somebody gets served divorce papers, that is the best time (other than before trouble starts, as a preventive measure) to start learning what you’ve needed to know all along and doing what you should have been doing all along to set things right while it’s still easy to do so. At this point, her feelings are still mostly positive, right?

Loves you? Maybe, even probably.

Loyal to you? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on whether someone else has created attraction for her and she’s responding to them. A woman will have sex with a man to whom she is attracted, and will not with a man to whom she is not attracted, at least not without resentment. It’s just that simple. There is also a strange tendency for people having an affair to refuse to have sex at home because they’re having feelings of fidelity for the person they’re involved with. So what do you do?

First, you forget about trying to find out if she’s sleeping with another man. That is irrelevant, and nothing good can come from finding out. She’s living with you, and that’s all that matters. Any woman would rather feel attraction for a man she’s living with, especially if she loves him, than any other man on the planet. It makes for a nice, tidy, secure, and enjoyable environment that is not possible under any other scenario. That is your edge. Don’t blow it by making accusations and digging around to find out something that you won’t want to know afterwards anyway. If you handle this right and your wife has any character at all, she’ll end up confessing sometime in the future anyway, or else her past will come back to haunt her. Forget about it. (Or “fuggidaboudit” as they say in New York City!)

Second, start creating attraction for her. You apparently did it for her at one time, or she wouldn’t have married you (even if she married you because she was pregnant, she slept with you – drunken daze notwithstanding – because you created attraction for her), so you have to bring it back, which is nowhere near as hard as creating it for a stranger, for a variety of reasons that I won’t get into here, but are fully explained in the book that will tell you how to create attraction for her, “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage.” She lives for it, yearns for it, and wants you to be the one creating for her, of all the men on the planet. Give her what she wants!

Take care, and keep in touch,
David Cunningham

Gentlemen, that feeling you get that you would describe as “I’ve just got to have her,” is the same feeling women get when in the presence of an alpha male who creates sexual tension for her by flipping switches and withdrawing in a “two-steps-forward-one-step-back” dance that can go on for minutes to days. They’re not visually stimulated like we are with the human physique, it’s behavior that gets them fired up more than anything, the confident, cocky, almost swaggering arrogance of a man who knows he can do anything balanced with the intellect to do what he chooses, the authority to pull it off, and the sense of humor to make it all enjoyable.

Putting on the act won’t do it, at least not for long. You might get way with it for a date or two with a stranger, but with your committed partner, it’s got to be you, the REAL you, not just an act you can put on and constantly be stressed out over the possibility of having her see through it. Help is instantly available if you’re ready to be the man you can be.

“THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” teaches you, as it has taught thousands of men, what you need to know and helps you to incorporate it into the real you, making you that confident alpha male you takes care of business and has fun in ways that drives women wild with desire.

It also teaches you the difference in how you communicate and how women communicate so that when she tries to tell you what she wants you’ll be able to hear and understand it. Believe it or not, many women have reported having affairs and getting caught in them so that their husband will see the example that “the other man” sets, because she’s tried to tell him and the message didn’t get through! The boyfriend wasn’t a boyfriend, he was the illustration in a “how-to” manual she tried to give him!

And, since women need love for security and attraction to feel alive, it teaches you what attractive behavior is, and the personality that causes it to happen naturally, the alpha male personality, and how to develop it so that you can enjoy the confidence that it brings you in all walks of life, not just in your relationship. It’s not just about relationship improvement, it’s about MALE improvement, about being a real man, and doing the manly things that real men do, and loving every minute of it.

The coolest part is that the manly things that manly men do and women love to see them do are fun! They’re things that men just naturally do, but in that idiotic fiasco of the 1980’s when women said they’d like for men to be more sensitive and men took that to mean sensitive INSTEAD OF manly and not sensitive IN ADDITION TO being manly, as the women wanted (they never state “the obvious”), men have just stopped doing and turned into a bunch of wusses.

