Signs That She’s About to Erupt, and a Miracle Cure for Tension and Drama in Relationships and Marriage

A guy asks if there are any tell-tale signs of a woman needing a drama fix. A few do come to mind… (WINK!!!)

This is one of my favorite topics, and it’s something fun and useful. To start the ball rolling, meet Zane:

Hey David,

I’ve been following you for a while and I see the things you talk about in my home every day, especially the testing and the drama. I got pretty good at handling the testing within a couple of days of reading about it in your book, but the drama thing has me stumped. I know she does it, I even know when she’s doing it and not expressing a genuine problem, but I can’t quite catch the knack of seeing it coming so I can head it off before it gets ridiculous. What am I missing?

Thanks,
Zane

Hey, Zane! Always good to hear from a fellow Southerner. (For all non-Southerners, “Hey” is Southern for “Hello, how are you?” We’re not lazy, just efficient.) You are indeed missing something, but it’s not hard to spot.

In "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," when I describe why women create drama (emotional boredom) and how they nearly always use negative pressure to create it because it’s both faster and easier to get a drama fix by stirring up a fight than by achieving something exciting, you missed the description of the progression of the problem in her and how it works up into an explosion.

Remember that in a woman’s emotional make-up, it’s boredom, not crisis, that is the biggest enemy. (See this article on our differing emotional scales for more details) If she doesn’t get relief from the boredom, she gets anxious, and then irritable, and you’ll watch her getting more and more uneasy and unreasonable as the tension within her builds. By the time she gets to the point of nearing an explosion, you’ll notice that her attitude has become very sour…

Let’s say your car broke down on your wedding anniversary and you jogged three miles to your house because she didn’t answer the phone when you called to tell her you were in trouble (okay, she was in the shower getting ready to go), and you hit the door late, sweaty, smelly, and tired. A woman in a normal state of mind would see that as heroic and be thrilled, where a woman in need of a drama fix would ignore the fact that you ran home to her and fight with you because you were late getting home. Get it?

Fights that break out over legitimate issues usually have some identifiable logic in them somewhere (although you may not be able to find it if you haven’t yet read "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and become well-versed in what women want and what makes them tick). On the other hand, drama-induced fights are in a word, absurd. These are the fights in which she seems to be raising the roof over nothing, brings up things that happened 20 years ago, and plays dirty, and your warning signs are pretty much toned-down versions of that absurd behavior – being abnormally bothered by more and more insignificant things, preoccupation situations and details that she’d normally ignore, etc. Why?

She’s trying to milk enough emotion from those things to get her fix, and getting more and more frustrated by the hour because it’s not working any better as she deviates more and more from her normal behavior. That’s what you watch for. If on a normal day she’s fairly laid back, then you notice she’s acting depressed and tense, then fussy, then negative about everything she speaks of, trouble’s coming.

There are two things you can do. Let her pick the fight, which you will both regret, or you can buck up and admit that you failed to give her some positive emotion that she needed and make up for it with some sort of surprise act of leadership, mystery, and fun, but be advised, if she’s too far gone, your efforts may end up being the very thing she uses to start the fight, and all you can do is hang tough. What exactly does that mean?

It does not mean you should be abusive, or play dirty like she is apt to do. It means that when tension and voices start to rise, you must step immediately into that leadership role and exercise some stern – and maybe even tough – love, by calling her on whatever bratty behavior she’s committing. For instance…

She says, “That’s it! I’ve had it! I’m so sick of you ALWAYS buttoning the button in the middle of your shirt first and then bouncing up and down from bottom to top! Why can’t you just start at the top and work your way down like everybody else?!”

To which you reply, “Because that’s how I’m comfortable buttoning it, and I don’t really care what you or anybody else thinks about it. It’s ridiculous that you should even bring something like that up, and the only reason you’re doing it is because you’re bored to death and need the a rush. Now settle down, stop being a brat and conduct yourself with a little dignity, and let’s find a more productive way of giving you what you need without the two of us saying and doing something that we’ll both regret later.”

She may try to further escalate the situation after that to test your resolve, and if she does, there’s an answer to that as well, one that involves getting a bit cocky and having some fun with her, but rather than spell it out in detail I’m going to employ it now and tell you that if you want to know what it is, you’re going to have to read it in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" – LOL!

Face it, Guys; it’s not and has never been a secret that the simple act of wishing your wife a good morning and making it out the door to go to work in the morning can be the joy of your day or like walking through a mine field. You need to know how to listen to her and how to talk with her to get along with her. You need to know when to be tough and when to be gentle and reassuring, when to indulge and when to reject, when to make her laugh and when to stand tall and get serious. If things have slowed in your bedroom, that’s not old age setting in, it’s one of the first symptoms of real relationship problems, the kind that lead to affairs – a symptom of advanced relationship decay – and divorce. There are pills that can help with physical deficiencies, but not with lack of engagement, lack of attraction, lack of desire, etc.

And if you doubt it, I have readers and clients in their 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s that have been together 20-50+ years and are still “whooping it up” 3-4 times per week or more, while the national average for couples who have been together for two years or more is six times per year. Yep, that’s once every two months. Talk about decay…it’s a wonder their “organs” don’t rot due to lack of contact.

You can let things continue to decay and try to make a heroic save at the last minute, which can indeed be done under the right circumstances and with the right help, or you can take the easier path and employ the same tools now, when you are not under so much pressure and have far less damage to correct, to fix everything that’s broken and keep your relationship running like a precision machine. The cost is the same (at best – it can be MUCH worse if you wait!), and it takes less time and effort to do it now before everything goes critical.

The big question is whether you are the kind of man who puts everything off and unnecessarily risks the future of his family by letting it fall into crisis before doing anything about it or if you are the kind of man who steps up and does what is necessary to keep his family – and himself – happy. What kind of man are YOU?

If you’re the kind who sees the wisdom of fixing the little problems to keep them from getting big and maintaining a happy status quo, or if you’re the kind who likes to fix them early but have been unable to find answers before things got bad, then you need to click over to http://www.makingherhappy.com right now and get your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and put things on the right track. If you’re the kind who puts things off until the last minute because you just don’t want to deal with them until you’re forced to, then I’ll be seeing you later, or if not me, your wife’s boyfriend, and probably her attorney. It’s your call; make it a good one!

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

Why Does She Erupt? How to Stop Drama from Killing Your Relationship and Marriage

Why do otherwise stable and level-headed women sometimes pitch a fit for no apparent reason? And what’s the best way to handle it?

We talked yesterday about how to tell when a woman is getting ready to erupt for no apparent reason, and there was a cursory explanation of how to handle it, but I really wanted to give you more on understanding the cause and handling the situation. To do so, I’ll provide something from my own experience that details the build-up, explosion, and diffusing of the situation to help you relate this lesson to events in your own past so that you can be better prepared next time it comes up, and IT WILL come up. It’s a topic that I frequently need to address, and the following reader question makes for an excellent lead-in for the discussion. Meet Joel:

Hi David,

I bought your book and I'm progressing through the relationship evaluation and it looks like we're good, but I've got to ask you about something that may already be in the book because it's driving me nuts. Donna, my wife, is usually pretty stable and understanding, and seldom raises her voice. In fact, sometimes we don't talk much at all. Occasionally she'll get really antsy and next thing I know she's exploding on me for no apparent reason, literally! Whatever she picks to explode about is usually trivial at best, and really ridiculous most of the time. I've watched the calendar, if you know what I mean, and it's not "cyclic." The only thing I've noticed is that it always seems to happen when I'm traveling or busy a lot. She'll explode, I'll explode back, and then she'll go away and come back in a few minutes cheerful and acting like nothing has happened. Can you shed any light on this?

Joel

Well, Joel, congratulations on taking the first step to making some serious improvements in your life, and thanks for writing. As for your question, yes, it is covered in detail in my book, but I'm going to give you the short version now to help keep you out of trouble until you read that part, and for the benefit of your fellow readers, because every man who keeps the company of a woman goes through this phenomenon at some point in his life, if not with every woman he spends any time around, and it may not even be with a wife or girlfriend. It could be with a "platonic" female friend, or even a coworker, but it will be with someone with whom you have regular interaction.

What's happening is she's feeling ignored (or possibly testing to see if you'll wuss out when she acts like a brat, but they usually use other tests for that), and missing the feeling of having you define or exercise authority for her, which gives her a little rush of adrenaline and attraction and gets the planets back in alignment. Actually, this is a good sign, because if she had already lost all attraction for you, she wouldn't be doing this at all, so congratulations on taking action before your relationship deteriorated to critical status as well!

Here's the deal. If you don't pay enough attention to her in ways that let her see you being the alpha male, especially in projecting authority and leading, whether it’s in critical decision-making or just having fun, she'll find something trivial and pitch a fit over it, just to get you to call her on it and tell her to straighten up. Mentally and emotionally healthy women will respect you when you establish a “no brat zone.”

This doesn't mean that you turn her across your knee and spank her, unless you can do it without hurting her and in such a way that it's entirely plain that you're playing with her and you're both laughing all the way through it. Remember, women love to have gutsy, strong men show their sense of humor in naughty ways, but they hate being painfully man-handled, bullied, controlled and abused, again if they are mentally and emotionally healthy. A show of strength when everybody is smiling and having fun is one thing, a show of control or cruelty is something else entirely, and something you never want the women in your life to see if you want them to stay around.

What it does mean is that you must take one of several approaches to call her on it, and it may entail raising your voice a little if that's all she'll respond to, but it mostly requires a show of strength, not of volume; a show of leadership, not abuse.

My wife did this to me once. I'd been neglecting her a bit as I worked overtime on my next book. Read the following paragraphs carefully and make sure you pick up on the details - no yelling, the only physical force was non-violent and smiling naughtily, etc., the very things she was looking for.

She wanted me to verify the quality of a piece of office furniture she wanted to buy and to pick up a pair of eyeglasses before 5:00PM, and it was 3:30PM. We live ten minutes from the eyeglass store, and had 90 minutes to get there. I said that I wanted to stop and pick up something on the way home and it would work best if we stopped to look at her office furniture first. Boom! That's all it took to open the door - I had set myself up.

I could see the change the instant she realized the opportunity she had. In the space of less than a second, she went from excited about getting a piece of office furniture and new eyeglasses to stormy. Then she said, "No, I don't want to go check on the office furniture, I want to go get my eyeglasses before they close. We've got to go there first." I thought, "Oh, hell, here we go!" and said, "We have 90 minutes to make the ten minute trip to get your glasses. We can afford the extra five minutes to stop on the way to check out the office piece."

To this, she went totally ballistic. "You know what? I don't even want you to go. I'm going by myself. I've got to get my glasses and I don't have time to go running around all over the place." Do you see how the level of absurdity is rapidly escalating, as well as the sudden reversal of both her desire to see the furniture and desire to be driven? (She doesn't see well enough to drive safely without glasses.)

Then I said, "You can't see well enough to drive without the glasses we're going to pick up, we have 90 minutes to get there, it's a ten minute trip, and we can certainly afford the five extra minutes to check out the furniture. Explain to me why you have a problem with this."

Her response was, "No, I'm not explaining anything. You always want to change my plans, so I'm going by myself." (Big hint: when you "always" do something that you've never done, or "never" do something that you've frequently done, it's said to make you call her on it and you're in this same situation.) At this point she has crawled across the seat of the car and is sticking her keys in the ignition, literally begging for an authoritative intervention.

I reached in, grabbed the keys, and snickered a bit as I said, "Excuse me, but you're not going anywhere unless somebody else drives because you're blind without your glasses. Now, it was your plan to stop and look at the furniture, and your plan to go to the eyeglass store. I suggested stopping one place to pick up one thing on the way home, and that hardly constitutes a change in your plans. You're pushing a bad position in an illogical argument, and until you tell me what's really going on here, I'm not driving your blind ass anywhere."

She went for her spare keys in her purse cursing and I climbed over top of her and grabbed them, and then playfully held her pinned to the seat with my body while she struggled and I said, "Say Uncle!" with a big grin on my face and that was all she could take. She busted out laughing and by the time she was done, she was about too weak to move.

She finally scooted over, we went to check out the office furniture, get the glasses, stopped and ran my errand, and just to put the icing on the authority cake, I announced a change in plans for supper (I'm the household chef) and stopped at a grocery store and lingered just a little longer than necessary in the produce aisle, cracking jokes the entire time about how good the cool air felt and "nature's thermometers" (guys if you don’t get this, ask a woman – I’d never get a more verbose description past the spam filters), exiting as soon as the smile began to fade the slightest bit, indicating that she was on the verge of boredom and starting to feel the cold, and therefore about to stop having fun. (NEVER let the fun come to a complete stop before changing course. Remember the old show biz cliché: “Always leave them wanting more!”)

So do you see what really happened? She was trying to goad me into taking an authoritative action, and may not have even been aware of it because it's such automatic behavior. If you respond to this the first time, you can get away with doing it with a humorous flavor as I did above and not having it get too ugly. However, if you just ignore her, or act bewildered and walk out of the room without doing anything, forcing her to find another excuse and launch a bigger attack, you may push it to the point where you have to yell a bit, physically restrain her from running out the door by standing between her and the door, etc.

Please note that one small change in the scenario, especially the failure to grin naughtily as I said, "Say Uncle," could have changed the event from one of fun to one of control and abuse; she would have been scared stiff instead of amused. Always mind your bearing when in this situation and make sure that it's fun for everyone or it WILL explode in your face. You've been warned...

Understand fully that unless she has been severely physically abused she will not be pushing you to strike her in any way (unless the two of you have a history of playfully spanking and slapping each other on the butt or something), and if she has ever in the past kept screaming and maybe even struck you until you slapped or shoved her, it's a strong sign that she has been beaten, still has issues, and really needs professional help to face those issues and begin healing. NEVER, EVER, for any reason physically strike her with the intent of hurting her, even if she begs you to do it or tries to force you. Use no more physical force than it takes to restrain her from hurting either of you, and if she's crying and hysterical, call a counselor and try to get her some help, because she needs it, badly.

There you have it. Again, it took more to explain that than I had hoped, but I wanted you to see a real-world example so you would have something more than just a rule to try to apply - a real episode with distinct characteristics that you could compare with what you have seen in your own life.

Women are constantly communicating things to us, but as you will learn in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," much of that communication goes right over our heads, while they are thinking it just goes in one ear and out the other because we don't care to listen, when in fact we're simply unable to hear it because we don’t know what we’re hearing or what to listen for.

The problem isn't that we ignore it; it's that we don't have the natural tendency to pick up all the non-verbal and verbally indirect ways they use to try to tell us things. They really don't know that we are that under-evolved with respect to communications infrastructure and skill any more than we are born knowing that they are that highly-evolved and sophisticated when it comes to communications without someone pointing it out. It's just not obvious when you don't have a frame of reference. (I'm explaining it to them in their own book, so hopefully, when everybody knows how everybody else does things, life will go a bit smoother for everybody.)

If you want to learn what you need to know to deal with this problem and others, and get your relationship and marriage (not to mention your “bedroom life”) working at full pleasure and intimacy capacity, go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" now, before you do another thing. Recognize that life is too short to spend it unhappy and work daily on making it better until it gets there.

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

"Can't You Just Let Me Feel Bad for Awhile?" -- Understanding Female Emotions in Relationships and Marriage

Sometimes women say they want to feel bad, and it drives us absolutely nuts, because we don’t. What’s happening, and what can you do about it?

As you might guess, the women in my life (wife, mother, sister, friends, readers, etc.) are usually a great source for material for these newsletters, as are their husbands and boyfriends and my male friends on occasion. One such occasion was one day while my wife was having her lunch and was watching television.

My wife, and a lot of other women, because they are inherently attracted to anything where they can see authority figures, will watch just about anything that has a cop, a lawyer or judge, a pilot, or a doctor in it. (They also like mysteries because they enjoy the anticipation and suspense, so take the hint!)

I walked into our living room to join my wife for lunch (lunch at the coffee table while watching a home improvement show was a favorite pastime at that time) as the end of an old episode of “Judging Amy” was on television, and saw a woman jump off the ledge of a tall building after letting her daughter loose to run to the judge. My wife says that Judge Amy had refused to alter a custody agreement due to lack of evidence, and said that the woman had contrived the “drama of the issue” as part of an ongoing fight. Witnesses has described her as “paranoid,” and “dramatic” during the proceeding.

The scene then changes to Judge Amy sitting in front of a fire in the dark drinking something that looked like Scotch on the rocks and her mother, the social worker, walks in looking concerned and sits down, and starts telling Amy how the woman was unstable, Amy had made the right judicial decision, sounding very much like a man would sound under the circumstances. (There’s nothing masculine about Tyne Daly, even in her “golden years,” but there are times when her character is quite direct and masculine, but in a matronly kind of way.)

Amy interrupts her by saying, “Mom, I feel bad because something bad happened today. Can’t you just let me feel bad for awhile?”

Yes, that sounds crazy because no man would ever say something like that, unless of course he was pretty effeminate, but I would bet the farm that eight out of ten men reading this will have heard a woman say that at one time or another because I’ve heard eight out of ten of the women I’ve ever known well enough to want them to feel better say it. Why?

It’s that same problem of our differing emotional scales. (See this recent archived article for details.) Ours runs from negative to positive, with neutral in the middle, while a woman’s runs from zero to extreme without a lot of discrimination between positive and negative. They would prefer to feel good over bad if handed the choice of two doses of equal intensity, but there are times when a woman has a choice between feeling a little good and really bad that she’ll choose to feel really bad just to feel SOMETHING intensely. Again, why?

We both tend to stay near the middle of our emotional scales, which is our comfort zone. Men don’t like to stray too far from neutral in either direction. Feeling bad creates an urgent need to fix something, while feeling too good makes us irrational (it will be a long time before the world forgets Alan Greenspan’s words, “irrational exuberance” and the fallout from that) or makes us paranoid, wondering so intensely when the good time is going to fall apart that we cause it to fall apart.

Women, on the other hand, have a higher level of emotional involvement and energy at the middle of their scale, and if they go too low, they get bored (and start exhibiting a lot of the same behavior we exhibit when we’re at the low end of our scale – scared, hurt or angry – including in extreme cases nausea, trembling, disorientation, feeling of desperation, etc.), or if they go too high on the scale, they tend to get irrational and get lost in the emotional overload, unable to return to the middle of the scale until they bleed off that excess emotional energy.

So what does this have to do with Amy? She was trying to bleed off that excess emotional energy by just experiencing it and letting it burn her out and make her bored with the issue to sufficient degree that she could get back in balance, recentered, and refocused. So what does this mean to you?

First, that when one of the women in your life is feeling bad, giving her logical, rational reasons why she should feel good isn’t going to do anything but frustrate her. She’s not stupid, and she likely already knows most or all of the reasons available to feel good and has tried thinking about them. Throwing them in her face is the equivalent of telling her she’s too stupid to think of something like that herself. Don’t do it.

Logic and reason can very rarely be used to bring a woman out of a heightened emotional state unless you are a very strong leader, so with a low chance of success and a high risk of insulting her and royally pissing her off, just don’t go there until you have mastered alpha male leadership and can jolt her out of her distress with a strong, alpha male maneuver that will cause a massive and rapid bleed-off of all that emotion. As a novice, there are really only two things you can do.

The first is to do as Amy asked, and just let her get through it. Be supportive if you can without acting like you’re trying to be a father or coddle her; otherwise just let it go. Or, there’s a better option, if you’re a pretty strong leader…

In some circumstances, especially when she’s feeling bad about something that happened to somebody else, such as a friend’s mother dying (as opposed to her own), you can convert that negative energy to positive energy by finding something utterly outrageous to do to distract her, and when she acts pissy and says something like, “Can’t you see I’m upset?” you just turn it up another notch with something like, “Do you think I’d be acting this ridiculous if I couldn’t?” and crack the big naughty grin.

She might smack you a good one, but she’ll be pouting and smiling at the same time, a sign that you’ve won, so keep it up and lead her out. If however, she says something like, “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I’m just going to have to get past this myself,” give her a hug and tell her that you’ll be somewhere doing whatever you’re going to be doing when she’s over it or if she wants to talk.

Be perfectly clear on this point: You can lead her if she wants to be lead, but you cannot force her out of a bad mood or emotional pain, so forget any notions you have to the effect of “I have to save her or die trying.” No, you don’t, and if you try to save her when she doesn’t want to be saved you’ll just make her mad.

Besides, as her partner, your job is protection and nurturing, not salvation. Some would say that’s the job of religion, not men; I say it’s the job of the person needing saved. In any case, give her the respect of assuming that she can save herself when she’s ready and will at most let you help a bit. Women who can’t save themselves from their problems aren’t partners; they’re dependents, just like men who can’t save themselves.

As I’ve been saying, lessons are everywhere if you look for them. Some of us are better at identifying them and organizing them than others, and we tend to be counselors, trainers, consultants, and teachers. I’m all of the above, and an author as well, so you lucked out!

I’ve put a whole lot of these kind of lessons in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," so go to http://www.makingherhappy.com/ and download your copy right now and have the benefit of all the testing and experience that went into it now, while it’s easier to do something with it than after everything blows up in your face. (You can fix it after the blow up, but why do it the hard way when you have an easier choice???)

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

Long-Term Effects of Health and Hormones on Your Relationship and Marriage

One of your fellow readers, a very sharp physician and personal friend, has an extremely important observation to share on the subject of hormones and female behavior.

Hopefully you read the last couple of newsletters describing the experience of a woman over-dosed on testosterone and her reaction to feeling male drives and experiencing male brain activity. If not, you can read Part 1 and Part 2 to get caught up before moving to the advanced lesson provided by Dr. Frank:

David....the problem goes beyond injections as you know. As young men, our hormones are high and many of us are sexually out of control. However, as we get older, our testosterone wanes and we become more like women. We become less aggressive. We settle down. We look more towards family life. We probably drop our guard in the boudoir.

Women, on the other hand, as their female hormones wane later in life, are faced with increasing testosterone levels relative to their estrogen. Women become more aggressive, more independent, more logical and less emotional to a degree, and, of course, their sexual appetite increases as you can see from your other reader’s letter. Hence, our bodies’ hormone levels and associated behavior are not in sync for most of our lives. This obviously lends credence to the 'seven-year itch (actually, 4-7 year itch). It also supports what we men fear most....that women can actually be just as sexually aggressive as we are...maybe even more as they get older.

It behooves your men to stay with your book so they can navigate this “reversal of fortune,” lest they find that their wives are satisfying their urges elsewhere.

Frank

Frank has thought this through quite logically and thoroughly (I’ve spoken with him several times and his personality is such that irrationality or shoddiness just isn’t within him), and you Gentlemen, and Ladies, should pay attention, and continue thinking, because now that the door is open, I might as well tell you that it goes even farther than this.

