Attitude Adjustment, a Double-Edged Sword That Can Make or Break a Relationship or Marriage

We’ve talked about how an attitude adjustment can build attraction, but we need to talk about how the wrong attitude adjustment can just as effectively kill attraction, to the point of trashing a relationship or marriage completely!

First, I’d like to tell everyone how proud I am of the letters I’ve been receiving from you folks. I have a very good group of readers, people who make the choice to improve and follow through on it, something that I don’t see much in the rest of my day-to-day activities. Constant contact with people who get things done is both therapeutic and motivating, and if you don’t have any other “winners” in your social or work circle, I strongly urge you to find some.

It’s very easy for the members of any group of people to sink to the level of the lowest member in the group, and surrounding yourself with high-quality people is excellent insurance against this, not to mention much more enjoyable than listening to some mealy-mouthed worm complaining about his mishaps and shortcomings every time you see him. Good people should keep the company of good people, not those who want to be supported by good people rather than expend the effort themselves to be good people.

Getting into today’s lesson, I was reminded by a letter from one of you that attitudes can be adjusted in both directions, for the better and for the worse, and it can go entirely unnoticed until it’s too late. Meet my buddy Joe, one of the older among you:

Hi David,

Thought I'd take advantage of the invitation to share a current example and the observed effects.
I'll try to make this the “readers digest” version, but some back-story is probably beneficial.

About 8 months ago some friends and I pooled funds and bought a business that would otherwise have disappeared. Three of us contributed money and one was to be sweat equity.

At the time I was exerting leadership and authority it triggered attraction in a woman (we'll call her Judy) I'd known for about a year and who was involved in the purchase as well. We were spending an increasing amount of time together, sharing more of our lives and becoming intimate. After being alone for about 4 years (long separation and divorce) it was a very welcome addition to my life.

After things settled in, I neglected to “keep it going” in terms of leadership, (mistakenly) feeling that since she and I were doing well and had a definite affinity that things would continue. WRONG. There are other factors involved, but basically I failed to continue in the leadership role and the attraction waned considerably. The end result was that the relationship that had been hot and very mutual was put “on hold” until we “each got things in our lives straightened out.”

This last week we had to remove the “sweat equity partner” from managing the restaurant. Since I'm the geographically close partner AND the person that put the deal together AND have worked the business as well, it has fallen to me to organize and manage the restaurant. This created a lot of strain and even induced a bit of “panic” initially. A lot communication went on with the partners over status, decision-making, etc. Again I failed to take a strong enough leadership position.

Since that point I've gotten a handle on things, however, the effect on my relationship with Judy took a worse turn in that she's not confident with my assertiveness and there's now some struggle and even bossiness on her part in how things will proceed. Yep, classic wussiness and deference have caused her to feel she has to “be the man.”

Now there are other issues in play here, and an evaluation of Judy as an appropriate partner is clearly required as she has her own set of issues. HOWEVER, observing the progression of events here it's clear that FAILING TO TAKE THE LEADERSHIP ROLE HAS TANKED WHAT WAS ONCE A CLEAR AFFINITY AND PRETTY FUN AND INTERESTING RELATIONSHIP.

I'm re-evaluating my process of relating information to my partners with an eye towards framing the issue, identifying options and suggesting the most effective choice, INSTEAD of coming across with a “what am I going to do now” type of attitude.

It's a learning process and some take longer to “get” the lessons. The thing is that the lessons continue to come until we DO get it.

Thanks David for your help and newsletters. They're helping me to change into a better man and better partner...for someone, sometime.

Regards,
Joe

As you can see from Joe’s account, letting your attitude deteriorate in the face of stress, deadlines, boredom, and a lot of other things, is easy, and it can cost you, dearly. So keep an eye on your attitude, mood, deviation from good habits (like being on time, or being well-groomed) that show self-respect, etc., and don’t let things go down the tubes when they could easily be maintained or improved. It’s far easier to maintain the good things in life than it is to regain them once lost.

Think of a bundle of asphalt roofing shingles. Once you get them up on your shoulder, holding them there or going up the ladder with them isn’t hard at all, but getting them from the ground to your shoulder (especially if you do two at a time like I do) is rough, and you can get hurt pretty badly doing it if you don’t do it just right. Relationships are the same way. Easy to maintain or elevate from a comfortable position, but having the potential to break your back if you have to bring one from the ground up.

So now you have to ask yourself a question: “Do I know what my attitude, demeanor, personality, habits, etc., are projecting about me???” And do you know how the people, and specifically the women in your life, are interpreting what they see? Another question: “If somebody, especially a woman, tried to tell me what they see, would I listen, and understand?”

You will after you’ve read my book, "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and you’ll also know what they like seeing and how to adjust your attitude and outlook so that they see what they’re looking for and you enjoy your life more, not because they see it, but because YOU do. It’s fun, easy, and every man who has tried it to date has succeeded in making his life better, regardless of what woman’s company he was keeping, so whatever is holding you back, skip it, and get over to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy right now. Never put off until tomorrow the success you can have today!

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

Attitude Adjustment, the First Step in Dewussification and the Forging of a Great Relationship or Marriage

The first step in being attractive is a good attitude, and a good attitude is entirely a matter of choice.

Those of you who have been receiving my newsletter for awhile have seen many letters from women complaining about their husband’s wimpy, wussy, defeatist attitudes and how much of a turn-off they are. We’re going to dig a little deeper into fixing that today.

Guys, in case you haven’t noticed, when you bitch and moan about how things are just crappy, you can’t get ahead no matter what you do, everything and everybody is against you, or “the system” is stacked against you and responsible for your present situation, or you’re some kind of victim, there are two things that you can be absolutely sure of:

1. Nobody wants to hear it
2. Nobody believes it for a second

The rest of us know that your life is what you choose to make of it, within the limit of your ability. How you deal with that is what determines your level of success, your self-confidence and self-esteem, and how people react to you – specifically, whether they want to spend time with you because they find you interesting and enjoyable to be around.

The good news is that how you deal with life is entirely your choice. Let’s take an extreme example to make the point clear, and then apply the principle to more common situations in every day life. Let’s say you’re walking down the street, looking wussy, staring at your feet as you shuffle down the sidewalk, shoulders slumped, pouting, and looking like you’re having a crappy day and want the world to know about it…

Out of nowhere, a stranger steps up in front of you, draws a fist back behind him, and punches you squarely in the face, BAM! He hits you so hard you land squarely on your ass about five feet back from where you were standing. What do you do? It’s your choice, right?

Do you sit and cry because the mean old stranger just walked up and punched you in the face, wanting everyone to feel sorry for you so somebody else will hit him back for you or call the police?

Do you stand up, mad as a wet hen, and punch him back, because you’re suddenly feeling violent and wanting revenge?

Do you stand up and realize that the man just woke you up to the fact that you were being a wuss and knocked you on your ass to prove to you that you could get back up on your feet and carry on, and thank him for the reminder?

Do you stand up and realize that the man just did something that you’re not capable of doing, and ask him to instruct you in how to do it?

Do you stand up and realize that the man who just hit you may have thought you were someone else, and simply ask why he hit you to get to the bottom of it?

Do you stand up and tell him that you’re running a two-for-one sale today, and that for the paltry sum of $500, you’ll let him do it again?

Any one of those choices, and many more, are yours to make! I know at least one individual who would have responded as described in each of those examples; that’s how I came up with the examples! How you respond to the situation is entirely your choice, and nobody else’s, and you should make it the most positive and productive choice possible.

No, this isn’t a head game. It’s truly how you choose to perceive and receive the situation, and what’s more, choose how you respond to it. You’re not choosing among various lies to tell yourself, but from among various results of what’s happening in front of you. How many of these choices do you get to make during the day? You may well be shocked if you watch for them and count them.

Let’s say one of your coworkers comes into your office and tells you about something new he’s learned to do and that the boss has complimented him or her on it. You can choose to label the coworker as a brown-noser and talk trash about them around the office to try to get them fired, or you can recognize that if your company makes more money, your job is more secure and your retirement contribution will be bigger, and you can recognize that this new skill may help your own career, and therefore ask the coworker to show you this new skill.

Your choice is therefore between seeing your coworker’s discovery as an insult or as an opportunity for you to make yourself more valuable to your company and give them a reason to pay you more. That choice should be a no-brainer.

Another example: Your boss comes in and says that the job you’ve had and utterly hated for the last two years is being terminated, and you’re being moved to another department to a job that pays slightly less, but is one that you’ve tried to get transferred to several times in the past, and which does have advancement opportunities.

Do you whine and complain about having to make an unexpected change and gripe about being unappreciated because you’re taking a slight pay cut, or do you choose to see that you’re finally free of the job you hate and being moved somewhere that you can better both your job and your pay and go at your new job with gusto and start realizing the changes you sought in the past? Another no-brainer, or so you’d think…

I saw two people at a company for which I was consulting quit in this very scenario. Their pay was being reduced by a whole $10 per week (1% of their weekly pay) until the end of the quarter (about eight weeks from then) when a new budget would take effect, and I know for a fact that both of them were blowing far more than that every week buying coffee and single packs of cigarettes at a convenience store on the way to work every morning instead of making coffee at home for the drive to work and buying their cigarettes in a carton each week. They had that same negative attitude, and chose to be insulted rather than see opportunity. And they constantly complained about the lack of attention their wives showed them, too.

I started to list several more examples of how you can choose to see adversity or opportunity, but rather than do that, I’m going to invite you to try to spot them around you, and write to me by replying to any edition of my newsletter or by posting comments to this post on my primary blog at http://blog.makingherhappy.com/ and we’ll revisit this topic in a few days and compare notes.

Meanwhile, let me be very clear about this: There’s little you can do to make your wife, girlfriend, friends, siblings, coworkers, or anybody else want to avoid you any more than by consistently choosing to frame everything that happens in a negative context, and little you can do that will help your relationship with your partner and everybody else by keeping a positive attitude and looking for opportunity. It’s heroic, and an attribute that is found in all effective leaders, and hence, trips those biological attraction triggers that bring women, especially the one you love, closer and closer to you.

It is indeed one of the first steps I look for to take in every intervention for a couple in crisis, because it is so important and because it is something that can be changed almost instantly, which is in turn because it is so purely a matter of personal choice. Positive attitude gets positive results, and negative attitude gets negative results. ‘Nuff said.

It doesn’t matter how bad you think your relationship – or your life – is, you will find what you look for with equal ease, whether it’s insult or opportunity. (You may recall a famous quote by Henry Ford: “Whether you think you can do it or you can’t, you’re absolutely right!”) Look for the opportunity, and when you find it, use it to achieve something, even if it’s only something small. Small chains of successes add up to self-confidence and big successes. Yes, that’s a choice, too.

Speaking of opportunity, how many times must I offer you the opportunity to know what every man needs to know about women before you stop bitching about me trying to sell you something in a free newsletter or a blog post and realize that what I’m offering you is something you’ve looked for all your life and thought you’d never find, and that it’s not even going to cost you as much as a good meal for two? That’s right Big Guy, opportunity is knocking here and now, and once again, you can choose whether to be insulted or to grab that opportunity and make the most of it. If you want to be a whiner, that’s your right and choice to make, but…

If you want to be one of us guys who people love to be around and who knows what every woman wishes all men – especially their partner – knew, then jump over to http://www.makingherhappy.com and grab your copy of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” and make the change. That’s your right, and your choice to make, too!

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

Be an Alpha Male, not an Alpha Dog, to Have a Great Relationship or Marriage

I’ve received a lot of questions regarding the nature of the alpha male because there is apparently a lot of confusion about what behavior one should expect from a human alpha male. It’s not what you might think, and here’s why…

This lesson is part of my free “Break-up Busting 101” course, but I’m rebroadcasting it now because I’m getting an inordinate number of questions about alpha male behavior and site analytics says that many of you have still not downloaded my free reports.

Aside from the fact that this lesson answers those questions quite well, I’m hoping it will induce some of you to go ahead and download “Break-Up Busting 101”. Not everything that is free is worthless, but I can see how you might expect it to be after reading many other authors’ “free reports” that comprise nothing more than a sales letter. But you’ll see when you read this one that I could have easily sold this report instead of publishing these lessons in this newsletter, as it contains more value than many authors’ “for fee” or “premium” reports, so take advantage of this opportunity while it is still available.

This lesson is part of our discussion of attraction to help you understand what exactly your partner is looking for so you can get her attention in the right way, make her desire your company (even if she’s ticked off), and set the stage for the problems to be resolved. A woman who is feeling attraction is obviously more prone to engage in any kind of discussion with you if it makes her feel good than if it makes her bored or angry. Alpha male behavior invokes attraction through biological triggers and is therefore automatic and extremely predictable and dependable, and you need to know everything you can learn about it, especially how to be a guy who naturally, automatically and effortlessly exhibits such behavior.

Over the years, people who really annoy the life out of me have erroneously referred to the feeling of attraction as being “in love” or some other poetically liberating but otherwise nonsensical term instead of what it is: pure, raw excitement and desire for intimacy, fun and adventure, sexual and otherwise, directed at a particular person, “attraction” for short, because the feeling forces you to want to be in their company and closer and closer to them as time passes; it’s like the closer you get, the closer it makes you want to get.

As we talked about in the edition on love, attraction, need, and lust (another chapter you can read in the free “Break-Up Busting 101” report), this state is entirely biological, not logical. It is also triggered differently in men and women, and you need to understand the difference in order to create it for her. HUGE question: WHY do you want to create it for her in a time of relationship crisis?

The answer has several parts:

• A huge and common reason for relationships being in crisis is because the man has stopped creating the feeling of attraction for her in the first place, leaving her feeling bored, distant, edgy, and vulnerable.

• Being biological and not logical, feeling attraction makes it very difficult for a woman to emotionally or logically convince herself to keep dramatizing or continuing to punish you instead of engaging in a discussion and activities that can correct the problem. It cuts through the anger and grief to focus her attention on trying to save the relationship by giving her evidence of a good reason to save it.

• Making her feel good about spending time with you will motivate her to spend the time required to discover and fix the problems instead of spending it with her girlfriends milking the emotion from the moment and listening to them bash you, which many are more prone to do than to try to address the situation logically. This is because their brain structure makes their response to crisis and change very emotionally-driven. Since the emotional state is enhanced biologically, getting through it to a state where problems can be solved also requires tripping biological triggers.

There’s more, but you get the idea. The attraction triggers in men are mostly visual; anything that creates the appearance of being a good candidate for giving birth and caring for a child (ample breasts, wide pelvis and round hips, good skin, thick hair, etc.) causes the chemical cascade in our brain that makes us feel attraction. However, for women, it’s quite different…

This goes back to that hunters and gatherers model, pure human evolution. It doesn’t matter whether or not you believe in Darwin’s theory that we all came from something like an amoeba; there has been enough evolution just in the last few thousand years of recorded history to explain what has happened between the sexes. Very long ago and until just recently (less than 100 years), marrying well was the most important of all survival skills for a woman. In early times, when women routinely spent their entire day tending children and fires and trying to forage edible plants and tan hides, men were either hunting, protecting the group, or making tools and building infrastructure.

Evolution was kind to women who chose skilled hunters and protectors, especially the leaders. Women’s brains developed to respond to that image, recognizing a skilled hunter and protector, an intelligent man who was good with his hands, and a strong, commanding personality as the best candidates to take care of them. Hence, while visual attributes like healthy, muscular bodies with broad shoulders get their attention, it’s only at the level of curiosity, not attraction.

To push a woman past curiosity and intrigue requires a demonstration of that very male behavior that shows intellect, leadership, and confidence, incidental signs of which are things like a good sense of humor, ability to have fun, and ingenuity – characteristics of the “alpha” or ultimate male. However, there seems to be some confusion as to the characteristics a human alpha male should exhibit.

I was talking with an old friend recently about alpha male behavior, and she kept insisting that there were parts of alpha male behavior that no woman could stomach. She wasn’t feeling well and was being a little “pissy,” and I hadn’t talked with her in a few weeks so there was some drama thrown in there for good measure, but when I finally pinned her down to list the things that no woman would find attractive about an alpha male, they were:

• Possessive of a few favorite women, and very jealous
• Controlling
• Uses force to get his way

I about hit the roof, because these are not “alpha man” characteristics, they are “alpha DOG” characteristics (or any other non-human animal), and it is VERY important that this distinction be made and fully understood by all, or some hideous mistakes will be made.

First, think about what you know about dogs. Even the most ferocious dog is inherently insecure, especially when it comes to his food supply, his bed (turf) and female dogs. He’ll fight a running sawmill to guard any of them. When dogs come together in a pack, the first thing that happens is the dogs challenge each other for the “top dog” position of alpha dog, and then the alpha dog doesn’t just lead the pack, he controls the actions of the individuals as well. In any dispute, there’s either a fight, or the alpha dog just takes what he wants and walks off. Dogs live like most wild creatures, focusing upon and fearing scarcity because they are not capable of productive work and creating their own means of survival. Now, compare this to humans…

We are at the top of the food chain. For the alpha – or “ultimate” -- male, his self-confidence level is high, so he could care less about possessing or controlling a woman because he knows they are standing in line to take the place of any woman that falls out of favor with him. He doesn’t try to control anyone because he doesn’t have to. He’s a leader and people want to do what he says, at least the kind of people he wants to have around him; he has no use for people who look for excuses to avoid performing. His attitude is “lead, follow, or get the hell out of my way!” He’s not afraid of competition; he looks forward to it in most instances.

He demands loyalty of those with whom he shares his life because he knows the value of his life, but unlike the dogs and other wild creatures, he doesn’t live in fear of scarcity. Being human, he has the power of volitional choice, the distinguishing characteristic above all others that puts humankind at the top of the food chain. Hence, he knows that if something isn’t the way he wants it, he can change it or create it. He knows that jealousy over anything is a sign of weakness and finds it repugnant in others and couldn’t begin to feel it himself; if he wants something, he earns it, or it simply comes to him, like friends, underlings looking for leadership, women looking for an attractive man, etc.

He doesn’t have to use force to get his way because he’s intelligent (meaning that he thinks and solves problems efficiently, not necessarily that he has a formal education), a skilled leader and negotiator, and generally gets his way anyway, although he’s more than capable of using it if he has to. That’s not to say that he won’t protect that which he has earned, because he certainly will, but he’s focused on WHAT’s right, not WHO’s right, so fights for him are purely defensive, unless he’s a cop, soldier, etc.

This attitude is natural in most men; we’re born with it, but over the years, different things teach and train us to shy away from this natural behavior. Examples?

How about your mother telling you that you need to be “nice” to women, and buy them lots of gifts and let them make all the decisions to be “considerate” of them?

What about the “experts” in the 1980’s who, when women said they’d like for men to be more in touch with their feelings, advised all men to cry in front of women? (Anybody that tries to tell you that a man crying, in any context, is sexy, is either a feminist propagandist, has some sort of fetish for boys, or is just plain psycho, because that invokes maternal behavior triggered by the image of a crying little boy, not a strong, virile hero, and hence, instantaneously KILLS attraction and male image.)

Or, as I’m seemingly constantly complaining about, Hollywood’s portrayal of weaker and more feminine men with every passing day?

Or maybe the various forces in the “romance” industry assaulting us with ideas like paying two to three months’ salary for an engagement ring (like a woman can or should be “bought” or that jewelry is some sort of “investment” when it can only be sold for scrap value when times are tough) or the sickeningly submissive and subservient image of a man kneeling before a woman asking (or begging) her to marry him?

Think about that last one for a minute. Your courtship was spent having fun, coming together, and being exciting, and if you followed tradition, you made two HUGE mistakes during the proposal, the beginning of your married life. It’s no wonder that attraction and sex lives seem to end with marriage! I think I once discussed the perfect proposal, in which I would dip a woman at the peak of a highly sensual dance, hold her suspended above the floor, look her straight in the eye, and say in a strong but not belligerent tone, “Marry me,” then pull her up, twirl her away and back up close to me, and hold her there until she said, “Yes!” You think not? Ask a woman…not a girl, mind you, but an emotionally mature woman. Kneeling is “sweet,” not manly, and if you ask women what “sweet” means, more often than not it’s associated with exposing frailty and vulnerability. I know because I asked them…a lot of them.

The women in the panel (those 118 who helped with the research and writing of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" ) responded to my proposal scenario with everything from, “Oh, YES!” to “Thanks, I’m wet now,” to just being plain speechless, which is interesting, because they were the ones who contributed the various parts of the scenario, having the man in the superior (head above the woman’s) position instead of kneeling, saying, “Marry me,” “I want you to marry me,” or “Let’s get married,” instead of asking. Speaking of dancing and sensual, sexual and exciting (“the vertical expression of a horizontal desire”), etc., were also quite common among them.

If you can get a woman talking she’ll tell you exactly what she wants and needs, if you can speak “girly-ese.” Well, not exactly; she’ll give you every part of the answer without putting it all together as the answer, but with all the parts, the answer pretty much falls together itself. Sometimes the parts are contained in what they say, others are obvious in what they do, once you learn how to see them and interact with them instead of just staring at their breasts and butts and wanting to ravish them. Indeed, they’ll tell and show you all of that, too.

The problem is that it can take years to pick up on all of it, and most men spend a lifetime with a woman at their side without ever picking up on much, if anything. (Hence, the woman at their side is a long chain of short engagements with a lot of women.) And if you think it’s hard when times are good, I’m sure you can estimate how much harder it would be when the chips are down and she’s ready to kick you out of the house or leave. When things are that bad, often one more mistake is all it takes to put her over the top.

That’s where "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" comes in. I talked at length with these women and their partners (whether husbands or long-term boyfriends), and we nailed it all down, how to know if you’re in the right relationship, how to communicate to keep the love alive, and how to trigger attraction to keep the excitement and fun alive.

With this book, you can use it as preventive medicine and ultimately not only stop your relationship from going downhill, but kick it up notches previously unknown to mankind. If you’re already in crisis, you can quickly figure out whether to try to save your relationship or move on to someone with whom you can be happy (in a case where you married somebody who is just plain wrong for you and compatibility issues make fixing it impossible), and if it’s worth saving, very quickly get a handle on inter-gender communications so that you can work together to fix the problems and then trigger attraction within her, to give her a reason to discuss salvaging the relationship with you instead of just starting over herself.

It’s all that, really, and it can be yours in the next few minutes if you click over to http://www.makingherhappy.com/ and simply download your copy. Restoring your relationship and rekindling your honeymoon is pretty much a bargain at any price, but at the cost of dinner – not dinner and a movie, JUST DINNER! – that’s a steal. Or maybe you’d prefer to pay the attorney fees and lose half or more of everything you own for no better reason than lack of trying?

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

Sweeping Her Off Her Feet, One of the Greatest Gifts for the Woman in Your Relationship or Marriage

Do you know what it takes to really sweep a woman off her feet? Unlikely. Legend has it that it takes a mansion, cars, money, jet-setting, etc., but that is unmitigated “bovine feces” (B.S.!). Sweeping her off her feet requires nothing more than creating a special feeling – one that she will kill to keep once you create it for her – through entirely natural and fun means!

I keep getting mail from men and women that refer to “sweeping her off her feet.” It would be comical to go through what most of the men think that sweeping her off her feet entails, if it weren’t so pathetic. I’m not going to print letters from the men because I don’t want anybody being embarrassed by seeing their effort used as an example of what to avoid doing or thinking on this most sensitive of issues, but we are going to talk about it, in detail, from both sides of the issue.

In a nutshell, the guys keep asking the question, “How do I sweep her off her feet when [I’m not/I can’t/I don’t have/etc.]”

What they aren’t, but maybe could become to some degree, is dashingly sexy and handsome, rich beefcakes.

What they can’t do, at least today, is be dashing, charming, traveling with their women all day every day, shopping like there’s no tomorrow without a care for where the money comes from.

What they don’t have, at least not yet, is a few million bucks, a mansion, an island retreat, exotic car, private jet, country club membership, huge male organ (which, by the way guys, is grossly unpopular with many women because while it’s fun to look at, a 10-inch long “member“ being forced into a 4”-6” long vagina hurts like hell according to the women, at least those who have not yet had a hysterectomy to make room for it!), etc.

You know what? Not one bit of this matters!!! At least not to any woman worth having. Yes, many of these things CAN be used, because some women do respond to some degree to some of these things, but when women talk about being swept off their feet, these things aren’t what come up on their wish lists.

When women talk about being swept off their feet, they consistently mention self-confidence and sense of humor (especially a naughty – but not trashy and especially not demeaning or disrespectful -- sense of humor) more than anything else. They mention “having him know what I’m thinking,” but when questioned on this point, will eventually explain that they don’t really expect a man to be psychic, but they want a man who listens and picks up on all their signals (non-verbal stuff, like body language, as well as hints, etc.) to the extent that they can tune in to what the woman wants and even anticipate it.

They also mention a man who acts with and even defines and exercises authority by making decisions, being intelligent – even an expert on something – and leading conversations, not to mention knowing how to lead a negotiation with them (yes, most conversations with women involve some sort of negotiation!) without trying to dictatorially control (bully) the conversation and outcome.

And more than half of them, believe this or not, said that they liked being grabbed, pressed up against a wall, and aggressively kissed and ravished. But there was a deviation amongst those that responded this way that means you must be very careful. A few said this scared them, some said they liked this, but liked for it to go on for a minute or two and then be left hanging so they could anticipate the finish later in the evening, while others just wanted to go for broke.

I noticed in two polls that I did early in this project that women who said this kind of sudden action scared them had also been abused or forced into sex, and described themselves as chronically insecure. The most secure of the respondents said they liked to be “pounced upon” and then left hanging, to be ravished fully later in the day or evening. (You may recall that I’ve told you that women often enjoy the anticipation of an event more than the event itself, and this is one of the things they enjoy anticipating most!!!)

You might be shocked at just how much a woman will tell you if you just ask her in a way that says that you’re genuinely interested in hearing what she has to say. And feel free to discuss this with your wife, and I do mean DISCUSS; DO NOT ask her permission. Tell her that you’ve heard about this and are curious as to what she thinks about it.

She’ll tell you how SHE’D react, because that is the question behind the question and that’s how women speak. But beware: if she says she would like or love it, use it sparingly, else you’ll spoil it for her by burning her out on it so that it bores her instead of giving her an adrenaline rush. Indeed, wait several days before doing it the first time, as she will be expecting you to do it immediately, and will love the anticipation and suspense of waiting and the adrenaline rush when it finally comes after she’s stopped thinking it’s going to happen.

This sudden ravishing is alpha male behavior that flips attraction switches like mad, causing undamaged women to go nuts with excitement and desire – the FEELING of being swept off their feet, walking on clouds being overwhelmed with anticipation of the next meeting with a man, his next smile, next touch, next authoritative statement or naughty remark, etc. Mature women who are the picture of sense and sensibility can be observed giggling like school girls when under the influence of this feeling, because it is that rare and delightful for them. It makes them feel alive like nothing else can; not just alive, but excited about being alive. It’s the extreme opposite of that dreaded curse of curses to women everywhere, “boredom.”

No matter whose advice you read or follow, read a romance novel or two to see the examples of the scenarios women fantasize about and the details these fantasies are built upon – and be smart about it by picking them off the best-seller list or asking a couple of really “girly” girls for their favorites – and tune in to the descriptions of this feeling in the characters in the books, and also pay some attention to what goes on to create that.

If this sounds like a stupid idea, think about this: If you are not invoking attraction in a woman, you are at least boring her, if not annoying the living hell out of her. Being able to sweep a woman off her feet is the second “Holy Grail” of a lasting relationship, only infinitesimally less important than a high degree of compatibility. It’s magic if you can pull it off, and guaranteed hard times if you can’t, because you will be failing to fulfill one of her most basic needs.

When you’re boring a woman you are in an inferior and adversarial position, trying to gain or regain her favor. If you were commanding an army against another army, and could read their Standard Operating Procedures manual and high-level stratagem papers to find out how they could be expected to behave in a given situation and how they could be expected to respond to a given maneuver, wouldn’t you? Sure you would! So what’s the difference, other than the obvious difference that a woman can be turned from adversary to ally much easier than a soldier?

For that matter, why do you think there are so many women subscribed to this newsletter and buying my book, “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage”? They want to know what you are being told, to know what to expect of you, if you’re smart enough to follow good advice! They also want to understand their own attraction mechanisms better, and want to identify the core of what makes some men so exciting so they might get a good one, possibly instead of the incredibly attractive losers, users, and abusers they’ve been dating in the past. Take a cue from them and get with the program! They’re a lot better at playing the relationship game than most of us are, so learn from them, especially their diligence in learning about and actively managing their relationships.

What else can I say, Gentlemen? Women are buying and reading this book, writing daily saying that it’s “spot on” and they wish their men would read it, or that they have their men reading it and it’s working for them. I have their letters to prove it. You can see a few of their testimonials in the archive at the address below and at http://www.makingherhappy.com/, and download your own copy while you’re there. Several hundred of them have provided the information to create and maintain this book (can you imagine several hundred women agreeing on anything???), and their men put it to the test and confirmed it before the first copy of the book was ever sold, so if you want to sweep your partner off her feet, get your copy today, not later, because life is too short to waste it living less of a life than you could live. Never put off until tomorrow the improvements you can make today in any part of your life.

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

Reader Responses to Asking for Intimacy in Relationships and Marriage

Some female readers respond to yesterday’s lesson on not asking for sex. Pay attention, Gentlemen, because this is the real deal, straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak…

I love the women who subscribe to this newsletter. They’re smart, funny, and I can always count on them to keep my horizons broadening and help set the things I teach in stone by demonstrating to you gentlemen that I’m giving you the facts, not just some hyped-up theory or opinion. I received a bunch of letters from the women on yesterday’s “Don’t Ask for Nookie” lesson, all of which contained a resounding “Amen!” in one form or another, and I’m going to share a few of them with you right now.

First, meet Teresa:

Hi David,

All I can say about being asked for sex is “EWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!” It creeps me out.

Teresa

For those who don’t speak girly-ese, raise “yuck!” “sick!” or “gross!” to about the 23rd power, and you’ll be getting close to the meaning of “creeps me out.”

Now meet Rhonda,

Hi David,

Men just don’t understand how repulsive it is to be asked for permission to do something that they should be doing. If you want to kiss a woman, you should already know whether you can by whether she lets you get close enough to kiss her. And for God’s sake, don’t make an announcement like, “I’m going to kiss you now,” because that comes across as asking. For me, I like the way Will Smith said to do it in that movie Hitch. Come 90% of the way and make me come the other 10% to kiss you. If I don’t come the other 10%, either I’m not interested or you’re going too fast.

Love your stuff. Get these guys into shape for me, will ya? I want a real guy so bad I could just die, and there’s none to be found around here, so hurry!

Rhonda

Hitch was a pretty good movie if you ignore the part where Will Smith wussed out at the end. Rhonda has a great point: if you’re moving into a woman’s space bubble too quickly she’ll back off immediately, and if you’re being so aggressive as to creep her out she’ll break off contact, so talking about kissing or sex or anything else is pretty silly. And besides, if you are generating attraction as you should be, she’s often going to be the one invading YOUR space bubble to get a kiss. Just ask Barb, who includes a LOT of great detail:

David,

I completely agree with your response to "asking" for sex. I can't think of a bigger turn-off than a man asking me if he can hold my hand or kiss me or asking me if we can have sex now. It's like a child asking permission to do something. It's a sign of weakness and insecurity to have to beg for sex.

It's a lose/lose situation. If she says yes, she's doing you some huge favor/chore. If she says no, you're going to feel rejected. Either way, you're setting yourself up for disaster because you're handing her your power on a silver platter.

My suggestion to Marcus is that he needs to do some serious inner work on his attitude and beliefs. Then at some point, take a leap of faith, believe in yourself and your power and trust that this stuff really works. Real men don't have to "ask", they just "do it". I think you'll be shocked and very pleasantly surprised to find that a woman just can't stop herself from responding positively to strength, leadership and personal authority in a man. I am a strong woman, but I want a man who is stronger than I am. I want to be able to surrender to his will. That's what gives me butterflies in my stomach and makes me weak in the knees.

A man may be aroused instantly, but that doesn't mean a woman is. We take longer since we don't have an on/off switch. For us, sex starts in the head, when
we begin thinking about the feelings. The anticipation. The suspense. The stimulation of not just my body, but ALSO my mind.

David's book has an entire section called "Great in Bed" to help build confidence in your lovemaking skills. And it is a skill we have to learn since we're not born knowing how.

I wish I'd had this book when I was still in my 25 year marriage, we could have either salvaged our marriage or I'd have known to move on much sooner.

Barb

I couldn’t have said it better myself! And note that Barb confirms that achieving attraction and arousal is not a near-instantaneous thing like it often is for men. We are largely visually stimulated, where a woman’s mind must be engaged to some degree with mystery, adventure, fun, etc. The alpha male attitude gets you noticed and ultimately cranks up the heat, but that “fun” element common to all men with self-confidence has to bridge the gap to get you there.