Kill that inner wuss and let your inner manly man and inner naughty boy come back out to stay. I’ll teach you how. Click over to http://www.makingherhappy.com, download your copy of "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and let’s get started, because life is just too short to spend it being a wuss, not to mention celibate and on the couch!

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

Forbidden Knowledge to Help YOUR Relationship and Marriage

A gift, from me to you, disclosing a lot of the “forbidden knowledge” about what women really want from men, and something even more important, what they respond to without realizing it!

Today I’m just going to issue a quick reminder, but it’s one that you’ll find useful. I’ve compiled another free report, called “What Women REALLY Want,” and it’s composed of eleven of my favorite e-mail lessons on the subject. Some of my peers are pretty angry that I’m giving it away, because it’s 50 pages long, full of real information, and makes some of their primary products look pretty weak by comparison.

But I don’t care!

You, my readers, are a great group, and with the holidays coming and my new web-site and shopping cart operational I’m feeling generous! You can get your copy immediately as a free download and since it’s a subject that has been erroneously considered “forbidden knowledge” for as long as any of us can remember, feel free to forward it to your friends, post it on file-sharing networks, or distribute it in any other manner you can think of. It will help your friends, or at least entertain them, and it will help get the word out as well. The bigger this group gets, the more I can do for you and the less it’s going to cost you.

Links to this report are embedded in the newsletter and blog templates, but many of you new readers may not have found them. I’ve posted over a thousand newsletters, some multiple times, and my archive is getting admittedly large. So bringing all these lessons together like this in a targeted, hand-picked collection seems to help a lot of people see situations more clearly. You can never start fixing problems too early when you know how to fix them, so make good use of it and spread it around!

While you’re at it, go ahead and grab my free “Break-Up Busting 101” report, too. It’s the same kind of thing, about 45 pages of great information on how problems evolve into break-ups, often unnecessarily, and how to reverse them, and a few paragraphs about my book, "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" as well, which you can find at http://www.makingherhappy.com.

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

Temptation Is All Around, So Don't Push Your Luck If You Value Your Relationship or Marriage

Men often forget that there are just as many temptations laying in wait for women as there are for us. If you let them get bored, they’re vulnerable, so don’t push your luck – or your limits…

I hope you’re having a great week. I’m having a busy one, between counseling/coaching appointments and putting the final touches on some new content for the MakingHerHappy web site, but it’s rewarding to do a good job in helping people through their problems and to close in on goal achievement, so I’m pumped, not complaining.

You may remember this recent edition in which a woman who left me a note while changing her subscription address saying that she had told her husband she was having a problem with marital boredom and had passed on newsletters for him to read saying that they directly addressed their problem, and he ignored them. It was quite a story, and you should read it if you missed it.

You may also remember this article in which a group of women were so bored they were holding an on-going contest to see who could manipulate their husband into buying the biggest gifts (and I’ve been told that there has been a recent development in that story, where somebody got busted, and I’ll be getting you details of that soon, when the story has unfolded and the lessons are obvious!). If you missed that one, you should catch it, too, because it’s a one-of-a-kind learning opportunity.

I mention these because the woman who left the note about her husband ignoring her prompting has written about the follow-up article to the contest, another article you should go back and read if you missed it, because it details a bunch of married women getting bored and hustling drinks and collecting phone numbers in a bar in a different contest that ended up putting one of them in the hospital due to a rape and beating, and her marriage and life are now irreparably damaged. Once again, meet “P.”:

Good Grief......here we go again.......

2 weekends ago I spent a weekend away in a big city with an old neighbor of mine (yes...female). We spent 2 nights there. One of the nights we went to a bar and had a blast. Guys buying us drinks, showing interest, and paying attention. I was really enjoying the attention part of it, particularly since the 2 men who asked me to leave with them were 24 and 32 -- more than 10 years younger than me. That's an ego boost. They knew I was married, I had on my ring and was not out to get laid. But I did have fun and enjoyed the company.