Male menopause is no myth; our hormones slow down at mid-life just as women’s. We don’t stop manufacturing sperm cells, but our growth hormones (pituitary and thyroid) and adrenal hormones (testosterone, epinephrine, cortisol – a.k.a., hydrocortisone, androsterone, and others – basically metabolic and gender-influencing) slow more rapidly as we age. Our brain structure does not change, so we do not pick up the female benefits of heightened communications skills and creativity, but we do slowly become more susceptible to the vulnerabilities estrogen creates in women, those of over-driven emotions, irrationality, insecurity, fussiness (even to the extent of drama), and lack of aggressiveness, even when it’s needed.

And as we lose some of the benefits of our masculinity, women gain them without losing some of the benefits of femininity; their communications skills and creativity are due to brain structure caused by estrogen early in life, not by on-going exposure to estrogen. Declining estrogen does not decrease their left-brain density, which facilitates their creativity, nor does it shrink their corpus callosum, the bridge between the hemispheres of the brain that gives them heightened communications skills and other things. BUT…

The change in their balance of estrogen to testosterone does do exactly as Frank described, making them more aggressive and less erratic, more rational, and often MUCH lower-maintenance with regard to drama, so much so that they may get tired of YOUR drama if your testosterone levels fall too far.

And the kicker, their libido will be climbing as your declines. And as they become more aggressive and their libido increases, they will be needing more from you in the bedroom, not less. Diet and exercise can do a lot to help in this regard, as can getting off of statin drugs and soy-ridden foods that raise your estrogen levels. Pregnenolone (the master adrenal hormone that is broken down into all the others), DHEA (the precursor to testosterone, and is a metabolite of pregnenolone), and testosterone itself can also be safely substituted with bio-identical hormone supplements, if required.

For those of you on statin drugs and concerned about stopping them, there is no medical proof whatsoever that statin drugs reduce blockages or heart attacks. Furthermore, high cholesterol is a symptom of low thyroid and/or adrenal output, not heart disease; cholesterol is the root of all the “sterol” (basically the hormones ending in “rone” or “sone”) hormones; too much of it means it is not being converted to the hormones we need, which in turn cause a lot of other health problems in addition to demasculinization.

The blockages associated with high cholesterol are in fact the result of either too little vitamin C in the body causing malformed collagen chains that weaken blood vessels or too much of the amino acid homocysteine eroding the wall of vessels at bends and junctions; each of these problems result in small fissures that hemorrhage and are clogged by LDL cholesterol, just like radiator “stop-leak,” and the bit of cholesterol that protrudes into the vessel collects more cholesterol and minerals that eventually build up to a blockage.

If you stop the hemorrhaging with proper diet that provides sufficient vitamin C and the B vitamins that keep homocysteine levels down and get even a modicum of exercise, high cholesterol is not an issue, let alone a threat, except as an indication of pituitary, thyroid, or adrenal issues, which can be life-threatening, as they DO lead to insulin resistance, and then diabetes, which brings high blood pressure (high blood glucose inflames the lining of blood vessels which decreases their diameter and raises pressure), severely impaired immune system, kidney failure, neuropathy, blood clots, amputations, and blindness, to name a few things. And yes, demasculinization, too.

So what do you do about all of this? We’ll talk about women in a minute, but for your health, I STRONGLY suggest you do not rely on mainstream medicine. Doctors don’t have the time, resources and energy to do their own research, and have to rely on the information provided by the drug companies. The information from the drug companies is SALES information. The studies they conduct on their drugs are to see if they can get it approved, and if it will make enough money to offset the lawsuits. Most doctors realize this to some degree and are willing to discuss treatment if you can bring them better information.

I am about to list the resources I personally use, and I do not have any affiliate or other arrangement with these resources and receive no benefit of any kind for recommending them. First is www.stopthethyroidmadness.com. Read their book even if you think you are the picture of health, because if the symptoms of thyroid problems start showing up, the overwhelming evidence is that your present doctor will NOT be able to treat you; they rely on lab tests that don’t indicate the effectiveness of the treatment and a treatment that provides only one of five thyroid hormones, a storage chemical that is supposed to be converted to the other forms and in many people, is not converted because of any one of many possible problems.

Long-story-short, as goes your pituitary-thyroid-adrenal functions, so goes your health in general, and mainstream medicine is not up to speed, while the doctors, researchers and patients that contribute at www.stopthethyroidmadness.com are compiling real-world results from real-world treatments and sharing the facts of their unsuccessful and successful treatment attempts. I recommend them because they very probably saved my life after spending years using mainstream treatments for an inactive thyroid and gaining weight, becoming diabetic, and watching my blood pressure go to 285/140.

In addition, I subscribe to several relatively inexpensive medical newsletters written by doctors who have dedicated a significant portion of their careers to research and have patient results to watch and report on. First is David Williams, MD, a globe-trotting pioneer and whistle-blower. He sells a lot of supplements to help fund his research, but his newsletter is highly informative and 100% factual. He’s at www.drdavidwilliams.com. I’ve subscribed almost non-stop for 20 years; breaks were mainly caused by being out of the country.

Another is David Brownstein, MD, possibly the world’s single top authority on the thyroid and one of the advisors at www.stopthethyroidmadness.com. His newsletter is excellent, factual, and easy to read. He’s at http://www.drbrownstein.com and has a great blog, newsletter, and several excellent books.

Russell L. Blaylock is another I highly recommend. I have over 60 editions of his newsletters on hand and expect I’ll be continuing this subscription for a long time. Another that is factual, thorough, and easy to read. He’s at http://www.blaylockreport.com.

There are some rather ridiculous blog posts that show up on Google searches of these sources, claiming they are frauds and fakes, but when you dig into them, you find that the people decrying them take issue with them selling supplements, or the fact that they are owned by a politically-leaning magazine, or just about anything else except that they quote and use verifiable studies to come to logical conclusions that make people healthy. In other words, if you’re going to fire a doctor, do so because he’s hurting you or can hurt you, not because you don’t like his politics or the way he dresses. And the same thing goes for keeping one; don’t just keep one because he gives you plenty of prescription drugs; keep him because he makes you healthy, and treats disease as a disease, with a cause to be cured, instead of a deficiency of medication.

One other resource I recently discovered and highly recommend is Jon Gabriel’s book, “The Gabriel Method.” It’s working wonderfully for me and several others whom I know. Even the guy’s story of what brought him to write his book is fascinating, from over 400 pounds to a trim 182, and unlike dieting methods, the longer you follow his program, the FASTER the weight falls off and you get in shape. Catch him at http://www.jongabriel.com.au, where he has a free newsletter, and you can buy his book on Amazon.com for about $11.00, but I bought his whole audio series and a copy of his book and the audio CD’s are great.

Giving total responsibility for your health to a doctor is like giving total responsibility for your safety to a police officer; it’s not their job to accept such responsibility. It’s your body, you live with it, and if you don’t take care of it, you will die. Period. Your health and personal safety are responsibilities that you should never, ever delegate. Be knowledgeable and prepared to handle whatever comes up. That’s what men do, right? And if you hesitated for even a second before an emphatic “YES!” came to mind, you and I really need to talk, because you’re farther gone than you realize.

As for what to do about women as they become older, first, look forward to it. They are far more enjoyable as they mature; indeed, I would not be surprised to find out that is why a lot of men prefer to date and marry women who are older than them. Second, learn all you can about typical male and female behavior. This will allow you to watch yourself for signs that your masculinity is waning so that you can do whatever is required to safely and effectively address the problem, and it will also allow you to be prepared for the evolution of your partner to a more secure and even aggressive woman.

Dr. Frank points out that a lot of men fear sexually-aggressive women. Why? Don’t we spend most of our lives WISHING women were more sexually aggressive? I can tell you from your letters that most of you are WISHING your wives were at least more sexually active and would be thrilled if they were indeed more sexually aggressive. Exciting your wife to the point that she becomes sexually aggressive is one of the cornerstones of what I teach, so if you’re afraid of it, you’d better wake up and get busy, because whether you want it or not, at some point, it’s coming, no matter what.

The good news is that as I’ve been explaining, it is indeed something to look forward to, not something to fear. The worst thing for most of you is performance anxiety, which is treatable with either some knowledge (write to me at tips@makingherhappy.com if you are the least bit dissatisfied or uncomfortable in the bedroom and I’ll point you toward some great resources), some testosterone, or getting your diet and exercise overhauled into something fit for a man instead of a couch potato who lives on deep-fried starch.

The rest of it requires simply knowing yourself, knowing your partner, being sensitive to changes in either, and knowing what to do. All of that is moot if you’re not getting along well enough today to stay together. You can learn about handling all of that from my newsletters, but you’ll find that you can learn A LOT MORE A LOT FASTER if you read MY book, "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," as those who have read it have already found out. And you can see how much I share in these newsletters, so imagine how much is in my book! It’s waiting for you at http://www.makingherhappy.com and every minute you spend without reading it is a minute spent at your own peril, without resolution for everything that has brought you here, so read it today. The clock – analog, digital, biological, or whatever – is ticking, and you can stay ahead of the game or spend ten times the effort playing catch-up. It’s your call, so make it a good one.

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

Beware: What You Eat Can Kill Your Manhood, Relationship and Marriage

There are some foods that should never be in a man’s diet (and probably nobody’s diet) because they block testosterone uptake and make him develop female characteristics and tendencies, as well as kill his libido. Yes, I’m serious, and you may be eating a lot of one of them in particular, the worst offender of all…

Those of you who have read my bio know that I’ve got a strong medical background for a non-physician; I’ve also been an herbalist since my teens and shell out about a thousand dollars a year on subscriptions to the best medical newsletters in existence, most of which are written by doctors and researchers who blow the whistle on the fallacies and frauds of mainstream medicine.

One topic that keeps coming up in ALL of these newsletters is that study after study is PROVING (not SUGGESTING) that plant estrogens attach to testosterone receptors and keep testosterone from being utilized in the male body, which in turn causes men to become less masculine, and in too many cases start becoming feminine, even to the extent of having their voice rise in pitch and developing female-like breasts and lactating in extreme cases. And, since testosterone promotes libido in both men and women and skews the rational/emotional balance toward the rational and easy-going, blocking the utilization of testosterone decreases libido and increases stress and drama! BAD IDEA!

(Plant estrogens do the same thing in the female body, which decreases a woman’s libido, and since she already has all the estrogen her body can tolerate, is also being proven to promote cancer, since estrogen’s main purpose in the body is to cause the proliferation of cells, which is normally is balanced by other chemicals in the body until a surplus is created by overactive adrenal glands – which if healthy, can produce as much or more estrogen than a woman’s ovaries – or ingestion of excess estrogen in food, birth control pills, or hormone replacement therapy, especially that using “equione,” literally horse estrogen and 1,000 times more potent than human estrogens– which has also been proven to promote cancer in too many cases and some doctors are now recommending against. Some tests of an HRT using equione were halted early because of an obscenely high incidence of thickening of uterine walls and the sudden onset of cancers.)

The biggest of all offenders is…brace yourself, especially if you are a vegetarian, SOY! Yes, that funny little green bean that tofu is made from, that is served as a sort of trendy Japanese delicacy called “edamame,” that is used to replace carbohydrates in a lot of low-carb foods (my wife tried the Nutrisystems diet for awhile, and I read the labels and was appalled at the amount of soy protein added), and is erroneously promoted as being more healthful than anything else that you can eat.

Don’t take my word for this. A Google search for “soy and testosterone” will give you over a million pages on the subject, including a most excellent book by Dr. Kaayla T. Daniel, a Certified Clinical Nutritionist, called “The Whole Soy Story,” which really blows all the myths about soy to bits. If your wife is fond of soy and trying to feed it to you for every meal, you can at least bring this to her attention and get her to stop pumping you and your sons full of estrogen. (Now there’s a hard thought, having your son’s voice go UP instead of down in his early teens!)

Gentlemen, I couldn’t be more serious if I tried. The evidence has been solid for several years, and I’ve abstained from writing about it because most people just won’t accept facts when they conflict with “common knowledge,” but there is so much overwhelming factual evidence now that it can no longer be ignored, just like people eventually couldn’t ignore that the Sun didn’t orbit the Earth, or that the Earth was round, or that two objects of different mass dropped from a height will strike the ground at the same time as long as wind resistance is constant across both objects, or that men can’t expect women to get excited about them if they’re acting like a woman instead of a man.

There’s not one word about soy or even your diet in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," but I’ve covered everything else that women want you to know about them, and a lot that many of them DON’T want you to know. So to make yourself everything the woman in your life really wants you to be (if she likes men, that is!) get the soy out of your diet and jump over to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage."

(Or keep doing what you’re doing, and when your wife keeps ignoring you in the bedroom, just double up on the soy and then you can fondle your own breasts! LOL!)

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

Sometimes You Have to Be Tough to Have a Great Relationship and Marriage

Sometimes a woman quite literally NEEDS you to get a little tough with her. How do you recognize this, and how do you get tough without being abusive? Think “leadership”…

Yesterday was a really odd day. Everyone I know was having what you would call an “off day” of one kind or another. Allergies, colds, arthritis, lousy weather, vendor incompetence, boss incompetence, employee incompetence, customer incompetence, bad food, bad service, monthly cycle – you name it, somebody was going through it. The oddest thing was what happened with one of my best friends, Daphne.

We met over ten years ago, and when we did, she was a mess. Totally submissive, living for the approval of others, and living under the thumb of a wimpy, manipulative, predatory, wife-beating husband and a highly-controlling and manipulative mother. She asked me one day fairly early in our friendship how I had come to be so tough and independent, and how I could live being self-confident and caring absolutely nothing about what others thought of me. I steered her to some targeted reading, especially some of Ayn Rand’s most excellent work, and we talked about different problems and how to solve them.

She became fiercely independent, ultimately “wearing the pants in the family” (not a surprise at all given her husband’s nature; bullies always capitulate when you call their bluff) and presenting such a strong image to her mother that her mother went from being dominating and manipulative to seeking Daphne’s approval at every turn because she was intimidated by Daphne’s independence. That was about nine years ago, and she’s held the line ever since…that is, until yesterday.

There had been a lot of turmoil over the weekend, including a funeral, a couple of family problems, a severe migraine, etc., and by Monday morning she was so mentally fatigued and her testosterone so depleted (it balances the creative and emotionally-driving effects of estrogen, and too much influence from estrogen makes women – and men – uncharacteristically – or more, for some of them -- erratic, unstable, and agitated, a medical condition known as “estrogen dominance”) that her self-esteem became challenged, and she suddenly started acting like she had when we first met, very dramatic, needy, approval-seeking, etc. As the day wore on, it was getting worse instead of better.

To finish putting this in perspective, Daphne is one of the brightest women I know, with an IQ of around 130-140, very emotionally aware, and extremely competent at self-evaluation. She’s one of the top three women on the support staff who helped with the development of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and who continue to respond to surveys, questions, reader dilemmas, etc., with useful insight because she can “step in and out of herself” at will and remain entirely objective through the whole thing, which is very unusual among women, who tend to get wrapped up in the emotion of an experience and don’t want to quickly shut it down and analyze it, even when it would be to their extreme benefit to do so.

Do you have the picture now? A smart, fiercely independent woman who is quite adept at side-stepping her own emotions to rationally examine them has reverted to behavior not exhibited in nearly a decade, and as the day wore on, as I tried to point out what was happening, it got worse instead of better. I knew what was coming when she said, “I just feel like I need a good cry.” Why?

She’d been to a funeral and yet she needed a good cry? Danger Will Robinson! Danger! That’s a dependable sign of MAJOR emotional energy build-up looking for an outlet; “needing a good cry” is bad enough, but when a woman has been to a tear-jerking event like a funeral and still “needs a good cry,” well, where I grew up they would say something like, “You ain’t seen trouble yet, but it’s comin’!” Emotional energy is like any other kind of mental energy. Thought is the result of chemical reactions in the brain causing electrical impulses at the nerve synapses. This tells you what?

That the stress of all the emotion from the weekend had put her brain chemistry out of balance. Some women have more of a problem with this than others, but the symptoms are the same; they get weaker and more clingy, then needy, then irritable, and finally they sound like they’re spoiling for a fight, and you can hear the stress and anger start building in their voice looking for an outlet. The big question is “what do you do?”

First, you have to avoid the urge to let her engage you in a fight. If you can spot the “I just need a good cry” stage, suggest to her that she sit down for a chick-flick, and invite a girlfriend over to share it with her if she doesn’t want to be alone, not because you don’t care, but because it would be bad for both of you if you step into the “girlfriend role,” even temporarily. If she can “bleed off” during the chick flick, she’ll be fine. But you can’t always catch her in that state because she may pass through it and be in bad shape while you are apart, such as while one or both of you are at work. If that happens, you’re going to have to deal with it; there’s no escaping it, at least not without extreme risk.

If she gets bad enough to need a fight to bleed off, she’ll say something to put you on the defensive and then jump to get you to jump back; a big clue that this is about to happen is that whatever she seems to be upset about would normally be something trivial, or is even something that she obviously contrived, albeit involuntarily. It’s chemistry, and until you’ve been driven by something like this, it’s hard to understand or identify with it, but a woman will have very little to no choice about starting a fight once they reach this point. (Chick flick, anyone?)

Giving her a good fight will reset her brain chemistry, but it will also create a lot of embarrassment, hard feelings, scars and other aftermath that neither of you really want to deal with, and while she might be able to dismiss the things she says to you, even knowing that she’s in a involuntary predicament due to a chemically-altered state, you may never forgive or forget them, as she may never forgive or forget the things you say to her in response to what she said to you SPECIFICALLY TO PROVOKE THE ALTERCATION. We’ve all seen how things, once said, cannot really ever be taken back, no matter how much they weren’t really meant at the time. You need a confrontation, but not a fight. How do you do that?

Remember the many times I’ve mentioned leadership as a biological trigger for attraction? The chemical balance in the brain is a biological matter. When she finally had things built up to try to start the fight and made a snide remark to try to provoke me, I took a stern tone that she had probably never heard me use before, and said, “Just hold it! You are not going there with me!”

That’s leadership (decision-making), and authority (establishing a boundary), but it’s also a confrontation (denying her the fight and doing so in a stern tone). I thought for a second she had dropped the phone until I heard her breathe, and then continued, “This is not about me and you, or even me or you separately. It’s about all the emotional turmoil that you went through over the last few days, and you’re looking for a fight to sort it all out. There’s a better way to handle this.”

I went on to explain what had happened, maintaining the stern tone of a friend who is verbally roughing up another friend for doing something silly, and gradually softening it as I proceeded over the next couple of minutes. After a couple of minutes of silence as she took it all in, she interrupted me in mid sentence with, “Oh my God! I’ve been doing this all day, haven’t I?”

It was like hearing somebody come out of a daze, and Gentlemen, you MUST understand this, for many women, it really is like coming out of a daze. When they get off balance like that, they are truly in an altered mental state, and may not even remember some things that happen or have an accurate sense of the passage of time. This does not in any way make them inferior, weak, flakey, or insane, any other kind of sexist nonsense. It’s just the way they are, and something that we have to be aware of and work around – NOT SUFFER IN SILENCE OVER -- if we are going to have a long-term relationship with them. It comes with the package, and you can help them though it or be made miserable by it. A pretty obvious choice, huh?

Eventually, after talking for a few minutes (and Daphne making several apologies and sounding very embarrassed), we got back to the point in a prior discussion about her saying that she felt like she just needed a good cry. Sometime before we spoke today, she watched some old sad movie, had a good cry, and was herself when I called this morning to share a reader e-mail with her. This brings up the other VERY important point…

When women say they “need a good cry,” they’re not being prissy little wuss-bags. They know that they are off-balance, and have learned over time that it’s going to take some kind of extreme emotional event that is sustained for a fairly long time (as emotional events go) to get things back in balance. It is VERY difficult to create a positive event that can create this intensity and duration of emotion, so they usually use something negative but inert, like a sad movie, to get them started and keep them going, and by the time the movie is over, they’re bled out, stabilized, and generally okay. Are you with me here?

Women don’t like sad movies because they enjoy being sad, they like sad movies because they provide a needed emotional rush and release that rids them of negative energy and sets their body chemistry right without having to engage us in a fight and damage our relationships. A woman’s life is mostly about managing her relationships, thanks to her brain structure and chemistry that give her the signature social nature of womankind, and they really do try to protect their relationships a lot more than many men. Hence, when your partner wants to watch a sad movie, don’t interfere. You don’t have to sit there through the whole thing, and again, should have her invite a girlfriend over to watch it with her, but…

If there is no girlfriend available or she doesn’t want to do that, you don’t want to be cast in the role of girlfriend because it kills attraction over time. Tell her that you don’t like sad movies and don’t play well in the role of girlfriend, and that you’ll be in another room, but if she gets upset and wants to be held a bit you’ll be happy to “pop in” for a few minutes if she asks. Being a strong shoulder to cry on is a far cry from being a girlfriend sharing in a drama festival. Crying at chick-flicks was part of the bad advice in the 1980’s that got us into this mess, so don’t go there, ever. You will indeed be very uncomfortable in the girlfriend role if you have an ounce of masculinity in you, and you’ll kill attraction and respect in her. There’s just no upside for either of you if you try to substitute for a girlfriend for even a minute.

If you do have to spend a few minutes with her while she watches, monitor her as she does, and if you notice tears starting to form sit down with her for a bit and snuggle her up, then a few minutes after the scene changes and she’s dried up for a few minutes excuse yourself for a bit. She doesn’t need a baby sitter, but it will feel good to have you there holding her when the tears come, and it will be endearing to her to have you tolerate a few minutes of that movie to help her get through it. Don’t feed into it, or egg her on, or start crying yourself. Just sit still, pull her close, and do whatever you do when she doesn’t feel good and you snuggle her up, such as hair-stroking, nuzzling, etc.

Incidentally, this is NOT the time to try to make sexual advances, but if she does, even subtly by holding a kiss longer or advancing from a “love” kiss to an aroused kiss, go with it if you can regularly bring her to orgasm, because that will release energy and reset chemistry just like a good cry for most women, according to those who have answered my surveys. If you can't, adding frustration to what's already bothering her is likely a pretty bad idea.

If she has difficulty with orgasm, or if you just don’t know how to get her there, I can point you to some helpful resources (just e-mail me or follow any of the reader-recommended links in the sidebar of this post), and I’d STRONGLY suggest you avail yourself of them, because no matter how much either of you try to downplay the issue, if she suddenly discovers that somebody else can while you can’t, or even suspects that somebody else can when you seldom or never have, you will have one of the worst of all problems on your hands: a bored wife in whom someone else has created attraction. Attraction is like a foot race, whoever gets there first wins.

Women are like us in a lot of ways, but in the ways they differ from us lie the potential for a lot of misunderstanding and lack of appreciation, not to mention good old-fashioned BIG trouble. They try to tell us what they need, but one of those differences is how they communicate with us, which really throws a wrench in the works. But, there’s help if you’re smart enough to know that you need it and man enough to accept it…

I brought a group of nearly 200 women together to find out what they want from men and life, and then worked with the 118 couples made up of the “attached” women in the first group with their men (about one-third of them were unmarried or divorced) and worked them over nine ways from Sunday to find out what went right and wrong in relationships, how men and women differed, how to communicate with them, and how to make or break that wonderful feeling of attraction, that emotion that women so desperately crave and which truly brings out the best in them when they feel it, so much so that they will literally kill to protect that feeling.