Notice that Barb says that she “wants to be able to surrender to his will. That takes trust, and if you don’t trust yourself enough to be confident, how the hell is she supposed to trust you at all??? I keep telling you gentlemen this isn’t rocket science…and there’s a pretty obvious reason for that…

Also note that she points out that “making whoopee” (the things I have to do to hide from the spam filters! LOL!) is a skill that we are not born with. We are born with an instinctive capacity for the raw act of procreation, but not for the pleasure that surrounds it if it’s done right. That requires knowing one of those things that Sigmund Freud was talking about when he said he didn’t know what women want. (And yes, I DO, because women tell me these things!)

So that’s it, the women have spoken, and have confirmed for you that I gave you the facts. And I have a lot more of them for you too, including the whole scoop on what women want, so if you want to get your marriage and relationship back in gear and get one up on Sigmund Freud in the process, come see me at http://www.makingherhappy.com/ right now.

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

Preparation, Key to Easy Success in Relationships and Marriage

It’s pretty easy to see that taking on any challenge fully prepared is infinitely better than doing so unprepared. This is just as true in relationships and marriage as it is in anything else. Were you prepared when you started? Are you prepared now? It’s never too late…

I’ve talked about preparedness before, but I got an e-mail from a reader that really drives the message home, and I want to share it with you. Meet Mark:

Hey David,

How's it going!

Well I'm doing pretty good indeed!

You know what, before, like a year ago, my girlfriend told me that she wasn't ready to move with me in a apartment. I wasn't either. After applying the information in your guide now she sure is! And I, also! She called me yesterday to ask me if I was ready to move in with her!

Like many of your readers, after reading your guide I now have much more respect for my woman. And I understand much more her needs, which is extremely important.

Here are a few things I've realized, summarized:

I've got to keep doing the things that attracted her to me at first.
I've got to display an alpha male personality in her presence.

I've got to improve my life in every way possible.

Finally, I've got to make her FEEL great about herself

David, thanks for everything, you’re the man!

Mark

Mark is one of many who is seeing the value of preparedness in relationships. When you’re unprepared, it shows, not just in your incompetence, but in your confidence level. And women can pick up on that from light years away.

And rightly so. It’s a defense mechanism. As I’ve shown you many times in the past, much of our courtship and relationship behavior is biologically driven and involves filtering mechanisms that have protected our ability to procreate and continue our existence at the top of the food chain for as long as we’ve been walking upright, or longer. They need to feel safe, especially in making an emotional investment in a relationship with us, and if they don’t, the relationship suffers.

And it doesn’t matter what kind of relationship, either. It doesn’t matter if you’re married, contemplating marriage, living together, dating steadily (committed or not), dating to find a relationship, dating for fun, or if the relationship is even of such a nature that se’xual contact might ever be an option or consideration. Women are just as protective of their lives and feelings with friends, family, coworkers, etc., as they are with men they may have some sort of se’xual contact with. And you should be, too! Think about that…

We’re talking about your life, are we not? Would you let a guy off the street act as a brain surgeon and start hacking at your head with a hammer, chisel, and table knife? Would you let a guy who didn’t know which part of your car was the engine start working on yours?

Would you employ the services of a doctor who didn’t speak the same language as you, so that information about symptoms, diagnosis and treatment could be exchanged? Would you put your retirement nest egg in the hands of a person who knew nothing about using it to build wealth for you?

Certainly not! Yet so many people will enter into human relationships without knowing the first thing about the corresponding issues of getting along with people, without understanding what makes men and women who they are, how they are alike and different, how to communicate effectively with them, how to know when something is broken and how to try to fix it.

And it continues to blow my ever-loving mind that these things are so crucial and so easy to learn and use, yet nobody seems to be insisting on getting this information until they’ve already screwed up, possibly several times. We spend years of our lives either chasing this information, begging people who purposely make it more complicated than it is to protect either their livelihood or the secret of their incompetence and ignorance, or consigning ourselves to the mistaken idea that knowing what we need to know about the opposite gender – and ourselves, for that matter – is some “great mystery of life” that we are doomed to never solve, and that having any kind of satisfying relationship is a matter of luck, fate, compromise, sacrifice, or some sort of divine intervention. A load of “bovine male fecal matter” if ever there was one.

The good news is that no matter how unprepared you are right now, you can get prepared, quickly and easily. And I’m talking hours, not days. Hell, I’ve had sex for longer than it will take you to get prepared, without any sort of chemical support or enhancement, and I’ll bet that if you go back to your teens or twenties, you probably have, too, so we’re really not talking about a lot of time here!

And even if it’s too late for this relationship, you can get prepared for the next one. Speaking of which, do you even know how to really tell when it’s over and no matter what you do she’s not coming back? Don’t you think you should know this before a conflict arises so that you don’t waste your life beating a dead horse? I know, and I can tell you. We’ll get to that in a minute…

Gross compatibility problems – personal values, goals, etc. – are the main reason that relationships fall apart, and about the only good reason to not try to put one back together, but when people get emotional they forget about reason and will sometimes go so far as to cut off their nose to spite their face. And believe it or not, sometimes a woman might just have a better grip on the situation than you do.

But either way, the only time that it’s not even worth your time to try to determine whether your relationship should be saved is when a woman puts up barriers to communication – court-issued restraining orders, moving to another town, changing her number and not giving you the new one, saying nothing at all to you except, “Don’t talk to me anymore,” having friends answer her phone to filter you out or directing you to her attorney for all communication.

That’s right. As long as she is still talking to you, even if she’s yelling and screaming at you, she’s emotionally engaged, and resolution is possible. You still have to determine if there is a sound basis for the relationship and act accordingly, but if you can make her feel safe in joining you in looking at everything and making that determination according to what’s best for both of you, she will calm down and work with you. But you have to be prepared for that, too.

You have to know enough about women in general to be able to also grasp the things that make her an individual. You have to be able to speak and listen to her in such a way that the message gets through and is interpreted correctly by both of you. You have to understand what part of her needs are the same as yours, different from yours, compatible with yours and in conflict with yours. And this is not something that you were born to do, else you wouldn’t wind up in such a predicament, but as the people whose letters I keep sharing with you clearly demonstrate, it can be learned. I can’t say that EVERYBODY is doing it, but I can say that EVERYBODY WHO IS USING WHAT IS IN MY BOOK is doing it, and I have their testimonials to back it up.

Yes, I said EVERYBODY. It’s really that good. And for the simplest of reasons: I was prepared to write it by gathering data from the source, a large group of women, and tested and refined that data by turning it over to the men in their lives to test on them. No opinions, no theories, no “branded methodology,” just the facts and a process for using them to quickly and easily set things right. And again, I have the testimonials of a lot of real people who had real problems to back it up.

So how about you? Do you want a piece of this action? Would you like to discuss something with your wife or girlfriend and know going in that even if the subject matter is touchy the two of you will be able to talk about and work something out instead of usual result of eye-rolling, shouts of “whatever!” as somebody leaves the room, and the accusations of “never listening” and “being a bitch” that always seem to come up? Would you like to go back to feeling like the woman in your life is a partner instead of an antagonist, or competitor?

The correct answer here is “yes!” by the way…

So go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and get prepared for a relationship that makes you both happy. It certainly beats hiding at the office or at “happy hour” somewhere to minimize the time you have to spend at home, wouldn’t you think?

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

How Are Your Friends Affecting Your Relationship or Marriage?

Who’s giving you advice? Are they succeeding in whatever way you want to succeed and living the way you want to live? If not, they’re not the people to be advising you, especially about your relationship.

I was out with my wife once at a local Mexican restaurant and saw something disgusting that we need to discuss. No, it wasn’t something with legs in the enchiladas or the salsa verde. It was a couple of fairly young men, seemingly in their early thirties. One of them was slouched over, in grungy clothes, looking like a total slacker – I looked under his table to see if there was a skateboard hiding there. His clothes were wrinkled, his hair disheveled and if he had come to my door to visit my daughter looking like that I would have kicked his sorry butt out the door and told him to come back when he’d acquired soap – both the body and laundry varieties – and some self-respect.

His companion looked considerably better. He sat up straight, and was dressed for being in public. He was fairly well-groomed, His shirt was tucked in and his clothes were not wrinkled. He had more of a worldly air about him. There was a near-empty margarita pitcher between them and they were both talking louder than they should have been. (It’s amazing how tequila damages others’ hearing and not your own, isn’t it??? LOL!)

The most respectable-looking of the pair was dating a co-worker of theirs, apparently a high-quality girl that was pretty popular in the office. He told his friend he wanted to escalate the relationship because he thought they were right for each other. Before he got to the end of the sentence, his friend the slacker said, "Dude, no way she’ll hang with you! You're not her type. She’s into power and sleeps with the boss. Even if she did hook up steady with you, you’d just screw it up like you’ve done with every other woman you’ve dated."

Doesn’t sound like much of a friend, does he? Unfortunately, it’s not that uncommon amongst "friends" for one who’s having a hard time or just generally negative about everything to rain on everybody else’s parade. In his mind, if he’s not happy, it’s not fair for anybody else to be. Instead of being happy for his friend, he’s throwing cold water on his friend’s desires/ambitions, possibly for no better reason than to keep himself from having to find somebody else to drink with or complain to.

The disgusting thing is that it worked! The poor guy sat there a moment and then said, "Yeah, you're probably right." He allowed his so-called "friend" to rob him of his ambition and convince him that he didn't have a chance with her. They worked in the same office! If she’d really been sleeping with the boss, wouldn’t they BOTH have heard about it by then? It’s ridiculous that so many people do this to one another, and still call each other “friends”! It’s just plain sick to think about, but it’s the nature of people who lack self-esteem.

Losers have a tendency to want to pull others down to their level, instead of learning from their friends and drawing on their successes as inspiration for their own success, which would elevate them to their mentor’s level. Lacking character, it’s easier for them to talk trash to the achievers around them than to get off their lazy butt and achieve something. Is this the kind of person you want to take advice from, about anything in your life??? I hope not, and I can tell you categorically and with authority that it is not.

This kind of person is a prime target for the “hire slowly, fire quickly” method of forming relationships of any kind. No matter how much you want to do or try to do, they will try at every turn to discourage and disparage anything that is above them. This is the last person in the world that you want to be discussing anything important or personal with, because they can’t possibly have anything good going on in their life or they wouldn’t be talking to you this way.

Their opinion of what you should be doing or any advice they may offer is therefore worthless; otherwise, they would be having some successes and being upbeat about at least a few things in their life. Their sole purpose in any conversation with you will be to bring you down, not celebrate your dreams and successes with you.

Always make sure you are fully supported by your friends and family. If you have any “friends” that are constantly telling you that you will not be able to accomplish something, or that you’re wife will end up leaving you, or that you can’t possibly get that better job you’re going after without any facts to back up their claims (if you’re trying to learn to play piano with no hands, or you’re a violent spouse abuser, or the job you’re applying for requires a PhD and you don’t have a high school diploma, they may have a point, but you know what I mean), fire them!

They’re not worthy of sharing your life’s energy and your space. Know the difference between a good friend who has relevant facts that you don’t yet possess and cares enough to give them to you and the pessimistic gothic ne’er-do-well who thinks it rains 24/7 and wants to make sure you stay soaked in their misery.

People like this can insidiously turn you into a carbon copy of themselves, and as you can imagine, that’s about as unattractive as it gets. Just ask any woman (who’s not one of these constantly complaining losers) what she thinks of them. She’ll tell you, in no uncertain terms, that she wants someone fun and upbeat, somebody with brains and vision and leadership skills, not some loser who ridicules greatness because he’ll never aspire to it, let alone achieve it. Nobody who looks at his shoes when he talks and walks and disparages everything he hears is attractive, to anyone, in any way, except maybe to a hard-up mugger looking for a target.

Besides, what kind of valuable advice would someone who is always negative and never going anywhere or doing anything have to give? There’s an old Chinese proverb that really comes into play here: "The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it." Ayn Rand also had something very valuable to say about this: "The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity." What opportunities will you be availing yourself of while you have “Joe Doomengloom” constantly telling you that you’re just going to fall off the ladder? Kick his (or her) ass to the curb and get on with the business of being a man.

Always surround yourself with positive, up-beat people -- people who have confidence in themselves and in you. Real friends will strengthen and support you when you’re onto something good, and if they do say something negative, it will be to give you the benefit of their experience or insight and keep you out of trouble, not to keep you from achieving.

Also, no matter what you’re doing, if you are going to ask somebody for a recommendation or advice, make sure that they have been successful in pursuing whatever you are pursuing, and therefore have valid experience to draw on and valid advice to give. Don’t ask your CPA for legal advice (unless he’s also a lawyer) or your lawyer for tax advice (unless he’s also a tax accountant). Don’t ask somebody who doesn’t even use a computer and has never sold anything to review your Internet business and give you suggestions. And above all, don’t ask an unhappy slacker who has no history of lasting, happy relationships about anything having to do with your relationship. If you want to succeed at anything, find somebody who has already succeeded, and learn from what they did, both right and wrong.

I’m a guy you can ask for help with a relationship, especially one that’s gone stale over time and needs reviving. I’ve done it, and I don’t think I could ask for things to be much better. In addition to my own experience, I have that of 118 other couples who all helped develop and test the content of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” – they all improved their relationships dramatically with this very material as we researched it, as did thousands more who have added the benefit of their experience in the years since. We all learned how to evaluate relationships, how to communicate to effectively bridge the inter-gender communications gap, and what it takes to trip a woman’s attraction triggers and bring that honeymoon back with a bang!

Learn from us and make your own relationship all it can be by going to http://www.makingherhappy.com right now and downloading your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," because it works, it’s guaranteed, and life’s too short to wait for good things to happen – YOU MUST MAKE THEM HAPPEN, AND YOU CAN!

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

Being Your Own Man, Crucial to a Great Relationship and Marriage

There are two ways to react to the successes of those around you. You can let them make you insecure and jealous, or you can learn from them and use them as example and motivation to bolster and enhance your own success. You might be surprised at the self-destructive power of the first, and the achievement that can be brought on by the latter, not to mention the self-esteem and attraction created by that achievement!


I got a call from a man who thought he had a problem, but really doesn’t, unless it’s a memory problem. He’s apparently forgotten who he is!


I didn’t get to take the call, but my publisher said that he was about fifteen years older than his wife, who had recently gone through some self-improvement and suddenly had the attention of a bunch of younger men. He described himself as physically fit, pleasant-looking, etc., and my publisher described him as articulate, intelligent, and outgoing and very personable. So what’s his problem?


The sudden spike in the attention others pay his wife has left him feeling a bit insecure. He’s feeling like he’s competing with men who are young enough to be his sons, maybe even his grandsons, and it has made him question his attractiveness. In addition, he’s been wrapped up in some work issues and is concerned that his wife may succumb to the temptations these younger men put before her.


What he’s forgotten is that it’s not him that has changed, it’s her. She has straightened her act up and brought herself more to his level of attractiveness. That’s a good thing, because her improved self-confidence will make her feel sexier and more playful, and enhance their intimacy. However…


If he lets himself be challenged by these younger men and responds by feeling competitive and resentful, he will lose the attractiveness of his intellect, self-confidence, personality, wit, etc., and begin appearing to his wife as an over-the-hill wuss instead of the man she was striving to upgrade herself to please in the first place! After all, these young men are only competition if he acknowledges them as worthy to compete.


The answer? Simple! Celebrate her success with her, and laugh at all the young bucks chasing her. She’s old enough to know that what they’re after isn’t a wife and children, and if he celebrates her success with her and shows her off instead of acting insecure about her new attractiveness, that confidence will spark desire in her like little else can.


Such action says to the young suitors, “You’d better grow a little before you try to climb into THIS ring, Junior.” And as always, his wife will follow his lead. It also expresses trust, saying to her, “Yes, I see you, I’m proud of you, and I know you love me and will stay with me because we’re both worth it,” where being insecure and treating her as though she might succumb to the advances of the youngsters forces her to ask if there is some reason that she should. It also expresses that he thinks that she cannot be trusted and might be swayed.


Ask any woman what they look for and especially respond to above all else in a man, and they’ll tell you: confidence. Not looks, not money, not power, not a fancy car or home. Confidence. Followed by a genuine smile. But, when they tell you, will you hear them?


If this man’s wife is like most women, she has told him repeatedly what she wants and expects from him, but like nearly all of us, he didn’t hear a word of it, because she didn’t say it as a man would say it. She said it as a woman would say it, and with good reason: She’s a woman! (Duh! LOL!) So he doesn’t hear it, and thinks she’s saying nothing and he therefore has to either read her mind or guess, and she thinks she’s being ignored – one of the oldest and most destructive stories in the relationship book.


She may even be telling him that he needn’t be worrying about these silly boys thinking they’ve fixed their sites on a “cougar,” (a mature woman who pursues much younger men, often young enough to be their son) that she finds them amusing and their compliments entertaining, even delightful, but not truly alluring. His non-responsiveness, of which she is totally unaware because she doesn’t know how differently men and women speak either, will be construed as weakness and push her exactly where he thinks she already is if he doesn’t straighten up pretty fast. Textbook example of a self-fulfilling prophecy, right?


Fortunately, he’s already purchased his copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and will be realizing all of this shortly when he reads and learns what he needs to know about both her and himself. His worst case scenario is that he may feel some subconscious insecurity triggered by the presence of these younger men until he comes to grips with the fact that he is not only their elder, but their better, especially in his wife’s eyes, and he’ll return to his confident, attractive self, then kick it up to notches previously unknown as he learns what makes women tick, what they want, and how understand them so well that they indeed think he can read their mind; he’ll be one of those rare guys who “just knows…”


A sagely word of advice: If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got. Horrible grammar, yes, but an entirely valid point. And you can do better, MUCH better, by going to http://www.makingherhappy.com/ and downloading your own copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," or you can continue doing what you’re doing. Unless you really like the way you’re feeling right now, you’d better get your mouse clicking!


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

Getting the Mix Right for a Great Relationship and Marriage

Building a great relationship isn’t a matter of an abundance of any one big thing; there is no “magic spell” or “magic bullet” that’s going to instantly put you over the top. But that’s a good thing, because the alternative is creating a mixture of more common, attainable things, and any man can do that, IF he knows what goes into the mix!

Before we get started, check out this news article on the current state of divorces, counseling, etc., as influenced by current economic conditions. It’s downright scary to see how many people are unhappily stuck together because they think they can’t afford divorce or even counseling!

One thing that caught my eye in the article was how these people who seek counseling because of the expense of divorce are looking at $1,000 or more for 10 or more sessions. Most of my readers never need counseling, and the few who opt for it have never required more than a session or two, often only a half-hour. Un-freaking-believable. I was flamed on the Divorce Busters’ web site by some guy who said that he was a counselor and was appalled because I gave specific advice. If it takes others ten sessions to get things on track and it takes me one, I can see why that might upset him. ;-)

By the way, in the end he ignored my advice to leave a woman who obviously had no love or respect for him, as evidenced by the way she chronically abused and demeaned him, because he found that by deceiving her, his situation became tolerable, and that in his estimation, deceit was the key to a happy relationship. I didn’t bother responding out of respect for the owner of the web site, Michelle Weiner-Davis, PhD. She tries to help people, while this guy was just looking for validation of his mistakes instead of a solution.

Getting into today’s lesson, as many of you already know, one of my acquired talents and favorite achievements is that of being a chef. The fact is I’m a “very alpha male” and therefore not only a leader, but also a consummate do-it-yourselfer, the most secure route to the independence that every alpha male demands, and a man who loves good food as much as I do needs to be able to create it at will, because unless you live in New York City, there are more places to get an average or bad meal than there are to get a good one.

(As a quick aside, New Yorkers are probably the only people on this planet that I envy as a whole, because in my experience, you just can’t find a bad meal in New York City. I’ve literally had better food from a NYC street vendor’s cart than I’ve had at restaurants in other places. A bad restaurant isn’t going to survive very long in a densely populated city with commercial real estate prices and rental rates as high as they are there. If you love good food, a vacation there is worth the stay just for the food!)

Getting back on topic, I was making omelets for breakfast this morning (“guy omelets,” loaded with pizza sauce, cheese, pepperoni, mushrooms, etc. – use your favorite pizza toppings!), and it hit me how much has to be just right for the eggs to set right, and how that equated to a relationship.

If you add too much water or milk, they don’t hold together and you’ll end up with runny scrambled eggs. If you let the mixture reach too high a temperature by leaving it in the pan too long, the proteins “spasm” and force all the water out of the eggs, giving you rubbery lumps sitting in water. Too much heat quickly will cause them to scorch and burn. Like baking anything that turns into a set foam (omelet, cake, biscuits, etc.), it’s a matter of chemistry and physics, and you have to have the right amount of everything to make it perfect, and getting close will get you something very good.

It’s the same way with relationships. Think about the things required to keep a woman happy:

You need to be sensitive to a woman’s emotional condition and have good communications skills, but if you over apply either you end up being treated like a girlfriend.

You need to project a strong leader-like personality, but if you cross the line and come off as controlling, you’re toast!

You need to have a good sense of humor and know how to have fun and make her laugh, but if you do it too often, you’re an over-aged adolescent clown, not “her dream guy who can be so much fun and makes her laugh when she feels bad.” (She really will get bored with too much comedy.)

You need to project self-respect and groom and dress in a manner that does so, but if you go too far with that, especially if you go “metrosexual,” you become conceited, fussy, spend more on skin and hair care products than she does, and you’re fun to shop with but nothing else (GIRLFRIEND AGAIN!), not to mention getting all the attention that she wants when the two of you go out.

You need to be a friend and companion, but if you take that too far, you become “just friends,” and a “nice guy,” somebody she wants to watch a chick-flick with, not somebody she wants to have come into the house, sweep her off her feet, and ravish her. Just another relationship for her to have to manage, and women manage a lot of relationships, actively. And, regrettably, you’ll also be someone who can’t stand up to her, and hence, in her eyes, someone who can’t stand up FOR her.

There are a lot of people touting a lot of ways to instantly get results, and as men, we tend to try to make each thing we hear about be that one magic thing we’ve been missing to make everything wonderful again. We heard women wanted a man to be “nice” and “sensitive” back in the 1980’s. We gave up on being the men that our fathers taught us to be and started being wimps who cried in front of their women while watching a movie.

What they wanted was for us to be real men, treat them as someone we liked (nice) instead of taking all their money and beating them up and then leaving them for one a little younger, and to be emotionally aware enough know that there would be times when they would be upset for no apparent reason, and other times when they needed to talk to somebody, and that busting through the door yelling “I’m home! Where’s my damned dinner?” wasn’t going to work out very well for anyone involved.

You don’t need to know every little thing there is to know about women, but there are some things that you do need to know if you ever want to be happy with one or more of them. And there again, it’s not just one thing you’ll need to know about, but a mix of things: compatibility, communications, emotions, mentality, needs, wants, and reactions, just to name the big ones. And then you need to throw into that mix everything that makes the women in your life (wife, daughters, sisters, friends, wives of friends, coworkers, wives of coworkers – there are probably a lot more women in your life than you realize) individuals, their idiosyncrasies that will endear you to them if you notice and appreciate.

With all these “mixes” going on, it sounds like you need a HUGE cookbook, doesn’t it?

Well, no, you don’t, and no, I’m not going to drop that “recipe for a happy marriage” cliché on you. However, you do need to learn a few things because there are several aspects of your relationship that you need to master and manage.

But! That’s not to say that you need a dozen books on psychology, several on communication, a few on seduction, a bunch on female physiology and sexual technique, one on women’s history, etc. Yeah, that’s a mixture, too, but it’s a whole lot of overkill, and quite frankly, since a lot of women think they want things that they really respond to quite negatively, it’s also going to be pretty confusing.

There is an answer for you, though. It’s not a freebie, but you can easily afford it, no matter what you’re situation. It’s not a magic pill, but it’s a regimen you can easily swallow. It’s not likely to turn your life upside down overnight, but some of my readers have stopped their divorces cold within less than a week of receiving it, and over the course of several weeks after that put things back on track and then went on to make them better than they’ve ever been.

Some are going more slowly, taking a few months, because sudden change just isn’t in them (you know, the detail-oriented sort who take the time to check and double-check and study everything before taking action), but even if you are one of those people, what’s two or three months compared to extending your marriage as much as thirty or forty years, and making it a great marriage instead of a trap that sucks the life out of you?

Or worse, what are two or three months compared to the years you might continue to be unhappy and/or alone, or stuck with the wrong person, if things continue the way they’re going? Not much, not much at all. Let’s see, three months study and self-improvement for 30 years of happiness. That’s a 12,000% return, and unlike the stock market, you’re in total control of whether that investment pays off, because it’s based on choices you make and actions you take, not the choices and actions of others. And I don’t even want to try to compute the percentage gain if you only have to spend the two to four hours required to read the book and hit the ground running!

Your answer is at http://www.makingherhappy.com/. It’s called "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and from what my readers and I have seen, it has that which will cure what ails your relationship, if you do nothing more than read and apply it. Don’t tell anybody I told you so, but just between us, it’s a whole lot of fun, so get to it now, before you do another thing!

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

The Most Important Skills in Building, Maintaining, or Saving a Relationship or Marriage, Part 1

A reader writes about his success and discoveries in reviving his marriage in the post-affair situation that many of you have written me about. Do yourself a big favor and learn from him…

I love letters like the ones I’m about to share with you. They prove just how much a guy with genuine desire, a little courage, and the right information can accomplish.

The following is a partial transcript of several e-mails that have passed back and forth between Mark and me today. He inspired a few noteworthy remarks from me, but his insight and achievement are the real stars today. This is really long, so I’m going to break this up over the next couple of days to keep from overloading your schedule. Join us now…

David,

Well I've been subscribing to your newsletter for a couple of months and bought your e-book, but I was really having some trouble putting your ideas to work. You see I had let my marriage get to a point that my wife was bored enough to have an affair. We've fought our way back from the brink and through your help I could see that I needed to take action, but I just couldn't figure out how to do it. So the other night I figure I'm going to make my wife notice that I'm different.

We're sitting on the bed watching TV and I just think I have to do something right now! So I sit up and lean over and look very serious. And I say, "you know, there's something that I've always wanted to do to you in bed." The look on her face was priceless. I could tell she thought that I was about to suggest some kind of sexual act and she obviously didn't want to play. But instead I grabbed the pillow and smacked her over the head with it and yelled "pillow fight!"

Talk about fun, we spent a couple of minutes rough housing on the bed and laughing so hard we woke up the kids. She was so surprised that her mood completely changed from somber to happy. This led to us having all kinds of fun that night. So I am totally getting the cocky and fun aspect of what you suggest.

The only thing that I am having trouble with at this time is that I am a stay-at-home dad. I am in the process of changing that but I'm still a couple of months out from getting the necessary training I need to get back to work. What specific ideas could you suggest for me to keep my wife attracted while I go through this transition?

Thanks,
Mark

My reply:

Hi Mark!

The pillow fight was a masterful move, so you're really getting it. That kind of fun is what makes intimacy happen, especially when you initiate it. And you can turn it up a lot hotter than that, too.

For example, one reader’s wife is one of those women who have a compulsion to pick up anything you point at. He sets her up by dropping something in the floor, and later when she's in the vicinity, he looks over at it and says, "What's that?" When she bends over, he gives her a playful little pinch or swat on the behind, or some other kind of mildly sexual "gotcha" maneuver. She laughs and tries to act mad because he got her again and can't stop herself from laughing.

The thing is to dream up things that are fun for you and not somehow degrading, humiliating, or painful for her (which would kill the fun for her instead of making it happen). That has a two-fold benefit. First, it takes the pressure off of you because you're having fun and she's along for the ride, and second, a woman will go along with just about anything for fun as long as it isn't somehow disrespectful, painful, or downright scary.

Case in point, consider the "wedgie." If you do it just far enough for it to be called a wedgie and surprise her, or just gently snap the band on her panties when it's exposed as she bends over, it's a shock, and when she sees that naughty boy grin she can't help but to laugh, where if you pull hard on the wedgie you can hurt her, or if you give her elastic the extreme snap it might sting that sensitive skin to the point of pissing her off.

(By the way, that’s the reason most women don’t like having their bra straps snapped. It’s been done excessively, too hard, and disrespectfully, and they have bad memories associated with it. Once you’ve earned her trust by doing these other things in a way she finds fun and trusts you not to hurt or disrespect her, the bra straps become fair game, too, but make sure you earn that trust before going where she’s likely to have bad feelings from the past.)

Stunts like wedgies and snapping elastic are much more about insinuation than achievement; "I could have really burnt you up if I wanted to, but I didn't because I love you and want to have fun with you, not hurt you," is the underlying message. (Be careful about pulling hard on elastic with the intention of letting up to only a gentle snap as well, because sensitive skin or tissue in the breast or groin area can be hurt as much or more by the pull than the snap if you catch it just right.) And you can have a lot of fun and excite her with anything that conveys that message.

You may have caught the e-mail a few days ago in which a guy interrupted his wife's bratty rant by pulling her pants down and walking out of the room grinning. That works great if she's just in a bratty rant and not genuinely pissed about a legitimate issue, and as long as it's just you and her in the room. Change any one of those variables and it's an act of disrespect instead of fun.

And by the way, there's nothing wrong giving her a playful nip on the breast or neck or something when nobody's looking, either. The earlier in the day you put a sexual thought in her head, the more she'll stew on it through the day and the easier it will be to ramp her up to the point where she's ripping your clothes off of you at bedtime. As you read in my book, anticipation is the name of the game, remember?

As for your home situation, it's not so difficult as you might think. Being a provider is part of the biological trigger equation, but so is being a protector, and being fun, intelligent, self-respectful, etc. If you get anxious and depressed about not having a job, it will have a negative impact.

If you treat your training as a job, and get excited about the training and the job prospects, that attitude and confidence will come across as heroic, and build trust and intimacy, not to mention be exciting to your wife. Women like to live vicariously through other people at times because it provides an emotional lift, and if she sees you striving heroically through a career change, it excites her and makes her feel safe.

In contrast, if you get insecure and anxious about it, you become a high-maintenance problem like a girlfriend and her confidence in you drops like a rock. You also point out how at the moment you are not a provider, but a dependent, and that’s really bad in the attraction equation. So in short, as long as you go through that transition with confidence and continue to look forward to success and remain fun and dedicated in the meantime, you're golden.

Just keep the communications lines open so that she gets an occasional taste of your confidence and excitement. Answer her questions with real answers instead of just "okay," or "It's going well," and then shutting up.

Give her a few details of things that you're learning and things you're excited about -- not verbose descriptions of technical processes that will bore the hell out of her, but stuff like, "I learned how to operate such-and-such today, and it was tough, but I enjoyed it. I'm getting really excited about this."

If it's not enough, she'll ask you specific questions, and if it is enough, she'll say something like she's happy for you that pretty obviously moves toward a new subject. And by the way, best wishes for whatever it is you're pursuing...

Take care, and keep in touch!
David

Mark’s reply to this advice carries some insights and reports of further success and experimentation that you will not want to miss tomorrow, so don’t. But let’s take a closer look at this and make sure you catch the most important parts of today’s lesson.

First, women love to play just as much as we do, and sometimes I suspect that it’s more than we do, but I don’t have any way to objectively measure it. They can get just as wild, crazy, bold, raunchy, and irreverent as any man, given the right circumstances. They don’t tolerate disrespect any more than we do, and pain isn’t any more fun for them than it is for us. Don’t be afraid to be yourself; if you go too far, switch gears fast and find a new way to play. Don’t dote and start apologizing all over yourself.

If you do trip over some hot button that you didn’t and couldn’t have known existed, apologize, once, not many times like a wuss would, cuddle her up and tell her that you’re there to love and protect her, not to deliberately say or do anything to hurt her, and as soon as you feel her tension wane a bit, start back in on her with something else. You’ll find that “two steps forward, one step back” applies to a lot more than just attraction-building.

Second, take a close look at what I said about his career situation. That’s a general formula for dealing with any kind of adversity. If you act all distraught and whiney, you appear weak and feminine, and in the back of her mind, an alarm sounds that says, “Warning! Warning! Another drama queen to manage!” You lose man points, lots of them. And if you allow her to see you as a dependent instead of a partner, the clock starts running faster and faster as you move toward the point where she’s done with you.

But, if you keep the attitude that adversity creates opportunity, deal with the situation with an air of looking forward to success, and talk with her about how you see that success and your effort to reach it, you will inspire her to trust you and support you, possibly to a degree you would have never expected. Heroism is a form of romance, and when you take the heroic approach to dealing with adversity, you put your wife right in the middle of epic romance – an outstanding opportunity in the midst of adversity when you think about it.

It doesn’t take a whole lot to be the guy who pulls this off all his life with grace and very little conscious effort. A little knowledge will go a long way, knowledge about what women want, need and respond to, about how they communicate, and what flips on the fun, excitement and attraction switches. Sound like a lot?