I can see how lonely women can get wrapped up in this kind of thing...it was fun! It made me feel good about myself, knowing SOMEONE was interested. Our husbands need to be that someone though. One thought that went through my mind that night was "maybe I should give this guy my cell phone so he can talk to my husband and tell HIM what he wanted to do to me....."

I do think this is dangerous, and could be playing with fire, just like that lady's friend.

P.

She makes an excellent point, in that men often mistake a woman’s expression of having fun as a “green light” that isn’t there, and things get out of hand and she gets hurt. It’s also not uncommon for a woman to go out for a drink with friends and get swept off her feet by some stranger, and in the throes of attraction does things that both she and you will have a hard time living with once she wakes up and realizes what she’s done (or even the thoughts she has while she is resisting the temptation), and there is no amount of blaming and finger-pointing that can fix such a problem.

She also points out that she (and in truth, every woman) wants her husband to be the one she has fun with and who makes her feel pretty, sexy, appreciated, and special. Think about this guys…

We marry for life, they marry for life. We are afraid of sexually transmitted diseases, they are afraid of sexually transmitted diseases. We are afraid of meeting a psycho on a date, they are afraid of meeting a psycho on a date, not to mention being beaten and raped. The majority of us are uncomfortable meeting and trying to date strangers, and so are they, most of them even more than us. When it comes to fidelity, we may not be identical, but we’re a lot more alike than we are different. And something else you need to realize…

Attraction is a biological drive, not a logical one. It’s difficult to mentally override it, and there is a point where it becomes impossible, where a cascade of neurotransmitters in the brain, your brain and her brain, cause inhibition to fail and logic to be faulty, and hence, rational, responsible choice to be impossible and self-validation, no matter how self-destructive the behavior, to become standard operating procedure.

And again, all the finger-pointing and blaming in the world will not fix what happens if either of you get to this point. It is not a matter of morality, but of chemistry.

Whether you think it’s fair, moral, or anything else is irrelevant. The simple fact is that when you’re in a committed relationship, if you expect fidelity you have to do what is necessary to facilitate it. So does she. If you’re bored, it’s because she’s letting you down, and if she’s bored, it’s because you are letting her down. You can argue about that until you’re blue in the face, but it won’t change the simple fact that that’s how the world – and the human mind – works, so you’re only choice is to deal with it or try to survive the aftermath.

Would you care to wager on which choice is easier and has the greatest chance of success? I thought not…

And to those of you who are sitting there saying, “He talks too much about boredom, it’s just not that big a deal,” let me be quite blunt: boredom kills. Do you think for one second that people who do things that significantly endanger their life do so because they really enjoy it? Does the man who jumps out of a perfectly good airplane do so because he knows there’s no chance of parachute failure? Does the guy who drives a minivan or a station wagon as fast as it will go do so because he really needs to get somewhere that fast? Does the social drinker who always ends up drunk and in trouble at parties do so because they like the taste of the booze and like waking up in strange places, or in jail?

No, they do it because they’re bored and looking for something, anything, that will give them even a moment’s relief. Just as the man or woman who gets too little attention at home takes a chance on wrecking their marriage and their life by carrying on an affair. Nobody gets away with it. Even those few who don’t get caught still have to deal with the guilt and the fear of getting caught – psychopaths and sociopaths notwithstanding, of course. So before you’re too quick to say, “It can’t happen to me,” bear in mind that everybody else who has ever been on either end of an affair “knew” that it couldn’t happen to them, too.

So what do you say? Are you ready to step up and make things better? Or are you going to keep your head in the sand and keep telling yourself that what I’m talking about is something OTHER men and women do, and something OTHER men and women have to deal with. Do you realize that you are implying with such nonsense that neither you nor your wife are human?

You are human, the top of the food chain on this entire planet, and that’s something to aspire to, not apologize for. You’re the top of the food chain because you have the power of volitional choice, the ability to think and make a decision that improves your life, making us the only species of life that continues to develop past the point required for bare survival. We don’t have to wait for evolution to raise our standard of living. We can do it ourselves, simply by making good choices and acting upon them!

And more to the point, you can do it yourself.