That research was compiled into my e-book, "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," which was given back to the couples for testing and fine tuning, and all of them, as well as everyone who has bought it since (unless somebody has failed to complain and get a refund when they felt like it, and can you imagine that happening today???) has improved their life and/or relationship, and I have more unsolicited testimonials to that effect than you could ever imagine. Some relationships can’t be improved because they never should have been formed in the first place, and this book helps you to identify and exit them peacefully as well. And the best news of all is…

That you can have it now! It’s an instant download, 118 pages in PDF format, single-spaced and optimized for printing on standard letter-size paper, so you can read it on your screen or carry it with you and read it on the train, plane, or your favorite easy chair – YOUR CHOICE. Just choose! Go for it now, so you can start replacing boredom, frustration, and fights with happy times and a higher standard of living and self-esteem, because life is too short to spend it just wondering why things aren’t going so well when they could be going great!

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

Boredom: Just How Far Will a Woman Go to Escape It? Far Enough to Wreck Your Relationship and Marriage!

MUST READ! I’ve talked a lot about how much of a problem boredom is for women, and why, but the obvious examples of boredom, affairs and dramatic outbursts, don’t hold a candle to what this woman reveals!

I hope you’re ready to have your world rocked, because it’s about to happen.

Anybody who has been reading this newsletter very long knows that I rarely use the words “MUST READ” in a title or summary, quite simply because I want to maintain credibility for the few times when I really send you a true “MUST READ” issue. This is one of them. Why?

The letter I’m about to show you left me speechless for several minutes, a feat I’m sure many of you may perceive as bordering on impossible. I had heard of such things happening, but never with such destructive and self-destructive force and disregard for the consequences. Meet Hannah:

Dear David,

I have something to share with you and your other readers that I think will shock some and make some say “My wife would never do something like that, “ but it happens and I think its about time that a lot of eyes were opened. After 18 years of marriage I recently was divorced and could not for the life of me figure out why, that is until I looked back at our marriage and what went on year after year. What I found was not pretty, but until I faced it I knew I could never have a successful relationship ever again.

For years I and a group of very close girlfriends had what we always called a book club. We would meet twice a month to discuss what the latest book we were supposed to have read. Key words here are “supposed to have,” because we never turned the first page of any book at all. This was our excuse to get out of the house and have a few drinks and really think of ways to cause major damage to our marriages.

At the time, major damage to our marriages was not at all what we intended, but the truth is we were kidding ourselves. Actually lying is what we were doing, but we were too busy calling it a contest to make it seem as if we were only playing around, not hurting our husbands and dooming our marriages.

We were horribly bored, because our husbands left us alone constantly to keep house and watch the kids while they worked late (whether they really worked or had an affair), played golf, worked on their cars, went fishing together, etc. We got one night every two weeks and they got the other 13, so on our one night, we made up for lost time with too much booze and drama.

We were also immature and honestly, in need of male leadership that wasn’t there, and two of our group ended up being alcoholics from trying to drown their boredom in vodka. One ended up with a “disease” from one of her affairs, and several of us are now divorced.

I guess I need to explain in detail what the contest are and the rules of the game. This way you can better understand what took place and how some of us are now alone and why at 40+ years old we are looking for jobs to put food on the table and clothes to wear.

It really started out that I did not have the ability to keep my big mouth shut when I should have sit quietly. One night after a few drinks I bragged to my friends that I could get my husband to do anything I told him or buy me anything I asked him too. That was all it took for the idea of the contest to be born and as time went by you will see what happened.

The contest, as we called it, was just simply a cruel way to see who could get the biggest and best thing from their husband, money be damned. Each woman in the group took turns thinking of what outcome would make one the winner of the contest. There was no prize to be won except for bragging rights until the next contest.

The first contest was actually pretty mild compared to what was going on when my divorce papers were delivered. We went from seeing who could get their husbands to pay for girl’s nights out to who had the biggest and best house, car and the most expensive jewelry. At first is was so easy to pull off without the worry of the husbands finding out, but as you can guess with each bigger and better thing we wanted it would take endless hours and sometimes days to make sure all the tracks were covered and secret details of the truth hidden.

We lied to ourselves and husbands so much that we actually believed that no harm was being done and it was something they really wanted to do for us. When the truth was we were pulling string that would come back to bite some of us in the very purse we were depending on for our very lives.

I can not remember when the first contest even started. What I can tell you is that after I shot my mouth off bragging it started with a few partially drunk women claiming to have the most control over their husbands. It was simply to have a new credit card with the highest spending limit before the next meeting of the book club. To some that is no big deal, just get the card and just not use it, right? Well, that is what a smart and sane person would do, but we were bored women who were only interested in treating our boredom by seeing what we could get out of a man.

The second contest was not so easy. It was decided at the next meeting that we needed something a little harder to get something that the men would really have to work harder to make happen for us. Mindy thought we should see who could talk their husbands into a new car. Now that did not mean it had to be brand new off the show room floor, just new to us, and with the biggest price tag. On this contest I was not the winner, but I did score a new car only a few months old. The winner of this contest if you are interested scored a brand new Lexus fully loaded with a sunroof. Even at this we still were not satisfied we all wanted to win at least once.

The third was a house if you did not already own one. This contest to some of us was nothing because we already owned homes and I knew that we had already bought the biggest and best house we could afford on his salary and I did not really participate in this one.

The next one was a new set of wedding rings with at least a $4,000 price tag. This one I took with a 4 carrot set of diamond wedding rings that it took my husband maxing out one credit card and taking out another one just to pay for my rings. These rings did not mean anything to me and I later sold them at a loss just to get rid of them. The truth is that I really did not like them from the start they were just something to put me on the top of the game for once.

Over the years there were many other contests and some I won and some I did not and with each loss I worked harder the next time to be the one on top. Soon this was a way of life for the women of the book club. Since our husbands weren’t giving us anything constructive or exciting to think about, all we could think about was the competition, and being women, it was fierce to say the least. For some of us it seemed like the best time of our lives, but it was really the cancer that consumed our marriages.

This is still going on with some of the women. I received an e-mail a few days ago telling me that this year there was to be a Christmas contest and the rules were that it had to be a diamond of at least one karat in a solid gold setting. The winner would be the one with the biggest price tag.

I know what I did was cruel on some level, but I can’t say that I feel bad about it, or that I will take the blame for the divorce. I was ignored to the point of not being able to love or be loved, and I was so bored that I would have done anything for a thrill. I guess we are all lucky that much worse damage wasn’t done. I will tell you this: there are times that a woman can be her own worst enemy. So be careful with the action you take and be smart. Know if you are the one being cast in the part of the fool of your marriage.

I hope that is something you can share with your readers, this was my real life and I hope others can learn from it. I’m having to restart my life at the age of 40, so you figure out who was really the one with control of the marriage in the end and who, if anyone, were the winners of any contest.

Sincerely,
Hannah

Gentlemen, I know that I talk about this a lot, and I do it because this is so much more critical an issue than what we have any frame of reference to understand or empathize with. When we get bored, we just do something goofy, grab our tools, flip on a ball game, or play grab-ass. Women can’t be satisfied with that, because their need for emotional energy is so much higher than ours.

By the time they take radical enough action to alleviate their boredom, they’ve already reached a point where rational thought, self-control, and even compassion are no longer possible, because they are truly desperate for relief. I’m not at all saying that they should never be held accountable for their actions, but I will point out that it is a whole lot easier for you to alleviate their boredom than to clean up the aftermath of them doing it themselves.

What’s really sad is that not only do women give off all kinds of signals that we could read to know when they’re in this kind of trouble but don’t know to look for them, they also tell us, but not in ways we are born to understand. For example, she doesn’t ask you if you think everything is alright to find out what you’re thinking, she asks to try to tell you that she has a problem, but you have to recognize the attempt and invite her to open up, proving that she has your attention and you care enough to listen, before she will spend the time to and effort to try to talk with you about it.

Regardless of who is ultimately responsible for a woman’s actions, there’s no denying that we can do a better job of positively influencing both their actions and our lives together. You tell me, would you rather see your wife smile because you just surprised her with a cute note or a subtle pinch or pat on the behind or see her angry and frustrated, rolling her eyes and walking out of the room? Either one is your choice, possibly even more than her own, and equally easily-achieved.

It’s not that we are responsible for a woman’s happiness, but we can help facilitate it much easier than they can themselves in a lot of ways. We can lead, we can share, we can protect, validate, and help to justify and celebrate their achievements. They are capable of many things, including many of the same things of which we are capable, but being far more social in nature than we are, they need a degree of social reinforcement to feel worthy of their happiness. Men generally look inside themselves for feelings of self-worth, while women are often compelled to look to others for such feelings.

The bottom line is that everything in your life needs attention, preventive maintenance, if you will. If you gas up your car and drive it until it breaks down, it will break down a lot faster, will it not? The same thing goes for your relationship and marriage. There are things you need to know and do that will keep your life together running smoothly, and it will break down quickly if you don’t know and do them.

So, you want me to give you an owner’s manual for your marriage? Sounds weird, but okay, here you go. Go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and make sure that you’re not the guy going to the poor house and divorce court because you couldn’t recognize the red light on your wife’s dashboard.

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

What Women REALLY Want in Relationships and Marriage, Part 2A, Reader Response on Drama of the Day

This topic of what women want is really waking some people up. Check out what this reader has to say about “sharing the drama of the day,” and how the situation is easier to handle than his experience has led him to believe…

I’m downright proud of the responses I’m getting from readers on this subject, even when they don’t get the whole message, because they’re taking the time to really look at their life and situation and taking the time to discuss it, looking for solutions instead of just ignoring a bad situation and letting it fester and finally erupt.

This reader didn’t include his name, so I’m just going to refer to him as “Steve.” Check him out:

OK. I understand that women do not operate by logic. However, it is beyond me as to why in this scenario Alyson can't take a step back, reflect and say to herself "Gee, he's doing everything else right - all other areas of the relationship are great - I'll just leave him alone on this one." The guy is batting at least .900 by her very own words!!!!! I know it is a "logical" statement to say "you're getting everything else you want, so give the guy a break" - especially since he's not necessarily doing anything "wrong" even in her complaint.

I know in the real world things aren't fair, but having been the guy at the dinner table, I have felt the heat from "Alyson's" complaint and I have always felt it was extremely unfair to be accused of doing something wrong just because I had no dialogue about the day. At least now I know the thought process that has driven me at the dinner table. I now realize that if there were no significant achievements in the day, the day had no value or meaning to me by the time I would get home and I would feel like there's nothing to share. So I guess you could say my "male filter" translates questions like "How was your day" into "Did you have a major victory today?" If my logical search engine doesn't find anything to match that query, then my response is "It was ok". I have returned the search results and that's the end of the story about my day. Then her "female filter" translates "It was ok." into a marriage crime punishable by nagging, poking, accusations and the most tortuous punishment of all - forgetting all of the other really important good things that the male has done.

So why can't "Alyson" just step back and leave well enough alone considering how great everything else is? Is the argument for emotional connectedness that heavy or is there some selfishness included which doesn't allow "Alyson" to look at the situation and ask herself "What is it that HE needs at the dinner table rather than focusing on what HER need is - again considering the fact that most if not all of her other needs are being met??????????????????

My reply:

Good morning, Steve,

This isn’t so much because women don’t operate by logic as because they are wired to do things differently than we are, and don’t realize that we have different emotional scales, different communications methods and protocols, etc., any more than men realize it. Until a woman is aware of how differently we think and communicate, she takes everything that you say as having meant the same thing and been said for the same reason that a woman would say it. In “man-world,” a succinct terse reply of “status quo, nothing to report” is a favor, where in “woman-world,” a terse answer without details says, “I don’t like you and don’t want to share with you because you’re not worth enough to me for me to allow you into the intimate details of my life, so go away.” It’s hurtful at best, and insulting at worst.

Alyson can step back and leave well enough alone if she understands that you are not closing her off and that there was really nothing to discuss, or that you find rehashing a bad day irritating. Women want to nurture the man they love, not torment the life out of him. Women generally don’t find rehashing a bad day irritating; for them it’s like a bonding ritual and a show of support to sit and listen to another’s problems with no expectation of getting involved in a solution; most women are offended by the offering of a solution before all the sharing and dramatizing is complete. You’ll notice that Alyson did acknowledge that the problem may be on her end when she said, “What can I do to make him talk or am I going about it the wrong way, the nagging wife syndrome?”

Remember, our emotional scale runs from extreme negative to extreme positive, while theirs runs from no emotion to extreme emotion without much discrimination between positive and negative. That’s not to say that they enjoy disaster; they simply find the “rush” from crisis to be as “emotionally relieving” as success and celebration.

Women accumulate emotional energy, and if they don’t have some outlet for it, they will create one, and here’s a big hint to chew on: It’s a lot faster and easier to create negative emotional energy than positive. Achievement and success take a lot of time to arrange, at least a lot more time than negative. Next time you’re having a fight over what seems to be absolutely nothing, it’s possible that it’s a real issue that the two of you are not able to communicate effectively about, but it’s more likely that she got so bored that the emotional energy boiling up in her erupted over something insignificant, because a fight over something insignificant is very easy to start and very easy to end when she gets all that pent-up energy out of her system; She can simply say, “I’m sorry, that was silly. It just struck me the wrong way and I exploded,” and proceed to making up.

I know all too well how frustrating this scenario is from personal experience. It was one of the things that put me on the road to doing the research for "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and the women in the test group were quite surprised to find out what I just explained, and when they understood that sharing the details of a bad day was different for a man than a woman, they had no problem with being satisfied with a few minor details and a declaration that the rest of the day was something the man didn’t want to discuss as long as there was nothing that threatened the man, his job, or the household, and that he wasn’t trying to hide some on-going problem that they should know about, like his life, health, job, financial security or happiness being threatened.

If you can grasp the significance of 118 women agreeing on something, you’ll understand how important this distinction is: the entire group agreed that women want to know that if trouble comes, the man can deal with it and involve them if they can help, and DO NOT want to be shielded from news of a potential credible threat. They don’t like being blind-sided any more than we do, and most of them are a whole lot tougher than you might think when things get tough as long as you take the lead and keep them informed and involved to whatever extent they can help.

As I wrote that paragraph it immediately put me in mind of a scene from “The Rookie,” the story of Tampa Bay Devil Rays pitcher Jimmy Morris who found that after an injury and surgery that had taken him out of professional baseball for over a decade, he had a 98 MPH fastball and went back into Major League Baseball for 2 years. In the scene, Jimmy is telling his wife that if he takes the offer to enter the minor league team in preparation for the major league performance, it will put too much of a squeeze on the family finances and too much strain on her, and she says, “Jimmy Morris, I’m a Texas woman, and that means I don’t need no man around to keep things running. This is your dream shot, and you go on and take it. We’ll be fine.”

That's paraphrased because I can't remember the exact quote, but the point is obvious. He was assuming she couldn't cut it or didn't want her to have to, and she stepped right up. Mentioning that “some bozo squirted ink all over himself and somebody else got caught being naughty in the supply closet, but otherwise the day was a waste of time,” is a small price to pay for that kind of support, any good woman will gladly give that and more once you tune in and connect with her.

I hope this clears things up a bit for you. I’m not suggesting that you just give in and talk about everything you don’t want to talk about at all. I’m saying that if you and your wife understand each other’s priorities, preferences, communications styles and needs, etc., there is an easy and very agreeable solution to this most common and frustrating problem.

Take care,
David

There’s not a lot I can add to that, except to say that readers of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" know all of this and much more about how to understand and connect with the women in their life and how to navigate and negotiate these sticky situations so that all this stress and frustration are not an issue for them, and you have the same opportunity for a better life that they have. All it takes is a quick trip to http://www.makingherhappy.com and a few mouse clicks to download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and a little time and effort. It really doesn’t get any easier or any better, so go ahead and be good to yourself and your family and get it now. Everybody involved will thank you for it, and you’ll be glad you did.

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

What Women REALLY Want in Relationships and Marriage, Part 2, Sharing the Drama of the Day

Continuing the series, to help you understand what women want from a man, this issue is another must-read. It addresses a specific issue and scenario that is addressed more generally in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," the issue of “How was your day, Dear?” and how women want to share in the bad as well as the good like they do with their girlfriends, while men don’t want to relive a bad day by going through it, and prefer to skip it and move on to something positive. A real eye-opener!

I hope you’re having a great week. I’m having a blast with reader e-mail. Lots of good questions with good lessons for all to learn, so keep them coming. I’ve had some questions about women wanting to share drama with their men, a topic from my free “What Women REALLY Want” report, and since many of you have apparently assumed that free report was worthless because it was free and chose not to download it, we’re going to go through that chapter today and then handle the reader questions and comments concerning it tomorrow. It’s good, so hang with me and stay tuned.

I’ve promised you statements directly from women about what they want, and here you go: This one, which demonstrates the difference in the emotional make-up of men and women, that a woman’s emotional scale goes from zero to infinity, without much regard for positive and negative, where a man’s scale goes from negative to none to positive, and the emotional upheaval that can come as a result of not understanding those differences and that both scales tend to run in the middle.

What exactly does that mean? What’s in the middle of a woman’s scale? A significant amount of emotional energy being absorbed and expended. What’s in the middle of a man’s emotional scale? Neutrality! Women need to have something going on pretty much all the time or they get bored stiff (their “emotionometer” goes to the far left, at zero emotion), where men don’t mind deviating from the middle a bit on an on-going basis, but the farther we stray and the longer, the more we’ll try to push things back toward that calm and simple state somewhere near the middle, where everyone is fed and protected.

Note that on the “left” side of our emotionometer is the most negative, and to a large degree, both men and women exhibit a lot of the same symptoms when the needle moves to the left; extreme boredom makes a woman as agitated and physically uncomfortable as fear, anger, and pain to a man. See my “Emotional Scales” article to see a graphic representation of the scale and a lot more information about it and how it works.

Without further ado, meet Alyson:

Dear David:

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!! I need some help. I am totally frustrated! My husband and I have been married for a year now. We are happy and communicate wonderfully except in one area. When we sit down to dinner, that is our time to talk. I ask him how his day was and get the standard [one-word] answers, fine, ok, good, rotten...etc. That's it, except when he is having an incredible day and tells me of the rewards. I want to know the good and the bad, but he won't talk about them. If he did tell me it would be great, I would continue to get to know him and how he functions and solves problems.

All other aspects of our marriage are great, he is kind, courteous and an incredible Alpha male but that one area drives me nuts. I have tried to prod and probe and he just says "leave it alone, I don't want to talk about it". What can I do to make him talk or am I going about it the wrong way, the nagging wife syndrome?

Can you help me?

Alyson

My response:

Hi Alyson!

I’m going to give you the answer that you need to hear, probably won’t like too much, but will have to accept because this is just how it is in the real world.

Men of action, achievers, the strong alpha male that women respond to with overwhelming and magical-feeling attraction, don’t like to dwell on problems, they like to fix them and get them out of the way. We learn whatever lessons these problems and solutions present and put the events behind us, taking only the lessons forward with us. This is part of what makes us who and what we are, because it is a huge influence on self-esteem and self-confidence, things which you and all women admire and want in a man.

We don’t like living through these events the first time, and to discuss them as women do, as an accounting of the day and exploration of the emotions, as you no-doubt go through with your female friends, is like living through the problem a second time, dwelling on it, and having that negative influence of that frustration and aggravation eating at us all over again.

It’s not that we don’t want you to know about the day or how we handle problems or anything else. We simply don’t want to relive a bad day and unnecessarily expose ourselves to those negative influences all over again, which can erode confidence and expends time and effort that could be spent in spending quality time with you or doing something else we enjoy, building achievements that we can celebrate with you, etc.

You’ll also notice that your husband does share his triumphs with you. This isn’t to brag and pound his chest; it’s an act of intimacy. When a man of action relives a victory with you, he’s inviting you to share in and celebrate something that is special to him: ACHIEVEMENT.

This celebration reinforces his feelings of strength and independence, and makes him better prepared to face the next day’s challenges. Bear in mind that being an alpha male and loner by nature, a genuine male achiever doesn’t need anyone else’s recognition or approval of his achievements; telling you about it is purely an act of sharing, of trust, and of intimacy, and not to be confused with the bragging of a man who one-upped someone by some trick of cunning or stroke of luck instead of through competently performing whatever tasks were at hand.

All of this is in stark contrast to the female social practice of sharing and even dramatizing everything that happens, indiscriminately reliving everything that has happened and trying to milk every last drop of emotional energy from it, regardless of whether it was a positive or negative event, and hence, whether they are bombarding themselves with positive or negative emotions.

(Gentlemen, you need to understand that they are not being nosey or trying to rub your nose in a bad day; this sharing is a reaching out for intimacy and when you just stomp on them for asking it’s a severe rejection, which we’ll discuss further in a minute, and it’s just as natural and automatic a drive as your own drive to bury negative things once they’ve been resolved and move forward.)

Women are frighteningly effective and efficient at this, and I must wonder how damaging this practice must be to women, and how much better their lives could be if they didn’t spend so much time and energy digging into negative emotions and drama and milking the emotion from it the way they do.

Take care,
David

I’ve never seen this in print, or heard anyone discuss it in any venue or forum, but it is statistically ridiculous that nobody in the 10,000 years of recent history has ever noticed this, so I can’t help but also wonder if it’s never been mentioned in public because those who noticed feared the outrage that women might voice at the mere suggestion that negative emotions and negative drama could be bad for their psyche, self-esteem, and by virtue of the chemical impact of stress on the body, their health in general.

Nonetheless, I’m saying it now; I wonder if women acted as men do in filtering out negative influences like those encountered in the ritual sharing of problems, especially those marathon drama-fests where the same problem is iterated over and over until everyone in the conversation gets bored with the repetition and moves on, this would leave them with time and energy to spend planning, achieving, celebrating and reaping the benefits of much more positive energy and influence on their psyche, emotional balance, and physical well-being, not to mention the boost in self-esteem and confidence and proportional drop in insecurities this would create.

This hypothesis is based on observation of a limited number of women, under 300, and of those, the ones who do not get bogged down in negative emotion are indeed much more happy, motivated, and successful than those who do. The evidence says that negative emotion creates physical stress in both males and females. I’m still looking for a way to test this hypothesis on a very wide scale, and if anyone hears of an existing study, I’d like to know about it immediately.

A word for the ladies reading this: Please think about this, Ladies. I realize that the concept sounds like suggesting you cut off your arm, more accurately, like you cut out a piece of your heart, emotionally speaking, but look at your own life and assess how much time you have spent in the last day, week, month, year, etc., indulging in negative emotions to milk the rush from them before setting to the task of solving and eliminating the problem. Then try to get some feel for how much time you spent that you could have spent doing other more positive and productive things, and what your life might be like right now if you had spared yourself all that negative influence and had those extra achievements and decreased stress from less time pressure. If you feel comfortable talking about it, I’d love to hear from you, and would love to eventually do a formal study of a large group of women, but this is strictly for your benefit, and I’m sure that if you are objective in your assessment, you’ll find that you could have done a lot with that time and positive energy.