Sure it does. It has all our life. We grew up hearing the story about the genie who thought it would be easier to build a bridge from Los Angeles, California to Hawaii than to tell the man who’d rubbed the lamp what makes women tick, or what women really want, depending on which version of the joke you hear. Apparently I’m a lot smarter than that genie, because I did it in 118 pages, not with the help of a genie, but of a whole bunch of women and their men.

When you want to learn something, you go to the source, plain and simple. I went to the source, learned everything they could teach me, translated it into man-speak, and gave it to their husbands to test on them. There were some discrepancies where the women thought they wanted things and didn’t like it when they got them – the old “be careful what you wish for” scenario. But we got it all ironed out and on paper, so to speak.

Actually, it’s in an Adobe PDF file, called "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and you can download it right now at http://www.makingherhappy.com/ if you want to be one of us guys who knows all that mysterious stuff about women that you’re not supposed to know – and your wife or girlfriend WANTS DESPERATELY for you to know. Give it a shot, and in a couple weeks you’ll be writing me letters about success instead of sitting there in front of that computer wishing you had a success to write about.

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

Getting It Done, No Matter What "IT" Is, Is Great for Your Relationship and Marriage

There are all sorts of things that create or kill attraction, both in dating and in committed relationships and marriage. In dating, unpredictability is wildly attractive, but in a committed relationship, while unpredictability is attractive to a degree (and under several unsurprising constraints), it is far surpassed by…

When I was growing up, I was constantly hammered about character, especially in terms of doing what you say you will do when you say you will do it. "Do what you say you'll do, perform as if somebody is watching even when they aren't, shake hands with a firm grip, look people in the eye when speaking or listening, always be on time no matter what, hold your head up and speak clearly. That's what a man does, Son. He respects himself and is respected because of it." The lesson “took,” too, so much so that while I hold nobody to a higher standard than I hold myself, incompetence and tardiness are nearly intolerable to me.

When you keep your promises consistently, no matter how large or small they are, it creates the one form of predictability that actually enhances attraction. Normally, predictability equates to boredom for women, and unpredictability in a man provides a never-ending chain of surprises and delights. However, doing what you say you will do in a timely manner, being on time for appointments and dates, and keeping people apprised of changing schedules when circumstances beyond your control do make keeping a scheduled appointment or milestone impossible is a hallmark of good character, personal strength, self-respect, and leadership, the combination of which is the hallmark of strong, heroic alpha male behavior that women find so irresistible.

In addition to projecting that crucial image of trustworthy, competent leadership, in this day and age, you’re also distinguishing yourself from the vast majority of other people as special, because incompetence and lackadaisical attitude has become so prevalent that while we don’t like it, most of us have come to expect incompetence, lack of commitment, and tardiness from the majority of people and businesses we deal with daily. Showing your partner that you are one of us rare men who get things not just done, but done well, and on time every time makes her feel as if she has the “catch of the county,” and when you do anything that tweaks and satisfies a woman’s sense of competitiveness, you’re making magic.

Another thing you must see is that even the most secure women want a man to make them feel “safe,” that is emotionally, physically, and financially (not so much that she will be “kept” as just being plain responsible, especially with debt-management and retirement planning), and showing such self-respect, leadership, and character marks you as a man into whom she can invest her emotions, energy, and life without fear of becoming one of the horror stories that other women are telling. You’ve heard the stories they tell, stories of men who falsely promised love to get sex, hung around just long enough to spend the woman’s savings, acted like such a great guy until the first time he got mad or depressed and beat her, left her, or just got drunk and worthless and stayed that way. Being able to see you as a man who gets things done is one of those really big things that makes the difference between a guy who’s a fun date and a guy she’ll give anything to spend her life with.

If you find yourself unable to meet a lot of commitments, consistently tardy, or having things blow up in your face frequently, and it doesn’t bother you, wake up, because you’re bothering the hell out of the rest of us. However, if you are indeed concerned and just can’t seem to find the answer, the first step is to make sure you are looking in the right place. It’s not the system’s fault or everybody else’s, or for that matter anybody’s FAULT. Fault and blame are the tools that losers use to evade what you should be focused on, which is RESPONSIBILITY.

When you take responsibility for performing competently and being timely, you can look to yourself for the answer. Am I late because I’m overloading myself, or because I just wait until the last minute to start? Am I incompetent because I don’t know enough to do a good job, or because I’m ill-suited to the task, or because I dislike it so much that I really don’t want to do it at all? Just find out what it is that is causing the problem and fix it. For example…

No, wait. Before I give you an example, I’m going to very quickly answer the question that has some of you scratching your head: “Why is it so important to be timely?” Because when you keep people waiting, you are wasting THEIR life, in addition to your own. It’s bad enough when you can’t respect yourself enough to do what you say you’ll do, but when you tie somebody else up by being late when you had the ability and the choice available to you to be on time, you’re disrespecting them, and interfering with their ability to achieve what they have on their schedule in a timely fashion. Look past the end of your nose and realize that your attitude and actions can have a negative impact on the lives of others that they have not earned, and minimize it. Otherwise, you make people want to disassociate from you at best, and beat you severely at worst – not exactly the formula for attraction, huh?

Now, for your examples…

If your wife is always riding you because the yard work is getting put off, ask yourself why it’s being put off. Is your schedule too over-loaded? Do you have arthritis or something else that makes it painful? Or something that makes it irritating, like a grass allergy? Is it just much lower on your priority scale than on hers and you never make it down that far on the list? If the cause is something that you can’t remedy yourself, then hire it out. If it is something you can remedy, like with a “riding mower” to overcome arthritis or a surgical mask and antihistamines to overcome allergies, do it. If you just hate doing it, then see if you can trade that chore with your wife or somebody else who does enjoy it for something that you enjoy doing that they aren’t good at or don’t like. Barter is the oldest form of trade, and the oldest form of cooperative problem-solving.

We do that at my house. I hate yard work. I don’t mind the labor, and I love being outside. The repetitiveness is boring, I have a grass pollen allergy, and it reminds me too much of the farm work I did as a child that I hated, which in turn wasn’t because it was hard work, but because it kept me from extra-curricular activities. Yes, it’s an “issue,” and maybe one that I could deal with better, but I don’t have to deal with it, because my wife loves to do yard work.

She likes repetitive tasks, likes being outdoors, and enjoys the fresh air and the smell of freshly cut grass. I’m an exceptionally-skilled chef, and I do all the cooking, which she doesn’t like to do. That’s not to say that I don’t help with an outdoor project, like setting a flower bed or building a planter, or that my wife doesn’t occasionally cook. We’ve each traded the ongoing responsibility for the timely completion of tasks that we deem as chores for the responsibility of the timely completion of tasks that we deem as fun and enjoyable.

The bottom line is that there is always a way to handle whatever comes up, if you just use your head and think it through instead of letting your emotions interfere or letting problems just fester unattended. And, when you handle things as they come up, meet your commitments in terms of both outcome and schedule, it builds your self-esteem and you are seen and appreciated by everyone else as a man’s man. It’s also an especially effective turn-on for the woman in your life, the kind that she will not only appreciate, but nurture and defend (but if it just stopped the nagging it would be great, right? LOL! Just kidding!)

Guys, there are a lot of small, simple things that you can do to spice up and strengthen your relationship that on the surface may not even seem to have any bearing on it, things that you should be doing for your own sake, or that of your business. When you understand your partner’s needs, both by knowing all you can know about female mental and emotional mechanisms and learning how to effectively communicate with her so that you can learn her individual needs as well, you can take a sub-mediocre relationship to rock solid and hotter than nine kinds of hell in a matter of weeks or even days, as many of my readers have, provided that the two of you are just fairly compatible and have a positive basis for the relationship.

(Having been through a shared trauma like an unwanted pregnancy, tornado, or a hostage situation and getting married in a fit of passion just because you survived it together without any common values, common priorities, etc., does not make for “fairly compatible” partners.)

What do you need to proceed?

Just some solid, tested and proven information like I’ve included in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage." It worked for the 118 couples in the test group during its development, and if it’s not working for anybody who’s using it now, they’ve not told me. I get letters daily with success stories from readers, and in fact, here’s one that just arrived as I was getting this newsletter ready to post:

David,

Thank you so much for your newsletters and your e-book.

I have to say that you have helped me more than you could know. I started reading your book when things in my marriage went south. I was unable to salvage that relationship, due mostly to my spouse's issues rather than mine. I was in extreme wussy mode towards the end of my marriage and have made great strides in removing that mentality from my existence.

I have since entered into another relationship and have put into practice many of the things that you suggest. My new lady friend has made comments to me such as "I really like your self esteem" - "everyone says you’re a nice guy, but there is a naughty side to you too" and other comments along this line.

I have caught myself at times slipping into wussy mode and have kicked myself out of it. Your teachings have helped me not only in this relationship but with myself in general. I can't thank you enough.

Sincerely,
Steve

I often share readers’ letters when they hold a lesson for the rest of you and can be conveyed while maintaining the reader’s privacy, and this one just happened to pop up saying something you needed to hear, that a real guy with real problems took this ball and ran with it, and he’s happy now. You’re welcome to peruse my newsletter archive at your leisure at the address below for other testimonials and lessons, as well as download my free reports and put them to work for you right now. But…

Your best move right now is to go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and get your copy of this instantly downloadable e-book, "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and get started, because it works, and you should never put off until tomorrow the success and happiness that you can have today. That’s how a real man lives, getting it done when it’s there to do and moving on, happily, not stressing about what he’s going to do next.

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

Firing a Bad Partner from Your Relationship or Marriage

What do you do when a romantic partner or life partner shows you that they are a detriment to your life and instead of supporting you and growing with you, want to destroy you as they destroy their self? This is a dark subject, and probably the darkest edition of this newsletter I have written, but it’s one you won’t want to miss, no matter how happy you are, because it has relevance -- and possibly purpose – in every part of each of our lives.

This is a sad day for me, because I have to “fire” a reader for the first time. That’s right. There is a reader who is such a loser with such a defeatist attitude that he refuses to be helped, and I can no longer afford the time and energy to try to help someone who so obviously doesn’t want to be helped. However, rather than sit and lament, I’m going to turn it into a relationship lesson so that all the rest of you may learn something from this experience.

My policy is to not reprint letters without the permission of the writer, a courtesy that I have not seen anyone else practice on any other newsletter, but I am going to reprint part of this reader’s letter today and give him a fake name, because loser or not, I’ll not violate his privacy or anyone else’s. In fact, the fake name I’m going to give him is simply “Loser,” not because he disagrees or asks questions, but because he’s too busy denying anything could work for him to try anything or listen to the answers to his questions. People like this, in any part of your life, are a drag and a drain. Here’s an excerpt from his letter:

Hello again, David,

As usual, I can’t see why you think that this could possibly work to any productive purpose. Why should I go through the trouble of faking a “naughty boy” act for a women to get her to like me better, or try any of this other stuff you keep harping about? Even if this stuff does work for some buff young stud muffin, why would I think this would work for me, being overweight, middle-aged and balding? If all you experts have so much wonderful advice to give, why isn’t everybody happy? If your advice is so good, why don’t you send it to me and let me pay you for it after it works for me instead of making me ask you for a refund?

(Several more paragraphs of self-defeating negativity omitted here to spare you…)

Loser

I sent him the following direct response:

Dear Loser,

As of today, you have been on my mailing list for 22 days. On 17 of those 22 days, you have e-mailed me stating that nothing I’ve recommended could possibly work, yet asking me for a free copy of my book. Listen up, because this is the last free advice or other favor I’m going to waste my time giving you:

You’re attitude isn’t that of an achiever, or even a skeptic or a pessimist; it’s truly that of a loser. You’re insecure about being unattractive because of your increasing age, weight, and hair-loss, and rather than taking the achiever’s path of looking for a solution, you’re taking the coward’s path of looking for confirmation that you’re hopeless and therefore can’t be expected to do any better so you won’t have to try.

I’m not going to apologize for being blunt about this, because the 17 letters I’ve already sent you to try to help you see, among other things, that I am middle-aged, overweight, and losing my hair yet quite happy have produced nothing but frustration for either of us – for me, because you don’t want to improve, and for you, because I won’t be your enabler and confirm for you that any effort you might make would be wasted.

I however, will waste no more effort with you; I’ve spent more than a full work-day trying to help you see that you can be attractive to your wife and everyone else, and you refuse to even try to listen or understand, let alone try to do anything to make it happen. I have removed you from my mailing list, and ask that you don’t reinsert your name unless and until you decide that you want some help being more than what you are instead of confirmation that “not good enough is good enough.”

In short, your fired, and if you don’t get off your butt and realize that you can make a change and can lead a productive and happy life by doing nothing more than changing your attitude to that of a man and doing what comes natural afterwards, your wife and employer will likely be considering the same action. My list of readers is for achievers, heroes, and winners, not cowards, whiners, or losers.

Sincerely,
David Cunningham

Folks, there are several lessons here. First, I hope it’s crystal clear that nothing I did or said was done to punish this man; I was indeed trying to help him, and spent a little over nine hours reading and writing to him to try to get him up on his feet and get him moving. I counsel, coach, and consult for $130-$450 per hour, depending on the project and expertise required, and have plenty of work with plenty of customers, so I don’t need a $39 book sale bad enough to work one hour for it, let alone over nine, and I really wanted to see the guy develop some self-esteem and accomplish something.

Doom, gloom, laziness, and cowardice are insidious foes that can slowly creep into the lives of the best of people when they are having a weak moment, and slowly erode their self-esteem until there is nothing left of them. It can happen so slowly that you never see it happen, rather like the frog who would jump if dropped into a pot of boiling water but would lie still and boil to death if placed in cool water and slowly heated on the stove until it boiled.

I sincerely hope that if I started exhibiting this behavior, there would be someone around to call it to my attention and give me a chance to recognize and correct it. That is why I said what I said. I said it bluntly as men must have it to take it seriously, yet also left the door open for him to return if and when he gets his mind and attitude right and is fit to participate in any kind of self-improvement instead of blocking his e-mail address.

That is the second lesson. When somebody wants help and is willing to participate in it, go for it if you can afford to and want to, but you cannot allow someone, no matter what kind of plea they make to you, to dump their problems on you and expect you to fix it for them when they are not willing to be a part of the solution and work for it.

In a relationship, the most flagrant examples of this would be:

• The addict who won’t stop using…(right Larry?)

• The abuser who won’t seek help to address the problems that make them abusive…(right Mike, Gene, and Warren?)

• The liar who would endure ten times the repercussions of a lie rather than tell -- or face -- the truth…(Right Noel, Will, John, Jake, and Louis?)

• The self-validating self-deceiver who would spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on weight loss drugs and supplements and blame the drugs when they kept gaining weight because they also maintained a poor diet and didn’t exercise…(right Garrett, Boyd, Dallas, and David?)

• The chronic complainer who always has a gripe to express but never has a single word to say about anything they have actually tried or even would be willing to try to fix it... (right about a quarter of my mailing list?)

These kinds of people, no matter how they approach you, can do nothing but destroy your life if you let them, and you have to cut them off, even if you have made the mistake of marrying them, if you are ever to find true happiness. You can’t take responsibility for curing a problem they don’t want to cure.

Some would say that is a cruel attitude, but I submit that it is not cruelty but justice, as they are getting exactly what they have earned. It is also justice that if they should manage to turn their life around that you give them an opportunity to show they have achieved it. You should celebrate it with them if they have done so instead of holding an eternal grudge based on some ridiculous emotional idea like “they didn’t think me important enough to straighten up for me.”

People with problems fix their problems for themselves, and for nobody else, ever, under any conditions. That is the meaning of the old saying about leading a horse to water but not being able to make them drink. They will drink if and when they are thirsty, not when you tell them you want them to drink because you want to be that important to them that they would do it for you.

I started “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” with a set of guidelines and questions to help you evaluate yourself, your partner, and your relationship for that very reason. Love can’t happen and attraction doesn’t matter in the least if you are bound to a person that cannot allow their self or you to be happy. You must recognize such a person, whether it is you or your partner, before any progress toward fixing the problem can be made.

Whether something’s “a little off” or there’s a pool at your office in which people are betting on who in your relationship dies first and how, there’s help in identifying and fixing it in "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage." Download your copy today at http://www.makingherhappy.com.
In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

Why Nice Guys Finish Last in Relationships and Marriage, Part 4, Compromise and Sacrifice

Now for the most destructive of all “Nice Guy” traits, self-sacrifice…

Brace yourself, because I’m about to either open your eyes or piss you off royally. But a little excitement won’t hurt you either way.

The subject of self-sacrifice is always controversial because most people are very confused about the meaning of the word “sacrifice;” they often refer to choices they have made in “trade” as “sacrifice” without realizing it, and then get angry when somebody says, using the word “sacrifice,” that they did something wrong. Let me give you an example or two to make sure we’re on the same page before we move on.

Let’s say you meet a guy on a street corner, and it’s obvious that he’s homeless, penniless, and a drug addict; he’s wearing short sleeves, has visible needle track marks, and is in obvious withdrawal. You give him money, which he uses not for food, clothing, or shelter, but to buy more drugs and bring himself closer to the grave.

Now take that same situation, except instead of it being obvious that the man is a drug addict, it’s obvious that he’s hit tough times and trying to claw his way back up out of the hole. His clothes may be somewhat tattered, but they’re clean. He asks if you’ve heard of any available work. And he looks you in the eye when he speaks. You give him money, which he uses for food and a payphone to try to find a job.

The former is sacrifice, the latter is trade. In the former scenario, you are trading a marker of value, money, which is in turn a marker for some portion of your life that it took to obtain that money, for absolutely nothing. Nobody benefits, and that value is destroyed. In the latter, you are trading that value for the satisfaction of helping someone get back on his feet. There is something in it for you and the other guy. That is trade.

Now, let’s bring the situation closer to home. Some family member has a substance abuse problem (I use the example only because it’s easy to see the impact, not because I have an axe to grind), and you keep pouring money into rehabilitation clinics and medical bills, and in return they act abusively toward you, do not turn away from their substance abuse, and instead steal from you to buy more drugs from some people they met at the rehab clinic.

Or, same scenario, but the family member actively works to avoid the temptations to return to abuse, gets a job, builds self-esteem, and thanks you for helping them.

Again, the first scenario is sacrifice, the second is trade.

Now, let’s bring it to your relationship, and this time, instead of substance abuse, we’ll talk about love, or what many think is love, but will find out shortly is anything but. You pour all of your time and energy into catering to the wants, whims, needs, and desires of a woman who won’t give you the time of day. She has no respect for you, demonstrates no love for you, and no matter what you do, she complains that it isn’t enough. She is abusive, accusing, bitchy, and maybe even goes so far as to tell you that she’s going to see other men while you go to your job or watch the kids at home.

Yes, that’s sacrifice. And the more you heap upon her, the less she’ll respect you and appreciate it. (And by the way, women are about as likely to encounter this scenario with a man; there is no gender-bias here. I’m writing primarily to men so I use pronouns appropriate for writing to men, but ladies, this lesson applies equally to you.) There’s absolutely nothing positive in it for you.

But you love her, you say? Sorry, Buddy, but no, you don’t. To love is to value, and you cannot value someone who would treat you this way. True sacrifice has one cause: NEED. Even people who don’t know the difference between need and love will not feel compelled to make sacrifices unless they need the approval or acceptance of the other person. (For more on the relationship emotions of love, attraction, need, and lust, see my free “Break-Up Busting 101” report before you really screw yourself up.)

And we all know what comes when your relationship is based on need instead of love, right? Abuse, disappointment, frustration, and demise, because nobody wants to have a needy wuss suckling on their jugular vein.

You may have heard for all your life that good relationships are based on sacrifice, or compromise, and that’s utter crap. A relationship based on sacrifice destroys life, plain and simple. A relationship based on compromise puts two people who need to be cooperative partners in the position of score-keeping competitors whose satisfaction comes at the expense of the person who should be their partner. Compromise is how people deal with the shortcoming of a lack of compatibility, not how they express love. If you are compromising, or asking another to, you and your values are in conflict with the other’s, and this diminishes, not strengthens, love. If you find yourself at odds, you must resolve it with trade, not compromise, to truly resolve the situation, maintain respect and love, and flourish as a couple in the long term.

Good relationships are based on compatibility, cooperation, genuine love and active attraction. Incompatibility creates points of contention and competition, which makes cooperation difficult to impossible. The absence of love means the absence of friendship, loyalty, trust, and respect, among other things, all of which are required for intimacy of any kind, the condition that determines the depth and staying power of the relationship, and the satisfaction of being in it. And the absence of attraction creates boredom, the primary catalyst in dissolving any good relationship that ever was formed.

This isn’t theory or opinion, and isn’t something you can debate or choose to believe or disbelieve. It’s that kind of self-evident, in-your-face reality that you either use to make your life better or ignore at your own peril. Give your love, life, and energy only to someone who gives theirs to you in return, and if you find that you have joined yourself with a parasite, predator, user, abuser, or loser, realize that there is nothing about them to love, that you are seeking their acceptance or approval, validation, or some other such nonsense, or else you are a codependent in need of psychological help. Also realize that someone else’s approval is meaningless. The only approval in the world that matters at all is your own.

That should be a lot easier, should it not? To approve your own life and self instead of depending one someone else, who isn’t qualified to judge, to approve it for you? You might be shocked at how many people I hear from every day who cannot do it. And the nemesis that thwarts them every single time?

Guilt!

Guilt because they had a good childhood. Guilt because they worked their ass off and got a better job than somebody else who didn’t. Guilt because somebody important to them chose to get behind the wheel of a car while drunk and killed himself in a car crash or chose a military career and didn’t make it out alive. Some of it is guilt over things they’ve done and should have worked their way through and forgiven themselves for years ago, but most of it is guilt for things that not only have they not done and weren’t responsible for, they had no control over at all!

If you’re having issues like these, get over them, as fast as possible and at any expense necessary. Guilt will suck the life out of you like nothing else can, not to mention make you somebody that nobody else wants to be around, especially the woman living in your house (unless she’s a parasite or predator). Feeling guilty will never in your life make anyone else’s life better, will not make up for a mistake anyone, including yourself, has made, and will never result in you feeling like you’ve paid sufficient penance to feel good again. Resolve it, or die with it and be miserable until then. There is no other choice.

So there it is. Why “nice guys” finish last in relationships isn’t because they’re nice. It’s because they’re either grossly ignorant of the relationship emotions or grossly ignorant of what women perceive as truly “nice.” I can help you with both, and a whole lot more…

Start by going to http://www.makingherhappy.com and downloading your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and getting the real scoop on everything that you, as a man, need to know about women, which will enable you to quickly learn even the finest points to be learned about the woman you love.

And while you’re at it, grab my free “Break-Up Busting 101” report and get a fast head start on managing and preventing crisis in case you’re unwittingly making any major mistakes now, or turning crisis around if you’ve already stepped in crap. My free “What Women Really Want” report will do you a world of good, too.

Together, we can get you on the road to happiness, but you have to take that first step alone; I can open the door, but you have to walk through.

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

Why Nice Guys Finish Last, Especially in Relationships, Part 3, the Pedestal

Continuing our study, let’s look at the guy who puts a woman on a pedestal, unwittingly setting both of them up for disappointment.

Most of us have made this mistake at one time or another, and all too many make it every time they get into a relationship, or even try to get into one, for that matter. They put women on a pedestal.

(This is something that men have a terrible tendency to do with both their partner and their mother, both of whom are human and don’t want to be “deified,” and after you finish this lesson, I’d strongly suggest you also review this August 9, 2009 article on the subject to gain a more thorough understanding of how failure to recognize any woman’s human qualities inhibits your ability to enjoy their company.)

As cliché as this problem is, it’s all too common. But so is being a wuss and thinking that a woman likes that. So pay close attention and think with me here.

What happens when you put a woman on a pedestal? You create expectations that neither of you can live up to, and set both of you up for failure and disappointment. No woman is any more perfect than any man, yet you foment the idea that she is “pure,” “perfect,” etc. Have you given any thought to what happens in the case that she might actually start believing it?

The first thing that will happen is your social dynamics will change. She will no longer be looking for your leadership; she’ll be ordering you around. After all, you’ve made her into a goddess. She’s always right, you’re always wrong. She’s justified in doing anything, and you nothing. And she will start testing to see where her limits are, too, just like a child, looking for firm ground to stand on, so to speak.

And what happens when this goddess’ demands become unreasonable, then annoying and frustrating, and then downright maddening as she becomes more aggressive with her demands and less accountable for her actions?

How much respect could she have for you at that point? Or you have for yourself?

Then comes the inevitable failure to live up to being on that pedestal. She gets bored because she’s a goddess without a god to entertain and lead her, and then there’s an affair, or she leaves. Your “goddess” has sent you to the self-styled Hell of rejection, betrayal, and loneliness.

Women don’t want to be worshipped, Gentlemen, at least not for long, and not often, if ever. Loved, yes. Respected, yes. Made to feel special from time to time, absolutely. Shown that your commitment to your relationship with them is real and deep, you bet. But rather than worshipped, they prefer, and most importantly, RESPOND TO, being led, and treated as a partner, not a goddess. They can live up to being a partner, but they can no more live up to being a goddess than a soccer ball can – or you, even if you had the correct “plumbing.”

So again, what we’ve been taught is “nice” isn’t nice at all, for either of you, unless she’s a predator or parasite, in which case it’s nice for her for awhile, until she gets bored with you and sucks you dry, and then moves on.

So think about this, in earnest: What do you want in a woman? (Aside from your genitalia, of course!) Do you want a spoiled, abusive brat who eventually falls from the pedestal you place her on and breaks your heart after sucking the life out of you? Or do you want a loving partner to share your love and life with?

A no-brainer, right?

Then never again shall you put any woman on a pedestal. Here endeth the lesson…

Well, no, not quite. There’s a lot more to having a great relationship and marriage than keeping a woman at your side and off a pedestal. Do you have a solid foundation of compatibility? Do you have love? Can you create attraction? Can you communicate on her level and grow closer together? Can you make your differences complimentary instead of competitive, so that they are life-enhancing instead of an on-going source of conflict and problems?

All of those questions need answers, real answers, not assumptions, and certainly not opinions or theories. After all, your life together depends on them, as does your life as an individual to a great extent for as long as you’re in a relationship or marriage. Or had you thought of that?

There may be a lot you’ve not thought of, and a lot that you have thought of, heard and been told that is complete and utter crap. After all, if everybody had the answers, guys like me who enjoy our life and a great marriage wouldn’t be making a living providing them to you.

And not so obvious, yet more to the point, is that if the other people providing you answers had the answers to fix your problem, I would have never gotten into this project and this business, because I would have been able to use all the answers that I bought when I had problems instead of having to gather a research group together and find them on my own.

But I did, and fortunately for you, turned it into a book, one that you can have in the next minute or so if you go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download it. And one thing that is in that book that you’ll never see in these newsletters is probably the most important thing of all: the EASY WAY to make all this happen. So do yourself a huge favor. Click that link and get started on the path to being the man that every woman wants and that you’ll enjoy being.

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

Nice Guys Finish Last, Especially in Relationships and Marriage, Part 2 of 4, Neediness

In Part 2 of our study of “Nice Guy” mistakes, neediness, which comes in a lot of flavors that you may not even realize are a problem.

I was afraid this topic was going to be met with resentment and denial, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how many confessions and turnarounds I’ve read today, so we’re definitely going to stick with it.

It’s pretty easy to spot the needy wuss who constantly sucks up to women trying to gain their favor, that is unless you’re one of those poor lost souls who think that love and need are the same thing, in which case you need to download my free “Break-Up Busting 101” report and study the section on “Love, Need, Attraction, and Lust” before continuing or this isn’t going to make a bit of sense to you. But what about “covert” or hidden neediness?

Oops! Didn’t think about that one, did you? Neediness doesn’t have to be that begging, groveling, in-your-face-whining nonsense to get on somebody’s nerves. Have you ever expected a woman to know your needs and respond to them without you having to say anything, and then been hurt and pissed off when she didn’t?

Since we’re guys, I’ll use the most obvious guy example, lying in the bed at night wanting sex and not initiating it because “she should just know that you’re a man and need it.” If you’ve done this, and then got angry or hurt when she went to sleep because you didn’t act interested enough in her to give her a reason to participate, let alone come on to you, you’re guilty of something I’ve heard called “passive neediness.” And you need help.

The same thing goes for finances, planning for the future, time off for a sporting event, or anything else. If you don’t make your goals, ambitions, needs and desires known, preferably by somehow stating or demonstrating that you want something instead of asking permission for it, you have no right to expect anybody to know or respond to what’s only in your head.

Women are quite good at picking up on signals, body language, etc., but they’re far from psychic, at least most of them are! LOL! Seriously, they’re no more capable of reading our minds than we are of reading theirs. And besides, your job is to take the lead in anything that she doesn’t actively and aggressively take the lead in herself (which most of you will see infrequently, if ever, once you start leading because women are much more social than we are and generally invite participation and cooperation rather than jumping straight into a commanding role if there is a known leader around, but you’ll know it if and when you see it).

The good news is that women are generally more than just comfortable following a leader, they enjoy watching the spectacle of a man being manly. They enjoy seeing a man act like he has a pair of gonads and going after what he wants (as long as it doesn’t grossly oppose what they want, of course). And as a sort of corollary to yesterday’s rule, “if you can’t stand up WITH and TO a woman, you can’t stand up FOR her,” if you can’t go after what you want, you can’t support her in getting what she wants, either.

And no, what I’m saying isn’t “politically correct,” but it’s reality, and we have to face it and live with it, no matter how badly you may want it to be different; human biology isn’t going to bend to your will any more than it is mine or anybody else’s. One of the women in my family is a staunch feminist, even somewhat of an activist, and even she confesses that when she’s around a strong male personality it excites her, often to the point of “lubrication” and fantasizing.

So the bottom line is that if you don’t expect women to be psychic you won’t have to be disappointed and go through that most annoying passive-aggressive bit that “passively needy” men go through when they try to avoid mentioning their needs to keep from appearing “selfish” and get hurt when nobody reads their mind and responds. Communicate, in a way that is proper to a man, and get either what you want or a good reason why you can’t get it.

And before you think, “Well, that means I have to just ask for sex,” NO, it most certainly doesn’t. That may be communicating, but it’s merely communicating neediness. Nor do you just tell a woman, “It’s time for sex because I need it.” That’s about as absurd as asking for it. You play, tease, withdraw, re-engage, and keep her on the edge of pouncing on you so that when the two of you are finally alone in the evening and you slip an arm around her waist and pull her up close for a kiss, the flood gate opens and she’s all over you.

What you communicate is that you are a man, that you know your place in the grand order of things, as well as hers, and that you know that asking for sex isn’t going to make it happen any more than dropping your pants and blurting, “Ya wanna?” the instant she acts like she might be the least bit interested, as if that constitutes foreplay. You communicate with your actions, not words, that you know what her needs are and that you are going to satisfy her as she satisfies you.

Oops! That takes confidence, huh? And communication skills, too, right? And in a lot of cases it’s also going to take knowing a few things about women’s needs, too, because they can sometimes be at odds with our own, requiring a little finesse to gain their cooperation. Well, so much for that idea… ;-)

I couldn’t even type that with a straight face! I’m glad I didn’t have to say it aloud or I’d have choked on the laughter. Of course you can gain all those things, in abundance, and take the much easier route to getting what you want, the route proper to a man instead of to an addled schoolboy. The reason you’re not doing it now is NOT because you can’t, it’s because you DON’T KNOW ANY BETTER!

But ignorance – not knowing – is an easily treatable condition. It just takes knowledge. It’s apathy – not caring – and stupidity – the failure to think rationally – that kills most men’s ability to live a good life. And if you were stupid or didn’t care, you wouldn’t be here, right?

So here’s what you do: Go to http://www.makingherhappy.com/ and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and learn what you need to know to be nice while still being a man that a woman can love, respect, and be excited to be around. Sweeping a woman off her feet doesn’t require being abusive or a “bad boy” any more than it requires kissing her behind and groveling before her. It just requires that you know what is truly proper to live as a man and a little more about women than you do now.

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

Feeling Guilty or Apologizing for Being a Man Is Unnatural, and Kills Your Relationship or Marriage

An advertising copywriter’s take on the idea of feeling guilty or apologizing for being a man, and that idea’s impact on both men and women, is both revealing and instructive. Take heed…

Many of you might remember the “King Arthur” contest we did. One of the winners of the contest is an advertising copywriter, someone who writes the copy for direct sales letters like those you get in the mail and the main page on my web site, and we’ve been working together on an overhaul of my web site as something that will help us both in a lot of ways, including improved advertising copy for me and a deeper understanding of both copywriting and women and relationships for him, a true win-win situation.