So start here. Go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage." Read it, put it to use, and make the success that those before you are enjoying now your own. Then you’ll know, beyond any doubt, that if your wife leaves the house, she’s going to be in a hurry to get back to you, and you’re going to enjoy having her there.

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

P.S.
“P.,” maybe you should have your husband read this one!

What Do You Hear When Your Wife or Girlfriend Speaks to You, Anything? "Tuning In" to Save Your Relationship or Marriage

I received an e-mail from a woman who had gone so far as to put answers to marriage problems in her husband’s hands, and he ignored her. See her reaction, and ask yourself if you want this happening to you…

I try to respond to every piece of correspondence I receive out of respect for the time and effort that every reader who writes to me expends to do so, and I make it a point to read everything I receive whether I can respond to it at the moment or not. That includes the notifications I get when people cancel their subscription to this newsletter.

Some of the comments on those notifications are predictable, like people changing their e-mail address or just don’t have enough time to read, but sometimes there is a really revealing gem buried in one of them. Such is the case here, in this story from “P,” which I’ve edited only to obscure any personally identifiable information to protect her privacy:

Name: P
Email: xxxxxx@gmail.com
Signup Date: 00/00/00 00:00 AM EST

Comments:
I had subscribed to your newsletter using my private email address. I thought the daily advice was so appropriate, that I was forwarding it every day to our family email (this one) for my husband to read. I think you are hitting home for me, but he now has several weeks’ worth of them he has not read....which leads me to the realization that I am "shoving it in his face." I am switching back to my personal address, for me to continue to read what you have to say.

We have been married over 20 years, and in January the love of my life from high school and I started an emotional affair over the Internet since we live thousands of miles apart. He took my lifeless soul, and made me come alive again. I indeed was that bored wife that needed passion and desire in her life, and I got it with a married man I have not talked to or seen for 24 years. He was within four hours of me in May, and I took a weekend away by myself and met up with him for twelve hours. We were very physical, but did not have sex. Just this little bit of attention made me stop thinking rationally, and was willing to give up my husband and family to a set of feelings.

I have got my head on a little tighter now, and I have been the one going to counseling, reading, talking about our loss of connection etc. I have stopped communication with the other man. It isn't sinking into my husband's head, and I am tired, and ready to give up!! At this moment, if the other man asked me to, I think I would leave this marriage...

I did send an email to my husband telling him I would not forward your stuff to him anymore. But I also put your link in the e-mail in case he decides for himself that he wants to listen to someone who has his wife pegged. So I am re-signing myself up at my personal address. If you see this address sign back up, it will be because our marriage is on the turn-around, and it will be my husband that will WANT to change.

P

Gents, I don’t know about you, but I want to kick this guy in the head for being stupid! She’s saying to him, “Read this, because it tells you things that I want you to know about me and have been unable to communicate,” and he’s tuned her out. Or maybe he just doesn’t understand “girly-ese.”

What about her? Don’t go there. We’ve already established, over the course of the last several days, how severe the effects of boredom are on a woman, and in spite of her having a “swept off her feet” feeling for the first time in many years, she abstained from sex, went back home, and stayed, waiting for him to take heed and wake up. There’s nothing here to fault her for.

He, on the other hand, has refused (so far) to take responsibility for the condition of their relationship and his influence upon it. And if he doesn’t wake up quickly, she’s likely to “fly the coop” as they say around here, a decision they may all well end up regretting to some degree.

“P” says I pegged her. I didn’t, or more accurately, I didn't peg JUST her. I write about what hundreds of women have taught me, through intense research and testing, about women, especially their common needs, desires, and way of going about things, like communicating, remedying boredom, and building up intimate tension for sex. I’ve never met P, never had an e-mail or other message from her nor any other communication. What I pegged was the common needs and tendencies in all women, including the one you’re with.

So what about you? Do you want to be this guy? Do you want to be the one at home with the kids while your wife is with her high school sweetheart trying to decide whether to leave you for him? Or even worse, the guy whose wife disappears one day and he gets the divorce papers and a restraining order along with a note declaring that it’s over, and he has no option but to sign the papers or fight it out with her attorney in court, because she’s done?