Now that everyone hopefully understands where everyone else stands on the issue, and the origin and nature of the behavior, let’s talk about what can be done to bring everybody closer together. Ladies, don’t feel like a man is being closed off or rejecting you when he doesn’t want to relive a bad day. Be glad that you have a partner who is an achiever and is strong enough to do this instead of doing what many men do: whining and acting weak and pissy, and sometimes getting caught up in the frustration and abusing you to release the frustration that something or somebody else caused. That makes him look like a girlfriend instead of a man, and kills your attraction for him.

Gentlemen, be aware that any time a woman is asking you questions about yourself in any non-accusatory, non-confrontational context, she’s trying to learn about you, trying to be closer to you and connect with you, so don’t just stomp on her if she’s asking about something you don’t want to talk about. Give her the gift of a little understanding and dignity by telling her that it was one of those days that was bad enough the first time you lived through it, and rather than going through it all over again and reliving all that negative emotion, you would rather put that part of the day behind you and give her the best part of your day, the enjoyable part, and rather than rehash bad memories it would be far better for both of you to use the time to make some new, positive memories.

When you do tell her about things, tell her as much as you can about the emotional aspects of it, the details that let her feel what you felt, and while it is still not good to rehash the really bad stuff, you could share the neutral to positive things with her to give her some part of the day. It may not have been something you thought worth celebrating, but it’s still something that she can examine to get to know you better, and it helps eliminate that illusion that you are trying to shut her out. And if it was a bad situation that you resolved and the day had a successful ending, by all means tell her, because women love to hear how anyone, especially their man, saved the day.

This was the best solution found by our test group, but is by no means the only possible solution. If you can find something that works better for you, write about it, and we can possibly discuss it here. If readers were more active, it might inspire me to set up some blog or discussion forum software on the website to allow you interact and exchange ideas and success stories directly, but I won’t be going through that trouble and expense without seeing that those resources, if provided, would be used for the benefit of a significant group of people, so if you want it, get involved by e-mail and let’s see where it goes.

There you have it, the answer to one of the toughest problems in any good relationship. In my men’s book, “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” men are instructed about women’s social mechanisms and their need to share, and encouraged to be sensitive to those needs to whatever degree possible, as well as many other critical topics and skills in the areas of relationship evaluation and understanding, communications with women, and a wealth of knowledge about attraction, that magical feeling poets refer to as “being in love,” including how it works, how to create it, and how to kill it (like making your partner feel shut out!), which is the beginning of trouble of paradise and the end of more relationships than you can imagine. In case it’s not obvious, these are all the very things that women REALLY want from a man!

Relationships can survive without a lot of things, even without love to a large degree, but they seldom survive without effective communication and attraction, so don’t let it happen to you. Jump on over to http://www.makingherhappy.com and get your copy today, because life is too short to spend it bored, fighting, or worst of all, lonely.

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

Too Much of a Good Thing Kills a Woman's Pleasure, and Hence Your Relationship and Marriage

Too much of a good thing gets boring, especially for women, who generally have a very low tolerance for routine, especially in their love life. Have you made any of these classic mistakes?

What a lovely day this has turned out to be! There are some days when just being competent and attentive are enough to get everything done, and this is looking like it will be one of them. I hope yours goes as well!

I get a lot of letters every day from readers about their problems and successes, and amongst the problem letters are a few common threads, the biggest of which seems to be female boredom. It permeates every situation in some manner, especially those where the man thinks that everything is going well until the very moment he gets slapped with divorce papers and when, in his shock, he asks, “I thought everything was fine! What’s this about?” he hears the words, “See! YOU NEVER LISTEN TO ME!”

What happened?

She’s bored to tears, tried to tell him in what she thinks is the most verbose means possible (which unfortunately often means that she rolls her eyes with her back turned to him or has asked him if he would like to do something different instead of TELLING him that SHE NEEDS to do something different – we’ll touch on that again in one of the upcoming issues on inter-gender communications, but it’s covered in detail in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage”), and being a man with the male, typically limited communications structure we are born with, he didn’t pick up on the complaint, and she got fed up.

That’s what caused the divorce threat (which incidentally, may be only a wake-up call, which you can determine immediately if you know what to look for, which is also discussed in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage”), but what caused the root problem, the boredom itself?

Whoa! Did you think about that when you read it? The threat of a break-up or a divorce is a problem, but in the bigger picture, it’s merely a very revealing symptom of a bigger problem, and stopping the divorce is only a temporary stay of execution, not a problem solution. Getting the relationship back on track requires fixing the problem(s) that got you to the stage of the divorce threat.

Getting back to the boredom problem, as men, we like a simple life. We don’t mind routine nearly as much as women because for us, a neutral (neither perilous nor exciting) environment means the absence of problems, and that’s a big plus; we’ll take a little excitement when we can get it too, but we’re happy to just be outside the reach of problems for a day. Our emotional scale is such that negative emotion is on one end and positive emotion is on the other end, and emotional neutrality is in the middle, and therefore better than negative emotions. We’re biologically wired to seek status quo, situation normal, a stable, threat-free environment because we’ve evolved as protectors for a hundred thousand years or more.

All the men who don’t know any better are right now saying, “So what? Anything else would be crazy!” Well, you and I might think so, but…

All the women are right now saying that we are the crazy ones! Their emotional scale runs from zero to infinity, not negative to positive; to them, lack of emotional outlet for their energy is the worst possible state, and they really don’t distinguish that much between positive and negative emotion, at least as far as their biological need for emotional energy is concerned (which is different from their conscious tolerance of it). That’s why they enjoy and even NEED tear-jerking movies that we think are a depressing (and somewhat masochistic) waste of time. Do you see the problem?

They need things stirred up more than we do, and in our quest for the problem-free environment, not knowing that our needs are different from theirs, we misinterpret their cooperation as their approval, their sharing of our need to have a calm, stable environment; wrong answer! They cooperate because they are social, and are expecting something in exchange for their cooperation, not because they enjoy being bored.

They are also, intentionally or not, following your lead, waiting for you to get around to the fun and exciting part. That’s why they need you to be an alpha male, a leader, to get naughty with them when they aren’t expecting it, to leave little surprises for them in places they don’t expect them, the impromptu picnics and vacations, etc. Without things like that, they go nuts! However, don’t go overboard; too much of a good thing ruins it!

This is the other classic mistake that men make. We have such a hard time figuring out what women want that when we find something, we drown them in it. I’ve seen guys find out that a woman likes chocolate and be shoving it in her mouth every time she opens it until she’s literally sick of chocolate, ruining one of her favorite things for her, and women really hate that. And when men do it and it doesn’t work out, they think, “Well, that ungrateful bitch! I gave her unlimited supply of her favorite thing and this is the thanks I get?!” No, Dude. You’re not getting thanks at all. And after ruining her enjoyment of one of her favorite things, be it a food, an activity, a sexual position, or whatever, you shouldn’t be expecting thanks, either.

That’s right. It’s very easy to give a woman too much of a good thing, even when it comes to sex. If you want to ruin your sex life to the point that it wrecks your relationship, all you have to do is find out that she likes something in bed, and do it every single time you have sex until she tells you to stop doing it. She’ll not only grow bored with the act, she’ll hate you for ruining one of her favorite sexual things.

And guys, be honest. Just about every one of us, alive now and who has ever lived, has heard a woman say something like, “oh, I love to be on top,” or “I love doggie-style,” and let that suddenly become 99% of your sexual repertoire. The magic was gone pretty fast after that, wasn’t it? You must mix it up in the bedroom just as much as you must mix it up in the rest of the house and outside the house. Use her favorite things as a reward, put forth at the climax (no pun intended!) of some event, not as part of any standard operating procedure. Contrary to popular belief, most women (and all the good ones) like a challenge, and like to earn the reward of meeting that challenge, even and especially when the challenge is seducing their husband.

Repeat after me: “BORING IS THE LAST WORD A MAN EVER WANTS TO HEAR A WOMAN USE TO DESCRIBE HIM!” Never forget that; you can bet that she won’t. She can’t! Avoiding boredom is literally a survival skill for women. It ultimately terrifies and destroys them. Just ask one. Indeed, ask several. And listen to the stories they tell you of what happens when they get bored. You can search my blogs (http://blog.makingherhappy.com is the oldest and has the most content) or my newsletter archive for some of those stories, too. Some of their stories will scare the mortal hell out of you when you see what some desperately bored women did to their husbands and even themselves, just because they were bored.

Guys, long-term committed relationships, whether you’re married or not, aren’t just a piece of cake sitting there waiting for you to bite. They don’t necessarily take a lot of work, especially if you are well-matched and attentive, but there is some work that has to be done no matter how well-matched you are. You can do it on the front end by finding someone with whom you are well-matched and live happily ever after, or you can do it when everything blows up in your face to try to save the situation (and if there are significant compatibility problems, you will inevitably find that it cannot be saved), but either way, you have to be prepared to be in a long-term committed relationship to maintain one whether you have to save it or not.

You have to know whether you are indeed well-matched with a woman, you have to know how to communicate with her so that you can keep things open, developing and committed, and you have to know what sparks and maintains her attraction for you to keep everything fun, exciting, intimate and everything else that keeps it from being boring. Luckily for you, you can find all this in a single source, an instantly downloadable e-book called “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” at http://www.makingherhappy.com, tested, proven, and working for everyone who is using it. Do it now, because life’s too short to spend it trying to work your way out of the doghouse.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Heather

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

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

They don’t like crises that cause major changes in their life (like divorce!) any more than we do, even though you will see them craving the adrenaline it causes to combat their eternally-tormenting boredom. It is foolish, not to mention catastrophic, to let a little drama convince you that the average woman would destroy her household and her marriage just to get a little adrenaline rush. According to the best information I’ve been able to find, only one in two thousand is that insanely damaged. (But a woman in a foundationless relationship or marriage will, because she's really not risking anything she wants to keep, so a compatibility check is always in order when there's a problem.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reader Responses to Female Eruptions and the Getting the Short End of the Stick in Relationships and Marriage

Some interesting feedback from some readers who have made some very positive changes in their lives that will open your eyes to some success you could easily enjoy as well.

I continue to be proud of the feedback I get from all of you. I’ll put my readers up against anybody’s in terms of intelligence and being motivated to make positive change. If I have a slacker among you, I don’t know who it would be. Let me show you what I mean with some excerpts from letters responding to recent newsletter topics (as always, names have been changed to protect their privacy)…

Meet “Keith,” who wrote in response to the issue on handling “female eruptions” (a.k.a., “hissy fits”):

Good morning David

I have a story to relay to you that happened to me last Monday. My wife and kids had just moved in on Saturday. It was a hectic weekend with moving and chores and such. I had forgotten to tell them that my year old dog Taz likes to run out open doors. My wife gets home on Monday and Taz runs out the door and is gone. I am not home and one of the kids had let Taz out of his kennel when they got home. He is in his kennel when no one is home.

I get home from work one of the kids is vacuuming, I say “hi,” and my wife greets me at the door with “YOUR dog is not allowed out of his kennel ever again”. She goes off on me for about 5 minutes, all the while I am just soaking in all this anger. Once the anger had subsided I pulled her aside and asked why she went off on me. She said because MY dog had run off and it took her half an hour to get him back. She was so angry with him she was ready to come home and phone me at work to come pick up MY dog. I asked what good that would have done. I said it’s the same as me calling her at work if her dog had pooped on the floor and asked her to come home and clean it up.

The old Keith would have exploded in defense when my wife started in on me like she did. But this time I waited for her to subside and then we talked calmly and rationally. I know she appreciated that because we were able to talk later that evening about other things and there was no animosity and we joked around a bit.

Cheers
Keith

First note that his wife and kids have just moved back home! Congratulations, Keith! And he’s learned how to handle her eruptions in a way that not only doesn’t escalate a problem, but gets it resolved and allows them to get back to having fun being together. He’s quite astute. Indeed, look at an excerpt from his previous e-mail, sent two weeks earlier:

Your newsletters and eBook have helped immensely. I saw that I was a wuss. I couldn’t and wouldn’t make choices for a fear of hurting someone’s feelings. Now I make choices or give options and if someone says “it doesn’t matter,” I make a choice and stand to it. I am still in the learning phase of reading my wife. She is a very independent woman and makes decisions without me. I have to learn how to deal with that. One of her hot buttons is the making a decision button. I have learned that when she says “it doesn’t matter”, she is testing me and she wants to be led and she wants to follow.

Cheers
Keith

He took what he had available, and instead of wasting time looking for all the things he could blame on his wife, he looked for the things he could fix, and handled it. That’s what being a man is about, isn’t it? Now, put these two e-mails together and get the big picture:

First, he saw there was a problem, got help, and fixed what he could fix. Great. But he didn’t stop there. When his wife reared up on him about the dog, first he handled her outbreak without escalating the altercation, then very astutely called her attention to the fact that she was unnecessarily escalating an issue – without igniting another conflict – and reduced his chances of having to deal with that problem again instead of just letting her go berserk on him and not holding her accountable.

Yes, Gentlemen, some women (it doesn’t matter if it’s the majority or not – concern yourself with the women in your life only) don’t particularly like being held accountable for their behavior while in a heightened emotional state (when you call them on something, they get mad, and come back with something like, “You’re just mean!” or “That’s not fair!”), but they will respect you when you do it as long as you’re not abusive about it, at least after they calm down. Respect enhances both love and attraction, so nothing bad and many wonderful things can come from commanding it.

Keith should be applauded, so join me in doing so. Yes, I gave him the information to work with, but just like everyone else, he had the choice to put it to work and make real changes or to say “I can’t do that,” or even worse, “Why should I do that when a lot of this is her fault?” He chose to be a man and fix what he could and hold his wife accountable for fixing what she can. Well done indeed.

And now, a note from my friend from across “the pond” (The Atlantic Ocean), Faith, who is writing in response to the “Getting the Short End of the Stick” article from yesterday:

Good newsletter David... but... it was the other way round for me and it’s getting more common for men to be earning less than their counterparts so maybe next time you mention the topic you could point that out as in the role reversal I had. I was working my ass off for little or no reward while he spent it all on computer games, CD's and drugs....and he was working in a crappy two-bit job but blew all his money so I think it can work both ways don't you?!!!!

I did enjoy reading it though and although you write predominantly for men there are plenty of us girls getting the newsletters who will probably be thinking the same as me!!!

Faith

Yes, it certainly can work both ways! Faith was married for more than a decade to the most disgusting slacker I’ve encountered in a long time. In his mid-thirties, he was working part time, changing jobs often, goofing off most of the time, being so abusive to her as to keep her in approval-seeking mode, and so controlling that she had no interaction with anyone but him. This was the worst part for her, because they had been together since their teenage years, and she didn’t know it could or should be any different.

Her biggest problem was that he projected such an image of a teenage slacker that he engaged her maternal drive, which is for some women just as strong as attraction. She saw him as a helpless child and didn’t want to leave him because she knew he couldn’t survive on his own. That was what ended up tormenting her the most during their separation and divorce, too.

But, she woke up one morning after we had spent weeks discussing the situation by e-mail, realizing that she had no respect for him, despised his slovenly ways, and wanted something more from life. She had originally contacted me to see if there was any way to make him grow up and be a man, and I told her the truth: the only way that could happen was if he wanted it to happen, and if he wanted it to happen he would already be seeking help and making improvements on his own behalf. He wanted to be mothered, and was making quite an effort (through abusing and controlling her) to make sure that he was.

Faith is a high-powered executive in one of the world’s oldest and largest cities, and when she finally cut the apron strings, she was an entirely different woman. She got a copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and set to the task of learning what kind of man she wanted to have and determined for herself that her husband not only wasn’t it, he was never going to be.

She’s now happily divorced and dating a real man, one that could accurately be described as “a man among men,” and having the time of her life, not just with him, but with all the people that she never got to socialize with while her ex was guarding his turf. By the way, his whereabouts are unknown, and her last mention of him was to say “good riddance to bad rubbish.”

Women will do extraordinary things to nurture a man when they think they have a reason to. There are a few bad reasons that you can give them, like being too much of a slacker to take care of yourself, but they usually get wise to the bad reasons and leave, usually punishing you in ways that no court could touch. But why give her bad reasons at all?

It’s so much easier to give her good reasons to nurture you. Being a real man is fun, exciting, and full of challenge and adventure. A real man is loved and respected by those who know him, especially his wife or girlfriend, who will reward him with the best that a woman can offer: herself, to the exclusion of all others.

So you want a piece of that action, huh? Then EARN IT, Big Boy! Buck up and learn what you need to know about women, which as elusive as that knowledge has been doesn’t turn out to be all that much, and what it really means to be a man, not that wishy-washy, politically correct, cry-with-your-wife-at-a-chick-flick wuss that they started telling us in the 1980’s that we should be, and get with the program!

Good grief! Think about it! Could you diffuse a fight like Keith did? Do you know how and when your wife is testing you, and how to pass those tests with flying colors (and win a trip to the bedroom for something a whole lot more exciting than sleep!)? Do you know how to listen to her so that you really know what she’s saying and you never have to see her roll her eyes at you and hear her spit “WHATEVER!” before stomping out of the room, ever again? Do you know what her deepest, darkest fear is, and that if you’re having trouble with her, it’s largely because YOU, in spite of your love for her and desire to protect her, are actually making her deepest darkest fear a reality? Would you like to put that fear to bed permanently?

It’s highly unlikely that you have the right answers to many of those questions; otherwise, you wouldn’t be here, would you? But thousands of men have learned before you, and they are getting it done, just like you could be right now, if you had the information they had.

But you CAN have it, in the next few minutes, if you want it bad enough to use it. It’s easy to get it. Just go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and just learn what’s in it and put it to use. Then you can be writing to me with your own success story like everyone else has, and what’s more, you can be LIVING WITH THAT SUCCESS! “…And they lived happily ever after,” doesn’t just happen in fairy tales. It can happen to anyone who wants to make it happen, but you have to take that first step, so step lively, Mister!

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

Why Does She Erupt? How to Stop Drama from Killing Your Relationship and Marriage

Why do otherwise stable and level-headed women sometimes pitch a fit for no apparent reason? And what’s the best way to handle it?

We talked yesterday about how to tell when a woman is getting ready to erupt for no apparent reason, and there was a cursory explanation of how to handle it, but I really wanted to give you more on understanding the cause and handling the situation. To do so, I’ll provide something from my own experience that details the build-up, explosion, and diffusing of the situation to help you relate this lesson to events in your own past so that you can be better prepared next time it comes up, and IT WILL come up. It’s a topic that I frequently need to address, and the following reader question makes for an excellent lead-in for the discussion. Meet Joel:

Hi David,

I bought your book and I'm progressing through the relationship evaluation and it looks like we're good, but I've got to ask you about something that may already be in the book because it's driving me nuts. Donna, my wife, is usually pretty stable and understanding, and seldom raises her voice. In fact, sometimes we don't talk much at all. Occasionally she'll get really antsy and next thing I know she's exploding on me for no apparent reason, literally! Whatever she picks to explode about is usually trivial at best, and really ridiculous most of the time. I've watched the calendar, if you know what I mean, and it's not "cyclic." The only thing I've noticed is that it always seems to happen when I'm traveling or busy a lot. She'll explode, I'll explode back, and then she'll go away and come back in a few minutes cheerful and acting like nothing has happened. Can you shed any light on this?

Joel

Well, Joel, congratulations on taking the first step to making some serious improvements in your life, and thanks for writing. As for your question, yes, it is covered in detail in my book, but I'm going to give you the short version now to help keep you out of trouble until you read that part, and for the benefit of your fellow readers, because every man who keeps the company of a woman goes through this phenomenon at some point in his life, if not with every woman he spends any time around, and it may not even be with a wife or girlfriend. It could be with a "platonic" female friend, or even a coworker, but it will be with someone with whom you have regular interaction.

What's happening is she's feeling ignored (or possibly testing to see if you'll wuss out when she acts like a brat, but they usually use other tests for that), and missing the feeling of having you define or exercise authority for her, which gives her a little rush of adrenaline and attraction and gets the planets back in alignment. Actually, this is a good sign, because if she had already lost all attraction for you, she wouldn't be doing this at all, so congratulations on taking action before your relationship deteriorated to critical status as well!

Here's the deal. If you don't pay enough attention to her in ways that let her see you being the alpha male, especially in projecting authority and leading, whether it’s in critical decision-making or just having fun, she'll find something trivial and pitch a fit over it, just to get you to call her on it and tell her to straighten up. Mentally and emotionally healthy women will respect you when you establish a “no brat zone.”

This doesn't mean that you turn her across your knee and spank her, unless you can do it without hurting her and in such a way that it's entirely plain that you're playing with her and you're both laughing all the way through it. Remember, women love to have gutsy, strong men show their sense of humor in naughty ways, but they hate being painfully man-handled, bullied, controlled and abused, again if they are mentally and emotionally healthy. A show of strength when everybody is smiling and having fun is one thing, a show of control or cruelty is something else entirely, and something you never want the women in your life to see if you want them to stay around.

What it does mean is that you must take one of several approaches to call her on it, and it may entail raising your voice a little if that's all she'll respond to, but it mostly requires a show of strength, not of volume; a show of leadership, not abuse.

My wife did this to me once. I'd been neglecting her a bit as I worked overtime on my next book. Read the following paragraphs carefully and make sure you pick up on the details - no yelling, the only physical force was non-violent and smiling naughtily, etc., the very things she was looking for.

She wanted me to verify the quality of a piece of office furniture she wanted to buy and to pick up a pair of eyeglasses before 5:00PM, and it was 3:30PM. We live ten minutes from the eyeglass store, and had 90 minutes to get there. I said that I wanted to stop and pick up something on the way home and it would work best if we stopped to look at her office furniture first. Boom! That's all it took to open the door - I had set myself up.

I could see the change the instant she realized the opportunity she had. In the space of less than a second, she went from excited about getting a piece of office furniture and new eyeglasses to stormy. Then she said, "No, I don't want to go check on the office furniture, I want to go get my eyeglasses before they close. We've got to go there first." I thought, "Oh, hell, here we go!" and said, "We have 90 minutes to make the ten minute trip to get your glasses. We can afford the extra five minutes to stop on the way to check out the office piece."

To this, she went totally ballistic. "You know what? I don't even want you to go. I'm going by myself. I've got to get my glasses and I don't have time to go running around all over the place." Do you see how the level of absurdity is rapidly escalating, as well as the sudden reversal of both her desire to see the furniture and desire to be driven? (She doesn't see well enough to drive safely without glasses.)

Then I said, "You can't see well enough to drive without the glasses we're going to pick up, we have 90 minutes to get there, it's a ten minute trip, and we can certainly afford the five extra minutes to check out the furniture. Explain to me why you have a problem with this." The response was, "No, I'm not explaining anything. You always want to change my plans, so I'm going by myself." (Big hint: when you "always" do something that you've never done, or "never" do something that you've frequently done, it's said to make you call her on it and you're in this same situation.) At this point she has crawled across the seat of the car and is sticking her keys in the ignition, literally begging for an authoritative intervention.