We were looking at the concept of men, influenced by the politically correct crowd, feeling guilty and apologizing for being men and having our natural, biological tendencies (which incidentally are the very things that trigger curiosity, intrigue, and ultimately attraction in the female subconscious). I told him to look at the use of “feeling guilty for” versus “apologizing for” as a sort of exercise, and what he came back with in his analysis is even more relevant to proper male attitude than it is to the ad copy, and demands sharing with all of you. Meet my good friend and fellow copywriter, Dave:

*********************************************
Okay. Playing this out, I get the following feelings: I think of being guilty as a place I'm in when I've made a mistake. I did something wrong. Whether by accident or intention, I still made the mistake; hence I need to apologize for it. Guilt is about something that's wrong, apologizing is for admitting it and moving on. However, this brought up another, much bigger issue:

Being a man is who we are. Feeling guilty about being a man is an attack on our very nature and according to popular culture, the only way to overcome that is by changing yourself into some kind of metrosexual and being another girlfriend to your wife. It stinks of propaganda on a large scale – "Social Engineering" to diminish the power instincts in men? Why should being what nature or "evolution," whether you agree with it or not, determined to be our absolute best survival skills as a species, be apologized for?

That should be a line or turned into a paragraph in the copy as a supportive and illustrative example of how we are being "engineered" towards something we naturally aren't and it's time we woke up. Even if it doesn’t sell anything, it’s still a congruent, factual and provable message that every man on Earth needs to hear. They should be asking themselves whether the "delicious personal fusion" is being drained from our way of life by a bunch of politically correct, societal pool cleaners, and finding that idea totally unacceptable.

For us to feel guilty about being men, at some point we bought the line that what we feel natural and comfortable doing is not what women want. Being confident, secure about who we are, taking a leadership role because it is instinctual had to be abandoned, even though it went against every fiber of our being, which somebody should have taken as a huge red flag that this was a bad idea, since our species’ population was expanding, not contracting, at the time. Simply, we bought the idea that being a man and acting like a man is somehow wrong, a mistake needing correcting, and if we get too strong, we should be ready to apologize for your error. What utter crap!

I think your newsletter today even hints at this fallacy in a very subtle way because women who have "take me now you hunk" fantasies love and respond to the power and submission aspects because it frees them to really dig into their most basic nature as well, instead of having to play the prim and proper little vessel of purity that they’ve been programmed to be (which is more utter crap).

It’s sort of like throwing off the shackles of conditioning to be free, even if it’s once in awhile, because there are so many ways to explore having fun together otherwise, but usually in fairly defined roles that don't always require letting it all go. Like a vacation from who we "have" to be, to who we have a fantasy about being, which in truth, is who we REALLY are to start with after you flush away all the programming. One of the fantasies my ex had was us running down the beach totally unclothed with no one around and gettin' with it whenever we felt like it. Being free...as men and women were eons ago, after we realized we were men and women and before some demagogue told us that there was something wrong with it.

We grow up as boys with an instinct to tease and play with girls as long we can be the leaders and choosers on how the game is played. It's amazing how easily I got girls to do things for me other boys couldn't because I simply defined the terms of the game and they responded big time. Now that's food for thought! LOL! Even when we did things they knew they shouldn't, because it was a "part of the game," they responded and were happy to do so. Interesting...
*****************************

Interesting, yes, but not magical, not by a long shot. What Dave saw as a kid was the power of defining and exercising authority, something the politically correct would tell us is a barbaric, demeaning insult to women. Really? Excuse me. How about clarifying this for me: Is it barbaric because it makes them involuntarily smile and move closer to us or because it makes them lubricate and think about being taken by us in a public place? Is it demeaning because it excites them and pleasure or because it helps them to feel like a part of something and eliminate the boredom that otherwise torments them? I’m just not clear on that…

I just copied that paragraph to a friend, one of the women on the support staff, through an instant messaging program and she came back with this:

SoccerMom1966a: LOL! If that’s demeaning, all I can say is “Demean me baby! Demean me now!!!” My hubby’s getting pretty good at that!

See what I mean?

You see Guys, this isn’t rocket science. In only a couple of months, and in the midst of working full-time and helping me with this web site overhaul and his own continuing education in copywriting, he became a guru in his own right, and has proven it by making contact with his ex-wife and both gaining and giving her closure on the issues that they had outstanding at the time of their divorce, and they are now good friends instead of bitter, hardened enemies with open wounds. It’s life-changing, world-changing stuff precisely because every man can grasp it and do it if he simply has the desire to improve his life and is able to read on about a fourth grade level.

So what’s holding you up? You’ve been listening to me say this and prove it for days, weeks, even months; I’ve been doing it before many witnesses, many of whom have given me unsolicited testimonials, for years. Indeed, there are a few of you who have been on my mailing list for over a year but still are not on my customer list. Are you waiting for me to reprint the entire book in these newsletters and blog posts? Not gonna happen. Are you waiting for somebody to just pop up on your doorstep and say, “Here, let me do that for you?” Not gonna happen. Are you waiting for somebody else to tell you that all your mistakes are validated and your problems are someone else’s fault? It may happen, but it won’t happen here, and it wouldn’t fix anything if it did. Besides, because you can do this.

I’ll make you a bet. Well, no, I can’t do that. Gambling is still illegal in a lot of places where this newsletter is going. So I’ll issue you a challenge. Go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and read it. Then just do what it says for a few days and watch what happens. And something WILL happen, by the way. Just ask some of the guys who have stopped divorces cold in less than a week of downloading this book.

Then take your pick, a refund or continuing down the path you’ve begun walking. I have yet to see a man turn from that path once he started down it, and you’ll stay on it too, because it just feels too damned good to be a man and have your life coming together to give it up.

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

Be Careful What You Wish for in Your Relationship and Marriage, Part 2, Fantasies

MUST READ! (And you know I use those words VERY sparingly!) When women say they have a “rape fantasy,” they are not being literal. They’re talking about a show of confidence and decisiveness, not brutality and cruelty. Find out exactly what they really mean by reading on…

Today is a great day. I stopped a reader from ruining his marriage and his life, and I may be about to stop somebody else by sharing his letter and my response. Meet Geoff:

Hi David,

I got your book, and things are really coming together fast. I had apparently become pretty boring without realizing it, and now that I’m back to being me, my wife is back to being her old self too, and it’s like you say, the honeymoon is back on. We’ve gone from once every time the seasons change to almost every night and sometimes during the day.

I’ve even overheard her telling her girlfriends about what’s happening and she’s trying to play it off to me like it’s not that big of a deal and teasing me to keep the pressure on, but when she talks to them and tells them about stuff I’m doing and stuff we’re doing, she giggles like a school girl. I walked in on her yesterday while she was talking to one of them and she was talking about what happened in the bedroom the night before and blushed and hung up in a hurry and ran out of the room laughing!

Overhearing her phone conversations is the reason I’m writing to you. I overheard her say something a few days ago about things are getting so hot she’s having “rape fantasies.” That makes me uncomfortable to think about, but if she really wants to try it I guess I’m willing. What do you think? I mean, is this something I should do for her, or is this some sign that she has a problem?

Thanks, and have a good one,
Geoff

Congratulations, Geoff! I just love hearing success stories like this. As for your wife’s fantasy, we need to talk, and fast!

Repeat after me and commit this to memory: NO MENTALLY HEALTHY WOMAN EVER HAS A TRUE RAPE FANTASY! Rape is violent, traumatic, and often damages women for life. It is not about sex, but about subjugation, terror, control, and abuse. It causes women to do things like never want sex, never allow their husbands to see them undressed, fall into suicidal depression, become so paranoid they can’t leave the house or sleep in the dark, etc. She’s talking about something else, and you and every other man needs to know what that is, so here goes, straight from the mouths of women:

Women want to be desired, led, and ultimately taken by a strong, confident man who doesn’t ask permission to initiate sex, but loves and respects them enough to honor the word “no” when they hear it and recognize it as being spoken in earnest. A great example is the scene in “The Fountainhead” where Gary Cooper goes to visit Patricia Neal in her apartment. She wants him terribly, and has gone to great lengths to make him know that she wants him, but she still resists because she wants him to “take” her, to hold her tightly, kiss her passionately, and take her where she’s craving to go, emotional heights of sexual bliss previously unreached! Understand above all that she fights him off to see how much he wants her, and feel the rush of him winning, and she wants him desperately.

This is what a woman refers to when she speaks of a rape fantasy, the feeling of a man being in charge and taking her where she wants to go, confidently, expertly, without asking permission. It’s a “sweep her off her feet” maneuver, not a “violate her and leave her emotionally ruined for all time” maneuver. They refer to it as a rape fantasy because once in a great while, in sharp contrast to their normal desire to be ramped up through a lot of talk, caressing, foreplay, advancing and withdrawing, it’s exhilarating for them to be taken to an aroused state through naughty play and seeing their man doing manly things to the extent that they’re wanting him, and then to just have him do something like walk in the house, pick her up, and carry her to the bed and ravish her without ever slowing down, shockingly and decisively, or to swiftly, hungrily, but playfully wrestle her to the couch, floor, kitchen counter, etc., and just go for it, hell-bent for glory and orgasm.

Things like firm-but-not-cruelly-painful pulling of her hair, spanking her behind firmly but not abusively (it’s much more about the sound of a spanking than the stinging for most women, and if you can cause a loud smacking noise without causing pain, you’re a master), wrestling and struggling a bit as you maneuver for position, etc., can be exhilarating for her and add to the sexual tension greatly if she’s into it, but the true essence of rape, the sadistic beating and threatening designed to humiliate, terrorize and subjugate, are not healthy, and not what she’s looking for if she’s healthy.

This is something you do only occasionally, and only when you can tell that she’s already amped up and you’ve been keeping her mind on naughty thoughts through the day. It’s done for the shocking thrill of pure, raw, carnal abandon, not when she’s had a bad day fighting with the kids, people at school or work, sitting with a loved one in a hospital, etc. If you encounter genuine resistance of any kind, this isn’t the time to be doing this; indeed, if she’s sufficiently aroused for this to be a good time for something like this, she may even be tearing at your clothes and clawing at your skin at the same time she’s saying, “stop.” The distinguishing factor is the heat; there will be very little if any foreplay, because she’s already amped up, is aching to have you inside her, and will aggressively be trying to make you erect and get you inside her as soon as possible. By all means, in this scenario, OBLIGE HER!

It’s about a show of confidence, not a show of force, or brutality. It’s about the man showing that he doesn’t fear his or her feelings or desires, or her rejection, and knowing, while seeing and feeling this powerful behavior, that if something weren’t right and she were to say, “No,” or tell him to stop in earnest, that he would do so, not because he’s weak, but because he’s in charge, not desperate; respectful and loving, not demeaning and abusive. This kind of action is a celebration of primal, carnal sexuality for both of you, not some “putting her in her place” maneuver intended to demean and subjugate.

If you really want to go to extremes, then at least establish some sort of safety signal that she can invoke so that you know that her resistance isn’t just part of the fantasy, such as the words “red light” or “too far,” which will allow her to say things like “stop” and “don’t” as part of her fantasy but still provide you a way of knowing that you’re going too far, being too rough, etc. One thing that you never, ever want to do is find yourself in a position of wanting to apologize for something after sex. But, as with most things concerning women, a little genuine communication goes a long, long way to keeping things on the right path.

As you can see, women often speak their desires, but even when they do choose to speak directly to us about them, which may be more often than you think, they don’t do it in language that we readily understand. They never state the obvious. When they say they want a “sensitive” man, they don’t mean sensitive instead of manly, they mean in addition to manly. When they say they have a “rape” fantasy, they mean they want to be taken swiftly and hungrily, not beaten to a pulp, verbally abused, scared to death, and then disrespectfully desecrated. But how are you supposed to know this?

You won’t, unless you learn to speak “girly-ese” as I and the many readers of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” have done successfully. Effective communications or the lack thereof can make or break a relationship just as surely as being well- or poorly-matched, or sexually attracted or sexually bored. Luckily for you, all of the above are discussed at length in this truly amazing book, and by the end of it you too will be a master of happy relationships. Download your copy now at http://www.makingherhappy.com, before you cross some invisible line that lands you in crisis counseling or divorce court, or if you already have, because it will get you out of trouble and keep you out if you just read it and use it.

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

Be Careful What You Wish for in Your Relationship and Marriage, You Might Just Get It!

A female reader cautions women to be careful what they wish for, because they might just get it. Like many women who don’t realize that what they think they want and that to which they respond are often two entirely different things, she wanted a nice guy, got one, and was bored to tears, but with some help from “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” everything is finally the way she likes it.

Today’s episode is a success story from a woman who wrote to me once before with a problem, with terrific lessons for both men and women on what women think they want and what happens when that’s radically different from what they respond to, namely, yes, the dreaded “B” word: boredom. Once again, here’s Daphne:

Dear David,

I hope it is ok that I am writing to you more than once, but I have something I think needs to be put out there for all to read. I am sure a lot of women have said "IF I could just meet a nice guy I would love that!" Well I am here to tell you be careful what you wish for. I used to say those exact words and I did find a nice guy. Then I wished he had found someone else besides me.

The trouble with a nice guy is just that. He is a nice guy. Now I am not saying all men should be jerks. I have had a couple of those as well. What I am saying is a typical nice guy is not attractive to a real woman. Women have all these ideas as to what a real man should be, like sensitive and open and always doing everything for us and waiting on us, and to be honest we are dreaming. Nice guys are fun for about an hour and after that you find yourself looking over his shoulder and yours for the naughty boy because the naughty boy excites us and we find ourselves so attracted to him he is all we think about or want especially in our beds.

After I bought your book and read it myself I left it for him on the bedside table in hopes he would take the hint, because I got goose bumps reading parts of your book and thinking about a man doing all those things with me and to me and wanted him to be the one to do them. I know men do not take hints very well, but I was hoping for once it would work and I would not have to totally crush him with the truth. No such luck. I finally had to tell him either read the book or I was out of there. After a few days of really taking your work serious I have a real man starting to form right here in front of me. I still have a nice guy sometimes but we’ll get past that eventually and the man’s man I see him becoming is great. But when I have the naughty boy come out to play I’m on fire all over again. He’s hot and he definitely makes me hotter than I care to mention.

If I could give some advice to your male readers, take this advice to heart and you will never find yourself alone in the bed or in life again. No woman wants a wuss or a total ass. What we want is the best of all things in one package, and with some reading and a few attitude adjustments you could be what every woman is dreaming of in a man. Is that not what it’s all about? Being a man who is wanted, enjoyed and loved by the woman of your dreams?

Men you can take things as they are and pretend all is well or you can make your wildest dreams come true. Women like to be just as sexually aggressive and free as most men so let us out and let’s enjoy the passion and heat with each other. Make it work for your life the way we have made it work for us. I can tell you our bed is never still and even when we are out I know the look in his eyes when he is thinking about us and now I want this man all the time.

David I know your wife has to be the luckiest woman ever since you already know the true secrets of making us happy. Thank you for giving the rest of us the chance to live it as well.

Daphne

Wow! What do you say to something like that, except “thanks for writing it and congratulations on finding what you want”? Well, on second thought, there is a thing or two.

Daphne’s right about the “nice guy” thing in several respects, if you know what she’s saying, which the women here probably do, and anyone who has read “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” does, but many of you men probably don’t have a clue. No, she’s not saying that women want a man to be mean to them, in spite of the reference to the naughty boy.

What she’s saying is that when a man spends all their time together aggressively seeking to please and appease her, it’s weak, approval-seeking behavior that bores the mortal hell out of them, and they don’t like it at all. Yes, they want a man who is considerate, moderately well-mannered, etc., but ass-kissing, trying to buy their affection with gifts, especially expensive ones, etc., is not going to get it done.

Indeed, constantly being the overly considerate and staunchly well-mannered gentleman isn’t going to go over very well, either. He’s nice, but not interesting. There must be that naughty element of fun and mischief popping up when she least expects it, and several other things, all of which are interesting and fun for a man to be and do, brought to bear before you can sweep her off her feet and keep her up and happy.

I need to comment on one other point. Daphne seems to say that some reading and a few attitude adjustments are all that is required. That’s not always the case, but that’s probably what she saw, and it’s pretty close to accurate. To be the man that every woman wants and the woman you love wants to stay with, you will most likely have to make some fundamental changes in either your life or your knowledge base and habits, changes that you will enjoy, but which may take some getting used to, like becoming independent so you can act and feel independent, becoming a man who enjoys his life so you can act and feel as if you enjoy your life, genuinely, not as part of some façade.

Faking it causes stress that kills relationships as fast or faster than the problems you try to fake your way through. Besides, who wants to fake being happy when you have the option of really doing it??? Or fake feeling confident when you have the option to really do it? Do you want to fret over blowing your cover or do you want to be calm and relaxed in your relationship because things really are going well? Duh! ;-)

You really can do it, and people like you are proving it every day. Do you really want to put this off any longer? I advise you to start fixing problems and improving your relationship now, because it only gets harder as you wait. Fix existing problems, large and small, and prevent those that haven’t started or are just starting from becoming huge, painful issues, especially since it’s far easier to prevent any problem than to fix one.

The fix and the preventive medicine are the same, it’s just a matter of how much pain and pressure you can endure if you put it off until it forces you to deal with it. So you finally see the light? Good. Get on over to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” right now, and get started turning your life around, before your wife gets sick of having what she may have wished for before she knew any better and goes looking for someone to make her new wishes come true.

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

The Good, the Bad, and the Naughty: What Does She Want in YOUR Relationship and Marriage?

There seems to be a lot of confusion concerning how women relate to “nice guys” and “bad boys.” Let’s clarify…

The word is finally getting out that when it comes to getting along with women, nice guys finish last – or are finished before they get started! – but as usual, the language being used to discuss what’s happening is inaccurate and misleading because there are too many “artistic liberties” being taken with the facts and their expression.

In the 1980’s we thought we were being told that women wanted a “nice guy.” What we were really being told was that women wanted a guy who was a manly man, and who wouldn’t do things like verbally and physically abuse them, lay around drunk while they brought home the bacon, etc., and would be at least marginally aware and considerate of their feelings. Hence, we ended up hearing “experts” (pronounced “academic morons with pet theories and feminist propagandists”) tell us that we should do really stupid things like cry in front of our women while watching their tear-jerking movies, defer all decisions to them to compensate for chauvinism, etc.

That didn’t work too well, did it? If it had, you wouldn’t be reading this!

Now it’s happening again, only this time, the phrase that is being bandied about like a cheap bromide is “bad boy.” Every woman wants a bad boy. Well, I have news for you: NO, SHE DOESN’T! At least not the real deal…

A bad boy is that abusive, worthless parasite or predator who lets her support him and beats the hell out of her in return and leaves when he has exhausted her resources; a psychopath or sociopath. Women are not looking for a man to abuse them, at least not if they are mentally and emotionally healthy.

When a woman says she wants a bad boy, what is she really wanting? You’ll find clues posted all over the Internet. To wit, consider these answers to the question, “Why do good girls love bad boys?”:

“They add spice to our good girl lives. They make us feel wild and sexy.”

“They excite us because they are so different from us. They’re the guys our parents warned us about.”

“They put passion into our sometimes boring, structured lifestyle.”

“They aren’t afraid to argue with us, and they usually win. We know they won’t come crawling back.”

“They represent rebellion, excitement, and steamy sex all at once. We’re under their spell.”

“They are hungry, unpredictable and a little bit dangerous”

“They make us feel sexy merely by the fact that they want us. You’ve got to be hot to catch a bad boy.”

“They have mastered that sly come-hither stare. “

“They can sweep us off our feet before we even know what hit us, and we love that rush.”

“They are irresistible because they know they’re hot.”

“They know what they want, and they usually get it.”

“With them there’s never a dull moment. You never know what they’ll do next”

“They don’t feel tied down to any one woman, and we love the challenge”

“They’re not afraid to break out of dating norms. Actually, most dates are just hooking up.”

“The word insecurity is not in their vocabulary. They don’t care what others think.”

“They are usually strong-willed and sexually aggressive.”

“They make us feel safe because they’re not intimated by anyone else.”

“They usually can’t be negotiated with, but when you get your way, it’s way exciting.”

“They are unpredictable. They keep you on your toes. (Duplicate! “Never a dull moment”).”

“They are untouchable for most women (depending on where you want to touch!).”

“They bring out the sexual animal in us because we don’t feel the need to be ladylike.”

“They take charge in all the right ways whether we admit we like it or not.”

“They live life on their own terms. “

“Because they can be extremely charming and unquestionably passionate. We love the challenge of reaching them.”

“They act with authority even when they have no right to.”

“They flirt with other women. It drives us crazy and makes us want them more.”

“They can’t be tested (or trusted most of the time!)”

“They are independent and throw caution to the wind.”

“Because they exude confidence at all times, making even the most secure women try harder.”

“They seduce us without even trying. And we feel like we’ve got to work hard to seduce them at times.”

“They are the right mix of mysterious and elusive. We never feel smothered but sort of wish we could.”

“They carry on as if women aren’t important to them. We want to be the one that matters.”

“They encourage us to be a little bit bad. They love it when we’re a lot bad!”

“We can be as obnoxious as we want, and we know they will always act worse. (Women need to be lead into being bad when a man is around!)”

“They show us a better time than responsible, upstanding guys. We try to fight this gut reaction, but we can’t. (Attraction is biological, not logical!)”

“They make us feel incredible when they do pay attention to us. The little things matter so much more.”

“They love their lives and aren’t bound by the rules of society. We want to let loose with them. (Again, needing to be lead to being bad.)”

“They have a lot of energy, and we can’t wait to see just how they plan to use it.”

“They are always a challenge. Who can resist a challenge?”

“They keep us on our toes and make us less selfish. They won’t put up with it.”

“They are our little “projects” to nurture and change, but if they do, we eventually dump them for another bad boy! (Challenge to see if they can make us a wuss and destroy our manhood, and toss us if they succeed! Diabolical!)”

“They have devilishly playful personalities and a twinkle in their eyes. We never know what they’re really thinking.”

What do these things tell you? Do you see any mention of a woman wanting a criminal, a loser, a bum, an abuser, a parasite, or a predator? No, you don’t.

So what DO you see?

You see attributes of a NAUGHTY BOY! A guy who is self-confident, self-respectful, self-directed, marches to the beat of his own drum, and isn’t caught up in being prim, proper, and polite at all times. BUT…

This must be kept in context! The context of these statements is concerning what a woman finds fun and exciting in, predominately in her DATING life! The rules are different when you are in a committed, long-term relationship, married or not, but especially when the two of you are sharing a mortgage, kids, etc., or can you see that?

Total unpredictability is fun and exciting for a woman to see in a man on the street, or in one she’s having a “fling” with, but in a long-term relationship, unpredictability must be balanced with responsibility, usually fatherhood, and a lot of other things. Your wife enjoys not knowing what you are going to do next insomuch that it entertains her, not that it scares the living hell out of her.

Hence, coming home and announcing that you’re taking her on a surprise picnic or day trip that the family can afford or have taken on a new, non-life-threatening hobby tickles her to death, where coming home and announcing that you quit your job for no apparent reason or have decided to leave and go to Japan to study nin jitsu so you can enter a career as a bodyguard or something equally outlandish is not going to go over well at all. Indeed, you’ll be lucky if you live through it with your marriage and dignity intact.

It’s a difficult balance, much more difficult than in the dating world. In the dating world, a “rebel without a clue” can go for years, bouncing from woman to woman and never allowing any of them to get close enough to see what a loser he really is and have all kinds of fun, but when you live with her, it’s another story entirely. One of the keys to success is to remember that when a woman is single, she only sees a “bad boy” infrequently, and spends the rest of her time dreaming about it. What does this tell you?

That you need to engage in this naughty boy behavior erratically, not all the time. Turning it on and off so that you can still competently fulfill the role of breadwinner (whether solo or with your partner), husband, father, homeowner, groundskeeper, investor, etc., is not only important, it makes it more effective, because it provides both contrast and the opportunity for her to see you doing other very attractive things, like being a confident and competent leader, craftsman, protector, and whatever else you can be confident and competent doing.

It’s about shaking her up a bit to break the boredom, not taking on a full-time role.

It’s about shocking the mortal life out of her once in awhile, but doing so in a non-threatening manner.

It’s about creating tension by jumping back and forth from fun to serious and back.

Yeah, it’s about a lot of things, but being a true “bad boy” who is mean-spirited, abusive, parasitic and/or predatory is not among them.

It’s a tough act to put on, but there’s no reason at all for it to be an act, because being a guy who does these things naturally is quite easy and fun! Most of it requires nothing more than shedding all your New Age, politically correct programming and simply getting back to being a man, a manly man who does manly things and leaves the girly things to the girls. There’s one secret ingredient that takes that dating version of the naughty boy to a new level, the level where a life-long relationship can be sustained…

SELF-RESPECT! Somebody like Johnny Knoxville, star of that idiotic show “Jackass,” who would sit on a display toilet in the middle of a hardware store sales floor and take a crap just for shock value might be a riot in the dating world, but few women would accept such behavior from her husband, nor from any man they were sizing up for his potential to be a husband and father of her children. Self-respect makes the difference in having the right kind of attention without desiring any attention at all and getting all the attention you can, even if it’s the wrong kind.

It also requires knowing your partner more intimately than you ever thought possible, but that’s easy too, once you learn how she communicates and how to communicate with her and simply pay attention for awhile. Sounds like a pretty tall order, doesn’t it?

Well, it’s not, at least not of you read and apply "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," my 118-page (single-spaced type, unlike most, who double- and even tripe-space e-books and online reports to make them look longer!) seminar-in-a-book that teaches you everything mentioned here and more, in great detail, after having tested and proven it in the relationships of literally hundreds of couples coached and surveyed.

It’s time to make a choice. Do you want your life and relationship to just continue on the way it is now, or do you want to be the only guy you know who really knows what makes women tick, knows what they want, and can turn them on and off at will? That’s a pretty easy decision, isn’t it? So make it, right now, and then go to http://www.makingherhappy.com, download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and follow through. It’s really just that easy.

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

Missed Signals Can Be the Death of a Relationship or Marriage

Women will go to extraordinary lengths to tell us and show us what they want. And often that is the problem; because of their communications skills and habits, they start with the extraordinary instead of the simple, and it usually goes right over our heads. What you miss could make a lot more than a difference; it could make for a break-up or divorce. What are YOU missing?

I am proud and pleased to say that a lot of my readers have become personal friends, and that many of my best students and greatest success stories still keep in touch, having mastered the wonderful world of women and relationships, they write with things for me to share with the rest of you to help you, and it’s always interesting when they do.

The following letter is from one of my best friends, who was one of the first winners of the “King Arthur and the Witch” contest I run every year and is a Jedi master among masters. He manages a convenience store, which is a veritable circus of human behavior and a laboratory as well. He points out some things that no man can afford to not know, so give him your undivided attention for a couple of minutes:

An interesting scene played out at the store on Sunday, and I thought would be helpful to some folks who haven't had the sense to buy your book yet.

I've told you before about this lady who comes in, with the Princess necklace because that's how her husband treats her. She came in Sunday morning with her husband and I couldn't help getting the feeling she had him there for one reason and one reason only: to show him how she wanted him to interact with her. From her body language towards me and to him, you would think even a modicum of insight would provide some clues. He missed them all, poor sap.

As soon as they came to the counter, she leans in toward me, away from him, and begins the teasing. We go back and forth, and I try to include him but it goes over his head. He stands to her side but behind her, and the one time she asks him if he wants something, she leans away from him to ask the question, and when he declines, she leans back toward me again and keeps going.

This whole time, his body language is subservient to her. His responses are to gain her approval and while it's obvious he thinks it's all fun and games, he has no clue that she is trying to get him to see, through a vivid, in-your-face example, what she enjoys in interacting with a man and wishes him to do more of.

It begs the question of how often men who may be getting angry, frustrated, or outright fed up with their wives’ and lovers’ flirty behavior are missing the point, and how many of them do miss it often. Of course some women are that mean, as you've made clear in those who destroyed their husbands as a game of guilt and boredom in their relationship. However, might not a frustrated woman, who still loves her man, feel forced to act out in non-threatening ways, to try to show him what she wants to see more of in him?

And when she has the integrity to do it in front of him to demonstrate, instead of doing it behind his back as an adulterous coward, does he not owe it to her to pay attention? Maybe he doesn’t have that kind of behavior in him, unlikely as that may be, but she’s communicating with HIM, not her girlfriends, not an adulterous lover, exactly what she wants and needs. Men have been begging women to do that since the dawn of time, have they not? Yet when they get it, they don’t embrace it. They call their wives teases and harlots, and rail against their disrespect.

And when the hints, the dropped clues, and questions produce no results, in what other ways can she be more aggressive with her pleas? Considering that I see anywhere from 150 to 200 women a day, I see things daily most men would have no clue of in a lifetime. I see how they act when their man is around and when he isn't. I watch as they attempt to give clues, drop hints, and as in this case, have a teachable moment.

The most telling hint was that on first arriving, she and I both tried to include him. When that wasn't working, she got more obvious, and by the time they left, she was in charge and wishing she wasn't. It took a while but I finally understood that her teasing about how special he treated her was an admission on her part that she likes it, loves him, but wishes he knew how to ramp that up with teasing and play. She enjoys aspects of the pedestal as long as it means it's a part of being appreciated as a woman, not a place to live.

A good analogy would be the commercial where the little girl is trying to ride a bike in a small square barely big enough for the bike. She understands that she can't enjoy the bike unless she gets to explore all over with it or enjoy the extended freedom it gives her. If you view a woman as being on a pedestal, she feels the restrictions, the pressure to conform to that small definition of what she is supposed to be.

She cannot enjoy the extended freedom a relationship should give her. She can never relax and enjoy it, herself, or her man. She can never be herself in every aspect as a woman. She can never truly be herself and let loose and be free in the moment to live life together with her man as she craves to do.

So just how many "plays" have we missed, how many restrictions on her does she feel from you while you're trying to get her to fit your definition of what a woman should be? Instead of trying to understand her, you worry more about why she doesn't understand you. If you feel the bite of being restricted and can't "just be yourself," how do you think she feels? Are her bites at you really bites about how you are treating her? Are they really about the pressures and restrictions she feels from you?

Instead of feeling pressured to be something you're not, it's time to man up and see that she wants you to be the man she sees you capable of being, so she can be the woman she's capable of being. She can't relax and be who she wants to be for you until you are the man she can trust to let go with. She wouldn't be with you unless she saw those traits in you in the first place. What have you done to prove it lately?

Just some random thoughts for the day...
David

What did you get from that? There was certainly enough to get. If nothing else, you should have seen two things: that women are subtle, not blunt, and that they do try to communicate their needs and desires. But unless it’s blunt or I’ve trained you, chances are it’s going to zing right over your head and be gone. She doesn’t know that. Women really don’t know that we communicate differently, and have a hard time accepting that we can’t read four paragraphs into the single gesture of a toss of the head, leaning toward or away, a roll of the eyes, or a touch of any part of their body against any part of ours. They don’t know that we don’t see the questions behind their statements and the statements behind their questions. Consequently, they think that we’re either daft or ignoring them. Bad either way, huh?

We don’t have the physical infrastructure to ever be able to communicate with a woman as women do. Our body chemistry during childhood makes it impossible for our brains to develop in such a way as to be similar enough to theirs to do so. Hard fact, not opinion. BUT, we can get a whole lot closer than we are, and if we talk about this with them, and tell them that we are trying to meet them somewhere in the middle and it would help if they would try to be a little more blunt with us when they thought of it and not be angry when we didn’t pick up on something and just realize that we missed it rather than ignoring it, they gladly try to meet us in the middle too.

Are you ready for the fun part? I’ll guarantee you that if you can remember and use just three simple rules and talk openly with your wife and other women about that main difference, that we are blunt while they are subtle, your communications problems, and all the eye-rolling and other dirty looks you get when you miss your cue, will be eliminated.

What are these three simple rules? Go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and find out. I’ll bet you’ll find them worth a king’s ransom or more. They will help you to answer that eternal question: “What does a woman want?” Sigmund Freud, the renowned psychiatrist and psychologist is famous for admitting that he didn’t know. But you can, and you will, if you stop sitting there wondering if this will work for you and just do it.

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

Seek Success, not Attention, to Have a Great Relationship and Marriage

Do you do what you do to enjoy doing it well, or to be seen doing it? Attractive behavior isn’t just an act to try to mimic an alpha male. It’s the result of BEING the alpha male, a real man of competence and confidence, which virtually any man can be. It’s both his birthright and responsibility, and for the vast majority of men requires only shedding some programming and attitudes that are oppressive, stressful, and lead to gross insecurity and stagnation in all parts of a man’s life. Read on and learn why and how!

I’ve mentioned in the past that I don’t watch much television, and the little I watch is either informative (news, how-to, or self-improvement) or mentally challenging, and when I find an on-screen example of something readers can watch for an example or explanation of attraction and attractive behavior, I write about it, because a picture is truly worth a thousand words.