You think it can’t happen to you? Again, I bid you, look at the divorce rates since the 1960’s, and how they have climbed, and accelerated through the 1980’s and 1990’s to present day. Any questions?

It’s time to step up and take responsibility for your role in the health of your marriage or relationship, because if you don’t make the choice to do something about your problems, she will, and as you can see from P’s letter, it’s not likely that you’re going to like what she chooses.

So get it right, and get it right now. Go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and lead the evolution of your marriage from something rotting on the vine to something reborn, revitalized, and in full bloom, just like it was during your honeymoon. And if she ends up pregnant as a result, don’t name it after me! LOL!

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

Cheating in Relationships and Marriage, Part 3, Basic But Effective Methods for Detecting an Affair

To conclude our series (part 3 of 3) on affairs and cheating, let’s look at some ways of finding the truth without being too obvious about looking for it.

Now that you have a better and hopefully thorough understanding of the nature, causes, and appropriate action to take in dealing with an affair, let’s talk about how to detect one. These methods are not fool-proof and should not be used in isolation, but if you should see multiple symptoms the odds increase to the point where confronting your partner and trying to resolve the problem (or proceeding with divorce preparations if you decide that you simply cannot continue the relationship) is appropriate.

The most significant indications of a woman having an affair are fairly sudden changes in behavior, especially frequent breaks in any established routine. Routines are established by things becoming a priority, and they are displaced by something becoming a higher priority. It happens gradually over time, or suddenly when something suddenly enters someone’s life and affects them radically, causing a shift in their priorities.

Among the things you can look for to change is her level of neediness. If she suddenly doesn’t seem as if she needs you to cater to her or cover for her, it’s far more likely that someone else is doing it than she just woke up one morning and found her independence under her pillow, a gift from the Tooth Fairy’s cousin. The same thing goes for your presence or attention.

A sudden change in her emotional displays in your presence is another telltale sign. Women will get emotional with you when they have excess emotional energy that they need to bleed off, whether it’s positive or negative (remember our previous discussions on emotional scales and the creation of drama to alleviate boredom). If she’s suddenly detached, there’s either a bottle of some new tranquilizer in the medicine cabinet or she’s found a new outlet for her emotion.

A sudden change in her attention level -- catering to you, gifts, etc., is often a sign of a guilty conscience and an effort to try to conceal her interest in another. (Men are generally bad about this one too, buying roses or jewelry at non-holiday times to appease their own guilty conscience, and women watch for this, so if you give a non-seasonal gift, make sure you express the reason so that it is not misconstrued.)

Need I mention suddenly becoming secretive? Women naturally have a tendency to give us much more detail about what’s happening in their lives than we are comfortable hearing; I’ve personally listened to a half-hour melodrama of the trials and tribulations of a cat belonging to a woman I never met and didn’t want to know because it came up in a conversation that a woman I know had participated in during the day, and I had made the mistake of asking “How was your day?” to a woman who naturally interpreted the question as “What happened during your day?”

If that openness suddenly stops, she’s limiting information to try to limit your opportunities to catch her in a lie. She may even try to make up for this by answering questions with questions, trying to change the subject to YOUR day so that you will do the talking. The same thing goes for refusal to answer questions, asking why you want to know before answering, and if she gets defensive over a question that she hasn’t had a problem with in the past, like “Did you have a good workout at the gym today?” she’s busted.

Hesitation before an answer to an obvious question, or repeating your question back to you before answering, is a classic sign of someone needing to stall while they formulate a lie. Obviously, asking someone to recite the presidents of the United States in chronological order including their years of office might cause someone to pause before they answer, but a simple question like, “Why did you not answer your phone all afternoon?” doesn’t require a lot of thought if they in fact did not hear it ring, left it in their desk while they were in a meeting due to departmental or company policy, etc. They were there, whatever happened, and the answer is readily available if they want to share it with you; else they need a few seconds to try to figure out if their busted and then make up something.