I reached in, grabbed the keys, and snickered a bit as I said, "Excuse me, but you're not going anywhere unless somebody else drives because you're blind without your glasses. Now, it was your plan to stop and look at the furniture, and your plan to go to the eyeglass store. I suggested stopping one place to pick up one thing on the way home, and that hardly constitutes a change in your plans. You're pushing a bad position in an illogical argument, and until you tell me what's really going on here, I'm not driving your blind ass anywhere."

She went for her spare keys in her purse cursing and I climbed over top of her and grabbed them, and then playfully held her pinned to the seat with my body while she struggled and I said, "Say Uncle!" with a big grin on my face and that was all she could take. She busted out laughing and by the time she was done, she was about too weak to move.

She finally scooted over, we went to check out the office furniture, get the glasses, stopped and ran my errand, and just to put the icing on the authority cake, I announced a change in plans for supper (I'm the household chef) and stopped at a grocery store and lingered just a little longer than necessary in the produce aisle, cracking jokes the entire time about how good the cool air felt and "nature's thermometers" (guys if you don’t get this, ask a woman – I’d never get a more verbose description past the spam filters), exiting only when the smile began to fade the slightest bit, indicating that she was on the verge of boredom and starting to feel the cold, and therefore about to stop having fun. (NEVER let the fun come to a complete stop before changing course. Remember the old show biz cliché: “Always leave them wanting more!”)

So do you see what really happened? She was trying to goad me into taking an authoritative action, and may not have even been aware of it because it's such automatic behavior. If you respond to this the first time, you can get away with doing it with a humorous flavor as I did above and not having it get too ugly. However, if you just ignore her, or act bewildered and walk out of the room without doing anything, forcing her to find another excuse and launch a bigger attack, you may push it to the point where you have to yell a bit, physically restrain her from running out the door by standing between her and the door, etc.

Note that one small change in the scenario, especially the failure to grin naughtily as I said, "Say Uncle," could have changed the event from one of fun to one of control and abuse; she would have been scared stiff instead of amused. Always mind your bearing when in this situation and make sure that it's fun for everyone or it WILL explode in your face. You've been warned...

Understand fully that unless she has been severely physically abused she will not be pushing you to strike her in any way (unless the two of you have a history of playfully spanking and slapping each other on the butt or something), and if she has ever in the past kept screaming and maybe even struck you until you slapped or shoved her, it's a strong sign that she has been beaten, still has issues, and really needs professional help to face those issues and begin healing. NEVER, EVER, for any reason physically strike her with the intent of hurting her, even if she begs you to do it or tries to force you. Use no more physical force than it takes to restrain her from hurting either of you, and if she's crying and hysterical, call a counselor and try to get her some help, because she needs it, badly.

There you have it. Again, it took more to explain that than I had hoped, but I wanted you to see a real-world example so you would have something more than just a rule to try to apply - a real episode with distinct characteristics that you could compare with what you have seen in your own life.

Women are constantly communicating things to us, but as you will learn in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," much of that communication goes right over our heads, while they are thinking it just goes in one ear and out the other because we don't care to listen, when in fact we're simply unable to hear it because we don’t know what we’re hearing or what to listen for.

The problem isn't that we ignore it; it's that we don't have the natural tendency to pick up all the non-verbal and verbally indirect ways they use to try to tell us things. They really don't know that we are that under-evolved with respect to communications infrastructure and skill any more than we are born knowing that they are that highly-evolved and sophisticated when it comes to communications without someone pointing it out. It's just not obvious when you don't have a frame of reference. (I'm explaining it to them in their own book, so hopefully, when everybody knows how everybody else does things, life will go a bit smoother for everybody.)

If you want to learn what you need to know to deal with this problem and others, and get your relationship and marriage (not to mention your “bedroom life”) working at full pleasure and intimacy capacity, go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" now, before you do another thing. Recognize that life is too short to spend it unhappy and work daily on making it better until it gets there.

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

Signs That She’s About to Erupt, and a Miracle Cure for Tension and Drama in Relationships and Marriage

A guy asks if there are any tell-tale signs of a woman needing a drama fix. A few do come to mind… (WINK!!!)

This is one of my favorite topics, and it’s something fun and useful. To start the ball rolling, meet Zane:

Hey David,

I’ve been following you for a while and I see the things you talk about in my home every day, especially the testing and the drama. I got pretty good at handing the testing within a couple of days of reading about it in your book, but the drama thing has me stumped. I know she does it, I even know when she’s doing it and not expressing a genuine problem, but I can’t quite catch the knack of seeing it coming so I can head it off before it gets ridiculous. What am I missing?

Thanks,
Zane

Hey, Zane! Always good to hear from a fellow Southerner. (For all non-Southerners, “Hey” is Southern for “Hello and how are you?” We’re not lazy, just efficient.) You are indeed missing something, but it’s not hard to spot.

In "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," when I describe why women create drama (emotional boredom) and how they nearly always use negative pressure to create it because it’s both faster and easier to get a drama fix by stirring up a fight than by achieving something exciting, you missed the description of the progression of the problem in her and how it works up into an explosion.

Remember that in a woman’s emotional make-up, it’s boredom, not crisis, that is the biggest enemy. (See this article on our differing emotional scales for more details.) If she doesn’t get relief from the boredom, she gets anxious, and then irritable, and you’ll watch her getting more and more uneasy and unreasonable as the tension within her builds. By the time she gets to the point of nearing an explosion, you’ll notice that her attitude has become very sour…

Let’s say your car broke down on your wedding anniversary and you jogged three miles to your house because she didn’t answer the phone when you called to tell her you were in trouble (okay, she was in the shower getting ready to go), and you hit the door late, sweaty, smelly, and tired. A woman in a normal state of mind would see that as heroic and be thrilled, where a woman in need of a drama fix would ignore the fact that you ran home to her and fight with you because you were late getting home. Get it?

Fights that break out over legitimate issues usually have some identifiable logic in them somewhere (although you may have to look hard to find it if you haven’t yet read "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and become well-versed in what women want and what makes them tick). On the other hand, drama-induced fights are in a word, absurd. These are the fights in which she seems to be raising the roof over nothing, brings up things that happened 20 years ago, and plays dirty, and your warning signs are pretty much toned down versions of that absurd behavior – being abnormally bothered by more and more insignificant things, preoccupation situations and details that she’d normally ignore, etc. Why?

She’s trying to milk enough emotion from those things to get her fix, and getting more and more frustrated by the hour because it’s not working any better as she deviates more and more from her normal behavior. That’s what you watch for. If on a normal day she’s fairly laid back, then she’s acting depressed and tense, then fussy, then negative about everything she speaks of, trouble’s coming.

There are two things you can do. Let her pick the fight, which you will both regret, or you can buck up and admit that you failed to give her some positive emotion that she needed and make up for it with some sort of surprise act of leadership, mystery, and fun, but be advised, if she’s too far gone, your efforts may end up being the very thing she uses to start the fight, and all you can do is hang tough. What exactly does that mean?

It does not mean you should be abusive, or play dirty like she is apt to do. It means that when tension and voices start to rise, you must step immediately into that leadership role and exercise some stern – and maybe even tough – love, by calling her on whatever bratty behavior she’s committing. For instance…

She says, “That’s it! I’ve had it! I’m so sick of you ALWAYS buttoning the button in the middle of your shirt first and then bouncing up and down from bottom to top! Why can’t you just start at the top and work your way down like everybody else?!”

To which you reply, “Because that’s how I’m comfortable buttoning it, and I don’t really care what you or anybody else thinks about it. It’s ridiculous that you should even bring something like that up, and the only reason you’re doing it is because you’re bored to death and need the a rush. Now settle down, stop being a brat and conduct yourself with a little dignity, and let’s find a more productive way of giving you what you need without the two of us saying and doing something that we’ll both regret later.”

She may try to further escalate the situation after that to test your resolve, and if she does, there’s an answer to that as well, one that involves getting a bit cocky and having some fun with her, but rather than spell it out in detail I’m going to employ it now and tell you that if you want to know what it is, you’re going to have to read it in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" – LOL!

Face it, Guys; it’s not and has never been a secret that the simple act of wishing your wife a good morning and making it out the door to go to work in the morning can be like walking through a mine field. You need to know how to listen to her and how to talk to her to get along with her. You need to know when to be tough and when to be gentle and reassuring, when to indulge and when to reject, when to make her laugh and when to stand tall and get serious. If things have slowed down in your bedroom, that’s not old age setting in, it’s one of the first symptoms of real relationship problems, the kind that lead to affairs – a symptom of advanced relationship decay – and divorce.

You can let things continue to decay and try to make a heroic save at the last minute, which can indeed be done, or you can take the easier path and employ the same tools now, when you are not under so much pressure and have far less damage to correct, to fix everything that’s broken and keep your relationship running like a precision machine. The cost is the same (at best – it can be MUCH worse if you wait!), and it takes less time and effort to do it now before everything goes critical.

The big question is whether you are the kind of man who puts everything off and unnecessarily risks the future of his family by letting it fall into crisis before doing anything about it or if you are the kind of man who steps up and does what is necessary to keep his family – and himself – happy. So what kind of man are YOU?

If you’re the kind who sees the wisdom of fixing the little problems to keep them from getting big, or if you’re the kind who likes to fix them early but have been unable to find answers before things got bad, then you need to click over to http://www.makingherhappy.com right now and get your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and put things on the right track. If you’re the kind who puts things off until the last minute because you just don’t want to deal with them until you’re forced to, then I’ll be seeing you later, or if not me, your wife’s boyfriend, and probably her attorney. It’s your call; make it a good one!

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 or two 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

An Attitude and Mistake That Can Kill ANY Relationship or Marriage

A reader’s comment on ending a newsletter subscription demonstrates an attitude and a mistake that will kill not just attraction, but any relationship, faster than you can snap your finger and say “Buh-bye!”

Occasionally readers end their subscription to this newsletter, and I invite them to provide a reason or any other commentary on the exit form. I have an on-going interest in trying to find any reasonable means to improve the scope, content, delivery, convenience, etc.

Once in awhile I get a comment that sparks positive change, sometimes a simple thank you for helping someone to become their own relationship expert, and a few benign comments like they were looking for a different kind of publication, are leaving on vacation and don’t want their e-mail inbox to fill up in their absence, are changing addresses, etc. No problem…

But then there are those few comments that proclaim such a level of “megalithic moronitude” that I have to disclose them here, because they invariably disclose something that the rest of this group, the part with a functioning brain looking for self-improvement and help, can learn from. The following is such a comment:

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

Name: zxxxxr
Email: xxxxxxxx@yahoo.com (e-mail address suppressed to protect the idiotic)
Signup Date: XX/XX/XX 06:18 AM EST

Comments:
all messages should be in a form of points and alittle comment coz its boring coz itz too long

Ignoring the lack of capitalization and punctuation, grammar and spelling that you couldn’t slip past a kindergarten teacher, and the obvious utter lack of self-respect that this person projects, look at the message:

“I don’t want to read this newsletter because there’s too much information and I get bored. How dare you expect me to listen and think about what you are saying???”

This kind of comment doesn’t make me angry; it makes me pity the poor sap who wrote it. Yes, I’m a bit verbose at times, because I’m writing for a very diverse audience. Some people need a bit more of an explanation than others and a writer has to communicate at the lowest level present in his or her target audience. Others just need a little more help because their situation is worse; emotionally-charged situations make it hard-to-impossible to think rationally and I’m quite literally “talking them down” from their emotionally-charged state so they can get a grip and begin fixing their problems. I freely admit that I could make some of these newsletters half as long as they are, but then they would only make sense and be valuable to half as many people or only half as valuable to others.

So in a nutshell, this guy is complaining because I'm making an extra effort to convey information to people, at no cost to them other than the time to read it, the value of which exceeds that of many for-fee products. Go figure. What can you learn from this?

This is the second such comment I’ve had that expressed this sentiment out of tens of thousands of e-mails and just over one thousand cancelled subscriptions. That means that most people read until they understand, skim the material that appears redundant to them, and start reading thoroughly again when they find a new idea being broached. Why? Because they are motivated to listen and learn!

But what happens when it’s not my newsletter that you’re reading, but instead, it’s your wife, talking round and round, seemingly in an endless circle comprising more laps than a NASCAR event? Do you tune her out until she comes to something new because you don’t care enough about what she’s trying to communicate to listen intently and not be bored?

NO! Hell NO! Because that’s what has put most of us in the dog house more times than we can count! And think about that for a minute; this woman cared enough about you to marry you and you pay more attention to something printed in an e-mail than something that she wants you to know? If this is the case, we can project with astonishing accuracy where your relationship’s problems started!

Guys, I cannot overstress this, even if I talked non-stop about it for a thousand pages or a thousand hours. Listening to a woman talk and hearing what she is trying to make you hear is not like listening to a man, and if you make the mistake of listening to a woman as if she were a man you will live to regret it every time, unless she has a markedly masculine communication style, in which case you most likely would not be reading this newsletter because you’d be getting along quite well. Indeed, many of you have written to me acknowledging that improving communications is the doorway to all other relationship success, including attraction and a return to “normal intimate relations.”

When we men speak to each other and use as few words as possible, we’re doing each other a favor and we know it, because we’re all about results, resolution, keeping things safe, etc., and efficiency is how we get the most things achieved in everything we do. It’s not so with women…

They only rarely, if ever, speak directly about anything. They often use repetition as a way of expressing emotional involvement. We’ve all heard the dramatic litany, “I thought I would die! I mean I thought I would die!” The more it’s repeated, the higher the emotional intensity they’re trying to convey. And yes, it bugs the crap out of me just like it does you, because it’s inefficient, dramatic, and annoying, just like it annoys them that we don’t repeat ourselves to indicate our emotional involvement like they do, being the closed-off, terse, Neanderthals that we are (in their minds, of course).

They use questions to make statements and make statements to ask questions. “Are you hungry?” really means, “I’m hungry and want to talk about what we’re going to eat and where we’re going to get it.” “Are you wearing that?” means, “Don’t wear that. You look stupid.” “I saw Jenny at the market today,” means “I saw somebody and talked to them and would like to tell you about it. Are you going to let me or are you going to cut me off like you usually do?”

They seldom if ever succinctly report anything except the details of their itinerary, and even then they’re waiting for you to act interested by asking them questions about what they’re saying, thereby giving them to green light to get into the emotions and social impact of their itinerary. Refer to the previous paragraph because it’s the same principle.

Everything with them is a negotiation of one form or another, and if you’re not hearing something that you can interpret and respond to and just tune her out until she gets around to something that you can, you just paid her a HUGE, HURTFUL INSULT (in her mind because she expects you to communicate like a woman), because you ignored her instead of engaging her to get the message right. Well, jump back two paragraphs to the example of being hungry. Pretty simple, universal stuff, right?

What she hears when you “cut her off” like that is that you don’t care enough about her or anything regarding her to try to listen. Why? Because she doesn’t realize that you don’t speak and listen in the same manner as women! (Women cut each other short or don’t ask engaging questions as a demeaning way of cutting someone off.) Remember all the times that she screamed at you, “You NEVER listen to me!” even though you were trying to listen and maybe even thought you were doing a pretty good job? Now you know why she pitched that fit.

Now the hook...

You need to listen to her whenever she’s saying anything important, yet you cannot let her inundate you with girl-talk and end up treating you like a girlfriend. This demotes you from attractive partner to just another node on her social network, the same effect on her as not listening to her, but far more annoying for you. You have to draw the line, but do you know where? Just one more of the many problems that men face when trying to live with a woman that I can help you with.

That’s right. There is a fix, and it’s not that difficult; indeed, there are more experts being born every day after reading "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and learning the mechanics and protocols that men and women use to communicate. As men learn to be better listeners and speakers when speaking with women, they’re also teaching the women in their life how to listen and speak more directly and effectively with men, resulting in women who are amused by men’s quaint shortcomings in communications skills instead of feeling ignored, discounted, and disrespected. Imagine how that alone is improving their self-esteem and trust of their men, and how that is in turn impacting their relationship and the men in their life!

And you’re going to love this: those who go through it verify that it is indeed fun! It’s like opening this huge box of new tools and toys and being overwhelmed with delight and discovery. Want to join in the fun and kick your relationship up to notches previously unknown to mankind?

It’s easy to do. Just hop over to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and your complimentary copy of my “Break-Up Busting 101” and “What Women REALLY Want” series reports. It’s an instant download, guaranteed to improve your life, no matter what condition it’s in. Do yourself a favor and go for it, before you end up spending yet another night in the doghouse and have no idea why.

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

What Women Really Want in Their Relationships and Marriage, Sharing the Drama of the Day with Their Man

To help you understand what women want from a man, this issue is another must-read. It addresses a specific issue and scenario that is addressed more generally in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," the issue of “How was your day, Dear?” and how women want to share in the bad as well as the good like they do with their girlfriends, while men don’t want to relive a bad day by going through it, and prefer to skip it and move on to something positive. A real eye-opener!

I hope you’re having a great week. I’m having a blast with reader e-mail. Lots of good questions with good lessons for all to learn, so keep them coming. I’ve had some questions about women wanting to share drama with their men, a topic from my free “What Women REALLY Want” report, and since many of you have apparently assumed that free report was worthless because it was free and chose not to download it, we’re going to go through that chapter today and then handle the reader questions and comments concerning it tomorrow. It’s good, so hang with me and stay tuned.

I’ve promised you statements directly from women about what they want, and here you go: This one, which demonstrates the difference in the emotional make-up of men and women, that being that a woman’s emotional scale goes from zero to infinity, without much regard for positive and negative, where a man’s scale goes from negative to none to positive, and the emotional upheaval that can come as a result of not understanding those differences and that both scales tend to run in the middle.

What exactly does that mean? What’s in the middle of a woman’s scale? A significant amount of emotional energy being absorbed and expended. What’s in the middle of a man’s emotional scale? Neutrality! Women need to have something going on pretty much all the time or they get bored stiff (their “emotionometer” goes to the far left, at zero emotion), where men don’t mind deviating from the middle a bit on an on-going basis, but the farther we stray and the longer, the more we’ll try to push things back toward that calm and simple state somewhere near the middle, where everyone is fed and protected.

Note that on the “left” side of our emotionometer is the most negative, and to a large degree, both men and women exhibit a lot of the same symptoms when the needle moves to the left; extreme boredom makes a woman as agitated and physically uncomfortable as fear, anger, and pain to a man. See my “Emotional Scales” article to see a graphic representation of the scale and a lot more information about it and how it works.

Without further ado, meet Alyson:

Dear David:

AAAARRRGGGHHHHH!!!!!! I need some help. I am totally frustrated! My husband and I have been married for a year now. We are happy and communicate wonderfully except in one area. When we sit down to dinner, that is our time to talk. I ask him how his day was and get the standard [one-word] answers, fine, ok, good, rotten...etc. That's it, except when he is having an incredible day and tells me of the rewards. I want to know the good and the bad, but he won't talk about them. If he did tell me it would be great, I would continue to get to know him and how he functions and solves problems.

All other aspects of our marriage are great, he is kind, courteous and an incredible Alpha male but that one area drives me nuts. I have tried to prod and probe and he just says "leave it alone, I don't want to talk about it". What can I do to make him talk or am I going about it the wrong way, the nagging wife syndrome?

Can you help me?

Alyson

My response:

Hi Alyson!

I’m going to give you the answer that you need to hear, probably won’t like too much, but will have to accept because this is just how it is in the real world.

Men of action, achievers, the strong alpha male that women respond to with overwhelming and magical-feeling attraction, don’t like to dwell on problems, they like to fix them and get them out of the way. We learn whatever lessons these problems and solutions present and put the events behind us, taking only the lessons forward with us. This is part of what makes us who and what we are, because it is a huge influence on self-esteem and self-confidence, things which you and all women admire and want in a man.

We don’t like living through these events the first time, and to discuss them as women do, as an accounting of the day and exploration of the emotions, as you no-doubt go through with your female friends, is like living through the problem a second time, dwelling on it, and having that negative influence of that frustration and aggravation eating at us all over again.

It’s not that we don’t want you to know about the day or how we handle problems or anything else. We simply don’t want to relive a bad day and unnecessarily expose ourselves to those negative influences all over again, which can erode confidence and expends time and effort that could be spent in spending quality time with you or doing something else we enjoy, building achievements that we can celebrate with you, etc.

You’ll also notice that your husband does share his triumphs with you. This isn’t to brag and pound his chest; it’s an act of intimacy. When a man of action relives a victory with you, he’s inviting you to share in and celebrate something that is special to him: ACHIEVEMENT.

This celebration reinforces his feelings of strength and independence, and makes him better prepared to face the next day’s challenges. Bear in mind that being an alpha male and loner by nature, a genuine male achiever doesn’t need anyone else’s recognition or approval of his achievements; telling you about it is purely an act of sharing, of trust, and of intimacy, and not to be confused with the bragging of a man who one-upped someone by some trick of cunning or stroke of luck instead of through competently performing whatever tasks were at hand.

All of this is in stark contrast to the female social practice of sharing and even dramatizing everything that happens, indiscriminately reliving everything that has happened and trying to milk every last drop of emotional energy from it, regardless of whether it was a positive or negative event, and hence, whether they are bombarding themselves with positive or negative emotions.

(Gentlemen, you need to understand that they are not being nosey or trying to rub your nose in a bad day; this sharing is a reaching out for intimacy and when you just stomp on them for asking it’s a severe rejection, which we’ll discuss further in a minute, and it’s just as natural and automatic a drive as your own drive to bury negative things once they’ve been resolved and move forward.)

Women are frighteningly effective and efficient at this, and I must wonder how damaging this practice must be to women, and how much better their lives could be if they didn’t spend so much time and energy digging into negative emotions and drama and milking the emotion from it the way they do.

Take care,
David

I’ve never seen this in print, or heard anyone discuss it in any venue or forum, but it is statistically ridiculous that nobody in the 10,000 years of recent history has ever noticed this, so I can’t help but also wonder if it’s never been mentioned in public because those who noticed feared the outrage that women might voice at the mere suggestion that negative emotions and negative drama could be bad for their psyche, self-esteem, and by virtue of the chemical impact of stress on the body, their health in general.

Nonetheless, you heard it here first; I wonder if women acted as men do in filtering out negative influences like those encountered in the ritual sharing of problems, especially those marathon drama-fests where the same problem is iterated over and over until everyone in the conversation gets bored with the repetition and moves on, this would leave them with time and energy to spend planning, achieving, celebrating and reaping the benefits of much more positive energy and influence on their psyche, emotional balance, and physical well-being, not to mention the boost in self-esteem and confidence and proportional drop in insecurities this would create.

This hypothesis is based on observation of a limited number of women, under 300, and of those, the ones who do not get bogged down in negative emotion are indeed much more happy, motivated, and successful than those who do. The evidence says that negative emotion creates physical stress in both males and females. I’m still looking for a way to test this hypothesis on a very wide scale, and if anyone hears of an existing study, I’d like to know about it immediately.