Having been deeply involved in alternative medicine for all of my adult life and more, the NBC series “House” (about a doctor who’s supposed to be the world’s best diagnostician and determines what’s wrong with people when nobody else can – and this season’s premier didn’t disappoint) is challenging (the writers rarely make a medical mistake, but when they do, it’s hilarious, such as when Dr. House had a sinus allergy and claimed to take 1,000 mg of diphenhydramine, the little pink pills that most of the rest of us know as “Benedryl,” and are dosed out at 25 mg per tablet, meaning that he took a dose of 40 of those little pink pills, which would likely ruin an elephant’s day and knock a human out for a week), and the governing dynamics of the personalities of the characters on the show are diverse, well-conceived and fascinating.

Dr. House is an alpha male, but with a twist. He’s brilliant, strong, funny, cocky, etc., but somebody on the writing staff apparently is intimidated by alpha males because they gave him a permanently damaged right leg and chronic pain to go with it, and a hydrocodone bitartrate (Vicodin, et al, regarded as “morphine-like in all respects” according to http://www.streetdrugs.org/hydrocodone.htm) addiction to go with the pain, which I find somewhat perverse, but it does make for some interesting twists in the plots.

One episode featured a doctor who spent his entire career treating tuberculosis in remote parts of Africa, contracted the disease himself, but with a pancreatic tumor that caused life-threatening symptoms unrelated to the tuberculosis. What was interesting about the character, and what both the character of Dr. House and I took exception to, was that this doctor didn’t present the appearance of doing the job to do it well, but to be seen doing it; he was constantly courting the media, even to the extent of refusing treatment for his own tuberculosis and calling a press conference to call attention to it.

The script writers did a good job of keeping it unclear as to whether the character’s main motivation was altruism or a need for attention, but it made me think about some of the letters I’ve received from readers of this newsletter and my blogs, complaining that it was hard to keep up the image of an alpha male and call sufficient attention to themselves without being too obvious. That’s an understatement if ever there was one; one that makes me want to pull my hair out.

First, putting on an act for a woman, especially in the long term, is a practical impossibility. The sheer fear of being caught putting on the act creates insecurity that gives it away, and no matter how many times I state that to some people, they still don’t get it. Attractive behavior is not the result of some theatrical effort or following some script; it’s the result of BEING attractive, having the confidence, attitude, wit, and competence to naturally be in this attractive state. You can fake it a little and for a short time in an emergency, but the successful on-going presentation of alpha male behavior depends entirely on the successful attainment of alpha male characteristics, which is not difficult at all, and a lot of fun.

So you see, the “trick” is NOT to act attractive and find a way to call attention to it that doesn’t give away the fact that you are trying to call attention to yourself. Seeking attention (or approval) is the opposite of alpha male behavior, regardless of why you’re doing it. That’s why the PUA’s and their peacocking (“Styles,” “Mystery,” etc., a la Neil Strauss’s “The Game”) is so bloody annoying to the rest of us.

(In one of John Alanis’s newsletters, he talked about getting almost mad enough to deck one of them. A PUA cut in on John while he was talking to a woman and the “wingman” running block for him kept putting his arm around John like he was some sort of buddy. All I can say is that John is probably a little more patient than I could have been with either one of them, and the PUA’s still lost in the end because he got the girl. John tells some very interesting stories and I highly recommend his newsletter as both entertaining and, if you are divorced and dating or wanting to start dating again, educational, as is Shelley McMurtry’s.)

Indeed, there is no trick, and the solution is far easier to pull off. You must simply understand what it is that women respond to with attraction, which turns out to be confident, fun, intelligent, “cock of the walk” behavior, realize that there are some things in your life that you can take pride in, develop them so that you can fully enjoy that pride, see yourself as worthy of having fun and enjoying your life, and let nature take its course. While nature is taking its course, you learn all you can about women, especially what they enjoy and how they communicate, so you can recognize the feedback that they’ve been giving you for years. Feedback that you were never able to interpret because you didn’t realize it was feedback. What???

Yes, they really have been giving you feedback for years, but most of it is non-verbal, and the verbal part is very indirect. For instance, when a woman says she wants a man “who just knows what she wants,” she isn’t speaking of a psychic (unless she’s a complete idiot just “parroting” something she’s heard other women say). She’s saying, “I want a manly man who does manly things, and pays enough attention to me to learn how to communicate with me so I don’t have to explain everything to him like I would a three-year old.” She saying that she wants a guy who is a guy, but who knows to communicate with guys like guys and be more perceptive and attentive when communicating with a woman, recognizing her social nature and her need to negotiate and be a social conduit instead of stating, reporting, and dictating as men do. Where’d that come from?

You’re right. Most women would never come out and explain that to a man, but a few of the very smart ones are always on the lookout for men who want to communicate effectively with them, and I had 118 of them who were in long-term committed relationships or marriage plus nearly a hundred more who were single respond to a survey I conducted before researching “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage.” They taught me everything they could think of about how women communicate with each other and how that affects the way the communicate with men, and when we finished that training, we talked – in “girly-speak,” or “feminese” as one of my readers is fond of saying – about what they thought they wanted in men and what they actually respond to, and exploded many, many myths, especially about the “nice guy.” (You’ll be shocked when you find out about the one version of the “nice guy” that women do respond to, and you’ll do so when you read my book!)

As we made lists upon lists of good and bad behavior and what caused it, we got their male partners (husbands and boyfriends, for future reference) involved, and tested everything we’d found. Some we fine tuned and improved, some wasn’t as consistent as I wanted because it was affected by culture or personal taste and was culled; everything that made it into the book worked for 90% or more of the couples, and in the end, everybody’s relationship was improved to the point of being fun and exciting again, not because the men learned how to act, but because they learned how to be and live NATURALLY as “real men,” which creates – BY DEFAULT – the very behavior that women respond to best, because it’s genuine, stress-free, fun and exciting for everyone involved.

There were even unexpected benefits of improved sleep, motivation to diet and exercise, children doing better in school, and a closer-knit family because the parents were feeling better about themselves, setting better examples for the kids and creating a more nurturing environment for them. (How nurturing an environment is it when parents are bored, frustrated, avoiding home and yet scared of their family coming apart at the seams?)

The bottom line is that there are no tricks, no magic bullet, no cute lines or secret potions (or positions!) that will save a stale relationship, but the solution to the problem is far easier and more enjoyable than employing any deception could ever be. It’s in my book, “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” and it’s waiting for you at http://www.makingherhappy.com, ready to Fully tested, proven and ready to deploy. Go get it and get busy, because life is too short to spend it enjoying your relationship even a little less than the most it can be enjoyed. Don’t settle; SUCCEED! (And you’d be doing yourself a favor to make that your personal motto, too!)

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

What Are Outside Influences Doing to YOUR Relationship and Marriage?

Is your environment, especially the part of it you choose and create for yourself, increasing or killing your attractiveness? It’s easy to tell by taking a good look around you, if you know what to look for. Do you?

I get a lot of mail from men who are feeling bad about themselves, complaining that their wives disrespect them, don’t like their job, feel like they’re alone and have no friends, and generally have a crappy outlook on like. There are a lot of causes for this, but generally when a man is disrespected, disregarded, and/or has nobody around him he would call a friend, it’s the result of bad attitude. And that’s fixable.

Most of the causes of both good and poor attitude are in the things that surround us daily. Let’s take a look at your living and work environments to see what they may be doing for you, or TO you. Much of male attractiveness is the direct result of attitude, self-esteem, and confidence, and your environment can impact those things directly, so it can impact your attractiveness directly, which in turn determines how – and whether – those around you will want to interact with you.

Feeling good about yourself requires that you take action to succeed, which in turn requires that you feel worthy of success and motivated to go after it. How does your environment affect you in this regard? Everything around you can impact you, so let’s look at some of the big ones to give you a feel for what to look for, and you can refine your search from there. Let’s start with music.

Yes, that’s a biggie! Even if you aren’t listening actively, it’s still there, being interpreted and assimilated, and there are subconscious mechanisms that act upon what you hear, so to what influences are you exposing yourself? First, what do you choose to listen to? If it’s depressing, as a lot of alternative rock, death metal, and some country and honky tonk, ballads, and of course, blues can be, it’s working on you. In my own experience, according to pop culture lore Michael Bolton was a great guy, but his music was so depressing that I couldn’t listen to it, and while I like some of the instrumental portions of Iron Maiden and Metallica, the death-oriented lyrics of many of their songs make me want to just shake somebody and tell the to wake up and get a clue. (The same goes for the angry-sounding rap that glorifies rape and cop-killing; fortunately, this isn’t all rap, just the worst of it.)

I grew up in an area where country, bluegrass, and honky tonk music was popular, and in my childhood, country music was all about trouble. Even if somebody had something good to say in a song, it was in the context of missing it, or somebody else having it and wishing they could have it. I can remember even as a small child wondering why people wanted to listen to songs that spoke of people hurting each other, breaking up, divorcing, being lonely, etc., and I could see that those who listened to depressing music were depressed. That made me wonder which was the cause and which was the effect. I learned later in college that it goes both ways, and once in the rut, it forms a feedback loop that sustains and even amplifies itself.

Even if you’re not choosing what you listen to, as in cases where you have piped-in music in your office that someone else chooses, or have a partner or a child that tends to dominate the household music listening (which luckily isn’t as bad these days since personal computers and personal MP3 players make private listening much easier), you may consciously just ignore it, but your subconscious mind ignores nothing. Hence, the music you expose yourself to, at least with regard for helping you to maintain a positive attitude and good self-image, needs to be fun, uplifting, motivating, etc., providing at least some positive influence; at worst, it should be attitude neutral, like some form of light instrumental or dance music.

What about television? Do you watch informative shows that help you feel better-prepared to achieve? Comedies to help break the tension? Heroic adventures to see the good guys kill the bad guys and go home with the girl for “gratuitous whoopee”? Or do you watch sad stories, a.k.a., “human interest” stories, where the object is to pull you in to feeling sorry for the subject? Or nothing but news, which tends to be negative because disaster gets better ratings that acts of heroism? Being informed is necessary, but you have to be careful of the source, because between sensationalism and bias, it can wreck your outlook and attitude in a cold minute. How can anyone expect to have a good outlook on life if a good portion of what they see every day is negative? There is obviously a lot you can’t choose, but there is also a lot that you can, so choose well.

Speaking of what you see in the workplace, how is your job affecting your outlook on life? Are you well-suited to your chosen profession and advancing through achievement? Are you appreciated and rewarded by your current employer? Do you enjoy getting out of bed in the morning to start your work day or do you leave home at the last possible minute and arrive a few minutes late every day because you just really don’t want to be there?

High self-esteem comes from achievement and no other source, and in every day life, that means mainly from success at productive work or a productive hobby, one that offers challenge – eating donuts or watching football is not a productive hobby. It’s a “pastime,” and you need to distinguish between them. Pastimes provide no mental challenge. That’s why I cringe when baseball is described as “America’s favorite pastime.” Passively watching the game is a pastime, but playing, coaching, or even scorekeeping is absolutely not. So make sure that in addition to work, you have at least one real hobby and not just a bunch of pastimes sucking up the time and energy you could be using to enjoy achieving and feel better about yourself.

Getting back to work, if your work conditions keep you from feeling like you are accomplishing anything, either in your job or your career, or if it’s swallowing you (as seems to be frequently portrayed on police dramas like “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit,” or any of the various flavors of “Crime Scene Investigation” where the officers are constantly exposed to the worst elements of human behavior and cannot avoid it because their job is to deal with it), depression and unattractive behavior is virtually inevitable.

The statistics available on divorce rates bear it out, too, by the way. Social workers, vice cops, criminal lawyers, and doctors all have higher divorce rates than bakers, telephone operators, etc. If your chosen field is killing your marriage or has killed more than one and marriage is important to you, it’s time to look at a career change, even if it’s a bit of a step backwards. And before you say, “But I can’t afford to make less money!” how long is it going to take you to pay for another divorce? A career change might actually be cheaper in the long run.

Take a hard, objective look at your job and your career, and if it is not satisfying you, talk with a professional headhunter or placement agency, no matter what you do now or think you may be capable of doing. They stay in business by competently matching people with good jobs, and often have aptitude tests and other placement aids they will be glad to offer you on the chance that they may be able to pick up a commission by placing you in a good job. And don’t let the idea of a career change scare you into failing to act. You may be surprised at how radical a career switch you can make but still be able to leverage your experience and be able to make more of a lateral – or UPWARD LATERAL! --move instead of having to start over at the bottom of another career path.

Another huge influence, and the last one I’ll speak about today, are the people around you. Achievers will influence you to achieve, and miscreants of every flavor, being unwilling to do what is necessary to achieve, will seek justification and validation by spreading their defeatist attitude around like a virus.

You know them, the people to whom you announce good news and they insist that all good fortune is either fleeting or something bad must happen to you to pay for your good fortune, and they’re always blaming their sorry life and lack of achievement on limited opportunities and some oppressive entity or system instead of doing what achievers do to make their own opportunities. You may include these people in your circle of “friends,” but they are not friends. Friends don’t try to impede the happiness of friends by trying to negate every good thing that comes their way.

If you have any of these people around, even if they are blood relatives, get them out of your life before they take you down with them; if they had any interest in climbing out of their funk, they would have done something about it already, so don’t bother trying to “save” them, either. Learn to let people be accountable for their own choices, and be accountable for your own. It’s a lot easier to manage your life and affairs that way, and you’ll never be put in a position of feeling like a failure because of someone else’s failure to act.

Once you find and eliminate all these negative influences from your life, you’ll find it much easier to maintain that confident, “can’t touch this” attitude that women find so irresistible, not to mention finding your life a whole lot simpler and more enjoyable, and you’ll also find you have new-found room in your life for people you enjoy being around as well.

And here’s a big bonus: when you couple that improved attitude with a solid working knowledge of how to evaluate relationships, how to effectively communicate with women, and what they automatically respond to with curiosity, excitement, and desire, a great relationship with a great woman is a foregone conclusion, even if you’re not currently with one!

What you need to know about all of that is waiting for you in a single source, my e-book, “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage.” It’s an instant download at http://www.makingherhappy.com, fully tested and guaranteed to work -- and for less than the cost of a good meal for two at a nice restaurant! Can you afford to ignore such information? NO! Can you use such information? YES! So get clicking, Bub, because life’s too short to waste it feeling lousy about your life, job, and marriage! ;-)

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

Women Test Men Constantly in Our Relationships and Marriage, So Why Not Test THEM? Here's HOW!

Women test us constantly, so why don’t we test them? Not in retaliation, but to help determine if they are testing us and what they might be trying to communicate. Here are a few tips…

I was listening to an old set of self-improvement tapes, Roger Dawson’s “The Secrets of Power Negotiating,” (a classic if you’ve not heard of it, available at Nightengale Conant) and in a section on negotiating tactics, he was talking about overcoming objections and said the main tactic to overcoming objectives is to “always test for validity.” Here’s an example:

You’re negotiating a car deal, and the seller says he can’t possibly go a penny under $25,000 for the vehicle. You ask, “What if I could bring you cash instead of a cashier’s check?” If he says it won’t make any difference, he’s rigid on the price for some reason, and you need to dig deeper to find out what his issue is to see if there is any way to address it, but if he says, “Well, then I could possibly come down a little,” $25,000 is not a firm price and he does have some negotiating range.

The same tactic can be used when women test us, or when we suspect they might be testing, to either neutralize the test or establish that we are dealing with a legitimate issue and need to give it due attention. Let’s say your wife is saying she wants new furniture, and you don’t know if it’s a test, a whim, or a legitimate need. You can test the legitimacy of the issue by finding out how much she’s willing to do to have it: “Well, I [like this furniture/don’t care either way/might be interested in replacing this, too] IF our budget will allow it. If the budget won’t handle the extra expense, do you want this bad enough to do something extra to make up the difference?”

Now you’ve got her. If she says, “Well no, I guess not,” it wasn’t that important. “Well I thought you might be nice and get a part time job to do this for me,” definitely means it’s a test, and we’ll deal with that in a minute. “Yes, I would, because I really want this stuff out of here,” means it’s definitely important, and you should then consider saying, “Well, then I’ll see what I can do as well, but if I’m going to help buy it, I reserve the right to help pick it out, at least to the extent of declining on anything that isn’t comfortable for me to sit in. Agreed?”

It’s not required, but it’s a good idea to remain involved so you don’t end up with a houseful of furniture that you hate, and doing things like that together is part of what long-term committed relationships are about, isn’t it? Besides, women love it when you take the lead and make decisions – as long as you provide that needed and expected input channel for them– it’s ATTRACTIVE!

Now, what if you find out it’s a test? The test looks on the surface like it’s to see what she can get away with, but what it usually is really about is to see if you can say “no,” a check to see if you can define and exercise personal authority. And be advised, if you see a lot of this kind of test, and you see a negative reaction when you reject the idea because she’s not willing to help pay for it, you need to be researching “toxic wife” on Google, Bing, or your search engine of choice.

This is a good time to switch back and forth between the responsible budget administrator and “the naughty negotiator.” Starting with something like, (straight face) “Well, I might consider being nice and helping with it, but if you want it that bad, you’re going to have to help, and you’re going to have to give me a pretty good reason to help, (sudden switch to naughty grin) so whatcha gonna do to be nice to me?”

Banter back and forth and make it plain that you’re not just going to roll over and give it up, even if she has recently done something nice, but make it fun for her to be told “no.” Bring sexual innuendo into it, like, “I don’t know, we’ve had a lot of fun on this couch, I hate to see it go,” or “We’ve not finished breaking this couch down…er…I mean in…It would be a shame to get rid of it before we’d got all the nookie….er….I mean useful life out of it…”

Do NOT get into anything that sounds like you’re willing to trade furniture for sex, because it can be taken as a very degrading remark that hints at prostitution. Whatever you do, DO NOT make it sound like you’re a sugar daddy and she’s a prostitute. Fun, not condescending. Challenge, not control. I’m appalled to even have to say that, but I did get an email about it once in the past, so for the sake of the very few who won’t realize it, I’m stating what’s obvious to most of us.

Use your imagination, but make sure you keep rocking back and forth between serious and naughty to keep her off balance, and keep dropping bits of sexual innuendo. You’re likely to end up having sex on the furniture before the discussion is over, just because the playful, naughty attitude and sexual tension may get to her that much, and then you can say, “See, we need to keep this couch!” and wink at her.

Do NOT, under any circumstances, fear going into this process. Remember that a woman’s first criteria in evaluating you and any other man is “If you can’t stand up TO me, you can’t stand up FOR me.” This is how you earn her respect, her trust, her attraction, and to a significant degree, her love. It’s also how you flush out a predator or parasite who is stealing your life from you. It’s a no-lose situation for you, so get on it.

It’s easy to test for validity once you get used to the game and get skilled at playing. To see the rules in vivid detail, along with lots of examples of how to play the testing game, go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and get your copy of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage.” What you’ll save on furniture the first time it comes up will more than pay for the book! Just kidding! Seriously, it costs less than a good meal for two, and any time you can throw a few dollars and a little time at a problem and watch it go away, that’s an offer you simply have to take!

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

Reader Response to "Walking the Matador Walk to Have a Great Relationship and Marriage"

Once again, a student rises to become the teacher, pointing the way to success in all things, including relationships and marriage...

I received this e-mail several days ago. Rick is one of my brightest and most motivated readers, and it's just his nature to hawk something when it works, so excuse the brazen plug for my book. He's results-oriented and achievement-driven, and I can think of very few of you who present such a great example for the rest to follow, so "brazen plug" and all, here's Rick again, commenting on my September 11, 2009 edition about expecting success in your relationship in order to achieve it:

Hey David,

You have no idea how dead on you are with this particular newsletter. This is one of the greatest secrets of life, and for Marcus's sake, I hope he benefits from that revelation.

When you mentioned Maxwell Maltz and his book Psychocybernetics, that really struck a chord with me because I recently read that book, and it's a part of my library. That book is pure genius, and I'm not surprised you met him.

Let me tell you what happened to me: On Saturday, I got a message saying that my temporary work assignment was ending effective immediately. I admit, it was a blow, but I kept my emotions in check. On Monday, I went to my recruiters office to talk about the situation. She was sorry that it happened, had never saw it coming, and said she could send my resume to another company, and I told her to do it [showing authority].

Yesterday I hit the online job boards and called other recruiters on job placement. This morning I talked with the recruiter I spoke with on Monday, expecting her to give me some good news. As it turns out, she set up an interview for me next Tuesday. She also said they usually start people right away and I negotiated a higher salary than my last assignment.

Like your newsletter said, I walked the matador's walk, seeing myself already victorious and I was. Whether it's my job, or any other part of my life, I can sum this up in three simple words: I heal fast. If anyone's reading this and hasn't yet purchased David's book, or is sitting on the fence, I'm telling you: get it NOW. Learn it, love it, & LIVE IT.

Live strong, be well, laugh often, and love much.

Rick.

When you expect good things, your confidence carries you through and inspires others, including irate spouses, to work with you instead of against you. It's really just that simple.

There's not a lot I could add to that if I tried, so today I'll just let the student be the teacher and leave you to ponder the lesson. And if you decide to take Rick's advice, start at http://www.makingherhappy.com with your copy of "THE Man's Guide to Relationships and Marriage."

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

Walk "the Matador's Walk" for a Great Relationship and Marriage

Your attitude toward your life, your relationship, and everything else may be more of a determinant of how well they go than the actual effort you put into them. Understand this thoroughly before doing anything else, because you can program yourself for failure even easier than you can program yourself for success, especially in your relationship, because it’s the most emotional issue most of us face every day.

I hope you are enjoying your day, safely of course, but with gusto! Wherever you are, and whatever you are doing, I hope you are doing it well and enjoying it, expecting it to work out for you.

Speaking of which, a letter caught my eye last night that triggered a huge rush of analysis and coaching, and I need to share it with you. Meet Marcus:

Good evening David,

I just finished reading "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and I must say I see many things that I can improve on. It certainly looks like you’ve done your homework, and now I have to do mine and make things happen. Wish me luck, because if this doesn’t work, I’m screwed!

Thanks so much!
Marcus

That last sentence set off alarms and started red flags waving immediately. I wrote the following to Marcus to help him get things in perspective and keep him from tripping himself up:

Hi Marcus!

Congratulations on making it this far; so many people know they have problems but wallow in them instead of fixing them for a variety of reasons, none of them good. If you see what you have to do, you’re already way ahead of the game, because many people’s first reaction is denial; they don’t want to accept that they have caused their problems through the choices they’ve made, which keeps them from realizing that fixing their problems is also a matter of choice and entirely within their control.

I needed to write to you to warn you about something that you did that may seem trivial at first glance but is indeed self-destructive. In the last sentence of your letter, you said to me, “Wish me luck, because if this doesn’t work, I’m screwed!” Take a closer look at this with me…

First, you don’t need luck. You’ve recognized your problem, sought and found help, defined the various components of your problem and have solutions to apply to them that have worked for many other people under similar circumstances. In short, you have the tools, and now must simply use them to enjoy success.

Next, and possibly even more important, is the phrase “If this doesn’t work, I’m screwed!” Do you realize what you’re saying here? First, you’re focused on the possibility of failure instead of the likelihood of your success. Then, to make matters worse, you’ve violated the first rule of self-programming: never use negative language when talking about yourself or your life. Why is that important?

One of the most brilliant men I’ve ever met, Maxwell Maltz, wrote about it in his most excellent book, “Psychocybernetics,” in which he describes a subconscious mechanism that automatically and constantly works to move you toward whatever you are focused on. Whether you focus on failure or success, that’s where it takes you. And there’s an even uglier part of that at work here…

The subconscious mind does not process negations! For instance, if I say, “I must not fear,” the subconscious processes that as “I must fear;” hence what you should say in that case is “I must be brave.” Now look at what you said: “If this doesn’t work, I’m screwed.” Your subconscious hears that as “If this DOES work, I’m screwed!” That’s a pretty nasty thought, isn’t it?

You have the tools, and you know they’ve worked for many others. Use them with the expectation that they will work for you, too. If you’ve ever watched a bullfight, even in a movie, you will have noticed how the matador always walks around the ring with the bull acting as if he has already won. Walk the matador’s walk! Know that you will succeed because there is no other possible outcome if you merely apply what you have at your disposal.

In your case, it’s a fixed fight, because what you are working with are triggers to involuntary behavior in her and the scoop on all her best-kept secrets, all the things that she talks about with her girlfriends behind your back and more! All you have to do is learn, think things through, and then follow through.

Take care, and keep in touch,
David

Well, Gents, there’s very little that I could add to that, so I will simply invite you to join Marcus and many others in learning and employing the knowledge in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," which you should download right now at http://www.makingherhappy.com, because if you’ll look at the calendar, summer is almost gone (for those of us in the northern hemisphere, and the winter holidays are fast approaching. What better gift could you give both yourself and your wife than a new and improved YOU???

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

Don't Be a Deer Caught in the Headlights…What to Do to Fix Your Relationship and Marriage

I have some feedback for you, from the men this time, which demonstrates just how easy it really is to use good information when you have it, and how you have a choice of getting results or being road kill.

Over 98% of all the e-mail I receive falls into one of three categories: Success stories, questions from newsletter readers who haven’t yet read "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" about their relationships, and the ones I really feel sorry for, the ones who are in such turmoil that they are too scared to try anything. Take this very typical letter from Dane:

Hi David,

I have enjoyed your newsletters and want to get your book, but I just do not know what to do. What you say in your newsletters makes sense to me, but I can not see myself doing it. I can not afford to make a mistake at this point because my wife is already talking about divorce. How can I know that this will work for me, or that I can even do it? Anything you can tell me will be appreciated.

Dane

The reason Dane and the many others like him are concerned is quite clear. They’re facing crisis and are too scared of making a wrong move to make a right one, and there they sit, like a deer caught in the headlights, unable to decide to move left or right, forward or back, and finally die without having made a decision.

What’s really sad is that the answer to their question is almost always included in their letter, and they’re too emotionally amped up and therefore mentally blinded to see it: Dane doesn’t know that it will work for him or that he can do it precisely because he can’t see himself doing it! He is focused on the impending catastrophe, and not the successful resolution of his problems.

One of the greatest and most motivational things I have ever heard in my life is, “What the mind can conceive, the body can achieve.” It’s been quoted so many times that I can’t verify for you who first said it, but that doesn’t make it any less true; if you can see yourself doing it, you can make the choice to follow through and get it done, like these guys:

Hi David,

I just wanted to say this you are so right: when women speak, "Questions are statements and statements are questions, men state, while women negotiate"

But what I have noticed is funny, this basic fact of life must certainly be ingrained in ALL women.

What I mean is my current girlfriend is a French Quebecer and that's the way she communicates... by asking questions when she really wants to say something! I talked to her about it and she told me how bright I was for noticing it, while I know I did not ask for your copyright!

SO bottom line would be: it doesn't matter if a girl only speaks French, only Chinese or Spanish! She will deliver statements by asking questions. Why is that so? I guess it is a mystery of life! Maybe they are always searching authority from the man, they always want his approval unconsciously.

And on BOREDOM: My ex-girlfriend was cheating on me and one sentence she said will stick with me forever: "I'm bored with you" or in French "Je m'ennuies avec toi". Anyways, if I had read your materials while I was with this particular woman, I could have turned the tables if you know what I mean...

But past is past and I now vow to never let my current girlfriend feel that terrible feeling of BOREDOM.

Sincerely,
MV

(No MV, it’s no mystery at all. It’s biological, a matter of the structure of the female brain, and yes, because of that, it does transcend geography, race, language, and everything else. Women naturally do it because they are women, and we naturally don’t do it because we are men and wired differently. It’s really just that simple.)

David,

I subscribe to several email newsletters from John Alanis, Shelley (McMurtry, a great source of female perspective which I highly recommend), and even David DeAngelo. And, I've purchased materials from several, but this email about the baseball player was quite possibly the best of all of you yet.

The club metaphor, bubble blowing irreverence, etc., was excellent. The best part was using other people as mentors. In the past, I had always been intimidated by people with superior skills, but using them to improve myself is a much better idea.

Thank you so much,
Mike

You see? These guys can see themselves doing as I recommend and see the benefits of it, and instead of asking “will this work for me?” they’re not only applying it, they’re even abstracting greater lessons by following the logic path to its inexorable conclusion.

It’s hard to thrive on reason and logic when your life seems to be falling down around you unless you’re disciplined and have learned through experience that the more logic and facts you apply the quicker the situation and the bad feelings it creates will pass. You should always look into yourself for your confidence and courage, but when all else fails, you can still look at those around you and say to yourself, “Well, if they can do it, I can do it!”

What I’m talking about doing isn’t something unnatural that takes years of study and practice. Most of it is simply removing unnatural, wussifying programming and letting your true self show through, maybe for the first time in your life. The few things you have to learn are things you’ve wanted to know all your life, like what makes women tick and what they really want, and how to really communicate with them, which really boils down to three very simple rules. You would literally have to be brain damaged to not be able to do it; indeed, if you can read this newsletter, you can do everything that you need to do if you simply choose to do it.

So why not get started, right now, while you’re thinking about it and have access to the tools you need to make it happen, quickly and easily? Stop looking for reasons to abstain from acting and take action. It’s the only way you’ll get results.

Your next action is to go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and join the ranks of men who are happy and with happy women, instead of living bored, celibate, in fear of affairs or divorce, or any of that other nasty stuff that so many of us have lived with since the 1980’s.

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

Lying in Relationships and Marriage, Part 1, Faking It Until You Make It

Is lying to your partner ever a good attraction tactic? Is it ever good for anything in your relationship? Only if you’re a predator…

This is the first part of a three-part series on the various aspects of deceit in a relationship, which will include, among other things, lie detection, so don't miss any part of it, even if you think everything is okay in your relationship! Reader comments indicate it is one of the most popular topics we discuss and the second most popular newsletter series I issue, and truth be told, I should probably turn it into a stand-alone report, so even if you’ve seen it before, read carefully and treat it as a “refresher course” if necessary.

I’ve been asked frequently about the tactic of “fake it ‘til you make it” when trying to revive stale relationship or rescue a failing one. We’ve not talked about it in several months, and since many of you have commented (all comments are welcome and read; see the text below my signature for instructions if you need them) that you like it much better when we focus on a subject for a few days and thoroughly explore it, we’re going to focus on lying and deceit in general for a few days, such as detecting it, damage it can do that you may not expect, etc. Let’s dig in!

I recently read (for the fourth time) the scariest book I’ve ever found, with the possible exception of Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals.” It’s entitled “The Rules: Time-tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right,” by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider, in an effort to find out why women do so many things that are bad for them and their relationships with men, and I don’t know if this book is “the root of all evil” in relationships and marriage, but while some of the advice it gives is sound, practical advice, especially on personal security for women, parts of it are pure poison, and there’s much for both genders to learn from it if you can filter the good advice from the bad.

Frankly, I’d recommend that every man read it to see what kind of tricks and ploys are used to pull a man into a bad relationship to help him know that either his partner is a great woman who didn’t prey upon his insecurities or that he got sucked in and is being manipulated so he can take appropriate action to safely exit with confidence. Make no mistake, there are good relationships with problems, and there are bad relationships that need to be dissolved, and no matter which you’re in, you need to know EXACTLY what you’re in to fix it. Your first responsibility is to yourself and your own happiness, and until you’ve met that responsibility, you might contribute to someone else’s needs or cause, but not their happiness.

“The Rules,” according to its authors, is based on advice that a woman gave her daughter a hundred years ago or more on how to catch and marry a man. At that time, marrying well was a survival skill because many women could not make it on their own due to social prejudices, etc. Being “in love” was a luxury; “finding support” was a prime motivator in finding a husband; being “cared about” took a back seat to being “provided for.” Hence, much of the advice given under “The Rules” is how to prey upon a man’s insecurities to make him jealous and over-react to her scarcity, marrying her in order to control her availability.

This will get the job done, if simply getting married and being kept is a woman’s goal, but at what cost? In short, turning him into an insecure, jealous wuss that no woman could possibly be attracted to because a woman won’t respect and can’t feel attraction (that “swept off her feet” feeling that is an integral part of female sexual arousal) for a man she can control. This is a sure-fire recipe for disaster (especially if you have a healthy libido!), as it is what creates that marriage in which the woman spends everything the man makes but has sex with the proverbial gardener or pool boy instead of her husband.

I’ll get into more of this in a future newsletter, but what I want to talk about today, and the reason I bring this up, is that a "scary big" portion of the advice given in this book entails lying to men to attract them. I’m going to address that issue for the women in my upcoming book written for them, but it begs the more general question: “Is lying ever a good way to handle anything in a relationship, especially the building of attraction?”

The short answer, for both genders, is “Not just no, but HELL NO!” unless you are indeed some kind of predator or a total loser. Among other things, it leaves you feeling that you had to lie to attract the partner and therefore aren’t good enough to have him or her, even if you are! Indeed, feeling a lack of self-esteem can also make you feel that you have to lie to be worthy of someone else’s attention.