As an aside, there is a recent three-part series of newsletters in my newsletter archive concerning lying and its impact on relationships and marriage, and the last edition in that series is about techniques for lie detection, if you missed it. The following links will take you to those newsletters:

Part 1, Faking It Until You Make It

Part 2, A Reader Response to Part 1 with Additional Advice

Part 3: Lie Detection, Confrontation, and Correction

I know, I really should turn that series into another free report, along with this series on cheating, and I’ll do that as soon as I can make some time. ;-)

Suddenly picking up a habit of being critical of your every move is a bad sign, especially if you find her moving from critical to angry at every turn. Women tend to seek validation for their emotions, and as Lenin is famous for pointing out, “A lie told often enough becomes the truth,” so if she can find enough reasons to be angry at you, even if she has to contrive them, she can justify her attraction to another man and her infidelity.

If you find her talking about somebody new frequently but without much detail, look out, especially if you say something like, “Wow, he sounds really interesting and like somebody I’d enjoy talking to. How about introducing us?” You can imagine how awkward a situation that might be, and she will resist being put into it.

The biggest telltale sign of all for most women is no sex at all. Some even go so far as to stop allowing you to see them in anything more alluring than an old sweat suit at bed time; it’s like she’s being “faithful” to someone else. You may also notice that the only time you see her looking like she wants male attention is when she leaves the house – without you. And if she comes home from “a long day at the office” or evening out with fresh make-up, fresh perfume, and especially with an underlying smell of fresh soap, don’t be surprised if you also find the back of her hair wet, especially at the back of the neck, where she’s been in the shower after being in someone else’s bed. Jumping in the shower immediately upon returning home is also a big tip-off unless she’s been to the gym and has an established aversion to the showers at the gym.

Detectives and courts use much more sophisticated means, including electronic surveillance, checking phone records, cross-matching receipts with schedules, etc., but those techniques are for building evidence for a divorce or criminal prosecution; what I’m describing here is more than adequate for recognizing you have a problem and confronting a delinquent spouse. Then there’s the big question…

What do you say to her when you confront her? Sorry, but you’re going to have to read "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" to learn how to handle that, because that’s going to take some skillful communicating and some specific references to events in your own past with her, and you’re going to have to be able to pick them out appropriately and express how you recognize them as errors and are prepared to do better and lead her into a better future.

Or, if you’re really smart, you can read it today and keep these problems from ever developing so that you never have to experience the pain, frustration, and for some of us, sheer terror of seeing your world come crashing down around you. Either way, you need to read it, so go to http://www.makingherhappy.com right now and download a copy. Sure, you can very likely fix it if it breaks, but it’s a whole lot easier to keep it from ever being broken in the first place, so get it done now, while it’s easy and fun!

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

Cheating in Relationships and Marriage, Part 2, What To Do When You KNOW She's Cheating

Part 2 of a 3-part series: A man writes to me because he knows his wife is cheating and wants to know what to do about it. Good question! Do you know what to do? Better yet, do you know what causes it, and how to avoid it?

To continue our series, we’re going to talk about what to do when you know she’s cheating. That may seem a bit out of sequence at first glance, but if you learn this first, the odds of you handling the worst-case scenario correctly are better if you happen to be one of the unlucky few who discover an affair in progress as a result of reading tomorrow’s edition on how to detect an affair.

This letter describes a scenario all too familiar to need an introduction. We’ve all either lived through it or watched someone we know live through it. Meet Kyle:

Hello David,

I am writing this letter in hopes you can help me to understand how a woman can change so much after 6 years just by making a new friend. A couple of months ago my wife met a woman at a high school football game and they fell right into being best friends. It quickly came to the point that they are together at least three nights a week and are always on the phone with each other for hours a day. I have never been the kind of man who cared if Cindy had friends to hang out with or not and I really believe it’s a good idea for a woman to have other women to share things with, but I also believe there is a line into each other’s personal relationships that should not be crossed.