A word for the ladies reading this: Please think about this, Ladies. I realize that the concept sounds like suggesting you cut off your arm, more accurately, like you cut out a piece of your heart, emotionally speaking, but look at your own life and assess how much time you have spent in the last day, week, month, year, etc., indulging in negative emotions to milk the rush from them before setting to the task of solving and eliminating the problem. Then try to get some feel for how much time you spent that you could have spent doing other more positive and productive things, and what your life might be like right now if you had spared yourself all that negative influence and had those extra achievements and decreased stress from less time pressure. If you feel comfortable talking about it, I’d love to hear from you, and would love to eventually do a formal study of a group of women, but this is strictly for your benefit, and I’m sure that if you are objective in your assessment, you’ll find that you could have done a lot with that time and positive energy.

Now that everyone hopefully understands where everyone else stands on the issue, and the origin and nature of the behavior, let’s talk about what can be done to bring everybody closer together. Ladies, don’t feel like a man is being closed off or rejecting you when he doesn’t want to relive a bad day. Be glad that you have a partner who is an achiever and is strong enough to do this instead of doing what many men do: whining and acting weak and pissy, and sometimes getting caught up in the frustration and abusing you to release the frustration that something or somebody else caused. That makes him look like a girlfriend instead of a man, and kills your attraction for him.

Gentlemen, be aware that any time a woman is asking you questions about yourself in any non-accusatory, non-confrontational context, she’s trying to learn about you, trying to be closer to you and connect with you, so don’t just stomp on her if she’s asking about something you don’t want to talk about. Give her the gift of a little understanding and dignity by telling her that it was one of those days that was bad enough the first time you lived through it, and rather than going through it all over again and reliving all that negative emotion, you would rather put that part of the day behind you and give her the best part of your day, the enjoyable part, and rather than rehash bad memories it would be far better for both of you to use the time to make some new, positive memories.

When you do tell her about things, tell her as much as you can about the emotional aspects of it, the details that let her feel what you felt, and while it is still not good to rehash the really bad stuff, you could share the neutral to positive things with her to give her some part of the day. It may not have been something you thought worth celebrating, but it’s still something that she can examine to get to know you better, and it helps eliminate that illusion that you are trying to shut her out.

This was the best solution found by our test group, but is by no means the only possible solution. If you can find something that works better for you, write about it, and we can possibly discuss it here. If readers were more active, it might inspire me to set up some blog or discussion forum software on the website to allow you interact and exchange ideas and success stories directly, but I won’t be going through that trouble and expense without seeing that those resources, if provided, would be used for the benefit of a significant group of people, so if you want it, get involved by e-mail and let’s see where it goes.

There you have it, the answer to one of the toughest problems in any good relationship. In my men’s book, “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” men are instructed about women’s social mechanisms and their need to share, and encouraged to be sensitive to those needs to whatever degree possible, as well as many other critical topics and skills in the areas of relationship evaluation and understanding, communications with women, and a wealth of knowledge about attraction, that magical feeling poets refer to as “being in love,” including how it works, how to create it, and how to kill it (like making your partner feel shut out!), which is the beginning of trouble of paradise and the end of more relationships than you can imagine. In case it’s not obvious, these are all the very things that women REALLY want from a man!

Relationships can survive without a lot of things, even without love to a large degree, but they seldom survive without effective communication and attraction, so don’t let it happen to you. Jump on over to http://www.makingherhappy.com and get your copy today, because life is too short to spend it bored, fighting, or worst of all, lonely.

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

Sometimes You Have to Be Tough to Have a Great Relationship and Marriage

Sometimes a woman quite literally NEEDS you to get a little tough with her. How do you recognize this, and how do you get tough without being abusive? Think “leadership”…

Yesterday was a really odd day. Everyone I know was having what you would call an “off day” of one kind or another. Allergies, colds, arthritis, lousy weather, vendor incompetence, boss incompetence, employee incompetence, customer incompetence, bad food, bad service, monthly cycle – you name it, somebody was going through it. The oddest thing was what happened with one of my best friends, Daphne.

We met over ten years ago, and when we did, she was a mess. Totally submissive, living for the approval of others, and living under the thumb of a wimpy, manipulative, predatory, wife-beating husband and a highly-controlling and manipulative mother. She asked me one day fairly early in our relationship how I had come to be so tough and independent, and how I could live caring absolutely nothing about what others thought of me, I steered her to some targeted reading, especially some of Ayn Rand’s most excellent work, and we talked about different problems and how to solve them.

She became fiercely independent, ultimately “wearing the pants in the family” (not a surprise at all given the nature of her husband; bullies always capitulate when you call their bluff) and presenting such a strong image to her mother that her mother went from being dominating and manipulative to seeking Daphne’s approval at every turn because she was intimidated by Daphne’s independence. That was about nine years ago, and she’s held the line ever since…that is, until yesterday.

There had been a lot of turmoil over the weekend, including a funeral, a couple of family problems, a severe migraine, etc., and by Monday morning she was so mentally fatigued and her testosterone so depleted (it balances the creative and emotionally-driving effects of estrogen, and too much influence from estrogen makes women – and men – uncharacteristically – or more, for some of them -- erratic, unstable, and uncomfortable) that her self-esteem became challenged, and she suddenly started acting like she had when we first met, very dramatic, needy, approval-seeking, etc. As the day wore on, it was getting worse instead of better.

To finish putting this in perspective, Daphne is one of the brightest women I know, with an IQ of around 130-140, very emotionally aware, and extremely competent at self-evaluation. She’s one of the top three women on the support staff who helped with the development of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and who continue to respond to surveys, questions, reader dilemmas, etc., with useful insight because she can “step in and out of herself” at will and remain entirely objective through the whole thing, which is very unusual among women, who tend to get wrapped up in the emotion of an experience and don’t want to quickly shut it down and analyze it, even when it would be to their extreme benefit to do so.

Do you have the picture now? A smart, fiercely independent woman who is quite adept at side-stepping her own emotions to rationally examine them has reverted to behavior not exhibited in nearly a decade, and as the day wore on, as I tried to point out what was happening, it got worse instead of better. I knew what was coming when she said, “I just feel like I need a good cry.” Why?

She’d been to a funeral and yet she needed a good cry? Danger Will Robinson! Danger! That’s a dependable sign of MAJOR emotional energy build-up looking for an outlet; “needing a good cry” is bad enough, but when a woman has been to a tear-jerking event like a funeral and still “needs a good cry,” well, where I grew up they would say something like, “You ain’t seen trouble yet, but it’s comin’!” Emotional energy is like any other kind of mental energy. Thought is the result of chemical reactions in the brain causing electrical impulses at the nerve synapses. This tells you what?

That the stress of all the emotion from the weekend had put her brain chemistry out of balance. Some women have more of a problem with this than others, but the symptoms are the same; they get weaker and more clingy, then needy, then irritable, and finally they sound like they’re spoiling for a fight, and you can hear the stress and anger start building in their voice looking for an outlet.

The big question is “what do you do?”

First, you have to avoid the urge to let her engage you in a fight. If she gets bad enough, she’ll say something to put you on the defensive and then jump to get you to jump back. Giving her a good fight will reset her brain chemistry, but it will also create a lot of embarrassment, hard feelings, scars and other aftermath that neither of you really want to deal with, and while she might be able to dismiss the things she says to you, you may never forgive or forget them, as she may never forgive or forget the things you say to her in response to what she said to you SPECIFICALLY TO PROVOKE THE ALTERCATION. We’ve all seen how things, once said, cannot really ever be taken back, no matter how much they weren’t really meant at the time. You need a confrontation, but not a fight. How do you do that?

Remember the many times I’ve mentioned leadership as a biological trigger for attraction? The chemical balance in the brain is a biological matter. When she finally had things built up to try to start the fight and made a snide remark to try to provoke me, I took a stern tone that she had probably never heard me use before, and said, “Just hold it! You are not going there with me!”

That’s leadership (decision-making), and authority (establishing a boundary), but it’s also a confrontation (denying her the fight and doing so in a stern tone). I thought for a second she had dropped the phone until I heard her breathe, and then continued, “This is not about me and you, or even me or you separately. It’s about all the emotional turmoil that you went through over the last few days, and you’re looking for a fight to sort it all out. There’s a better way to handle this.”

I went on to explain what had happened, maintaining the stern tone of a friend who is verbally roughing up another friend for doing something silly, and gradually softening it as I proceeded over the next couple of minutes. After a couple of minutes of silence as she took it all in, she interrupted me in mid sentence with, “Oh my God! I’ve been doing this all day, haven’t I?”

It was like hearing somebody come out of a daze, and Gentlemen, you MUST understand this, for many women, it really is like coming out of a daze. When they get off balance like that, they are truly in an altered mental state, and may not even remember some things that happen or have an accurate sense of the passage of time. This does not in any way make them inferior, weak, flakey, or insane, any other kind of sexist nonsense. It’s just the way they are, and something that we have to be aware of and work around – NOT SUFFER IN SILENCE OVER -- if we are going to have a long-term relationship with them. It goes with the territory, and you can help them though it or be made miserable by it. A pretty obvious choice, huh?

Eventually, after talking for a few minutes (and Daphne making several apologies and sounding very embarrassed), we got back to the point in a prior discussion about her saying that she felt like she just needed a good cry. Sometime before we spoke today, she watched some old sad movie, had a good cry, and was herself when I called this morning to share a reader e-mail with her. This brings up the other VERY important point…

When women say they “need a good cry,” they’re not being prissy little wuss-bags. They know that they are off-balance, and have learned over time that it’s going to take some kind of extreme emotional event that is sustained for a fairly long time (as emotional events go) to get things back in balance. It is VERY difficult to create a positive event that can create this intensity and duration of emotion, so they usually use something negative but inert, like a sad movie, to get them started and keep them going, and by the time the movie is over, they’re bled out, stabilized, and generally okay. Are you with me here?

Women don’t like sad movies because they enjoy being sad, they like sad movies because they provide a needed emotional rush and release that rids them of negative energy and sets their body chemistry right without having to engage us in a fight and damage our relationships. A woman’s life is mostly about managing her relationships, thanks to her brain structure and chemistry that give her the signature social nature of womankind, and they really do try to protect their relationships a lot more than many men. Hence, when your partner wants to watch a sad movie, don’t interfere. You don’t have to sit there through the whole thing, and in fact should consider inviting her to invite a girlfriend over to watch it with her, but…

If there is no girlfriend available or she doesn’t want to do that, you don’t want to be cast in the role of girlfriend because it kills attraction over time. Tell her that you don’t like sad movies and don’t play well in the role of girlfriend, and that you’ll be in another room, but if she gets upset and wants to be held a bit you’ll be happy to “pop in” for a few minutes if she asks. Being a strong shoulder to cry on is a far cry from being a girlfriend sharing in a drama festival. Crying at chick-flicks was part of the bad advice in the 1980’s that got us into this mess, so don’t go there, ever. You will indeed be very uncomfortable in the girlfriend role if you have an ounce of masculinity in you, and you’ll kill attraction and respect in her. There’s just no upside for either of you if you try to substitute for a girlfriend for even a minute.

If you do have to spend a few minutes with her while she watches, monitor her as she does, and if you notice tears starting to form sit down with her for a bit and snuggle her up, then a few minutes after the scene changes and she’s dried up for a few minutes excuse yourself for a bit. She doesn’t need a baby sitter, but it will feel good to have you there holding her when the tears come, and it will be endearing to her to have you tolerate a few minutes of that movie to help her get through it. Don’t feed into it, or egg her on, or start crying yourself. Just sit still, pull her close, and do whatever you do when she doesn’t feel good and you snuggle her up, such as hair-stroking, nuzzling, etc.

Women are like us in a lot of ways, but in the ways they differ from us lie the potential for a lot of misunderstanding and lack of appreciation, not to mention good old-fashioned BIG trouble. They try to tell us what they need, but one of those differences is how they communicate with us, which really throws a wrench in the works. But, there’s help if you’re smart enough to know that you need it and man enough to accept it…

I brought a group of nearly 200 women together to find out what they want from men and life, and then worked with the 118 couples made up of the “attached” women in the first group with their men (about one-third of them were unmarried or divorced) and worked them over nine ways from Sunday to find out what went right and wrong in relationships, how men and women differed, how to communicate with them, and how to make or break that wonderful feeling of attraction, that emotion that women so desperately crave and which truly brings out the best in them when they feel it, so much so that they will literally kill to protect that feeling.

That research was compiled into my e-book, "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," which was given back to the couples for testing and fine tuning, and all of them, as well as everyone who has bought it since (unless somebody has failed to complain and get a refund when they felt like it, and can you imagine that happening today???) has improved their life and/or relationship, and I have more unsolicited testimonials to that effect than you could ever imagine. Some relationships can’t be improved because they never should have been formed in the first place, and this book helps you to identify and exit them peacefully as well. And the best news of all is…

That you can have it now! It’s an instant download at http://www.makingherhappy.com, 118 pages in PDF format, single-spaced and optimized for printing on standard letter-size paper, so you can read it on your screen or carry it with you and read it on the train, plane, or your favorite easy chair – YOUR CHOICE. Just choose! Go for it now, so you can start replacing boredom, frustration, and fights with happy times and a higher standard of living and self-esteem, because life is too short to spend it just wondering why things aren’t going so well when they could be going great!

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

Why Women Read Romance Novels and How They Can Help Your Relationship and Marriage

A female reader tells all about why women read romance novels, especially in bed, what men can learn from this, and how men can actually benefit from this. Gentlemen, I strongly urge you to pay attention to this…

I hope you’re having a really great day today, and if you’re not, there’s no better time to start than now.

Before I understood attraction and how important it is to women to experience it because their brain structure and chemistry makes them need (often to the point of addiction) frequent (and sometimes intense) emotional indulgences, I thought romance novels were the biggest waste of time, energy, and effort on the planet next to trying to make soy products resemble real meat. A girlfriend had dared me to read one when I was in high school, betting me that I couldn’t even finish it, let alone understand it.

Well, I finished it, but she was right, I didn’t understand it. The plot was absurd, the characters ridiculous, and everything seemed to center around some guy who had just got out of prison, wore tight jeans with no underwear, and was a total bad boy hooligan. I wish I had received the following letter about 30 years ago, because things would have sure been a lot different in high school. Meet Karen:

Dear David,

I have something I would like to share with your male readers. Have you ever wondered why your wife or girlfriend reads romance novels? What do we find so great about reading about people who do not even exist in real life? Well I am here to tell you what the real truth is on this subject. We get our thrills feeling attraction for the men in these books when we are reading them.

Has your woman ever been reading in bed and then suddenly put down the book and wanted to have sex with you? I am sure it has happened because most of us women do that. Why? Because the book we have been reading is so hot we want the same thing. I have sit in my bed and skipped boring parts of books just to get to a hot steamy sex scene and then wanted to jump my husband while the other man was still fresh in my mind.

Now I know some of you men are saying “well why would I want to have sex with her if she is thinking of someone else?” Think about it. You could be that man for her if you wanted to. IF you were that man why would she need the books? Is that not the question you should ask yourself? As a woman I think most men should think about that. If you are not sure what she is reading let her read to you a small section of the book and get the idea of what she is attracted to in a man. Even if you’re only pretending to listen to it all at least listen to the part that is what she finds so hot and exciting. I know not everyone is going to have the bearskin rug in front of the fire place, but you can at least learn how she wants to be touched and caressed with you hands if nothing else. Instead of being jealous of her fantasies, live them with her, and learn from them.

We read because we are missing that attraction element in our own lives, not to read about others having sex. Any man can learn new things so what are you waiting for? Why not be that man in the book instead of her reading about someone else and having sex with you while her eyes are closed and dreaming you are the lover in the book she just laid down? It IS possible and with David's book you can be that man and just watch her throw away those romance novels.

You become her romance novel and see if she does not want you before she ever picks up a book.

Thank you so much David I have not read a romance novel in over two months now. I do not have to. I gave your book to my husband and he has learned enough from it and me after reading it that I am walking on clouds or swimming in fire most of the time now. Maybe I should start writing romance novels.

Karen

Wow Karen! Thanks for writing. I’ve tried to get the men to read a romance novel or two, and the ones that have written back say it was weird but enlightening, but maybe your explanation will get through to some of them that didn’t choose to listen to me.

Guys, for the purpose of entertaining a guy, romance novels are probably about as lame as a one-legged horse and therefore as useless as teats on a boar hog (yes, I grew up on a farm). But as an educational tool, they can contain a wealth of knowledge. Like I said, they usually have nothing intriguing in the way of a plot; the storyline’s only purpose is to transition from one emotional scene to the next, which it does by moving some alpha male character with a tendency to either exert or flaunt authority – in either case, “defining” authority by breaking rules or making his own – and usually some naughty, fun thing about him to get the women interested and dreaming. Then they dive into the sex scene with that image of that attractive guy having flipped all their attraction triggers, got their juices flowing, both figuratively and literally.

Truth be told, it’s the literary equivalent of the merger of soft por’n with a “B” movie, but it does the job – it gets her stoked up, and if you’re anywhere near her when it happens, she’s likely to “jump your bones” to relieve all that sexual tension that the book has built up and she might otherwise be prone to relieve herself in private, if you don’t blow it and turn her off by ignoring her or griping at her for reading her book.

And don’t think for a second that because you don’t hear moaning noises coming from the bathroom after she lays her book down that she can’t or won’t relieve herself in private, either, Buster. Women absolutely thrive on anticipation, and may wait days or even weeks to finally scratch that itch, savoring the “slow burn” as they call it for days on end. And when she does finally relieve that tension, she may not do it alone. She may enlist a friend, maybe even one of YOUR friends, to bring all that fantasizing to a thundering climax. So you can see how it’s imperative that YOU be the object and cause of her attraction, because as surely as the sun will rise in the East tomorrow morning, SOMEBODY is going to be the object and cause of her attraction! You’ve been warned…

That’s the short-term, up-close view; what about the long-term and wide-angle view? First, if she’s reading romance novels, it’s to get something that you should be providing for her and you’re not. You may not like the sound of that, but it’s reality. If she’s bored enough to be reading a romance novel, it’s your failure to create attraction that has left this deficit that she is filling with the book, and denying it will not change it. Deal with it, and deal with it quickly, because if the books stop working she may indeed resort to a real live man, one who doesn’t answer to your name, and there’s no amount of love in the universe that can make up for an attraction deficit.

It’s nice to think that love conquers all and is the answer to everything, but in real life, it doesn’t, it isn’t, and if you don’t think so, snoop around a little and get a fix on how many sexual affairs are conducted by men and women who love their partners and will never leave them, but are having affairs because they are so pathetically and desperately bored. You will find that it is most of them. Why?

Attraction and love are two entirely separate emotions and are not in any way dependent on each other or related, and both have to be present in a long-term committed relationship if the relationship is to last, unless you are so open-minded that an “open relationship” might be for you. For women, a day without attraction is literally like a day without sunshine – dull, gloomy, boring, and depressing. If your wife is reading romance novels, you need to brighten things up, fast.

Reading a romance novel might help you get a feel for attraction, but there are much easier ways. To get a glimpse of it, just ask your wife to read to you her favorite passage from her favorite romance novel. Watch her pupils dilate and her breathing intensify as she does. You’ll get the picture, especially if she pounces on you when she finishes. However, there is a much better way, a way that involves reading a book written for men, pointing out everything for you and explaining it in detail with examples of how things work and how to improve your attitude and personality so that attractive behavior occurs naturally, for the long haul, not as part of an act that you nervously fear having her see through at an inopportune time.

It’s called “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” and it’s an instantly downloadable e-book in Adobe’s Portable Document Format (PDF file). It’s 118 letter-size pages of proven information on evaluating your relationship, communicating with a woman effectively (yes, you really can do that!), and how attraction works, how to create it, and how to kill it. Go to http://www.makingherhappy.com right now and download your copy, and do a little reading of your own before you find that your partner’s no longer content with reading.

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

And Why Does She Erupt? How to Stop Drama from Killing Your Relationship and Marriage

Why do otherwise stable and level-headed women sometimes pitch a fit for no apparent reason? And what’s the best way to handle it?

We talked yesterday about how to tell when a woman is getting ready to erupt for no apparent reason, and there was a cursory explanation of how to handle it, but I really wanted to give you more on understanding the cause and handling the situation, including something from my own experience that details the build-up, explosion, and diffusing of the situation to help you relate this lesson to events in your own past so that you can be better prepared next time it comes up, and IT WILL come up. It’s a topic that I frequently need to address, and the following reader question makes for an excellent lead-in for the discussion. Meet Joel:

Hi David,

I bought your book and I'm progressing through the relationship evaluation and it looks like we're good, but I've got to ask you about something that may already be in the book because it's driving me nuts. Donna, my wife, is usually pretty stable and understanding, and seldom raises her voice. In fact, sometimes we don't talk much at all. Occasionally she'll get really antsy and next thing I know she's exploding on me for no apparent reason, literally! Whatever she picks to explode about is usually trivial at best, and really ridiculous most of the time. I've watched the calendar, if you know what I mean, and it's not "cyclic." The only thing I've noticed is that it always seems to happen when I'm traveling or busy a lot. She'll explode, I'll explode back, and then she'll go away and come back in a few minutes cheerful and acting like nothing has happened. Can you shed any light on this?

Joel

Well, Joel, congratulations on taking the first step to making some serious improvements in your life, and thanks for writing. As for your question, yes, it is covered in detail in my book, but I'm going to give you the short version now to help keep you out of trouble and for the benefit of your fellow readers, because every man who keeps the company of a woman goes through this phenomenon at some point in his life, if not with every woman he spends any time around, and it may not even be with a wife or girlfriend. It could be with a "platonic" female friend, or even a coworker, but it will be with someone with whom you have regular interaction.

What's happening is she's feeling ignored (or possibly testing to see if you'll wuss out when she acts like a brat, but they usually use other tests for that), and missing the feeling of having you define or exercise authority for her, which gives her a little rush of adrenaline and attraction and gets the planets back in alignment. Actually, this is a good sign, because if she had already lost all attraction for you, she wouldn't be doing this at all, so congratulations on taking action before your relationship deteriorated to critical status as well!

Here's the deal. If you don't pay enough attention to her in ways that let her see you being the alpha male, especially in projecting authority and leading, whether it’s in critical decision-making or just having fun, she'll find something trivial and pitch a fit over it, just to get you to call her on it and tell her to straighten up. Mentally healthy women will respect you when you establish a “no brat zone.”

This doesn't mean that you turn her across your knee and spank her, unless you can do it without hurting her and in such a way that it's entirely plain that you're playing with her and you're both laughing all the way through it. Remember, women love to have gutsy, strong men show their sense of humor in naughty ways, but they hate being painfully man-handled, bullied, and abused, at least if they are mentally and emotionally healthy. A show of strength when everybody is smiling and having fun is one thing, a show of control or cruelty is something else entirely, and something you never want the women in your life to see if you want them to stay around.

What it does mean is that you must take one of several approaches to call her on it, and it may entail raising your voice a little if that's all she'll respond to, but it mostly requires a show of strength, not of volume; a show of leadership, not abuse.