It also labels you as needy and weak, and is a tactic for losers and predators who cannot be attractive in their own right. That alone is devastating to self-esteem, if you have any, and when you look at the bigger picture, how can you feel or express love or respect for a person you lied to in order to have them involved in your life? Or for yourself? Can you love and respect yourself after lying to trick somebody into a relationship with you? Even without getting into what happens when you get caught, it’s a losing proposition for both sides.

What should you do? Work your attraction magic with things that are really part of you, incorporating new things that fit well into yourself if necessary. Start by emphasizing – NOT exaggerating -- your best behavior and avoiding and ultimately reforming – NOT disguising -- your worst. Then, take on a bit of self-improvement in areas that are appealing to you. If you’re not naturally funny, learn to be.

Don’t just try to fake it, and stress over it. Study it, understand how it can brighten your life and your outlook on life, as well as make you more attractive to your partner, and treat it as a self-improvement exercise because it is. Don’t try to act funny, BECOME funny. Join Toastmaster’s or something and learn how to tell a good story and see the humor in things. Take dancing lessons if you’ve always thought about it but never got around to it. Learn how to have real fun and adventure yourself and you will be fun and interesting to a woman.

Another example? Don’t try to act romantic, BE romantic. Develop a genuine appreciation for the great, the beautiful, the larger than life, by exposing yourself to it, and be able to spot it and point it out to others as you do in a way which helps them to get excited over it and appreciate it, as you see in the movie “Don Juan DeMarco.” Take a music appreciation, ballroom dancing or art appreciation class to get you started, or take up some kind of hobby where appreciation for greatness will be an inherent part of it as you delve deeper into the hobby, and gain self-esteem from your achievements as you progress. This isn’t changing yourself for her, it’s changing yourself for YOU, to have what YOU want, which is a strong, positive, attractive personality that you enjoy living with, people enjoy being around and which will attract viable candidates for a great relationship.

Or, you could just try to “fake it ‘til you make it,” and be stressed out over having your cover blown and somebody seeing the real you and not liking what they see, kicking you to the curb while yelling “Fraud!” and walking away without another thought. No? I thought not.

This process is not difficult; indeed, it’s most enjoyable. Most people who don’t engage in self-improvement avoid it because of fear of failure, not because there’s really any reason for them to fail, while most people who do engage in it (and I do mean ENGAGE, not just buy the materials and set them on the shelf or skim them instead of using them) succeed.

By the same token, if you don’t have any exciting stories to tell, don’t make them up – get off your butt and get out and do something exciting! If you’re not an expert at something, don’t fake it and make an ass of yourself, pick something interesting and useful to you (and hopefully fun for you as well) and BECOME an expert. It is far better to be silent and thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt! Besides, a man needs a hobby. ;-)

Never, ever, lie to your partner. Even without regard for moral or ethical issues; it’s just too stressful for both of you, and too damaging to your self-esteem, whether you get caught or spend years trying to maintain a lie, not to mention damaging to the relationship. It’s far easier to actually become attractive than to try to just put on the act, and once you do become attractive, BEING attractive isn’t just stress-free, it’s fun! And then, if the potential for love is there, it can develop and make for a truly great relationship that stands the test of time.

There’s a wealth of solid, tested information in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” on what women find attractive, and just as important, what will kill it in a heartbeat, not to mention how to communicate with her in a way that has her talking with you instead of spending hours every day complaining about you to all her girlfriends, or the guy she’s having an affair with! It can even help you figure out if you’re in a relationship that has a good foundation and can make it or if you’ve been pulled in by a “Rules Girl” and are truly too mismatched for there to be any hope.

This is it, your best shot at getting things back on the right track no matter how far astray they’ve gone, so download your copy today at http://www.makingherhappy.com, because the information works, the price is right, the guarantee is unconditional, and life is too short to miss living it to the fullest.

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

A Female Perspective on Political Correctness, Wussification, and Its Destructive Impact on Relationships and Marriage

A female reader speaks out on behalf of many others against “political correctness and the castration of the American Male” (according to other readers this is going on EVERYWHERE!). There is a solution, and it’s a great idea, no matter where you live.

I got an e-mail last night from a reader who sounds like she’s about as fed up and downright pissed off as a woman can get. She’s got a beef with the world’s over-reaction to feminism and political correctness in general, and is issuing a wake-up call. Meet Gail:

Hi David,

I’m angry right now, very angry, and it might have been better if I had waited to share this until I was a little more composed, but I’ve been angry for months, and I’ve shared this repeatedly with my girlfriends and realize that doing so is not accomplishing anything because I’m SO “preaching to the choir” that it’s ridiculous. I’ve got to share it with someone who can help me do something about it, and I’m starting with you.

My husband of 28 years is a wuss. He wasn’t a wuss when I married him, or for years after I married him. He’s a production manager at a large manufacturing company, and got to that position because he was an excellent leader, strong and decisive, but always fair, and tried to be a good motivator. If he doesn’t straighten up soon, he’s going to lose his job, and he may even end up losing me, if I don’t kill him first!

You see, he went to this seminar that was supposed to help him be a better manager, and from what he told me, it amounted to a pep rally for touchy-feely people and about the only thing he came away from the seminar with was the idea that he needed to pay his employees personal compliments to make them feel like he was interested in them as people, not just employees. I think this is ridiculous, because you show people you are interested in them by asking them questions, not saying flattering things, but that’s beside the point.

There was a woman who worked under him – I call her a woman, but she was a gold-digging hussy just watching for a chance to sue somebody – and when my husband complimented her on a nice hairstyle one day, she went to the HR department and filed a sexual harassment complaint! He spent the next six months being raked over the coals by corporate attorneys, HR consultants, attending “sensitivity training seminars,” etc., to finally get the bitch satisfied and still be able to keep his job. He’s now been so mentally and emotionally battered that he’s afraid to talk to women, including me!

He used to be so very strong and confident. He walked into a room like he owned it because he did. Now he walks into a room looking as if he expects to be attacked if there’s a woman there. We’ve talked about it, and he says the problem is that the legal threats and the threat of losing his job after 31 years with the same company made him realize what would happen if he were to suddenly lose his job this late in life, and how little it might take, and it “spooked him” as he says.

I’ve just bought your book for him, and if it has everything in it you say it does, I’m pretty sure he’ll be okay. He or I may have questions; will it be okay if we contact you? If so, how?

Thank you in advance for your help,

Gail F.

My reply:

Well, Gail, to say I’m feeling your pain would be an understatement. What you describe comprises one of my main motivations in writing “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage.” I’m not an antagonist or provocateur, but I am as disgusted with all this politically correct nonsense and the wussification of both men specifically and people everywhere in general that I could about puke. There was a time when I would have offered an apology if the word “puke” offended anybody’s fragile sensibilities, but today, I just really don’t care. I say it to get the message across, not to try to offend people. (Indeed, Gentlemen, if it offends you, grow some skin or find another newsletter to occupy your time, because becoming an alpha male is definitely not in your future.)

Getting back to the subject at hand, congratulations! I see all kinds of corrective action being taken here. Discussion with your husband and nailing down the problem is a huge and wonderful step in the right direction, one that, unfortunately, many couples couldn’t pull off. Identifying a path back to your husband’s old alpha male (and therefore highly desirable and effective leader) self and taking the first steps down that path are also commendable.

To answer your questions, I read all e-mail, answer as much of it as I can and still remain productive, and any questions and answers that can benefit all readers, as you know, appear here in this newsletter with the senders’ consent. If your husband needs a session with a personal coach to speed up the process he can e-mail me at support@makingherhappy.com, but it shouldn’t be necessary. You’ve made an excellent start with my book, and I’m going to suggest to you that in your case, you skip the beginning material on evaluating your relationship for now and have him start with the communication section. He is one of the few whom I would say should complete the evaluation after he has cured this crisis of confidence; your relationship is obviously on a solid foundation if you are taking this route to try to help him.

In your case, the communication section will help him regain his confidence in speaking to women because he will be better prepared to pick up hints and signals, which will in turn help remove that “vulnerable and lost” feeling, one of the main reasons I put it before the attraction section. Then have him continue through the attraction section, and work with him as he goes through it. If you want to be really supportive, read a bit ahead of him and try to round up copies of books, movies, etc., that are mentioned as good examples so they will be convenient for him. It will speed his progress, which you’ll both appreciate, and the two of you will thoroughly enjoy watching movies like “The Fountainhead” and “Don Juan DeMarco” together.

Speaking of examples, there is one that is not yet in the book that I need to add, and while it is about U.S. Americans (I personally hold all people in this hemisphere as Americans, since we live in “North,” “Central,” and “South America”), it is an interesting read and full of good examples for all men to follow, regardless of where you live. The book is called “The Greatest Generation,” by Tom Brokaw. I never cared for Brokaw’s politics or the political slant in a lot of his reporting because there’s a big difference in reporting the news and trying to influence the public’s perception of it, but the details in this book about the men very often describe heroic alpha males, and regardless of your feelings for Brokaw or U.S. heroes of World War II, the role models found there are effective, and it makes for interesting and productive supplementary reading.

One other thing that I need to bring out and that you need to point out to your husband is that “sexual harassment” is only a workplace issue as far as legalities go. It is a workplace issue because you are compelled to co-exist there for the sake of your employment. That doesn’t give you license to be chauvinistic, rude and obnoxious everywhere else, but that does mean it is the only place where you may have to actively avoid any kind of sexuality, so if you are concerned, contain your concern to the workplace and be yourself – your respectful but assertive and naughty, and therefore FUN self – everywhere else. He just needs to see examples of it being okay to be the way he used to be so he can get back in touch with it, just like most men.

Take care, and keep in touch,
David

There you have it, folks. If you (Gentlemen) or the man in your life (Ladies – it’s just wrong that I even have to say that, but I know I’ll get a ton of smart-ass comments from you jokers if I don’t! LOL!) are feeling castrated, there is a fix, guaranteed effective, in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage.” Download your copy today at http://www.makingherhappy.com and get back to being the man you were born to be.

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

King Arthur and the Witch: Lessons in Women, Relationships, and Marriage, and a CONTEST!

A very funny King Arthur story holds some very valuable lessons for the man who wants to understand and be happy with a woman.

I received a great story from one of you (thanks Ken!) that tickled my funny bone so thoroughly that by the time the laughing fit had subsided I had literally “laughed myself sick;” I was a bit nauseas, my diaphragm and abdominal muscles were sore, and my jaws and cheeks ached from that ancient and wonderful condition known affectionately as “perma-grin.”

But then I looked past the punch line and looked for the lessons it might hold for us, and sure enough, there they were. Read this story, and then see how many lessons you can pick out and we’ll compare answers at the end of the story, and I’ll give you details on how to win a free copy of my book in our annual “King Arthur and the Witch” Contest.

King Arthur and the Witch

Young King Arthur was ambushed and imprisoned by the monarch of a neighboring kingdom. The monarch could have killed him but was moved by Arthur's youth and ideals. So, the monarch offered him his freedom, as long as he could answer a very difficult question. Arthur would have a year to figure out the answer and, if after a year, he still had no answer, he would be put to death.

The question? What do women really want?

Such a question would perplex even the most knowledgeable man, and to young Arthur, it seemed an impossible query. But, since it was better than death, he accepted the monarch's proposition to have an answer by year's end.

He returned to his kingdom and began to poll everyone: the princess, the priests, the wise men and even the court jester. He spoke with everyone, but no one could give him a satisfactory answer.

Many people advised him to consult the old witch, for only she would have the answer.

But the price would be high; as the witch was famous throughout the kingdom for the exorbitant prices she exacted.

The last day of the year arrived and Arthur had no choice but to talk to the witch. She agreed to answer the question, but he would have to agree to her price first.

The old witch wanted to marry Sir Lancelot, the most noble of the Knights of the Round Table and Arthur's closest friend!

Young Arthur was horrified. She was hunchbacked and hideous, had only one tooth, smelled like sewage, made obscene noises, etc. He had never encountered such a repugnant creature in all his life.

He refused to force his friend to marry her and endure such a terrible burden; but Lancelot, learning of the proposal, spoke with Arthur.

He said nothing was too big of a sacrifice compared to Arthur's life and the preservation of the Round Table.

Hence, a wedding was proclaimed and the witch answered Arthur's question thus:

“What a woman really wants,” she answered, “is to be in charge of her own life.”

Everyone in the kingdom instantly knew that the witch had uttered a great truth and that Arthur's life would be spared.

And so it was, the neighboring monarch granted Arthur his freedom and Lancelot and the witch had a wonderful wedding.

The honeymoon hour approached and Lancelot, steeling himself for a horrific experience, entered the bedroom. But, what a sight awaited him. The most beautiful woman he had ever seen lay before him on the bed. The astounded Lancelot asked what had happened.

The beauty replied that since he had been so kind to her when she appeared as a witch, she would henceforth, be her horrible deformed self only half the time and the beautiful maiden the other half.

Which would he prefer? Beautiful during the day, or night?

Lancelot pondered the predicament. During the day, a beautiful woman to show off to his friends, but at night, in the privacy of his castle, an old witch? Or, would he prefer having a hideous witch during the day, but by night, a beautiful woman for him to enjoy wondrous intimate moments?

What would YOU do?

Noble Lancelot said that he would allow HER to make the choice herself.

Upon hearing this, she announced that she would be beautiful all the time because he had respected her enough to let her be in charge of her own life.

Now....what is the moral to this story?

If you don't let a woman have her own way, things are going to get ugly!

Yes, the moral presented is a valid one, but only up to a point; giving in too much can make you look like a wuss, make your partner bored, and make things get about as ugly as they can get as the relationship comes apart at the seams, especially if you have a “toxic wife,” but that’s not the lesson I hope you found. A woman can only be in charge of her own life up to but not including the point where she starts being in charge of yours.

Foremost, did you notice that the witch wanted to be in charge of her own life, but submitted to Lancelot’s leadership on the issue when she clearly had the power to choose independently of his say-so? Women will do this in real life as well, every time. Why?

No, it’s not because they are weak, or stupid, or anything like that. They simply enjoy being lead and testing a man to see if he’s capable of leading. It’s exciting for them to see a man act with authority and make decisions. That’s NOT to say that they like seeing a man be a bully and force decisions upon them without giving them a fair hearing and consideration in issues that involve them, so don’t go there. Some women may respond to it, but the pay-off is damaging to both of you, so just don’t.

They can handle things just fine on their own if they have to; it’s just a lot more fun and exciting for them if they tell us whatever’s on their mind and then they see us make a good decision and carry it out, kind of like it’s fun for us to ask them to go get something for us so we can watch their hips swing as they walk away. It’s that same low-key, voyeuristic sexual excitement; they get it from our behavior like we get it from their appearance.

And yes, some of them literally need leadership because they tend to get drama-swamped and can’t make a decision at all, and some are emotionally-damaged and self-destructive, just like some men are. These are minorities, gentlemen, small minorities. They’re just so noticeable when they do occur that we’ve all seen them, without realizing that a whole lot of us are seeing the few of them, that they appear to be more common than they really are.

And what about “being in charge of her own life”? Do you know what that means to a woman? Pretty much the same thing that it means to us, but much more intensely. Women have a lot more insecurities than we do, and they tend to be bothered by them a lot more than we are. No wonder after the centuries of oppression and the constant bombardment of their self-esteem by the fashion and beauty industries, predatory men, hyper-competitive women, and others. Coupled with their more-creative brain wiring and subsequent heightened emotional tendencies, I’m surprised and pleased that they get along so well as they do, because many of them do have more obstacles to happiness than we do.

For a woman, being in charge of her own life means being able to rise above the insecurities and the drama to feel comfortable in her own skin and confident about her choices, especially the choices she’s made about the relationships in her life. No small task when you consider the conditions they live in as listed in the preceding paragraph.

Where we tend to spend our lives managing tasks and projects, women, because of their social nature, spend their lives managing relationships. When they say they want a man who makes them feel safe, they’re not talking about a bodyguard; they’re talking about a man who earns their trust and loyalty, who gives them a feeling of commitment and continuation of the relationship, because severed relationships are as traumatic for them as failed plans and projects are to us, if not more so. We put our life into our work, and they put their lives into their relationships.

Another lesson is in her response to Lancelot. If you do the things that make a woman happy, like letting her see you being a real man and using what you learn about a woman’s needs, wants, communications style and methods, etc., she will be compelled to make your life wonderful. It’s in the wiring, and even predatory women can be turned around to some noticeable but still unhealthy degree if the man is strong and exciting enough; NO, it’s not enough to make them a partner, so don’t bother wondering if you could be the one to turn them around.

Predatory behavior is the result of biological wiring, just like their more-sophisticated communications skills, responding to confident leadership and other alpha male characteristics with attraction, being hyper-adverse to boredom, etc. Don’t let that lesson be wasted.

As an aside, hopefully a quick one, I want to point out a common misconception in this story that has extremely destructive potential. This story speaks of Lancelot’s “sacrifice” in marrying the witch. “Sacrifice” is the trading of value for nothing, resulting in the destruction of value, which benefits nobody at all. Lancelot traded his choice of bride to see his King live and lead his country, because he did not wish to live otherwise. That is a trade of value for value, not a sacrifice.

You often hear people talk about the need for sacrifice in a relationship; if ever you are asked to make a true sacrifice in your relationship, to give up and destroy something of value to you for no appreciable benefit, you are looking at a controller, some form of predator or parasite, not a partner. A partner might ask you to choose between two things of value to you, (like trading a roadster for a car that will carry the whole family) or between two actions (a fishing trip with a friend or a family vacation), but only a predator would ask you give up something of value to you without something in return, like selling your roadster so they could have one or giving yours to them while you do without, or giving up your fishing trip so they could go off on a cruise with girlfriends. Good relationships do involve a lot of trades, but never sacrifices, and if you’re with the right person, you’ll seldom employ compromise, either.

What other lessons can you find in this story? Let’s do a contest. E-mail me at tips@makingherhappy.com, and if you send anything I find worthy of repeating to your fellow readers that hasn’t already appeared in print during previous runs of this contest, and I’ll send you a free copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage.” Entries must be received by 11:59PM Mountain Standard Time (Las Vegas, Nevada time) on Saturday, August 22, 2009. I've held this contest in the past, and it was a blast. I also met some of my best students and closest friends through this contest. And for those of you who participated last year, no cheating this year! LOL!

If you don’t have an entry, that should tell you that you need to be reading "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," because you should be able to recognize these things if you’re going to be living happily with a woman. Download your copy right now at http://www.makingherhappy.com and start becoming that guy whom legend says does not exist, the guy who knows what women really want and how to have fun giving it to them, not to mention reaping the immense and wonderful rewards they give in return.

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

How Feminism Destroyed Real Men: Beating the Politics of Relationships and Marriage

A British author’s hypothesis on the near-extinction of real men and how he has coped with it, a surprisingly useful and interesting narrative to say the least!

I’m taking you to task with something a little unusual today, so you might want to save this issue for your lunch break if you’re a slow reader because it will take longer than the usual target of two to three minutes to get through it. Several of my readers forwarded me this link and told me to check it out.

I did, and you should do the same. To help protect this author’s message for future generations, since this is some pretty profound writing and web sites tend to inexplicably disappear from time to time, I’m going to reprint the content here, without the express permission of the author, a Mr. Nirpal Dhaliwal, who published the following article at the Daily Mail web site and apparently is also the author of a book entitled “Tourism,” available through Vintage Press for ₤7.99. I would not recommend some of his behavior or attitude, such as having an affair or bragging about a sexual encounter with his wife, but he does present some very lucid commentary, and the comments of some of his readers are interesting as well. Here’s the article, followed by some brief commentary and suggestions:

How Feminism Destroyed Real Men
16:27pm 4th August 2006
By Nirpal Dhaliwal

Women thought the last victory of equality was to make men more 'sensitive'. The bitter irony, says this male writer in a piece that will infuriate the opposite sex (including his wife Liz Jones), is women don't like wimps after all...

At a dinner party recently, I encountered the depressingly familiar sight of a dynamic thirty- something woman accompanied by a nerdy male sidekick that she'd browbeaten into proposing to her.

The mismatch in power was obvious. She was successful, ambitious and confident; he was a diffident, overweight, shrinking violet who measured every word he spoke in case he said anything remotely contentious that might offend her.

On her wedding finger was the most enormous, glittering engagement ring. A mutual friend later told me she'd initially been presented with a less garish but more exquisite diamond but had told her fiancÈ to return it to the shop and get her something bigger.

That huge diamond was his declaration of surrender in the sex war. But I didn't feel sorry for the stupid sap; he should have been man enough to tell her to get lost and find some other dummy.

Instead, he'd been sucker-punched into a lifetime of nagging and neglect, and looking at his bossy wife-to-be parading her huge rock, I felt a shiver of pre-emptive schadenfreude.

Her smug smile might have given the impression that her glossy-magazine-inspired life was all going to plan, but I could see the tragedy to come.

One day she'll realise how dull and unfulfilling it is to have a man who doesn't answer back, who offers no challenge or danger - but by then she'll be over the hill and stuck with him for fear of being left on the shelf. Sadly, this is the state of many marriages today.

Back in the Nineties, emboldened by the successes of feminism, women sought to slay the dragon of patriarchy by turning men into ridiculous cissies who would cry with them through chick-flicks and then cook up a decent lasagne.

Suddenly, women wanted to drive home their newfound equality by moulding men to be more like them.

This velvet revolution was reflected in a series of broader cultural changes. After decades of uncompromising movie heroes like Marlon Brando and Clint Eastwood, we were asked to fall for stuttering, floppy-haired fops like Hugh Grant; touchy-feely and hopelessly embarrassed around women.

No doubt at the time, millions of misguided single women thought that having a man who could feel their pain and emote for Britain was a Good Thing.

Now, over a decade later, women are waking up to the fact that these men are drippy, sexless bores. The feminisation of men hasn't produced the well-rounded uber-males women were hoping for.

Instead, women are now lumped with flabby invertebrates, little more than doormats, whom they secretly despise but are too proud to admit it.

Rather than partnership, professional women tend to seek dominance in a relationship. They map their lives out early on and pursue their dream of 'having it all' with cold-blooded ruthlessness.

Young women have a crystal-clear agenda: they want the career, the wardrobe, the smartly furnished house, the 4x4 and the cute kids they'll ferry in it to expensive schools. No man is going to get in their way; and the men they choose for themselves are pliant and feeble enough to facilitate that programme.

Concentrating so much energy on work and family matters requires these women to pick a man who is predictable and secure, who won't upset the apple cart by pursuing dreams and instincts of his own.

These are cardboard cut-out men who gush with empathy whenever their wives and girlfriends need to dump their professional stresses and female angst on them: weak and soulless men who haven't the guts to make a mark themselves, who take the passenger seat in their women's juggernaut journey to post-feminist Nirvana.

But having ticked off the various items on their life checklist, women are left with a nagging sense of dissatisfaction. Where was the drama? Where was the passion? Where was the stimulation and growth?

It was all forsaken for an anodyne, materialistic shopping spree that is a Good Thing. ultimately a poor substitute for a real life. These women consider themselves to be alpha-females, but they are nothing but a pathetic sham.

A true Amazon couldn't stand the company of a supplicant male, let alone marry one. Real alpha-women are the ones who can more than hold their own with an alpha-man.

Deep down, women love men who stand up to them, who won't be pushed around. They love men who will look them in the eye and tell them to shut up when their hormonal bickering has become too much.

They love men who will draw a line in the sand and walk out on them when they've had enough. They love men who know their own minds and are man enough to stick to their guns.

I'm always telling my wife, the writer Liz Jones, to shut up. She gets into a prissy huff about it, but I know she respects me for not indulging her neuroticism. Long ago, I realised it is unhealthy for a man to embroil himself in arguments with women.

While men want an argument to make sense and have a rational conclusion, women solely want the argument itself: it's a pressure valve for their emotions, and once they get started there is no stopping them.

I have a very low boredom threshold; I can't bear having protracted discussions about where my wife and I 'are going'. Nor can I bear to listen to the gossipy, highly detailed 'He said, she said' monologues that women drift into when telling you about their day.

I deal with these elements of the female personality with impassive indifference. People might call me a sexist pig, but I am the opposite. I love women, and I love my wife because she is brilliant and incredibly strong.

I am a true feminist, because I only want to be with a powerful and capable woman. No sexist could cope with having a wife as intelligent and independent as mine.

Our relationship would never have worked had I been an effete New Man, desperately wanting to sympathise with the female condition.

My wife would have grown to loathe me for my fawning cowardice. She is a warrior and she needs to be with someone who is a match for her. Knowing the limits of what I will deal with in a relationship, I maintain my self-respect and, accordingly, gain hers.

Men are now generally terrified of women. They hold their tongues for fear of being misinterpreted as sexist; they constantly attempt to second guess their partner in order to avoid giving offence.

They preen themselves with groaning shelves full of beauty products so they won't incur derision and scorn. They suppress their masculinity and present themselves as cuddly Mr Nice Guys, and won't project self- confidence in case it's regarded as unreconstructed machismo.

This backfiring feminist conspiracy has, of course, developed hand in hand with the march of raging political correctness in Britain. The two have combined like some potent chemical reaction to explode in the faces of a generation of women who thought that a 'moulded' man would make for a desirable one.

In recent years, men have been trained like circus seals to be inoffensive to women, and no longer know how to entice them and turn them on.

But women secretly long for a man with swagger, who is cocky and self-assured and has the cheek to stand up them and make fun of their feminine foibles.

They long for the rakish charm of a man who knows there's a whole ocean of fish out there, who isn't afraid of being himself in case he is rejected.

The truth is, a real man doesn't care what any woman thinks of him. He doesn't care what anyone thinks of him: he answers solely to his spirit.

Real men don't pretend or even try to understand women. They simply love them for being the mysterious, capricious creatures that they are. And they don't take them too seriously, either. They know the vicissitudes of the female mind, its constant insecurities and the fluctuations in mood.

Rather than pander to them, they simply watch them drift by like so many clouds on the horizon. They don't get entangled in a woman's feelings and listen to her prattling on and on until she's talked herself out. Such strong and stoic men are exactly what women need to anchor themselves amid the chaos of their emotions.

Sometimes my wife bemoans my detachment and laissez-faire attitude to our marriage and wishes I were more wrapped up in her. I tell her she would soon get bored of it, because men who put women on a pedestal can't make love to them in the way that women want.

A man who is too in awe of his woman isn't going to tear her blouse open and ravish her on the couch; he isn't going to pull her hair and whisper profanities in her ear. Whenever my marriage is at a crisis point, and my wife's ego and mine are jostling for a position of supremacy, we inevitably have strenuous, battling sex.

My wife is older and more successful than I am, but the bedroom has always been the arena in which I have brought her down to earth.

The female orgasm is the natural mechanism by which men assert dominion over women: a man who appreciates this can negotiate whatever difficulties arise in his relationships with them.

Last Christmas, my wife threw me out after discovering I'd been cheating on her. On the night we got back together, I made strong, passionate love to her. Unfaithful as I'd been, I was not going to let her have me over a barrel for the rest of our marriage. I needed to keep a sense of self and not allow her to mire me in guilt and a desperate quest of forgiveness.

I needed to let her know what she would be missing if we broke up for ever. I gave her a manful bravura performance that night, and at the height of her passion, I asked her: 'Who's the boss?'

The question threw her. Initially she wouldn't give me a reply, but I enticed it from her. 'You are,' she finally gasped. 'You are!' I am a very difficult man to be with. I know I have caused my wife great pain and anxiety. But she is an adult, and ultimately it is wholly her choice whether she wants to be with me or not - I cannot be anyone other than myself.

I don't believe in working on relationships and making artificial efforts to give them substance. I believe in people being themselves and following their hearts towards whatever destiny lies before them.

When women choose to be with New Men, they are choosing a life that will be only half-lived. I think a lot of them are finally waking up to that fact. Relationships between independent and assertive people will always be fraught with tensions, but they have enormous creative energy.

Despite the many problems my wife and I have endured, we have both come a long way since we first met six years ago.

We have challenged one another to grow - professionally, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually. This would never have happened had she flaked out and gone for a softer option in her choice of partner.

Bring back the real men, girls. You might just remember why you loved them in the first place.

Tourism by Nirpal Dhaliwal is published by Vintage, £7.99.

As I said, I would not recommend some of this author’s behavior. Aside from the affair, he also says that “real men don’t pretend or even try to understand women.” In my experience, to not try to understand a woman is to set yourself up to be unable to lead a woman, which is crucial to attraction and her excitement; understanding and effectively communicating with anyone, regardless of gender, race or anything else is requisite to effectively leading them.

Dhaliwal’s attitude is that of an adversary, not a partner, despite his claims of loving women to the point of being himself a feminist. However, his picture indicates that he is young, and his language artistic, so hopefully as he ages and gains experience he’ll be less apt to try to take emotional or artistic liberties with reality. Again, do visit that site, and if you’re interested in tourism, you might want to look for his book as well.

I wanted all of you to see this because this young man does have a provocative and highly accurate idea, and we will spend an issue or two discussing your questions and comments about it, because if nothing else, it should certainly bring into focus some of the problems and misconceptions that many of you have that brought you to me. His life is working for him better than most, but there are still some issues that provide room for improvement, and we’ll be digging into them for sure, so feel free to send questions and comments to support@makingherhappy.com and let’s see where we can go with this.

If you already know that you need help and have just been having trouble finding the information to fix the problems and make improvements in your relationship, go ahead and jump over to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and find out how to make your partner one of the happiest women alive without engaging in the “pandering” and other bad behavior men are so prone to commit these days, allowing you to find happiness yourself!

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

Is Somebody Bringing You Down? Insidious Killers of Relationships and Marriage

There are some people who not only don’t want anything in their life to go right, they don’t want anything in your life to go right, either. These people will pose as your friends, but if you carefully listen to them, you’ll know they don’t act like friends, because every time you get excited about something going well in your life, they have something negative to say. These people can even end up being your partner or your spouse, and if they do, they “gotta go!”

I had a run-in with a defeatist this morning, and it reminded me that defeatists, people who are simply resigned to defeat without regard for real chances of success, are a scourge not only to all achievers, but to relationships, since a great relationship with them is not possible and a great relationship in their presence is something they will fight tooth-and-nail, and I want to make sure you can recognize them and get them out of your life before they can do too much damage to you or those you love.

You shall know these people by their works, as the saying goes. They lead a mediocre life at best, always complaining about some problem, always a day late and a dollar short, and always trashing any idea you have to get ahead or trying to tell you that whatever success you just experienced will have to be short-lived because they tried it and it didn’t work out for them.

The plain and simple truth is that these people have no self-esteem and refuse to see themselves as successful, and to confirm that success is impossible, they have to obstruct everyone else’s success in whatever way possible, else their little delusion explodes and they have to admit that success is possible and it’s their choice to fail that has caused them to fail all their life.

You do know them, huh? Maybe some of these:

1. The guy who says the car you’re trading up to is a piece of crap, and Consumer Reports or other professional reviews only say it’s good because they’re taking money under the table.

2. The woman who says that the business you want to start can’t possibly succeed because everybody knows there’s no real market for something like that, and only by dishonest means can you ever make a living selling real estate, manufacturing some way cool new gadget that the world is begging for, or performing a service that everybody and their brother is asking you to quit your job to come to do for them.

3. The guy who spends more time bitching about not having a job, or more effort trying to look like he’s trying to find one while milking unemployment insurance for every penny he can get, than it would take anyone to actually get one.

4. The chronic chemical abuser who says there is no sense being clean and sober because they couldn’t do anything worthwhile anyway, and by the way, neither can you, so you might as well join them for a few drinks, smokes, pills, etc.

5. The zealot who greets your ambitions with sermons about how “money is the root of all evil,” and “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” and telling you that you should be volunteering for their pet charity instead of starting or expanding your own business, trying to make you feel guilty about wanting to improve yourself and your situation through honest effort and hard labor.

I’m sure you get the picture by now. No matter what you want to do, they say it can’t work, and no matter what you do succeed at, they say it can’t last, or they want to throw some obstacle in your way, like guilt, or the futility of the system, or some lament about life not being fair.

There are three basic scenarios in which these sorry people can have a negative impact on your life and especially your relationship, if you let them. Above all else, keep in mind that they can only impact your life if you let them, because you always have the choice of eliminating them, even if YOU are the defeatist; we’ll talk about that scenario last, so pay attention, because it’s the biggie.

The first scenario is where someone who doesn’t live in you household is the defeatist. Maybe a co-worker, somebody you erroneously regard as a friend (no real friend who values you and whom you can value can truly be a defeatist – they are more likely to be some kind of dependent and need you rather than care about you), or even a family member who doesn’t live with you. These are the easiest people to dispatch, because you can give them two choices, to straighten up and support your aspirations or stay out of your life; you can ultimately hold them accountable for their choice by cutting them out of your life if they don’t get with the program.