Allison, my wife's friend, is also a married woman and her marriage is on very rocky ground. She would frequently go out of town for entire weekends and has been begging my wife to go with her so they could “have some time to be alone and talk,” like they don’t do that all day long while her husband and I are at work and three evenings a week. I did some detective work of my own on these trips out of town and was not at all surprised at what I learned. Allison was traveling several hours to spend the weekend (pretty much in bed) with a man she had met months ago.

She wants my wife to go with her because the man she was seeing has a friend that wants to spend time with my wife. I also found out the two women, at the age of 39, had not been going out to dinner as I was told, and were in fact spending hours sitting in local bars flirting with other men and acting like they had just come of legal age and could buy drinks for the first time. Now besides being dangerous and possibly causing a car accident, the two would flirt and carry on with the men in the bar to the point I was sick to my stomach. Yes, I did follow them out a couple of times just to see what level Cindy would let things get to.

Last night Cindy told me that she and Allison would be going out of town next week to spend some time with friends of Allison in Nashville. That is straight into the arms of other men, and I am sick about this. What I need to know is how to break up these two women without losing my own wife. Allison is the worst kind of woman, always wanting men’s approval and willing to sell herself to get it and do whatever they ask to keep it. I see my wife falling down that hole and I am not sure if I can still reach her to get her out of it. If I try to talk with her about it she just laughs and tells me my imagination is working overtime. I know for a fact this time she is being set up to spend the weekend with another man and I have the conversation on tape.

How should I handle this? I could leave it up to Cindy, but this would not be the first time she has been in the arms of another man since we’ve been together. I love her and have forgiven many things most men would have never put up with, but if she does this again I am gone. I would like to be able to stop this from happening if I can so what do you suggest?

Kyle

My reply:

Well Kyle, you’re in a jam and a half. Do you know how you got there? I do. No mentally and emotionally healthy woman who is feeling attraction for a man she’s living with is going to be sucked into this situation; she won’t risk losing what she has if it’s working. About the only chance you have of this not being the case is if she’s so emotionally damaged that she would be seeking all men’s approval like her friend Allison, and you make no mention of that.

I hate to break it to you, but you’re being a wuss or ignoring her needs, and she’s either looking for excitement elsewhere or testing you to see if you’ll be a man and step up to the plate. It’s going to be very difficult for you to know which because you don’t have the communications skills to pick up on the hints and signals that would tell you. Otherwise you would have already picked up on everything she gave you that would have told you that you weren’t being enough of the alpha male and creating variety, mystery, excitement and authority in her life that protects her from boredom, her worst of all antagonists. That’s two strikes against you right there. Then we have to address her problems as well…

It doesn’t appear that she’s necessarily in an approval-seeking mode, more like thrill-seeking, but she’s lying to you about what she’s doing. Why is that? Is it because she lacks the self-respect and respect for you to tell you the truth, or because she’s tried to tell you the truth and you’ve been so deaf to it that she gave up? The fact that she’s had other affairs really doesn’t give a clue, because the affair is the symptom, not the cause, and multiple affairs are often symptoms of the same cause.

Then we have the issue of why you are still together if she’s had other affairs? Did you work something out that has since failed, or are you just a doormat who let her back in the house after she had her fling? I see that you say that this is the last straw and that’s understandable, but have you considered whether the last straw should have been several straws back? Have you considered that forgiveness in the past may have set the standard for future expectations and behavior?

Right now, you’re in more trouble than any other reader who has written me, not because of where you are, but because there are so many unknowns in your equation. I’ve helped several snatch their relationship right out of divorce court, and helped others find their way to it by helping them see that they were hopelessly mismatched or with a parasite or a predator who was sucking them dry of life (and assets) with their abuse, but in the face of all these unknowns, I can’t answer your question.

A real man would immediately stand up and tell her that he knows what she’s up to and that she can stay at home and be part of the family as they work out their issues or she can leave and never come back, but without knowing whether she is worth keeping, you can’t know if you want to do that. Until you can sharpen your communications skills to the poin