My wife did this to me once. I'd been neglecting her a bit as I worked overtime on the women's book. Read the following paragraphs carefully and make sure you pick up on the details - no yelling, the only physical force was non-violent and smiling naughtily, etc., the very things she was looking for.

She wanted me to verify the quality of a piece of office furniture she wanted to buy and to pick up a pair of eyeglasses before 5:00PM, and it was 3:30PM. We live ten minutes from the eyeglass store, and had 90 minutes to get there. I said that I wanted to stop and pick up something on the way home. Boom! That's all it took to open the door - I had set myself up.

I could see the change the instant she realized the opportunity she had. In the space of less than a second, she went from excited about getting a piece of office furniture and new eyeglasses to stormy. Then she said, "No, I don't want to go check on the office furniture, I want to go get my eyeglasses before they close. We've got to go there first." I thought, "Oh, hell, here we go!" and said, "We have 90 minutes to make the ten minute trip to get your glasses. We can afford the extra five minutes to stop on the way to check out the office piece."

To this, she went totally ballistic. "You know what? I don't even want you to go. I'm going by myself. I've got to get my glasses and I don't have time to go running around all over the place." Do you see how the level of absurdity is rapidly escalating, as well as the sudden reversal of both her desire to see the furniture and desire to be driven? (She doesn't see well enough to drive safely without glasses.)

Then I said, "You can't see well enough to drive without the glasses we're going to pick up, we have 90 minutes to get there, it's a ten minute trip, and we can certainly afford the five extra minutes to check out the furniture. Explain to me why you have a problem with this." The response was, "No, I'm not explaining anything. You always want to change my plans, so I'm going by myself." (Big hint: when you "always" do something that you've never done, or "never" do something that you've frequently done, it's said to make you call her on it and you're in this same situation.) At this point she has crawled across the seat of the car and is sticking her keys in the ignition, literally begging for an authoritative intervention.

I reached in, grabbed the keys, and snickered a bit as I said, "Excuse me, but you're not going anywhere unless somebody else drives because you're blind without your glasses. Now, it was your plan to stop and look at the furniture, and your plan to go to the eyeglass store. I suggested stopping one place to pick up one thing on the way there, and that hardly constitutes a change in your plans. You're pushing a bad position in an illogical argument, and until you tell me what's really going on here, I'm not driving your blind ass anywhere."

She went for her spare keys in her purse cursing and I climbed over top of her and grabbed them, and then playfully held her pinned to the seat with my body while she struggled and I said, "Say Uncle!" with a big grin on my face and that was all she could take. She busted out laughing and by the time she was done, she was about too weak to move. She finally scooted over, we went to check out the office furniture, get the glasses, stopped and ran my errand, and just to put the icing on the authority cake, I announced a change in plans for supper (I'm the household chef) and stopped at a grocery store and lingered longer than necessary in the produce aisle, cracking jokes the entire time about how good the cool air felt and "nature's thermometers" (guys if you don’t get this, ask a woman – I’d never get a more verbose description past the spam filters), exiting only when the smile began to fade the slightest bit, indicating that she was on the verge of boredom and starting to feel the cold, and therefore about to stop having fun.

Do you see it? She was trying to goad me into taking an authoritative action, and may not have even been aware of it because it's such automatic behavior. If you respond to this the first time, you can get away with doing it with a humorous flavor as I did above and not having it get too ugly. However, if you just ignore her, or act bewildered and walk out of the room without doing anything, forcing her to find another excuse and launch a bigger attack, you may push it to the point where you have to yell a bit, physically restrain her from running out the door by standing between her and the door, etc.

Please note that one small change in the scenario, especially the failure to grin naughtily as I said, "Say Uncle," could have changed the event from one of fun to one of control and abuse; she would have been scared stiff instead of amused. Always mind your bearing when in this situation and make sure that it's fun for everyone or it will explode in your face. You've been warned...

Understand fully that unless she has been severely physically abused she will not be pushing you to strike her in any way (unless the two of you have a history of playfully spanking and slapping each other on the butt or something), and if she has ever in the past kept screaming and maybe even struck you until you slapped or shoved her, it's a strong sign that she has been beaten, still has issues, and really needs professional help to face those issues and begin healing. NEVER, EVER, for any reason physically strike her with the intent of hurting her, even if she begs you to do it or tries to force you. Use no more physical force than it takes to restrain her from hurting either of you, and if she's crying and hysterical, call a counselor and try to get her some help, because she needs it, badly.

There you have it. Again, it took more to explain that than I had hoped, but I wanted you to see a real-world example so you would have something more than just a rule to try to apply - a real episode with distinct characteristics that you could compare with what you have seen in your own life.

Women are constantly communicating things to us, but as you will learn in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," much of that communication goes right over our heads, while they are thinking it just goes in one ear and out the other because we don't care to listen, when in fact we're simply unable to hear it because we don’t know what we’re hearing or what to listen for.

The problem isn't that we ignore it; it's that we don't have the natural tendency to pick up all the non-verbal and verbally indirect ways they use to try to tell us things. They really don't know that we are that under-evolved with respect to communications infrastructure and skill any more than we are born knowing that they are that highly-evolved and sophisticated when it comes to communications without someone pointing it out. It's just not obvious when you don't have a frame of reference. (I'm explaining it to them in their own book, so hopefully, when everybody knows how everybody else does things, life will go a bit smoother for everybody.)

If you want to learn what you need to know to deal with this problem and others, and get your relationship and marriage (not to mention your “bedroom life”) working at full pleasure and intimacy capacity, go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" now, before you do another thing. Recognize that life is too short to spend it unhappy and work daily on making it better until it gets there.

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

Signs That She’s About to Erupt, and a Miracle Cure for Tension and Drama in Relationships and Marriage

A guy asks if there are any tell-tale signs of a woman needing a drama fix. A few do come to mind… (WINK!!!)

This is one of my favorite topics, and it’s something fun and useful. To start the ball rolling, meet Zane:

Hey David,

I’ve been following you for a while and I see the things you talk about in my home every day, especially the testing and the drama. I got pretty good at handing the testing within a couple of days of reading about it in your book, but the drama thing has me stumped. I know she does it, I even know when she’s doing it and not expressing a genuine problem, but I can’t quite catch the knack of seeing it coming so I can head it off before it gets ridiculous. What am I missing?

Thanks,
Zane

Hey, Zane! Always good to hear from a fellow Southerner. (For all non-Southerners, “Hey” is Southern for “Hello and how are you?”) You are indeed missing something, but it’s not hard to spot.

In "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," when I describe why women create drama (emotional boredom) and how they nearly always use negative pressure to create it because it’s both faster and easier to get a drama fix by stirring up a fight than by achieving something exciting, you missed the description of the progression of the problem in her and how it works up into an explosion.

Remember that in a woman’s emotional make-up, it’s boredom, not crisis, that is the biggest enemy. If she doesn’t get relief from the boredom, she gets anxious, and then irritable, and you’ll watch her getting more and more uneasy and unreasonable as the tension within her builds. By the time she gets to the point of nearing an explosion, you’ll notice that her attitude has become very sour…

Let’s say your car broke down on your wedding anniversary and you jogged three miles to your house because she didn’t answer the phone when you called to tell her you were in trouble (okay, she was in the shower getting ready to go), and you hit the door late, sweaty, smelly, and tired. A woman in a normal state of mind would see that as heroic and be thrilled, where a woman in need of a drama fix would ignore the fact that you ran home to her and fight with you because you were late getting home. Get it?

Fights that break out over legitimate issues usually have some identifiable logic in them somewhere (although you may have to look hard to find it if you haven’t yet read "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and become well-versed in what women want and what makes them tick). On the other hand, drama-induced fights are in a word, absurd. These are the fights in which she seems to be raising the roof over nothing, brings up things that happened 20 years ago, and plays dirty, and your warning signs are pretty much toned down versions of that absurd behavior – being abnormally bothered by more and more insignificant things, preoccupation situations and details that she’d normally ignore, etc. Why?

She’s trying to milk enough emotion from those things to get her fix, and getting more and more frustrated by the hour because it’s not working any better as she deviates more and more from her normal behavior. That’s what you watch for. If on a normal day she’s fairly laid back, then she’s acting depressed and tense, then fussy, then negative about everything she speaks of, trouble’s coming.

There are two things you can do. Let her pick the fight, which you will both regret, or you can buck up and admit that you failed to give her some positive emotion that she needed and make up for it with some sort of surprise act of leadership, mystery, and fun, but be advised, if she’s too far gone, your efforts may end up being the very thing she uses to start the fight, and all you can do is hang tough. What exactly does that mean?

It does not mean you should be abusive, or play dirty like she is apt to do. It means that when tension and voices start to rise, you must step immediately into that leadership role and exercise some stern – and maybe even tough – love, by calling her on whatever bratty behavior she’s committing. For instance…

She says, “That’s it! I’ve had it! I’m so sick of you ALWAYS buttoning the button in the middle of your shirt first and then bouncing up and down from bottom to top! Why can’t you just start at the top and work your way down like everybody else?!”

To which you reply, “Because that’s how I’m comfortable buttoning it, and I don’t really care what you or anybody else thinks about it. It’s ridiculous that you should even bring something like that up, and the only reason you’re doing it is because you’re bored to death and need the a rush. Now settle down, stop being a brat and conduct yourself with a little dignity, and let’s find a more productive way of giving you what you need without the two of us saying and doing something that we’ll both regret later.”

She may try to further escalate the situation after that to test your resolve, and if she does, there’s an answer to that as well, one that involves getting a bit cocky and having some fun with her, but rather than spell it out in detail I’m going to employ it now and tell you that if you want to know what it is, you’re going to have to read it in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" – LOL!

Face it, Guys; it’s not and has never been a secret that the simple act of wishing your wife a good morning and making it out the door to go to work in the morning can be like walking through a mine field. You need to know how to listen to her and how to talk to her to get along with her. You need to know when to be tough and when to be gentle and reassuring, when to indulge and when to reject, when to make her laugh and when to stand tall and get serious. If things have slowed down in your bedroom, that’s not old age setting in, it’s one of the first symptoms of real relationship problems, the kind that lead to affairs – a symptom of advanced relationship decay – and divorce.

You can let things continue to decay and try to make a heroic save at the last minute, which can indeed be done, or you can take the easier path and employ the same tools now, when you are not under so much pressure and have far less damage to correct, to fix everything that’s broken and keep your relationship running like a precision machine. The cost is the same (at best – it can be MUCH worse if you wait!), and it takes less time and effort to do it now before everything goes critical.

The big question is whether you are the kind of man who puts everything off and unnecessarily risks the future of his family by letting it fall into crisis before doing anything about it or if you are the kind of man who steps up and does what is necessary to keep his family – and himself – happy. So what kind of man are YOU?

If you’re the kind who sees the wisdom of fixing the little problems to keep them from getting big, or if you’re the kind who likes to fix them early but have been unable to find answers before things got bad, then you need to click over to http://www.makingherhappy.com/ right now and get your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and put things on the right track. If you’re the kind who puts things off until the last minute because you just don’t want to deal with them until you’re forced to, then I’ll be seeing you later, or if not me, your wife’s boyfriend, and probably her attorney. It’s your call; make it a good one!

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

Party Advice for Men in Relationships and Marriage

Have you ever thought about what might be appropriate or desirable post-party behavior when you’re in a marriage or committed relationship? Gentlemen, lend me your ears, because there is indeed more to it than you might expect…

I wish I could gather all my “students” in one room for a day for a caucus. The ideas and observations that some of them e-mail me explaining what they have learned and especially what they have figured out on their own after reading my book are stunningly brilliant. Get this:

Hi David,

Here's a newsletter idea for you: It occurred to me recently how different men and women communicate when it comes to classifying their experiences. A man and woman can spend the day, the weekend, or a lifetime together, and at the "end" (of whatever), the man will know that he had fun, think it's obvious [because it IS], but a woman will ABSOLUTELY need to review the experience and HEAR him say: "I really enjoyed myself with you today". KEY communication issue, particularly with those in a troubled or "young" relationship, but still important at any stage. It might be partly because men are less talkative about their emotions, but there's something more basic to it than that. So there's your newsletter:

"Guys: on the way home from the Christmas party, tell her how much fun you had with her, how nice she looked, and then listen while she relives the best parts. Then go home and have sex, because you've done the prework. Oh, and don't forget to flirt with her while you're there."

There might be a whole "Christmas Party Newsletter"
needed, since I'll bet about half of them (family or otherwise) end up in fights. Maybe you could make it a New Year’s Eve Party newsletter.

Johnson

This is the kind of thing that happens when a man tunes in after reading "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage." He no longer has to sit around wondering what the right thing to do or say is because it all just becomes naturally obvious. I’m proud of every one of them, too.

So let’s look at Johnson’s observation. He’s spot on. It’s not good enough for a woman to see you enjoying anything with her; her social nature demands that it be verbalized, just as she still needs to hear that you love her and are committed to her to believe it, no matter what she sees. And yes, that’s why all those relationships from your youth that you thought were going great for two or three months suddenly ended without you having a clue as to why. You didn’t verbalize the love and commitment you felt and she didn’t believe it was there.

When it comes to parties, especially the kind where she puts on the little black dress, she takes extra pains to look good. Granted, part of that is because she wants to compete with all the other women there, but she still wants to know that you noticed and that you appreciate the effort, because part of what she is competing for is your attention. She also wants to feel like you were glad to be there – WITH HER. That’s the important part.

Yes, really. She wants to share your fun by hearing the accounts of the fun you had with other people, but the icing on the cake for her will be the feeling that going with her was better than just going. A girl likes to hear that if you hadn’t taken her to the party you’d have damned sure picked her up if you’d found her there, if you know what I mean.

And she wants to share her good time, her conversations, etc., to relive them and feel the rush again. Believe it or not, this is a privilege of sorts; remember that women snub and shut out people they don’t like. Most of the time their accounts will be fun to listen to, but if they stray into uncomfortable territory like telling you about so-and-so’s menstrual problems or some gossip that you really don’t want any part of, don’t be afraid to encourage her to save that part for her girlfriends because you’re not stepping out of the husband role to indulge in it. Just make sure you say it with a smile and try to be fun about it; that’s not a maneuver that can be aided with whining or irritation. For example:

“Hey! Hey! Hey! The gossip window is closed! (Laughing) Save that for when you’re talking to Charlotte tomorrow and tell me about So-And-So-I-Saw-You-Talking-To-By-The-Fireplace.”

A diversion, a laugh, and leadership into some other topic, got it? Fun, not cranky or whiney. And that’s not hard if you allow yourself to be amused by her excitement over some juicy piece of gossip or the drama of something that you couldn’t possibly be interested in because it’s just too girly for words.

Now tell me something. Why am I telling you all of this? Why aren’t you part of this army of men that I’m building who “get it”? Sigmund Freud, the renowned psychiatrist/psychologist, is famous for saying (among other things) “The great question, which I have not been able to answer, is ‘What does a woman want?’” I know, my students know, but Sigmund Freud didn’t. Fancy that!

So how about it? Why don’t you cast in with us? It takes a very few dollars and a very few hours; I’ve had meals that lasted longer and cost far more than what it takes you to read this book. The bragging rights alone are worth more than that, for crying out loud! You’ll be able to prove that you know what women REALLY want, how to communicate with them instead of getting the eye-rolling and “whatever!” There’s also a return to honeymoon activity, in the bedroom and out, and you get to say you know something that Sigmund Freud couldn’t figure out in a lifetime! Can you beat that deal with a stick? LOL!

Seriously, you really should join us. Just make it a holiday gift to yourself that your wife will benefit from as well. Go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" right now, and before New Year’s you’ll be turning things around and kicking them up to notches unknown to humankind.

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

Do You Know How to Listen to a Woman? Walking the Mine Field in Relationships and Marriage

Women are social creatures and want to be heard. Being a good listener is highly attractive to a woman, but don’t let yourself become a girlfriend. Learn where to draw the line!

I got a letter that really got under my skin, because it shows just how simple some of women’s needs are and just how little effort it can take for a man to do incredibly attractive things. Meet Angie:

Hi, David! I’m so glad to see somebody addressing our [women’s] needs like this. There does not seem to be too many men who speak “female,” and your services as a translator are truly appreciated.

I bought your book for my husband, and getting through the first part was an education for us both, but we made it. We’ve been together since early grade school, and have always felt that we were right for each other, but after getting through your instructions on how to evaluate our relationship, we now KNOW that we’re not just star-crossed or the product of long-standing habit, we really belong together. But that’s not what I’m writing about.

My husband is going through the second part of your book now, and he’s catching on fairly fast and I can’t thank you enough for that. I always thought he was a bit short on attention span when we’d talk, but it turns out that I am probably worse than the average woman about using non-verbal communication and expecting everyone around me to pick up on everything, and we didn’t have long conversations because Jay (my husband) would get frustrated or bored with not knowing what I was saying most of the time.

Don’t get me wrong, we talk all the time, but never for long enough to have a really deep conversation, and this has always bothered both of us, but we kept hoping that sooner or later we’d just grow together and it would work out. Well, we’re growing together as we go through your book, and it’s like being with a new and much better man, because he now knows how important communication is to me as a woman, and is quickly learning how to engage on a level that we are both more comfortable with. I’m also learning to be a little more direct with him than with my girlfriends, and that’s helping him to feel better as well.

We (women) don’t really want that much, do we? We want a man who is a man, not a girlfriend. We want you to listen to us. We want your attention. We want you to focus on us when you are with us, not other things around us. We want you to look at us, preferably at our eyes instead of our breasts, when we or you are talking, and really listen to what we are saying, because we know when you are not paying attention. We want you to be interested enough in us to ask us questions, about us, our day, our feelings, our friends, or whatever – just something to show that you are there because you are still interested in us, not because it’s a habit. And yes, when we’re being a brat, we really do want you to call us on it. You don’t have to be mean about it, but we definitely don’t want you being a wuss about it either. Is that too much to ask?

Anyway, your book is helping a lot, and while we are in our 30’s and have been together for almost 30 years (yes you read that right) we are getting closer, and I’m starting regularly to feel intimate desires for Jay that I haven’t felt for him but sporadically in years. A lot of it is just the lower stress level in our home and being able to have longer, more intimate conversations, but he’s also starting to be really fun again, like when we were teenagers and really started “discovering” each other (which is kind of awkward because our two teenage girls are starting to date), and the passion is really coming back. Thanks so much!

Love ya,
Angie

Wow! In their thirties and together for thirty years! The original “childhood sweethearts.” They’ve had thirty years to get bored with each other, and are still young enough to have very healthy libido’s, not to mention another 30-50 years together! Incredible! Well, let’s focus on attraction for a minute.

Angie made it plain that she had needs, and was pretty verbose about what they are. Obviously, she has a lot of other needs, but people take the time to express those that are most important to them, and she expressed wanting a manly man who could be genuinely interested in her and engage her in meaningful conversation, and that the more that need was fulfilled, the more they were rewarded with intimacy and passion. Guys, it doesn’t get any simpler or more basic than that, and this woman is saying that this is what’s most important to her, at least in regard to what she wants from Jay. She could be every woman alive today, too. Those needs and wants are universal amongst women.

Also note what she says she doesn’t want, and because of this, she’s a lot smarter than the average bear: She wants “a man who is a man, not a girlfriend.” I don’t know if she fully realized the wisdom in that statement, or if it’s obvious, so I’m going to explain it. Do not indulge your female partner’s “drama-fests.” If she wants to tell you about a problem, listen, but if she’s in that drama mode where she wants to keep repeating every detail of the problem to you over and over to milk every last drop of emotional energy out of it before becoming bored with it and moving on to the solution-finding stage, don’t go there.

Allowing her to treat you like her girlfriend is an attraction-killer, and often is even a form, possibly a subconscious form, of testing to see what you will tolerate. If you detect that a woman is starting to talk to you as if you were a girlfriend, just tell her that you’re not comfortable in the girlfriend role and that’s where it feels like she’s taking you, and that it would be better for both of you if she continued the conversation with a girlfriend and came back to you to either tell you about the resolution to her problem or to secure your help if she found that she wanted it.

The one place where a little compromise might be in order is in eye contact. Women need it, and are grossly uncomfortable without it. It’s part of how they “connect” when they converse. We men, being results-driven, tend to multi-task and speak while we are doing something else, such as working or scanning the room for threats while in that primal mode of “protector,” which they will often interpret as lack of interest, attention, and respect with regard to both what they are saying and them in general. It’s no longer a realistic possibility that a dinosaur, lion, or bear is going to eat your family, so try to be a little more deliberate and aware of your actions when talking with a woman.

It’s very helpful if you do indeed make an effort to maintain eye contact when both speaking and listening, but if you are in the middle of something that you can’t put down, point that out, saying something like, “Look, I have to finish this. We can either talk while I work (or whatever you’re doing) or you can give me a few minutes to get to a place where I can stop, and then we can talk. Which are you more comfortable with?” Notice that you’re not dumping the choice in her lap, you’re asking for her preference; the difference is subtle, but significant. You will then “decide” to grant her preference. This is both leadership and consideration of her needs, not to mention the kind of diplomacy women tend to engage in, and she will appreciate it without you looking like girlfriend.

Getting back to drama-fests for a moment, when you start hearing the details a second time, you’re getting into girlfriend territory. After making the announcement about not being comfortable in the girlfriend role mentioned above, point out to her, politely and respectfully, that you already understand the problem from her first run through describing it, and if she wants your input or assistance later when she’s ready to do something about fixing the problem you’ll be there for her, but until then she needs to share this problem with her girlfriends until she gets it out of her system and is “over it” and ready to move on. She may pout a bit at having her “emotional inertia” interrupted, but if you handled it right that’s a test, too, so don’t worry about it.

This is one of those areas where you need to define and exercise authority, and you need to gently but firmly make it clear that you’re willing to listen the first time, but the second through “however-many-times-it-takes,” she needs to share with her girlfriends, because they are wired for it and enjoy it and you are wired to fix problems, not relish and explore them. She may not understand this at first (many women really think that we’re all wired the same, just as many men do!), but you must be steadfast if you want to remain her manly man and not evolve into another girlfriend she has to keep up with.

Gentlemen, women seem a little more complicated than we are at times, but their true needs really aren’t. They want the same things we want: self-esteem, productive work (at least the good ones do!), a meaningful relationship with an attractive and interesting partner, and intimacy -- passionate intimacy when the kids aren’t around. And to beat it all, all we have to do to give it to them is act like real men (“manly men who do manly things,” as the saying goes) and pay attention to them enough for them to know we’re interested in them and to know what they’re saying to us.

They find that sexy and attractive, and reward us for it by giving us what we want, which is pretty much the same thing much of the time. It’s just not that hard when you know how, is it? And as Angie points out, it’s easier with my book, “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” so download your copy today at http://www.makingherhappy.com, because life’s too short to spend it any other way than happy.

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

The Science of Stress in Relationships and Marriage: Women Do It Differently, and Men Need to Know How

Scientists have discovered the chemical cascades that occur when a woman is under stress, and who would have guessed that it’s very different from men and make them respond differently? LOL! And you can bet that it has an impact on your relationship and marriage.