Yes, they might get pissy, and might say bad things about you, but while they’re sitting around talking about how you cared so little about them that you just went off and succeeded without them (a defeatist’s favorite lament), you’ll be off succeeding without them! Big whoop, huh? Hardly…

In the second scenario, the defeatist lives in your household. Ouch. That either means family member or some down-on-their luck “friend” (yeah, right, see the first scenario) that has suckered you into taking responsibility for their bad judgment and may have even out-stayed their welcome within the first day of moving in. This scenario is considerably tougher, but still ultimately in your control; you may just have to pay a higher price for their cooperation.

Sounds harsh, huh? Well, yes it does, until you realize that the defeatist is so efficient at killing any chance of achievement and happiness they might have that they almost always end up in trouble as a result of their own choices, not random events. Yes, there were certainly some defeatists displaced by Hurricane Katrina or a tsunami, and one could reasonably argue that at least some of those were there by choice (to stay when they could have left and ultimately to live there at all) as well, but regardless, they would be doing it to themselves if natural forces weren’t doing it to them, because they choose failure after failure. What do you do with them?

The same thing you would do with the ne’er-do-well in the first scenario – you give them the choice to straighten up or leave! By continuing to support them as they destroy their own life and try to influence you to destroy your own, you are “enabling” them! And they will reward you by inviting you to join them in their pity-party, and may even let you continue to pay their bills while they’re sitting around too depressed to look for a way to fix their problems and regain their independence, if they ever had any. Just what you live for, right? They think so.

If you know a defeatist, look at their life – indeed, check out several. See how many are living in really bad rental housing, shacked up with friends, parents or other relatives (well into adulthood!), and how many of them are working minimum or near-minimum wage jobs when the average person of their age and expected experience level is at twice that or better. There may be some emotional repercussions from ousting them, but can you afford to be influenced by that failure-mongering attitude? Can you afford to have your partner or your children (if you have any still at home) influenced by them, or disrespecting you because of your failure to rip them from your jugular vein? Get them out of your life before they impact your relationship with members of your family.

But wait! What if it is your partner that is the defeatist? Does that make a difference? Should it? Think with me for a minute here. You’re on an ocean liner, it’s going down, you and the rest of your family and friends are on a lifeboat, there’s still more room and plenty of supplies, but your partner says, “no, I’m just going to go down with the ship, because if I get in that raft, nobody’s going to find us.” What do you do?

Do you step out of the raft and back onto the sinking ship to go down with them when there was clearly an available and attainable choice to live??? Not me, nor anyone else who realizes just how precious a resource your life is. Being on that sinking ship – that they choose to go down with rather than to step on the raft – is a bad choice on their part that does not in any way create an obligation on your part.

Repeat after me: “A bad choice on your part does not create an obligation on my part.” Again. Again. Keep going. Yes, again! Keep repeating it until you understand it, accept it, and can live it. You may choose to help somebody out of a tough spot, but there’s no good reason for you to sanction and enable someone’s stupidity by bailing them out of a bad choice that was made simply because they wouldn’t acknowledge the possibility that they could succeed at something else and give it a try.

If it’s your spouse, give them some time, support, and even professional counseling if they need it, as well as ample opportunities to succeed so they can learn that they can indeed do it, and hold them accountable for both the outcome and a timetable for an outcome, and if they just can’t make the choice to snap out of it, fire them! It may cost you half of everything you have, but that’s better than having the defeatist costing you everything you have, including your life, for the rest of your life.

Hmmm….who does that leave for the third scenario? Well, yes, YOU! If you are the defeatist, you’re in big trouble, because everyone around you either pities you, is annoyed with you, or flat out wishes you’d find somebody else to bring down with your negativity. Yes, YOU are the one who may be about to get the “shape up or ship out” ultimatum, and no, there’s no nice way to put it, they’re really feeling that way!

But, since it is you who is the defeatist, it is you who has ultimate control as to whether that defeatist philosophy and attitude gets fixed! You don’t think it’s you? Well, take the test. If as you read the preceding paragraphs and kept feeling you needed to defend those mentioned because they just couldn’t help making bad choices because everybody always makes bad choices and nobody does anything right except by luck, guess what! You’re a defeatist!

If you are the defeatist, denial time is over. All these things I’ve been talking about doing are subject to be brought to bear against you, and somebody may already be contemplating it. You’ve thought all your life that you couldn’t succeed, and as long as you thought that, you were right, precisely because you thought it.

Henry Ford, the great American industrialist who founded the Ford Motor Company was known for being tough and rude, and at times, a little too arrogant for his own good (such as trying to tell the market what it was going to accept, which almost bankrupted him over the Edsel), but he was also incredibly wise in areas of human intelligence and human behavior.

He was known to take prospective employees out for a meal, and watch to see if they salted their food before tasting it. If they did, they were creatures of habit, not people who salted food because it needed salt, and he wouldn’t hire them. He wanted thinking people. And one of his favorite expressions according to historians was, “Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.” Wisdom from the grave.

Ask any achiever about happiness and success and they will tell you two things: Success is a choice, and hanging out with losers is something they won’t do. So start by choosing to believe that success is a choice, then pick a successful person and learn from them.

It doesn’t have to be a Fortune 100 CEO, just somebody who is living a life that you would like to live. Model their behavior, especially how they think about life, success and achievement. It will give you the picture of success to move toward, the thought processes to help you get there, and the confidence to continue succeeding and be strikingly attractive to your partner! Then instead of wishing you were somewhere else, everyone will want to be around you and doing things with you for a change. ‘Nuff said!

Folks, success and happiness really are choices you can make, no matter what it is you want to do, as is a great relationship. You must choose to believe you can succeed, you must choose to act to succeed, and you must choose to eliminate anything from your path that will keep you from it. Nothing that is a part of your life is a neutral; it is either for you or against you, enriching your life or detracting from it. Remove the detractors and live. Part of your job as a husband and father is the same as that of a soldier, to protect your family and domicile from all enemies, foreign and domestic. And if you fail in that job, you have no right to complain when those in your charge want new leadership.

If you’re having relationship or career troubles, or any kind of trouble, seek advice from those who have successful experience upon which they can base good advice, not somebody who whines about how there’s no use in trying. Don’t waste your time discussing your plans, hopes, and dreams with someone who plans for nothing and expects nothing but failure, hopes everyone else will fail to validate their own failure, and dreams of nothing but rationalizations for their own failure (or someone handing them success, such as those people whose retirement plan consists of buying a lottery ticket every week), or seeking advice from those who obviously have none of value to offer.

If improving your relationship is on your list of things at which you want to succeed, there’s a ton of good advice in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage.” It’s tested, proven, and works. Download your copy today at http://www.makingherhappy.com, because success is a choice, your choice, as is a truly great relationship, and what you need to know to get it done is just a few mouse-clicks away!

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

Speaking of Alpha Buffoons, How Do You Handle Them? Keeping Respect and Attraction Intact in Relationships and Marriage

I told you not to be the “alpha buffoon” yesterday, but we didn’t talk about what to do when you meet one. Failure to handle him properly can cost you dearly in terms of how your wife or girlfriend sees you, no matter how “alpha” you may be yourself.

Before I get into today’s lesson, I want to note that we are slowly but surely winning the war against male wussitude at the grass roots level. While Hollywood and others seem hell-bent on turning us all into bumbling, sniveling, beta males and worse, there are those among the masses who are noticing that this is the wrong way to go and are joining in the fight. Please take a minute to read the following article by David Von Drehle of Time Magazine, entitled “The Boys Are All Right.” It is compelling, encouraging, enlightening, and for most, entertaining as well.

To get into our lesson today, I received a letter that we need to take a good look at together. One my top guys, Dee, wrote me about an encounter with an alpha buffoon, and he learned a lesson after the encounter that he wanted to share with all of you. (I so love it when my students become teachers! That’s when I know that the lessons have really hit home and they “own” the material.) Check it out:

Hello David,

I want to tell you something I found out only two days ago that was making withdrawals from the "attraction bank." Perhaps some of your readers can benefit from my experience.

There is a man (let's call him Bill), that works for the same company as my wife and I, who is, let’s say an alpha buffoon.

A few days ago we happened to be in the office at the same time he was. There was a box a pecans which looked to be “wild” as I called them, which to me meant not from trees which are trained, pruned, etc.

He couldn't resist telling me there is no such thing as wild, only native or paper shell and proceeded to tell my wife she was married to me (like she’d made a bad decision). I popped off a few comments to him which were so far over his head he didn't even know they were insults.

Later one of the secretaries’ son was in and had been swapping punches with kids at school. For the fun of it I told the boy to go ahead and let me see what he had. I wouldn't hit him back.

Well, Bill heard and couldn't resist, said he "wanted in on it" when I told him “Let's go,” he backs out.

Bill then starts a long monologue how it's been too long since he hit someone without trying to hurt them that he better not. He bounced for so long and had been around so many top martial artists who taught him so much.

Although it was all I could do to keep from laughing in his face, I let him ramble and basically say in all his actions that I was a moron who knew nothing. No one but my wife knows that I used to be an instructor of martial arts years ago, and I prefer to keep it that way. I don't brag about it.

NEVER EVER EVER let any one put you down in front of your wife no matter what.

Here's why.

When we left my wife acted like she was mad at me. Wouldn't hardly talk. (Sometimes I'm a little hard-headed and my mind has been focused on business I am trying to start)

When asked, she said no, she was not mad at me. Finally, after much silence I told her to tell me. "I WISH, SOMETIMES, YOU TWO WOULD JUST FIGHT AND GET IT OVER WITH! I'M TIRED OF THE MACHO BULLS**T. You’re always at each others throats."

My response was “What did I do?”

"You didn't do anything," she said.

(I was still not using my head yet.) And asked, “Then what is the problem? I never attacked him, he started it, I ignored it, so what did I do?”

She said that whenever he popped off "well you’re the one married to him" that she just wanted to rip him to shreds, and it was all she could do to keep her mouth shut.

David, let me tell you, it sank in then.

"Do you know why he was always that way," I asked?

"Yes, because he is afraid of you, but you eat it up, you just have such an air of confidence that people either want to be like you, or are intimidated and afraid of you," she said.

That helped her calm a little and seemed to make her feel better.

As much as I hate to I guess I am going to have to put a stop to it. With his kind usually physical is the only way to go. The bad thing, he is the owner’s nephew.

If I had told him I was at one time a teacher of self defense, it would have only shown him how pitiful he was and made it worse, for it would have shown him he was not the expert he thought he was. He would have looked the fool.

He is one of those who always know more than anyone else about everything no matter what.

I told my wife these things, and also why I refuse to let things get physical with people. All this has helped with the damage a little.

The point is, even if a woman knows some one is a buffoon she expects her man to be able to handle it in a quick, efficient manner. NOT TO IGNORE IT as has always been my custom, no matter if you don't want to waste your time and energy with such nuts.

Watch yourself around men like this if your wife is with you don't let them "seem" to be getting the upper hand.

You will be losing many attraction points.

Maybe you can use this lesson learned by me to help some one else.

Sincerely,
Dee

Dee wrote back in response to some advice I gave him about how to put a stop to it without getting physical (which I’ll get to in a minute):

Lessons learned:

It would not have bothered my wife so much, I do not believe, if there had been no one else around.

I should have put a stop to it. I allowed the protective or motherly instinct to kick in which was a no-no.

Plus, I allowed someone to seem to get the better of me. I realize it embarrassed her as there were others around.

My confidence is enough it did not bother me. As much as I hate to waste my time and energy on some one such as he, I now realize it is imperative to handle such situations quickly, not to ignore people such as he. Especially in the presence of my wife.

Thank you for the advice. I appreciate it. I will use that or something similar. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Dee

Those are some pretty powerful lessons, are they not? And what pleases me the most is that now that Dee’s eyes are open, he’s able to spot these things without having to be prompted – or punished by his wife! Thanks to Dee for sharing all of this, too!

The advice he thanked me for was something I picked up back in my corporate consulting days. Diffusing situations is a matter of leadership, which, by the way is an attraction-builder.

This “Bill” character is not in the chain of command, so there’s no apparent risk to anybody’s job by stomping on him a little bit. The advice was to take him aside next time he started this nonsense (by telling him, “Let’s talk over here for a minute,” instead of asking, “Can I talk to you a minute?” which establishes him as the “big dog”) and adopting a tone that is somewhere between friendly and fatherly and saying something like:

“Do you realize that you may be the only person in this company who doesn’t know that what you were doing over there is approval-seeking behavior and instead of making you look like an expert, makes you look like an ass? If you want these people’s respect, show them some. Just be yourself, and when you talk with them, ask about them, their families, and the things that interest them. They don’t care what you know or think you know about something until they ask you.

“The more you know about them, the more you’ll find that you enjoy talking with them, and the more they’ll like about you and the less you’ll embarrass yourself. For instance, I was a martial arts instructor for a lot of years, and I know you wouldn’t have said a whole lot of things you said to try to impress me about being a bouncer if you had known that. Now just lighten up and enjoy everybody’s company and you’ll see them start enjoying yours.”

That’s how you take a guy off at the knees and make him thank you for it. But the simple act of cutting his tirade short and pulling him aside shows your partner that you can take the lead and fix the problem in that situation just as well as any other, and makes her proud to be there with you instead of embarrassed because you let the buffoon get away with boring and insulting her. It doesn’t take “fisticuffs,” as they used to say, but it does take action, and action is all she needs to see.

So now the question of what to do when you meet up with the alpha buffoon has been answered, but there’s a bigger question here for you: do you want to continue to wait for these lessons to come trickling in through this newsletter or my blog posts, or do you want to grab the bull by the horns and bring yourself up to speed and be able to spot things like this yourself?

When you know what you need to know about women and how to communicate with them, it’s really pretty easy. In spite of what we were all taught growing up about how impossible a task that’s supposed to be, that knowledge does exist, has been compiled for you, and wonder of wonders, it’s easy to learn and use.

Indeed, we’re not talking about some grueling academic exercise requiring that you rearrange your schedule, take classes, and conduct all manner of experiments that stand a good chance of royally pissing off your partner. Just a few hours of light, entertaining reading and thinking.

Desperate for help? Intrigued? Or think I’m full of crap? Put it to the test! Download your copy of "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and see for yourself. But a word of advice: don’t bet against success. There’s a very good reason why these men and women write me these letters and all those testimonials on my web site… ;-)

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

Trick Question: How Do You Ask for Intimacy in Your Relationship and Marriage?

A reader asks about the proper way to ask for physical intimacy. The short answer is, you don’t!

I hope this day is going as well for you as it is for me. The air is thick with the smell of testosterone as project after project, the kind that require a quick mind, strong back, and power tools, has been completed and celebrated with a satisfied grunt and a wipe of the brow before changing tools to start the next project.

Being a guy is easy for me, because I’ve learned that it’s something to aspire to, not something to apologize for, just like being human. There is very little that annoys me any more than to hear someone try to cover a mistake by saying, “But I’m ONLY human.”

We are the most highly-evolved species on the planet, the only one capable of sophisticated engineering, fabrication, and decision-making, not to mention art, cooking, music and dance, etc. We have the power of volitional choice, and hence can develop and raise our standard of living well beyond what is required for mere survival, unlike any other species on Earth.

In spite of this status, some of us just don’t get it. We shy away from doing what comes natural, as if there’s something wrong with being human, or with being a man or a woman. Meet Marcus:

Hi David,

I’ve been following your newsletters for several months now, and haven’t yet seen you speak of the proper way to ask a woman for intimacy (sex). Is this something that you cover in your book and just don’t want to discuss in your newsletter or what?

Regards,
Marcus

Marcus, Buddy, if the truth were a snake it would have bitten you. You’ve not seen me speak of it because YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO DO IT! If you were to ask any woman – WOMAN, mind you, not some high school girl who still has a head full of poetic mush from reading too many fairy tales – how she liked to be asked for sex, she’d most likely laugh at you and walk off without an answer. The question is truly that pathetic to women, as it marks you as an “un-man,” a loser.

You should have noticed that what I DO talk about, frequently, is how to flip a woman’s attraction switches on by acting like a man, being a leader, the alpha male who, instead of being wussy and boring and hiding from the world in his easy chair channel surfing with a beer all evening and then asking for sex at bed time, projects an image of confidence because he’s good at the things he does and enjoys being a man leading an active life, who has a fun, playful, flirtatious sense of humor, and can put a smile on a woman’s face by jumping in and out of “leadership” mode to crack a naughty grin and playfully tease and create enjoyable sexual tension for her.

This is what women want (Pay attention here, Sigmund Freud -- he's famous for saying, "The Great Question, which I have not answered, is ‘What does a woman want?'"): They want to be excited. They want to be surprised from time to time. They want to feel safe in investing their emotions. They want to have fun. They want to dance that “two steps forward, one step back” dance with you as the naughty fun and flirting ramps up tension, eases a bit momentarily, and then shoots to new highs, until such a high is reached that they pounce on you, wanting to be “taken.” THAT’S why you’ve never heard me describing the proper way to ASK for sex. It doesn’t exist.

And before somebody jumps to a really stupid conclusion and sends me a nasty-gram saying I’m promoting rape, no, I absolutely am not. “No” means “no” and your desire or need is not a rightful demand on another’s life. What I’m telling you is that if you do what you should do in flipping the biological switches to create attraction and excitement, you’ll never hear “no” because she will be coming after YOU, or waiting with bated breath and quickened pulse to be taken by you and making it plain that she wants you. “No” is only an issue when you’re either not creating attraction for her or being insensitive and pushing her for sex when she has other problems.

Whether or not she wants to have sex with you is her right to choose, but if you do what you should be doing as a man, which is creating attraction for her by simply being a man and knowing how to communicate with her, she will be consistently choosing to unless she’s in pretty bad shape, because she’ll be biologically driven to it and you will in fact be holding her off a bit to heighten the tension and excitement!

Attraction is biological, not logical, and there is no request or argument that you can make that will excite her enough to do anything more than tolerate you. Flip those switches off, and you will hear “No” every time. Flip them on, and you’ll not only hear “yes;” you’ll see it, as she pounces on you.

And how do you go about learning and evolving into a man who does this naturally, without the stress of trying to “fake it until you make it?” Come to http://www.makingherhappy.com and find out, like many before you have!

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

Be an Alpha Male, not an Alpha Buffoon, for a Great Relationship and Marriage

There’s a fine line between being an alpha male and being a bully, buffoon, or a show-off. Know where it is, and don’t cross it!

Before we get into today's lesson, I had a very telling e-mail from a new reader that I must share with you, one that all you Gentlemen need to let soak in and grasp the full impact. It was regarding a recent post about the difference between men and women’s emotional scales. It read:

“David are you available for marriage??????? Surely you're taken!”

There was a follow-up e-mail after this one in which the woman introduced herself and made it quite clear that she was hoping we could get on. And all because I could explain the difference between male and female emotional structure. I’ve had quite a few letters like this when I’ve discussed this in the past as well, so you must take this at face value: Understanding a woman’s emotional needs, their source, and the behavior that they induce is one of the most important things that a woman wants you to know. (Right Jan?)

And I GAVE that to you in that post. Read it. Use it. And then think for a minute about how great the information in my book must be if I’m going to give you information like that. ;-)

Let’s move on to today’s lesson.

Have you ever had a “textbook moment”? One of those occasions that provide a textbook example of exactly what to do or avoid doing in a certain situation? I have a lot of them because I look for them, and I had one over the weekend that I really need to pass along to you.

There’s a wonderful Mexican restaurant a couple of miles from my home, one of those little “hole in the wall” places that you’d probably never go into if you didn’t know how to read a parking lot to find a great restaurant (look for cars of all makes, models and ages, meaning that everybody eats there, regardless of income, indicating the food is exceptional but priced affordably, and is crowded because it’s exceptional and affordable, not because it’s trendy, in which case you usually see only late-model high-end cars. An old pick-up truck parked next to a new BMW is a great clue, especially for Mexican cuisine and barbecue!).

This place is in the middle of nowhere and is packed all day and all evening, every day of the week, and it’s a great place to watch people. As you’ve noticed if you’ve ever done much of it, people-watching in a restaurant comes with its risks, such as the risk of having to endure an insufferable drunken buffoon at the table next to you while you’re trying to enjoy a good meal and your partner’s company. Such was the case Saturday night.

We walked in, and this really pretentious jackass was standing up at his table, trying to order the serving staff around in Spanish, and changing the dinner and drink orders of those at the table with him because he thought he knew what they wanted better than they did; every other sentence ended with, “Trust me, I come here all the time.”

My Spanish is poor at best, but I heard this guy order a fence for one of his friends and a bathtub for another; the waiters repeatedly had to question his selections in English and he was being abusive to them because of it. Even worse, he had had too much to drink, and was trying to justify his own inebriation (at 6:30PM) by forcing alcohol on the other guests, including one woman who was obviously about to give birth and another man whom I know to be a non-drinking alcoholic. Are you getting the picture?

What this man either didn’t know and apparently didn’t care enough to learn (he was in his late fifties) was that what he was doing was not alpha male behavior, and did not remotely resemble leadership. He was loud, obnoxious, over-bearing, bossy and controlling, and generally annoying to everyone within earshot, and I could see from the expressions on their faces that he was downright offensive to the majority of people sitting at the table with him after trying to force an alcoholic beverage on a pregnant woman and an alcoholic. Nobody was having a good time, and would you care to guess how his wife was reacting to this?

You could see the storm building, and lightning struck when he stood and yelled at a waiter across the room, got his name wrong for the fourth time, and tried to get him to bring “Maggie-ritas” to the pregnant woman and alcoholic for the second time. She grabbed the tail of his sport coat, yanked him down in his seat very hard, and said, “You have embarrassed our guests more than enough, and me for the last time,” with such venom that it was clear that she was either going to kill him or divorce him when they got home.

True leadership, that thing that excites women to no end when they see it, is about initiating action, not dominating it against others’ will. It’s about being decisive, not dictatorial. It’s about being authoritative, not autocratic. It’s about inviting and stimulating participation, not browbeating a crowd into submission while you grandstand for them.

For example, if when they arrived he had said, “I come here often, and I strongly recommend their Fajitas Supremas and Enchiladas Especial, as well as their Margaritas,” that would have been great, but trying to impress everyone by barking bogus orders in a language he couldn’t speak and changing people’s food and drink orders (not to mention ordering alcohol for a pregnant woman and a reformed alcoholic who had ordered iced tea and already refused a drink when offered) was beyond bad; his wife was mortified, and rightfully so! As you can guess, mortifying your wife with obnoxious behavior is not the way to entice her to join you in the bedroom for dessert.

You can’t command respect as long as you are seeking approval. Is it obvious to you that this is the underlying reason for this man’s behavior? He’s not a leader, not knowledgeable of a foreign language, doesn’t hold his liquor as well as he should to be drinking in public, and plainly sucks as a host. He’s a “wannabe,” not the real deal, and knows it. His efforts to try to impress everyone around him are in fact an attempt to gain their approval, and is indeed subordinating himself to their acceptance and approval, not elevating himself to the post of a leader. Bad move. “Nuff said.

Not everyone is a born leader, but anyone who steps up can lead if they know what leadership is about. People will naturally follow anyone who steps up to lead if they do nothing more than project self-respect, a noticeable level of confidence, and appear to be acting out of common sense instead of hysterical frenzy or emotionally-driven recklessness. It doesn’t have to be in a critical situation; making a decision to go to the beach and getting everybody and everything together to do it and enjoy it creates just as much excitement for a woman to watch as you ordering a work crew around, which is considerable if you do it like a leader and not a wannabe or a dictator.

For those who don’t quite grasp the concept, the bully or control freak barks out orders, like “Everybody drop what you’re doing and grab your stuff. We’re going to the beach, and don’t aggravate me by making us late, or else!” Participants are threatened with punishment if they don’t go along with the bossy person in his quest to have a good time.

The social approval-seeker is on the opposite end of the scale. He lobbies, almost apologetically, to get his way: “Wouldn’t you like to go to the beach today? I mean, it seems like everybody has fun there when we go. Can’t we all just get our stuff and head out there and try to have a good time?” Note all the negativity, telegraphing the expectation of a bad time, not a good one.

The leader’s approach is irresistible: “Hey everybody! Let’s jump in the car and head for the beach! The weather’s great, and we’ve all earned some fun. C’mon!” Not irrationally exuberant, but visibly excited about the prospect of having some quality time and expecting to do so.

Learning and doing little things like this can make you an entirely new person, in your eyes and hers. It makes you feel better about yourself, and anything that makes you feel better about yourself will get your partner’s attention. The strangest divorce-stopping story I’ve ever heard was told by one of your fellow readers (congratulations again, Dale!), who was promoted to a managerial position near the end of the divorce negotiations.

His pay increase was so marginal that it had no bearing on the situation. The promotion put a different image of him in her head, one of a man leading a group of people, where she had formerly regarded him as “a prairie dog in a cube farm” (a guy who sits in an office cubicle day after day, raising his head to watch other people come and go while he is going nowhere), and her response was, “I didn’t know you had it in you, so I’m sticking around to see what else you might surprise me with.” That was her way of expressing new-found respect. I wasn’t surprised when he told me about it, and after he finished reading “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” he wasn’t surprised either. Why?

Because he then knew about attraction, both how to create it and how to kill it. He also understood communicating with women well enough to understand that when his wife said she was sticking around to see what else he might surprise her with that she was giving him instructions and success criteria. She liked seeing him succeed, liked seeing what it had done to him, liked being surprised, and expected him to understand and continue instead of falling into another rut and leaving her bored to death. Would you have understood that from what she said?

If not, download your own copy of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” right now, before you do another thing, because you need to know what makes women tick, what they want, and how to correctly interpret and act upon what they tell you. That knowledge will stop a divorce from ever starting, and stops one cold that’s already happening in many circumstances, because most divorces are initiated by women, and most are initiated because a woman gets bored after attraction is lost and the man can’t understand her when she tries to tell him what’s happening and how to fix it.

Protect yourself and your family by becoming one of us guys who know what most men don’t, what women want and how to listen to them, because life’s too short to have to start it over in the middle if you don’t have to.

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

Don't Win the Battle Just to Lose the War: Conflict Resolution in Relationships and Marriage

E-mails and blog posts gave more coverage to Darren Sherman’s stalking behavior after a date didn’t go his way than about the problems of the world. Could it be that’s because this kind of behavior is a far bigger problem than crooked politicians and (alleged) oil shortages? Look at what you can learn from this poor idiot’s behavior concerning your marriage or committed relationship.

If you didn’t see one of the e-mails floating around about Darren Sherman’s post bad date behavior a couple of years ago, you’ve missed one of the most pathetic yet funny incidents I’ve ever heard. Here’s a hugely entertaining rendition of it at Peter Shankman’s “PR Differently” blog and there’s a lot you can learn from reading it and listening to the voice mail message that isn’t so obvious at first glance. Jump over there and check it out before continuing here…

Pathetic just doesn’t really scratch the surface, does it? But since we’re talking about committed relationships and marriages here, let’s move past the idiotic, crass, and utterly uncouth bit of demanding a refund on her half of the check (because she was out of town and didn’t get his messages, leading him to believe there would be no second date, which, from his behavior, seems to have been a reasonable expectation on his part anyway!) and look at his behavior in from a broader perspective.

First, according to the girl’s letter, he apparently assumed that she didn’t want to see him again in spite of no facts supporting such a conclusion. Since it may have been awhile since you were in the dating world and possibly out of touch with current practices, if you’re going to call somebody you’ve been out with to acknowledge a good time and chat them up for another date, you call one time, and then you go about your business, and if they haven’t called by the time you need to make another date for the weekend, you simply call somebody else. A lot of people are subject to go out of town suddenly, especially in a town of movers and shakers like NYC, and you have to give them a bit of time to “clear out the clutter” and get their schedule stabilized before calling you back.

He apparently jumped into wuss mode, assumed that since she didn’t immediately call back that she didn’t want to see him again and was just snubbing him, and his ego jumped into the driver’s seat. And then what does he do?

He starts very childishly trying to punish her for the assumed rejection, and continues to escalate it, apparently without any regard for the risk he’s taking under today’s stalking laws, or for the mathematics of the situation; the guy is the CEO of a compliance consulting firm, and that’s “big bucks” anywhere you go, and double in NYC, and there is no way in the world that $50 came close to covering the value of his time in pursuing it. Got the picture? Okay, now let’s bring this closer to home…

How many times have you made or seen these mistakes made in your own or other relationships?

1. Letting an incorrect assumption motivate an act of reprisal against someone

2. Continuing to escalate a situation after finding out that your assumption was incorrect and that there’s really nothing to be pissed off about (but possibly something to be terribly embarrassed about, such as the original absurd assumption!)

3. Getting so hung up on “who’s right” and “winning” that you lose track of “what’s right” and “the risks and cost of fighting the battle.”

Silly things like assuming that somebody didn’t pick up something you wanted at the store while they were out when in fact the store was out of stock on the item can spur an incident that follows this path of escalation and destruction to the point that it causes a break-up or a divorce, and if you haven’t seen it happen at least once in your lifetime, I’d like to hear from you just to know that you exist. I’ve watched it all my life, and frankly, well over half a lifetime ago (I was 17), I did it myself, and ended up screwing up a very good relationship that could have easily turned into a life-long partnership. Now for the big question…

What can you do to stop this from happening?

I’ve preached enough on the law of cause and effect and when trying to fix a problem you should seek to treat the cause and not the symptom, so I’ll spare you the justification for that approach and say that the cause of Darren’s problem and all occurrences of this kind of mess is low self-esteem. That’s right! If you feel good about yourself, you have no reason to be anxious and jumping to negative conclusions with nothing but fear of the unknown as the basis for that conclusion.

Nor do you have the need to get competitive and try to punish somebody for a disagreement and force yourself or your opinion on them or make them regret having disagreed with you. Right?

And most of all, when you feel good about yourself, you’re much more interested in what’s right than who’s right, so you focus on finding the truth instead of securing an empty victory. People who feel good about themselves also avoid putting themselves at risk unless the possible benefit justifies that risk.

Assuming for the sake of discussion that a man has a six-figure or even seven-figure salary and will lose it if he goes to jail for stalking, is that in any way justified in the recovery of fifty bucks for a meal check? Or is the risk of a divorce and having your family torn apart, life turned upside down, and losing half or more of everything you have justified by getting your partner to admit that to doing something that they haven’t really done, or say that they agree with you when they really don’t, just to placate you and shut you up?

It’s intriguing to see how many of the laws of physics apply to relationships; for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Granted, in the case of a relationship the reaction may indeed be disproportionate, and it’s likely to be an over-reaction if you make somebody fairly angry or hurt them. Monitor your emotions carefully, and next time you catch yourself feeling like you want to “uncork on your partner,” stop and think, “What am I going to gain by going through this, and what am I going to risk losing?” Then answer!

The easiest rule of thumb to follow is if you’re going to gain or maintain your self-respect, then you should continue (although you should try to keep your anger in check and ask questions and discuss rather than just jumping down your partner’s throat), and if you are going to risk losing your self-respect (through embarrassment over assumptions, etc.), it’s very likely going to be a bad idea and you definitely have some more thinking and fact-finding to do.

Another of my favorite laws of physics is the Law of Inertia. It states that an object in motion tends to remain in motion and an object at rest tends to remain at rest, until acted upon by an equal or superior force. This can be universally applied by merely simplifying the language:

If you always do
What you’ve always done
You’ll always get
What you’ve always got.

The limerick format just makes it easier to remember. So now think about this. If you’ve always had problems and do nothing to change the underlying cause, is there any reason to expect them to just fix themselves? Of course not, and you there, in the back, nodding your head “yes” with a dumbfounded expression on your face, will stay after class for remedial training and possible scheduling for a brain transplant. Where problems are concerned, a continuation of the problem without escalation is your best-case scenario if you don’t do something to fix it, and continuance with escalation and disaster is the most likely course if it’s causing any kind of ill feelings.

No ill feelings? Are you sure? Are you hearing things like, “You never listen to me?” Or are you hearing nothing at all? Have things slowed down at the dinner table discussions, or in the bedroom? Are you getting short or even monosyllable answers to questions that you’d think would invite a more verbose answer? Are you going separate directions when you go places that you used to explore together? An answer of “yes” to any of these questions is a highly-reliable indicator that there are indeed problems, either unresolved issues or boredom at least.

Didn’t know boredom was a major problem? You don’t know much about women, do you? Ask one how she feels when she gets bored. You and I aren’t that uncomfortable with it, indeed, it’s often a good excuse for a nap, but in women you’ll find that they are so stricken by it that they start exhibiting some of the same symptoms we do when we feel anger or fear: trembling, inability to focus, sensation of desperation, willingness to do anything, even if it’s wrong, just to cause some change in the situation, just to name a few. The greatest gift you can give any woman is to love her enough to remain vigilant and protect her from boredom.

That sounds like a pretty tall order, but if you talk to people who have been married fifty years and are still happy together (especially those who still have “the heat” for each other, and yes, there are plenty of them), you’ll find that the secret to their success is that they have learned, usually the hard way, how to cope with these problems or they are so well-matched that they never experience them enough to notice.

Whether subconsciously or consciously, they keep an eye on the status of their relationship, and they fix things when they break. They recognize that men and women have different needs and ways of doing things, especially communicating and dealing with problems and emotions, and they consider and accommodate these differences to reduce stress and build trust. They know what each other likes and values, and they share common values. They also know what turns each other on and off, and reserve their bedroom for sleep, sex and intimacy instead of taking their problems in there.

I’ve worked with hundreds of such couples, and imparted the knowledge that worked for some to the rest of the group to see what was universally true and what was more appropriate for only some participants. Everything that worked for 90% or more of the couples is in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and you should download it at http://www.makingherhappy.com right now, and have the benefit of all those who succeeded before you to do wonderful things in your own relationship…

…or, you can keep doing what you’ve always done, and keep getting what you’ve always been getting, like frustration, confusion, fear, celibacy, affairs, fights, questions with no answers, dirty looks, spousal abuse and sabotage – I really don’t need to give you the whole list, because you’re living with it. By the way, I’m not living with it anymore, and from the testimonials I’m receiving from readers, they’re not either. So how about joining us?

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

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.

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

Cute or Cruel? The Fine Line Between Play and Abuse in Relationships and Marriage

One of the easiest ways to learn how to do something right, including creating attraction, is to model the behavior of someone who is already skilled. However, you still have to know enough about the process to know whether the behavior you are thinking about modeling is the right behavior to model.

I hope you are enjoying this day as much as I am. In the July 4, 2009 edition of this newsletter, I wrote to you about playing with women, and how many of the things we do with each other as men to bond and help each other develop “a thicker skin” are perceived differently by women, cruel in fact, because they use the same behavior to attack each other and therefore misconstrue some of our joking as an attack as well.

This is obviously not well-received by a woman from a man who tells her that he loves her. That lesson inspired the following letter from Nina, who notes the difference between ignorance and abuse (and yes, there are valuable lessons here for those of you whose relationships don’t involve abuse, so please stick with me here and you’ll see what I mean):

Hi David,

My husband and I have been reading your newsletters since my we started having trouble last summer, and your book has made a world of difference in our life. We were in a bit of a death spiral, bored and frustrated with each other and had begun picking and sniping at each other in retaliation against what we both thought were deliberate attacks and disrespect, and I need to thank you for helping us get that all sorted out.

He’s back to being the man I married, and I feel better about our marriage and my life now than I’ve ever felt, because Karl never bores me anymore. He’s fun and playful one minute and strong and decisive the next, and in spite of his growing “spare tire” around his middle and his receding hairline, he keeps me in the clouds, if you know what I mean. And by the way, thanks so much for teaching him about the value of anticipation and taking it slow. We’re both enjoying that part of our life more than we did during our dating and honeymoon periods combined.

I wanted to tell you about something I saw today, and have been seeing since our new neighbors moved in. I didn’t realize what I was really seeing until your newsletter about how men and women play differently. I thought that this was what our neighbor Gene was doing to his wife Carrie, but I think I was wrong. Every time we’re over there, no matter who is around or how Carrie really looks (she’s usually very slender and fit but sometimes she puts on a couple of extra pounds when she has to work late a lot at the hospital here), he’ll walk up and say to her, “You’re looking pretty chunky in those shorts (or pants or whatever). We’re going to have to get that weight off of you!” And then he’ll swat her on her bottom or pinch her or grab her and pull her skin to make love handles. It embarrasses her so badly that she’ll start crying and walk away, and he just laughs.

I thought for a long time that he was really that stupid and insensitive, but I’ve noticed other things lately. She never leaves the house without him, and very often when we’re all together and she’s asked a question, she’ll look at him before answering, and won’t answer until he makes eye contact with her and twitches some part of his face. I’ve never seen him hit her, and haven’t seen any bruises, but I think he’s controlling and abusing her, because she never looks happy and often the only way I can describe the way she looks is “trapped.” Is there anything that I can say to her or do for her to help her through this?

Thank you so much for your help, and for listening,
Nina

My reply:

Hi Nina,

I’m so happy to hear that you and your husband have had such success, and I’m equally sorry to hear that your neighbor is having such trouble. There is nothing to help her through, except exiting the relationship, unless she wants to risk going to jail by cracking him in the head with an iron skillet next time he abuses her.

Seriously, this is probably out of your league and hers. She needs some professional help to help her understand that she doesn’t have to tolerate his abuse and should in fact give him an ultimatum to either stop or leave, and that’s obviously not something that can be successfully handled by e-mail or phone, so she needs to find a local counselor.

What you can do for her is to point out to her that her accepting his behavior is self-destructive and unnecessary, that his behavior is controlling and abusive and not the “norm” for male behavior, and that if she is uncomfortable facing him down herself that she should get counseling from someone who specializes in abuse cases and start getting the problem handled. But be warned, she may try to suck you into her problems, or begrudge you sticking your nose into her marriage, and getting involved in your neighbor’s domestic disputes and relationship problems can land you in all sorts of trouble, including emotionally draining you to the point of damaging your relationship with your husband or causing a feud with your neighbor, so don’t let that happen.

Take care, and keep in touch,
David

Now, what can the rest of us learn from this situation? First, some women are just as capable and skilled at this kind of controlling, demoralizing behavior as men; indeed, some of them are even better at it than we are. They may not even make a pretense of playing with you; they may just attack you outright in public, airing your dirty laundry, discussing your mistakes and failures, describing in detail your embarrassing moments, complaining about things you do, etc.

But not every attack is abuse. Now, pay close attention here so you can learn to distinguish between a desperate plea for negotiation and abuse…

When a woman does this infrequently and it’s limited to a single issue, like some on-going disagreement that you’re having, it’s a sign that the two of you are having a communication problem on that issue, she’s frustrated, and thinking that she may get you to work harder to listen to her if she gives you a dose of embarrassment and frustration as punishment. Not the best solution in the world for sure, but malice, control, and abuse are not the motivation behind the problem. She’s merely getting desperate for communication and trying to bully you a bit to get it and punishing you for making it rough for her. HOWEVER…

If the attacks are frequent, and not related to problems, but to things that destroy self-esteem, like overtly trying to embarrass you over your receding hairline or recent weight gain, being passed over for promotion at work, etc., hitting hot buttons that have nothing to do with anything in dispute and especially target your manhood and independence, you have a spouse abuser on your hands, seeking to control you and keep you close to home by destroying your self-esteem and making you seek their approval.

On the issue of abuse, we have it just a little easier than most women. Most of us don’t generally have to worry about our wife beating us to a pulp and putting us in the hospital. But that’s about the only advantage. They can still hurt us financially in any number of ways, including burying us in debt and keeping us there, relentlessly putting us down in front of people to the point that we withdraw from the outside world to keep from being embarrassed in front of anybody we know, acting seductive toward other men in our presence or even bringing them home, and in extreme cases, even mixing things like mild poisons, things we’re allergic to (peanuts, shell fish, etc.) in our food in just high enough a concentration to make us miserable without endangering us. Abusers, male and female alike, don’t want their victim dead, they want them utterly submissive, alive and healthy enough to fully experience the abuse.

If you are with such a person, you can leave or throw them out. There may not be any criminal charges to file, and life may be a bit rough for a little while as you get used to being on your own again, but the truth is that no matter how insecure your abuser makes you feel, you don’t have to take it, and there are others in the world who will treat you with love and respect. It may take you awhile to heal and regain both your self-respect and your ability to trust women again, but you can do it, and I and thousands of others are capable of helping you through it, so you don’t have to do it alone, either.

Being well-matched is one of the cornerstones of a great relationship, and something I devote a lot of time and energy to explaining and helping you to understand in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and being strapped to an abuser for the rest of your life is definitely NOT what anyone would call “being well-matched,” unless of course you are a masochist.

Getting away from an abuser (and that includes predators who use attacks on your self-esteem to keep you submissive and in the habit of spending your entire life for their benefit at the expense of your own) first requires ascertaining that you are indeed with one, then either quashing their abusive behavior or separating yourself from them (almost everyone ends up doing the latter, because the underlying problems that make one an abuser of any kind rarely can be corrected, even with professional help, which is why we have nice, big prisons with lots of tiny cells), and then going through a process of healing and regaining your manhood and self-respect.

It also requires that you recognize that the odds of being struck by lightning are better than the odds of finding some way to reform an abuser, and accepting that they’re not going to change for you or anybody else, nor are they likely to change for their own sake. They live to find targets, and punish or exploit them. Nothing more, nothing less.

This must all be followed by overcoming any lingering fear you may have of future abuse, and then gaining a complete and working understanding of what a high-quality woman looks and acts like, how she thinks, and what she wants, and then evaluating yourself to see if some part of you needs to grow in order to satisfy such a woman.

The growing part is actually easy, because nearly all of us are born with a hero within, a part of us that wants to do better, have better, and be better, and the only thing that suppresses that part of us is bad programming that we pick up from the world around us. Remove the bad programming by accepting your true nature, and self-improvement comes very naturally and aggressively, because you suddenly realize that you both want and deserve it, and nothing can get in the way of you having it.

Great relationships don’t happen every day, but it’s not because they’re not available. It’s because even with all the school we attend and everything else we go through in growing up, very, VERY few of us are ever taught – by example or otherwise – what we need to know to find, build, and maintain a great relationship or marriage. We do what we’ve been programmed to do, or worse, what our insecurities, caused by our lack of understanding of the opposite sex, force us to do, and screw things up royally, and it doesn’t have to be that way at all.

As I said, I and thousands of other can help you, to varying degrees depending on our expertise and specialty, with any problems you have, but you have to first admit there is a problem and then choose to do something about it before any of us can do anything for you. I’ve been helping people with all sorts of problems my whole adult life, and I’m not a bit shy about saying that I’m one of the best you’ll find to help you, because I have thousands of business and individual clients to back me up on it, and nobody will ever tell you that I couldn’t help, at least to the extent of referring them to other competent help if their needs were outside my area of expertise. You can argue with opinions, but you can’t argue with history.

So what are you going to do about your problems? Are you going to just continue to wallow in them and hope somebody gives you a magic wand or powder or pill that makes them go away, or are you going to take the bull by the horns and get some help to get things going your way quickly so you can get back to (or get around to, if you never have) enjoying your life?

If you’re tired of things being touchy, rocky, scary, boring, tense, lonely or celibate in your relationship, stop tolerating it and let me help you fix it, a lot quicker and more easily than you would ever imagine, because I have the one thing above all others that you are lacking: good information that has been tested and worked for EVERYBODY who has used it, and it will work for you, too. Just jump over to http://www.makingherhappy.com and get your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and you’ll see what I mean.

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

What to Do When She Gains a Few Pounds, Keeping the Flame Burning in Relationships and Marriage

Summer is here, and many of us still have that inconvenient layer of winter fat and we’re now wondering how many extra trips to the gym it will take to get rid of it. And it’s not just winter fat, either. Stress, pregnancy, etc., can put a major whammy on women, who are especially troubled right now because bikini season is here! What do you do when she gains a few pounds? Inquiring minds want to know, at least if they ever hope enjoy being married again…

That’s right, it’s time to shed that winter insulation and get into bikinis, volleyball, backyard barbecues, and all those other fun activities that require baring skin, and unfortunately, exposing your “jelly belly” if you picked one up through the winter. Here’s a typical letter about this most common problem, and a very sticky one to say the least. Meet Tia:

Dear David,

I need your help. The past few months I have put on a few extra pounds due to a medication that I have to take for my asthma. Everybody tells me that they don’t notice it and I look good, but to me I feel like the Goodyear blimp and have no desire to be intimate with my husband at all because I’m embarrassed over having curves in places that were flat. The more he tries to tell me I look sexy the more his advances just make me feel pressured, and I hate feeling under pressure this way. It has nothing to do with not loving him or not wanting to enjoy each other the way we always have. We have always been very in touch with each other and being together in the bed was always one of the best parts.

I was hoping you could give me some advice as to how I could bring this up with him. I want him to understand just how awful I feel I look and how it has nothing to do with him at this point.

Thank you,
Tia

Tia, I’m going to make this really easy for you, because it’s such a great question. Just print this and let him read it, because I’m going to tell him and all the other men about this. He won’t know it’s you unless you tell him because I’ve changed the name to protect your privacy.

Get ready guys! Pay close attention, take notes, and make sure you fully understand what you’re about to read. This is some of the most critical information to ever appear in this newsletter and you need to get this down pat and cold, right now, because sooner or later, EVERY woman will experience a bit of weight gain that makes her uncomfortable with her appearance, and consequently, with YOU.

If you’ve read "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," you know about the difference in the male and female brain structure. Aside from making our communications styles and methods grossly different, it also makes women visualize and dramatize to the extreme compared to males.

You also must remember that nearly all of the advertising in the fashion and beauty industries is designed to prey upon a woman’s sense of competitiveness to make her feel insecure about her appearance so she’ll buy their products even if she doesn’t need them. Women are literally bombarded with this crap everywhere they look, and while you or I probably wouldn’t even notice a little weight gain until we had to loosen our belt a notch or sew a button back on our trousers that had popped off, to them a pound or two can be nearly or wholly traumatic, especially if they’ve taken pride in a flat stomach for a long time.

We often respond to this by telling them that they look “fine,” “sexy,” “hot,” etc., and that is precisely the wrong thing to do. Why?

She knows what she sees in the mirror, and thinks that you see what she sees in the mirror. If she thinks she looks fat and you say she looks sexy, all that says to her is that either you’re lying or your standards are really, really low. Don’t go there, even if you really think she looks better with a couple of extra pounds because you like the curves, and whatever you do, DON’T tell her you like the new curves! That can get you killed, because in her ears, that’s, “But honey, I like you better when you’re fat like this.” (Ladies, you are cordially invited to write and tell the men just that – I’ll reprint your letters so the men will know just how serious an issue this is.)

And this is getting to be a more and more pervasive problem, especially in the United States. In the 1980’s some moron at the FDA decided that Americans might get too much iodine in their diet, and told manufacturers to replace the potassium iodide that was added to flour and other things as an anti-caking agent with potassium bromide, which attaches to the same receptors in the thyroid but does not create thyroid hormones, the chemicals that keep your metabolism up to a healthy level. They also advised against the iodizing of salt. This resulted in slowed metabolism and "brominated thyroid," a condition wherein the thyroid is inundated with bromine, which renders it dysfunctional or even non-functional.

Concurrently, women started trying to add career aspirations to motherhood and running a household, which added stress. Stress causes the over-production of hydrocortisone, a.k.a., “cortisol,” by the adrenal glands, which causes your body to store fat for hard times. Then we have another idiot at the FDA who determined that a high-carb, low-fat or fat-free diet was healthy, overloading all of us with carbs and making us insulin-resistant and consequently further slowing our thyroids (high blood glucose level impede the conversion of T4, a thyroid hormone that is mostly inert and used to store iodine to T3, the thyroid hormone that enters your cells and causes the mitochondria to burn glucose so they can perform their function, the core of the human metabolism), making us fatter and often diabetic.

Incidentally, prolonged stress causes fatigue of the adrenal glands, and when this happens, sufficient hydrocortisone to get the T3 hormone into the cells is not produced. This creates many of the symptoms of hypothyroidism, but obviously treating adrenal fatigue with thyroid hormone doesn’t fix the problem; indeed, it makes it worse, because the adrenal glands have to convert the excess T4 hormone into something else (called “reverse T3”) to get it out of the bloodstream, further stressing the adrenal glands. Thank you “modern medicine.”

Yes, I have a bone to pick with these incompetent jerks, and the pharmaceutical companies that are behind them, but my axe-grinding here is to show you why you see so many people around you becoming more and more overweight and to hopefully open your eyes to the facts that 1) it’s likely to happen to you and/or your partner, 2) you’ll have to deal with both the physical and emotional/psychological impact of it, and 3) there are things that you can do to fix it before it gets terribly broken and you and/or your partner end up on medication for the rest of your significantly-shortened life.

Incidentally, if you are even marginally overweight or there is any possibility that you could have a lower-than-normal (98.6° F. or 37° C.) basal body temperature, slowed metabolism, dry skin, brittle nails, sleep disturbances, the outer third of your eyebrows thinning, thinning hair, dark circles around you eyes, allergies, weight gain, or any type of autoimmune problem, whether or not you are already on thyroid medication, go to the "Stop the Thyroid Madness" web site and order the author’s very thorough, 100% factually-based book on the thyroid and how it is inadequately and inappropriately all over the world using the wrong lab tests (TSH, total T3 and total T4) and the wrong medication (synthetic T4 hormone, a.k.a., “Synthroid,” Levothyroxin, et al). (I receive no commissions or other consideration for this recommendation. I make it because you need these facts to live a healthy and happy life.)

I stress this because I had to become an expert on this subject. I have a thyroid deficiency, went through pure hell for several years while being told by several physicians that I was “adequately treated" while remaining 50 pounds overweight in spite of diet and exercise in excess of US Military specifications and having 18 symptoms of hypothyroidism (that have been known and used to diagnose hypothyroidism for over 100 years before the infamous TSH lab test was made popular) remaining after several years of treatment, just because a lab result that reports irrelevant information was in “the normal range,” which some rather sharp doctors have found is preposterous. The StopTheThyroidMadness web site also has a link to another site that will help you find a local physician who will properly diagnose and treat this condition.

So getting back to your relationship, what are you supposed to do with regard to your partner?

You’d already know this, too, if you had read “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” because you wouldn’t be making those kinds of advances and doing really stupid things like asking her to have sex with you. You’d be tripping her attraction triggers with alpha male behavior, naughty talk and gestures, and making her have fun and get so hot that she didn’t concern herself with her additional weight because she’d still feel sexy and desirable, and she’d be coming after YOU! (See Jay’s letter in the archive for an example, because he’s got it down cold.)

When you know what a woman wants, what makes her tick, how to both listen and talk to her, and how to lead her and have fun with her, she doesn’t feel like a middle-aged housewife that can’t compete with the 20-somethings anymore. She feels like a real queen who rules the world at your side by day and a red hot vixen by night, keeping that naughty little secret for you and you alone because you create it for her. There's a time and place, not to mention a right way and a wrong way, for everything, and that includes delivering genuine, honest compliments, and giving them because they have been earned, not because you’re trying to get something in return. That’s called “flattery,” and it will get you absolutely nowhere with anyone who is worth getting anywhere with.

That, Gentlemen, is how a real man makes a real woman feel, and that is what you learn when you read “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage.” So how many more times are you going to have to stick your foot in your mouth and spend the night in the doghouse before you go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy? Go now, and get it done, because there are far better things to do with your feet (and your mouth!).

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

Handling Women's Insecurity and Jealousy in Relationships and Marriage

What to do when your partner gets jealous. It’s a security and self-esteem issue, so you must be careful…

I received the following in response to the recent edition on “Being Your Own Man”:

Hi David....I agree with you on what this guy needs to do. Let me ask you though...When I am showing this confidence which I believe I do and in fact I enjoy seeing my wife getting attention from the younger guys, but is it possible that when she sees me so self-confident and not being jealous etc that the wife may start being insecure herself? Do you think that she could start thinking that all the other women are going to want him and she might withdraw into herself seeing other women being interested in him?

Thanks,
Keith

I told Keith that it was purely a matter of her self-esteem combined with his past behavior; if she feels good about herself and he’s shown himself to be trustworthy in the past, she’ll eat it up just like him, but if not, there could be trouble. I also pointed him to this article in my newsletter archive, which does bring a lot of clarity to the picture, especially on how to maintain that “They’re chasing me, but I’m going home with you, so don’t worry” connection going with your wife or girlfriends while others are flirting with you. Read it again if you’ve seen it before, because this is a skill you MUST acquire, and one that will be richly rewarded:

“When She Gets Jealous”

Let’s talk about our women, and how to give them one less thing to worry about each day.

Why should that be important? If you had read “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” you would know that women are wired differently from men in some rather fascinating ways (and yes, bothersome and delightful as well), one of which is that they are constantly evaluating and reevaluating everything in their world. That includes us, themselves, and all the other women they know, too, and there are some “competitive insecurities” that still creep in, even though we now live in a world where women routinely make it on their own without a man’s help.

Patience, everyone. It took at least a couple of thousand years to form those habits, and they won’t go away overnight, especially as long as every time you turn on the television you see commercials aimed at women whose sole purpose is to make them feel insecure about themselves so that they will spend more money on diet and exercise fads, makeup and clothing to try to outpace each other. (Yes, Guys, they’re doing it to us, too, with commercials about “dysfunction,” size, hair loss, etc., just not as aggressively as they do it to the women.) Until everybody gets together and figures out that there’s plenty of partners to go around and we all need to be a little more patient and selective when trying to choose one, we’re all going to have to deal with this.

Gentlemen, this is particularly a problem for us! How so? As you master the knowledge and techniques in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” you will become more attractive – TO ALL WOMEN! Yes, that IS a problem if not handled properly. Put your ego back in your pocket for a minute and think with me here. What do you do when you’re in a public place and other women notice you and come up and start flirting with you, right in front of your partner?

She’s in a quandary, because she wants to be with a man who is in demand (F.J. Shark’s “social proof”), and wants to be proud to be seen with you, but unless she’s feeling particularly strong about you and your relationship, she’s likely to get a little uneasy, especially at first, if this is a new development in your relationship. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to allow her to see her man being in demand without making her feel insecure or even fearful of the other women noticing you. I cover this in detail in my book, but I’m going to give you the crash course here and now so you can have a better understanding of how things work and maybe avoid a bad situation before you get to that part of the book.

First, if you have followed my advice and let her read this book with you, she knows what you’re doing, and probably already knows that you’re becoming more attractive with her feelings and needs in mind and a desire to better your relationship and marriage. She just needs a little subtle but firm reminder, possibly frequently until she gets used to you being attractive and still remaining true to her – remember, they’re constantly reevaluating and testing, even when they know things are good. That reminder comes in the form of continuing to make contact with her when other women are around. Care for an example? Yeah, I thought so.

Okay, you have just spoken at a dinner, seminar, party, or some gathering and have become known to the room as some kind of leader, authority, entertainer, etc., that causes women to pay attention to you because you have just publicly defined authority and established alpha status in commanding the attention of the group, room, or whatever. Your partner is now at your side as these other women come up introducing themselves, asking questions, flirting, etc., which is their lead-in to testing you to see if you can be swayed and to see if you’ll give them attention, and on what level. They’re highly competitive and can’t help it, so there’s no avoiding it. Some of them will be subtly flirting, others may even overtly give you a phone number or a room key (yes, attraction is that powerful, as well as some women’s sense of competition in establishing their own “social proof”!) knowing that your wife is standing there.

Frequently, yet subtly, make contact with your partner, touching or even squeezing her hand, glancing at her and smiling as you answer the other women’s questions, etc., which telegraphs to her and to the other women that while you are the catch of the room at that moment, you’re committed to her, and happy to remain so. If you are passed any room keys, phone numbers, etc., DO NOT try to conceal them. Try to very subtly and politely refuse them, and if they insist, take it, slip your hand behind your back, and try to get your partner to take it, or slip it in your pocket while smiling at your partner, and then turn out your pockets for her when you are alone again. Let her dispose of the phone numbers and take the room keys to the front desk, not as an act of giving her control, but as a sort of trophy demonstrating your commitment to her, saying something like, “Well my dear, you’ve earned these, so dispatch them as you wish,” with a big naughty grin, of course.

If you know that you are going to be speaking publicly, discuss it with her! Yes, people really do things like that. “Honey, there are going to be women asking me questions tonight after the presentation, and some of them are likely to try to pass me phone numbers, room keys, etc. You know I have no interest in them, and I want you to be comfortable with handling the situation. I can dispose of the contraband myself or I can allow you to handle it if you prefer. Frankly, I find it amusing, and if you pay attention, you will, too.” Don’t do it apologetically, or like you’re asking permission, because you’re not. You’ve decided what’s to be done, and left her room for input.

If your relationship is pretty strong and you want to be really naughty about it, you can take that approach. “Damn, I get so tired of all these women flirting and carrying on at these things. I usually just toss the phone numbers and room keys, at least the ones from the ugly girls, but I’m getting tired of having to deal with it. Why don’t you take the keys to the desk and trash the notes and numbers for me tonight?” A big wink and a grin at that point will probably get you get you a good natured slap, kick, punch, or something that doesn’t hurt, along with a choice expletive or two and a kiss. Ride her about it a little bit more to get her to giggle if you can, and let it go. The main thing is to keep it framed as your decision, because it is. It’s your decision to be true to her and it’s your decision to have her participate in celebrating that fidelity. This is something you’re doing because you love her, not something you’re doing because you need her and are afraid of losing her.

Obviously, there are a lot more circumstances than these with the potential for an insecure wife to become jealous. The general rule is to remind her that it is your commitment, your choices, and your actions, not the actions of aggressive women, that will determine what happens, and that her voiced distrust of those other women is in effect expressing distrusting you. It would be really, REALLY helpful if at this point, you could honestly say to her, “…and all the evidence that you have tells you that it doesn’t matter what these other women do, I’m with you and will remain with you.” You can only do that if you’ve not been caught cheating, so keep yourself out of trouble. The only way to LOOK clean is to BE clean, right?

There are very few problems that a man and woman can have, or any two people for that matter, that some honest, factual communication can’t fix, even if it’s just to agree to disagree and move on; at least the conflict is stopped and closure secured. Listen to your partner, and trust them to listen to you, always. If you can’t, you may just be calling the wrong person “partner.” (Yeah, that’s another newsletter.) Learn how to make yourself this attractive and how to talk to your partner in the aftermath in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage;” your copy is waiting for you and your life is getting shorter with each passing minute, so I strongly suggest you get moving.

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

What to Do When She's "Mean" to You: Horseplay and "Picking" in Relationships and Marriage

Men frequently write to me complaining that their wives pick at them, needle them, push them to do things they don’t want to do, etc. How are you supposed to handle this? The answer might surprise you…

I get a lot of letters like the following, and I’ve addressed the issue in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," but the frequency of these letters is scary. There are too many men who don’t recognize what this issue really is and how to deal with it, and families are literally coming apart at the seams because of this simple misunderstanding. Meet Jeff:

Hello David,

I need help. I haven’t yet read your book but I’ve been reading your newsletters for awhile and I think you can tell me this. My wife has picked up a bad habit of picking on me, making fun of me, being a smart-ass in front of our friends, etc. It’s really abrasive and embarrassing, and getting worse by the day. The more I ask her to stop, the more she does it, like she’s trying to push me into a fight. How can I stop it?

Thanks,
Jeff

Well Jeff, you slacking cheapskate, if you’d read my book you’d know! Just kidding! LOL! Seriously, she’s not trying to start a fight at all. She’s trying to get you to play with her! You’re boring her to tears, and she’s trying to bring you out of your shell.

Women like challenge, and they like a man to act like he “has a pair.” She’s challenging you to a verbal “joust” to have some fun. What she’s expecting from you is that you pick back at her, not in a mean, nasty, insulting way, but in that fun, naughty, pranksterish way as you probably cut up with your friends, at least at first, escalating it to get into chasing, tickling, playful pinching or spanking – you know, that kid stuff that you used to do when you drove her wild!

What’s happening now is that she’s trying harder and harder to provoke you into showing that you have reproductive glands and a sense of humor, which is effect punishment for not doing so all along. If you don’t do it, you’ll find her losing interest in you pretty soon, so you’d better be finding your sense of humor, fast.

And we are talking about humor here, no matter how pissy you might think she’s being. If she makes a smart crack about your big feet, make a smart crack about something that obviously IS NOT a problem; i.e., only make a remark about her big butt if she DOES NOT have a big butt and doesn’t obsess about having one. Find something to exaggerate to crack wise about so that it’s obvious that you’re playing, else you may strike a nerve and end up starting a fight while trying to play.

I cannot overstress how you need to exercise a little sensitivity here. If she stubs her toe and is limping around but not seriously injured or embarrassed about the accident, then calling her “gimpy” is fair game, but if she is crippled, or if there was something embarrassing about the injury, like she was in a public place, stubbed her toe and ended up dumping a cup of coffee on a white blouse in front of her boss because of it, “gimpy” is off limits, at least until you see that she’s over the embarrassment, which will usually be if and when you see her smile or laugh a bit when talking about it with a girlfriend. The idea is to be obviously fun with your picking to give her a giggle and demonstrate that you are a playful guy, not some wuss who can’t take a joke and is afraid to dish one out for her or a jerk who is retaliating and being a mean bully instead of going along with the joke.

Women don’t really want that much from us, Gents. It’s just that what they want is stuff that almost nobody is teaching these days, as we talked about with the Superman example yesterday; they’re politically incorrect for wanting it, and we’re politically incorrect for giving it to them. However, I am teaching it, after learning it from some gurus before me and adapting and expanding that by working with several hundred married women and their husbands, and I’ll teach you if you want to learn. Screw political correctness. It wasn’t in my wedding vows; was it in yours?

So how about it? Are you ready to learn what may turn out to be the most valuable lessons of your life? Remember all those jokes you cracked about nobody ever being able to understand women, or know what they want, or what they’re saying, or how to pass all those damnable tests and traps they’re always laying for us? I could give you the old “be the first kid on your block to own it” spiel, but it doesn’t really matter if you’re first. What matters is that you’re successful, as quickly as you can get there.

The quickest path to lasting success in your relationship is to go to http://www.makingherhappy.com/ and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and then just reading it and putting it to work. You’ll not find too many opportunities where you can have so much fun being so successful, if you find any at all like this one, so get busy.

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

Lessons From the Past About Women, Relationships and Marriage

Many lessons from the past, before the feminists and media decided to attempt the castration of our gender, are being lost, things that our fathers and grandfathers knew from childhood about women and keeping them happy. Tune in to see a biggie…

One of your fellow readers, truly one of the sharpest of you, sent me this little pearl of wisdom:

You might point this out to your readers someday - an idea I got from one of my son's movies:

Clark Kent and Superman are the same guy, but Lois Lane is only attracted to Superman - Clark is someone she can only see as a friend. A little story we all learned so young it's permanently part of our thought process!

How profound! And how sad, that we’ve seen that story and that double image for so long and so many of us have been unable to make that connection until this moment. Superman acted as he did in the guise of Clark Kent to kill Lois Lane’s attraction for him. Think about that!

He was nice, agreeable, indecisive and ultimately left decisions up to her, never assertive, never took the lead on anything, never initiated conversations – the consummate wuss! And he was the same guy as Superman, the guy she couldn’t stop thinking about.

“Oh, but that was a comic strip,” you say! Sure it was, written by men of the early and middle 20th century, before the wussification movement of the late 60’s through the present. These men who wrote that comic strip and did those shows (it was in black and white for a long time, and if memory serves, was on radio long before it was ever on television) knew about attraction because it wasn’t politically incorrect at that time to acknowledge that there are distinct and delightful differences between the sexes that can enrich any relationship if the partners in that relationship understand them.

Decisive man of action, or nerd who talks to his feet through his hand – which one do you think any woman would go for? It sickens me to think about the hero images being painted for our kids today. We had Superman, the Lone Ranger, Babe Ruth, Lou Gherig, The Green Hornet, The FBI Guys, James Bond, etc., and what do they have? Barney, the Teletubbies, and that man’s man of the world, Sponge Bob Squarepants. Gender-neutral at best.

And it doesn’t get any better if you look at films for people our age. You may recall from the editorial in the “Where Have All the Real Man Gone” editorial quoted in my free “Break-Up Busting 101” report that Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Chuck Norris, Clint Eastwood, etc., have been replaced by Demi Moore and Angelina Jolie, with our gender being represented by Will Farrell, Hugh Grant, etc. Real fine examples of attraction-building heroes, huh?

Gents, it’s like this: A woman’s greatest enemy in the world is boredom, bar none. Wussy men who won’t act like a man, take the lead, make decisions, etc., are boring. When she gets bored, she picks fights, then has affairs, then leaves if you don’t finally get the message. It’s really just that simple, and Ladies, please feel free to comment on this to help me get these men to see that this is as big an issue to you as their job security is to them!

You need to know how this works, and you need to know how to listen to and speak “girly-ese” so that when your partner starts trying to tell you that you are boring her (and you can bet the farm that she will, whether she wants to or not!), you can respond appropriately in a timely manner and head off the trouble that is going to follow. And most of all, you need to know that being the kind of man that every woman enjoys is a whole lot easier and more fun than being the one they merely tolerate, or dismiss as a wuss.

I can and will teach you, as hundreds of women have voluntarily taught me, if you’ll jump over to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage." It’s easy, it’s enjoyable, it’s easily affordable, and it’s guaranteed, so you have no excuse. The earlier you stand up and take action, the easier it is, so stand up and do it now, or maybe you’d prefer to continue making life hard on yourself…

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