There is an author by name of Gale Berkowitz whose work I keep running across in researching women and their behavior. She impresses me tremendously because she is thorough in her research and doesn’t interject a lot of opinion in her writing; she presents a lot of facts and when something is hypothetical she’s labels it as such, something I insist upon in this work because the stakes are too high in a troubled or failing relationship or marriage to consign anything to guesswork, theory, opinion, or anything else except solid logic based on the hard facts of vast and relevant experience. Follow up on her work at the link provided if you want some interesting and relevant reading.

In an article in Melissa Kaplan’s “Chronic Neuroimmune Diseases” newsletter, Gale Berkowitz discusses research that confirms that women’s chemistry causes them to respond to stress in a very different way than we men do. She and other researchers refer to it as a “tend and befriend” response, as opposed to the more masculine “fight or flight” response.

You can refer to the original article for the full details on the chemistry, but the short version is that they have isolated a hormone called “oxytocin” that buffers the fight or flight response and causes her to tend to children and gather with other women instead.

It’s interesting to note that estrogen enhances the effects of oxytocin and testosterone diminishes it. Both genders have both estrogens and testosterone (estrogen is in fact a whole family of hormones, all of which are “metabolites,” or by-products, of the metabolization of testosterone – yes, fact is sometimes stranger than fiction!), but the balance is different. Men have more testosterone than estrogens, while women have more estrogens than testosterone.

This lays waste to a common misconception about stress-handling, and it is one that you need to be VERY aware of in your interaction with women. When a crisis arises, stress is created, and in men, the fight-or-flight response engages, and we move very quickly to eradicate the threat and neutralize the crisis. We’re biologically driven to do so.

Not so with women. They don’t just choose to sit and talk about problems instead of correcting them. They are as biologically driven to pull the kids up under their wing and have what appears to us to be a “drama fest” as we are driven to tell everybody to hide and lock the doors while we deal with the threat.

Not all threats can be immediately dispatched. You can kill a barbarian or wild bear crashing through your door, but other problems can take time, such as health or financial problems. Our method of dealing with the barbarian doesn’t work with a wife who has just found out she has breast cancer any more than calling a dozen girlfriends and talking for hours would deter a barbarian or a bear.

Consequently, fight-or-flight works best for immediate threats, while tend-and-befriend works better for long-term problems, especially with regard to stress relief. We can stress ourselves to death while feeling helpless as weeks and months of cancer treatment lag on, just as women can be stressed to death by being thrown into a situation requiring immediate action. We need closure, they need familiarity, social interaction, emotional build-up, and emotional release, THEN action if there is still any call for it.

This is another wonderful example of how understanding our differences and using them to compliment each other instead of competing with each other works to make a stronger and more intimate relationship. If you’re faced with a long-term problem, try to take it more at your wife’s pace than your own; don’t indulge in dramatizing and such, but ease up a bit on the push, handling things as they can be effectively handled instead of trying to bully everything into submission. If you’re faced with an immediate threat, don’t waste time trying to goad your wife to action.

Give her a brief period for input if she wants to give you some and then move on and eliminate the threat. Tell her that there will be time to talk after the threat is no longer bearing down on you, but for right now, since the window of opportunity to deal with the threat is so narrow, you just have to go with the best you can do at the moment and you can talk about emotions or further corrective actions later.

Cooperation, not competition, is the single most distinguishing characteristic of a successful long-term relationship of any kind, and it’s especially true in a marriage or other live-in arrangement. You’re right there in each other’s faces, and you need things to share and draw you together, not constant points of contention to tear you apart.

There are many differences that we can treat as complimentary, and others, such as opposing values, which cannot be resolved. Hence, some great relationships have problems that make them look bad, and other, utterly terrible relationships have a few redeeming features that make them look more attractive than starting over – the comfortably unhappy crowd that I talk about from time to time who will eventually split or torment each other into a wasted lifetime of misery. The difference is not always obvious, but if you’re ever going to be happy with another person, you must know it and recognize it when it confronts you. There is no other way.

To know this and everything else you need to know to fix, maintain, and enhance a good relationship with problems or end a bad relationship with dignity and as friends, go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage." Life is short, so don’t spend it guessing…

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

MUST READ! When She Gets Mad: Keeping the Peace in Relationships and Marriage

Women get mad at us for a lot of different reasons, a significant number of which have nothing whatsoever to do with us. Handle it wrong and you’re in the dog house; handle it right and you’re golden…

Today you’re going to get a HUGE favor. I’ve abstained from writing about today’s subject in this newsletter because quite frankly it’s something I want men to learn after reading my book, but something has happened that compels me to do so before I can do another thing.

I got a call telling me that another of my best friends has died, this one in a car crash after he and his wife had an argument about something they shouldn’t have even been discussing at the time. She was moody and upset, needed an outlet, picked a fight with him over something he’d said two weeks prior, and he left in a huff, apparently to try to cool off.

He got plowed at an intersection. He was not intoxicated or otherwise impaired, but witnesses said he ran a red light and was struck in the driver’s side door by an oncoming car. It was only two blocks from his home, so while there is no way of knowing what really happened, we must admit that there is at least a high probability that he was angry or otherwise distracted, or possibly driving too aggressively, and paid for it with his life. Fortunately, the driver of the car that hit him sustained only minor injuries thanks to safety belt and air bags.

Dane was a good guy, a very rugged, manly man, but he was stubborn as the day is long and repeatedly refused a copy of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” because he thought it was silly for a man to read a book about how to get along with women. A pity, because it could have saved his life.

Dane never learned how to deal with his wife’s temper and moodiness. He had an odd temperament himself; it took a lot to make him angry, but if you pushed him that far, he went all the way and just blew up. He never hit his wife, and never said anything purposely to hurt her, but he would yell and knock things over and then leave to keep from destroying his home any further or hurting his wife, and thought that was handling it well enough. As I said, a good guy, but stubborn.

So to try to make sure that this doesn’t happen to any of you, I’m going to tell you about women’s anger and how to handle it. And I will ask something of you in return for improving your relationship and possibly saving your life as well, but we’ll get to that in a bit…

Sometimes women just get angry to bleed off the emotional energy of being bored and frustrated. I’ve written frequently and at length about this problem how to avoid it, and you can find a lot of articles in my archive and blog, but the two most relevant are the August 12, 2008 article, “Women’s Biggest and Loudest Complaint About Men, and What You Can Do About It BEFORE It Kills Your Relationship” and the June 09, 2008 article “Differing Emotional Scales: A Key to Understanding Women and Improving Your Relationship” If you’ve not read them, please do so, because understanding female boredom and a woman’s emotional scale are critical to properly handling and avoiding fights.

Women can also easily get mad at you for something they THINK you’ve done, without first trying to find out whether in fact you’ve done it. They’re much more emotionally-driven than we are, and worse, emotionally-dominated. The reasons for both these traits are spelled out in the two aforementioned archived articles, so I won’t repeat them here; there’s already a lot that must be said today and limited space (and limited reader attention span!) in which to say it.

Then the clincher, they get mad at you over something you really have done, whether you realize it or not. It’s important that you understand all this so that you will in turn understand how crucial it is to try to find out which kind of anger you’re dealing with. For instance, if she’s mad at you for something you haven’t done, there’s not a whole lot you can do to “undo” it, right?

So, the obvious first step is to try to determine, OBJECTIVELY, whether she has a legitimate issue, just thinks she does, or doesn’t care whether she does because she just needs to vent and you happen to be handy.

If she’s just in a foul mood or picking a fight over something ridiculous, point out to her that she’s angry at something that normally wouldn’t be an issue, and that you’ll be happy to either try to do something with her to bleed off that energy or she can pitch a fit at somebody else, because being a whipping post isn’t in your job description.

Or, if you’ve mastered the art of the naughty boy grin, call the preceding “plan B” and bust on her a bit and convert that negative energy to positive, playful energy. Even if you’ve not mastered it, give it a shot, and if she insists on remaining pissy then go with “plan B.”

It’s a little tougher when she thinks you’ve done something that you haven’t, because you’re facing genuine anger instead of general moody pisstivity. She thinks she really has an issue.

Instead of sticking your foot in your mouth and blurting, “What did I do?” which almost instantly pins guilt on you by triggering psychological anchors from past fights, or “What’s wrong with you?” which is absurd when you think about it because it’s obvious that what’s wrong with her is that she’s angry, in a leadership tone, tell her, “Tell me what’s really bothering you so we can get it fixed and move on.”

It’s important that you direct her to open up rather than asking her anything. The act of leadership alone will help to calm her anger and subconsciously make her feel like you are interested in listening and making amends. The same thing applies when you suspect that she really has a legitimate issue, and the same process should be followed up to this point.

The difference here, when you’re dealing with “real” anger, is that there are two and only two possibilities: that she does or does not have a legitimate issue. In neither case do you want to argue with her, because nobody ever wins an argument. Now that you’ve ascertained what she thinks is the real problem, your job is to lead her out of being mad.

That doesn’t mean that you con her. I’m talking about true leadership and a real solution. If she just thinks that you’ve done something that you really haven’t done, start with, “I think I may see where you could think something like that, but here’s what’s really happened…” and then just explain it to her. If she tries to reject your explanation because she’s still amped up or wants to stay pissed until she can milk some more adrenaline out of it, go back to the plan for handling a mood, and try first to convert the negative energy to positive by getting playful and if that fails, tell her she’s going to have to be angry with somebody else because enabling pissy, bratty, bad behavior by arguing or fighting with her is not in your job description.

If you have indeed done something wrong, your job is still to lead her out of the situation. First, you admit that whatever you did was wrong, could have been handled better, or whatever is an appropriate admission, and tell her that it was a mistake that you won’t be repeating, at least not deliberately, and that you didn’t do whatever it was to hurt her or make her angry.

There is no need to be heaping apology on top of apology, and in truth, much of the time an apology can actually work against you if you have already admitted that you were wrong. An admission of guilt and expression of remorse is strong, while many women – but not all – view apologies as weak, especially if they are repeated. And it can be one of those “be careful what you wish for” things too, where she wants an apology and loses respect for you if you give her one.

This issue of apologies varies widely from woman to woman, and you’re best bet in handling it is to ask her at some time when she’s in a good mood how she views apologies, and whether she’s ever noticed losing respect for someone or seeing them as somehow weaker after they did so. This is the kind of “what’s really inside you” question that women like to discuss, and you’ll get the best answer she can give you. Then when the situation arises, watch her reaction to see if it is congruent with what she’s told you.

Getting back to the altercation, once you have admitted guilt and pledged a better effort in the future (which you’d better make good on or you will lose credibility very fast!), if she continues to act pissy and like she’s trying to hang on to the anger, again try to flip it around to playful, and if she refuses to go there, refuse to be an enabler and tell her that you’re not going to be a wuss and grovel before her. You’ve admitted guilt and pledged reform, and if she wants anything more than an apology beyond that, she can talk to you after she calms down.

There are several caveats here. First, NEVER, under any circumstances, try to buy her off with some kind of gift or favor, even if she demands it. You’ll only anchor the gift to a negative meaning and emotion, and look like too big a wuss to handle a problem head on. Indeed, if she demands it, she’s proving that she can be bought, proving in turn that she’s a prostitute, not a wife, and you need to get her out of your life quietly and quickly, before she decides that she’s going to leave and has time to bleed you dry and hide the assets.

Next, never succumb to the urge to return fire if she starts saying things to try to hurt you, because once it’s said, it can’t be taken back. Don’t slink away with your tail between your legs, but do tell her that there is obviously an issue that needs to be worked out and she can talk to you about it when she has calmed down and is ready to address the issue instead of pitching a fit, but in the meantime, you’re her husband, not a whipping post, and she will deal with you as her husband or not at all. (If you can’t stand up TO her when you should, in her estimation, you can’t stand up FOR her when you should, which causes her to instantly lose respect and attraction for you, so don’t hesitate to stand tall.)

There’s never anything to be gained from a competition to see who can hurt each other the most. That’s called “war,” the most spectacular and costly of all human endeavors, and it is a last resort, not a standard operating procedure. You fight when all other options have been exhausted, and not until, and when you fight, you fight coldly and deliberately, to win, not out of anger, to punish. If you find yourself pushed to the point of having no choice but to fight with a woman you’re living with, you’re either with the wrong woman or she’s with the wrong man.

And if there is a single rule that will help you get through delicate situations without a fight, it is this:

“Always focus on what is wrong and how to fix it, not who is wrong and should be punished.”

It sounds simple because it is, and it works better than anything I’ve ever seen. As long as the two of you are focused on the problem and fixing the problem, you are in a mode of cooperation, even if one or both of you is upset. It’s when the discussion turns competitive – Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Who gets punished? Who gets to “win” the fight and who has to “lose”? – that things escalate and get ugly, and there’s really no good reason that should ever happen.

So that’s it. Use it in good health. Live long and prosper.

That’s some of the most important advice that anyone will ever give you, and it works for everything from a moody little spat to a working through divorce issues. It’s also one of the cornerstones of "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and I’m giving it to you unsolicited and with my blessing.

In return, I’m going to ask a favor or two. First, invite your friends, whether they are having trouble or not, to subscribe to this newsletter by filling out that short subscription form at the bottom of the page at http://www.makingherhappy.com. Forward a copy of this newsletter along with your recommendation so they can see that it's real advice, not just a glorified sales letter. Also download my free “Break-Up Busting 101” report and my free "What Women REALLY Want" report and attach them to that e-mail and forward it to them as well, and invite them to pass this information on so we can start putting an end to at least some of the fighting and frustration that goes on in every couple before somebody else ends up dead during or after a “domestic dispute.”

Second, visit my new web site, again at http://www.makingherhappy.com, and seriously consider downloading your own copy of "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," especially since there’s new content going in and there’s about to be a price hike. (All buyers get free lifetime updates.) It’s time to learn all those things that you should have been taught earlier in life about women, relationships, and marriage, and make your life and relationship all it can be, because life can be fleeting; it can be gone before you know it, and for no good reason.

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

Be Careful What You Wish For, Part 3: Romance In Relationships and Marriage

I’ve run into another of those “Be careful what you wish for” scenarios, and it’s yet another perfect example of how women will say they want something because it makes for a bit of an emotional rush, but it never quite works out the same way in the real world, especially on the subject of ROMANCE.

I got an e-mail from an Australian friend, one who’s pretty bright when her brain is engaged, but who seems to have been living alone and bored just a little too long, because she’s pretty bad about getting caught up in “sweet” e-mails when she’s lonely. Check this out:

RE: Awwww

A girl asked a guy if he thought she was pretty.

He said, “No.”

She asked him if he would want to be with her forever...and he said, “No.”

She then asked him if she were to leave would he cry, and once again he said, “No.”

She had heard enough. As she walked away, tears streaming down her face the boy grabbed her arm and said...

“You're not pretty, you're beautiful.

“I don't want to be with you forever, I NEED to be with you forever.

“And I wouldn't cry if you walked away...I'd die...”

I sent this out to two groups of women for their response. The first group was a group of 16-25 year old single women who had responded to a survey I ran last year. Their archetypical responses were:

“Awww…that’s sweet.”

“I wish I had a guy like that.”

“That’s so romantic.”

The other group was ages 30-60 who are married or in a committed relationship of two years or longer:

“’Awwww’ my ass! I’d say ‘EWWWWW!!!”

“Yuck! What a wuss!”

“Yeah, right. Like anybody would fall for that crap.”

“Can I just shoot him and get it over with?”

“Yeah, sure. I can just see Humphrey Bogart or Dirty Harry saying something like that.”

Are you getting the drift? When it comes to romance, young women and teenage girls are pretty silly, and don’t yet have a clue that there are things they respond to differently than how they imagine, while more mature women, while still prone to do that at times, can be expected to be more in touch with their feelings by virtue of having been burned by them in the past, so their reaction in this case is the one that tells you what you need to know.

There’s nothing romantic about acting like a needy wuss. Yet when we are in our teens and early twenties and are making our first efforts to learning about women, we’re inundated with all this silly crap we hear (or more likely, OVERHEAR, out of context) from girls, NOT women, mind you, and those wrong answers hang with us into adulthood until somebody pulls the wool from over our eyes and shows us the truth. One of the worst of these is the girlish tendency to confuse “sweet” with “romantic.”

So while you can’t necessarily be blamed for not having anything better to work with in the past, now that you know there is something better, you have a responsibility to yourself to seek it out, learn it and use it. So what is “romance”? And what is “romantic”?

Romantic, more than anything else, is that which is larger than life and sparks excitement and attraction, in a word, “heroic.” There’s nothing romantic about blowing a month’s salary to take a woman to Paris for lunch when you live in North America. That’s done for extravagance, and is wasteful. A young girl who has never had to work for what she has might mistakenly see that as romantic, but the average adult woman, while she might fantasize about something like that with a stranger, would see the actual act as wasteful and stupid if performed by the man she’s been with for awhile...

…and more to the point, a man who is so frivolous that he would blow money he didn’t have like that would not be seen by a woman in or considering a committed relationship as being able to make responsible decisions and be a good partner. He could be a plaything, but nothing more – another one of those things that might get someone’s attention in the dating world but has no place in a committed relationship, unless you’re so wealthy that going to Paris for lunch is something that you could afford to do for fun and would do by yourself. Otherwise it's just a desperate act of attention-getting and approval-seeking.

That’s not to say that a trip to Paris isn’t romantic. But it has to be a real trip. There has to be time to see the city, experience the city and build memories that she can relive, and time to gather mementos to put in her treasure box. There has to be time and opportunity for intimacy to take advantage of being in an exotic place and using it to build excitement, attraction, and all those memories as well. Just being there long enough to say you were there isn’t enough.

To be romantic, she needs to remember more than the sights of the city; she needs to remember you and herself immersed in the emotion of being in the city.

And you need to know the difference!

Do you?

Would you know how to use a trip, a dinner, a bouquet of flowers, or more appropriately, a live plant, or even a “sticky note” to create a romantic occasion for your partner? If you don’t, I’ll give you three guesses as to at least one of the reasons that she’s bored and unhappy and you’re reading this newsletter…

…and in truth, should be reading my book, "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," which you can download at http://www.makingherhappy.com, and getting your knowledgebase in order. You need to purge all the lore, urban legends, bad programming and other utter crap you’ve heard about women that’s swimming around in your head and screwing up your relationship and marriage and get with the real program, the one that lets you enjoy being and feeling like a man and lets her feel like she’s truly living with the man of her dreams.

It’s your choice, and your responsibility, to yourself and to her, so choose well, and choose quickly. The clock is running…

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

Why Does She Erupt? How to Stop Drama from Killing Your Relationship and Marriage

Why do otherwise stable and level-headed women sometimes pitch a fit for no apparent reason? And what’s the best way to handle it?

We talked yesterday about how to tell when a woman is getting ready to erupt for no apparent reason, and there was a cursory explanation of how to handle it, but I really wanted to give you more on understanding the cause and handling the situation, including something from my own experience that details the build-up, explosion, and diffusing of the situation to help you relate this lesson to events in your own past so that you can be better prepared next time it comes up, and IT WILL come up. It’s not a matter of “if,” but of “when.” It’s a topic that I frequently need to address, and the following reader question makes for an excellent lead-in for the discussion. Meet Joel:

Hi David,

I bought your book and I'm progressing through the relationship evaluation and it looks like we're good, but I have to ask you about something that may already be in the book because it's driving me nuts. Donna, my wife, is usually pretty stable and understanding, and seldom raises her voice. In fact, sometimes we don't talk much at all. Occasionally she'll get really antsy and next thing I know she's exploding on me for no apparent reason, literally! Whatever she picks to explode about is usually trivial at best, and really ridiculous most of the time. I've watched the calendar, if you know what I mean, and it's not "cyclic." The only thing I've noticed is that it always seems to happen when I'm traveling or busy a lot. She'll explode, I'll explode back, and then she'll go away and come back in a few minutes cheerful and acting like nothing has happened. Can you shed any light on this?

Joel

Well, Joel, congratulations on taking the first step to making some serious improvements in your life, and thanks for writing. As for your question, yes, it is covered in detail in my book, but I'm going to give you the short version now to help keep you out of trouble and for the benefit of your fellow readers, because every man alive goes through this phenomenon at some point in his life, if not with every woman he spends any time around, and it may not even be with a wife or girlfriend. It could be with a "platonic" female friend, or even a coworker, but it will be with someone with whom you have regular interaction.

What's happening is she's feeling ignored (or possibly testing to see if you'll wuss out when she acts like a brat, but they usually use other tests for that), and missing the feeling of having you define or exercise authority for her, which gives her a little rush of adrenaline and attraction and gets her chemistry back in balance. Actually, this is a good sign, because if she had already lost all attraction for you, she wouldn't be doing this at all (she’d be ignoring you), so congratulations on taking action before your relationship deteriorated to critical status as well!

Here's the deal. If you don't pay enough attention to her in ways that let her see you being the alpha male, especially in projecting authority and leadership, and including her in some sort of fun and/or adventure, whether it’s in critical decision-making or just playing around, she'll find something trivial and pitch a fit over it, just to get you to call her on it and tell her to straighten up. Mentally healthy women will respect you when you establish a “no brat zone.”

This doesn't mean that you turn her across your knee and spank her, unless you can do it without hurting her and in such a way that it's entirely plain that you're playing with her and you're both laughing all the way through it. Remember, women love to have gutsy, strong men show their sense of humor in naughty ways, but they hate being painfully man-handled, bullied, and abused, at least if they are mentally and emotionally healthy. (Some do like benign man-handling quite a bit, so investigate and see if your partner is one of them by starting slow and watching her reaction.) A show of strength when everybody is smiling and having fun is one thing; a show of control or cruelty is quite something else. Keep the words “playmate” and “leader” in mind at all times, as it will help you see boundaries and play appropriately.

What it does mean is that you must take one of several approaches to call her on it, and it may entail raising your voice a little bit if that's all she'll respond to, but it mostly requires a show of strength, not of volume; a show of leadership, not abuse.

My wife did this to me once. I'd been neglecting her a bit as I worked overtime on a book. Read the following paragraphs carefully and make sure you pick up on the details - no yelling, the only physical force was non-violent and smiling naughtily, etc., the very things she was looking for.

She wanted me to verify the quality of a piece of office furniture she wanted to buy and to pick up a pair of eyeglasses before 5:00PM, and it was 3:30PM. We live ten minutes from the eyeglass store, and had 90 minutes to get there and do what needed done before closing. I said that I wanted to stop and pick up something on the way, and it would take about five minutes. Boom! That's all it took to open the door - I had set myself up.

I could see the change the instant she realized the opportunity she had. In the space of less than a second, she went from excited about getting a piece of office furniture and new eyeglasses to stormy. Then she said, "No, I don't want to go check on the office furniture, I want to go get my eyeglasses before they close. We've got to go there first." I thought, "Oh, hell, here we go!" and said, "We have 90 minutes to make the ten minute trip to get your glasses. We can afford the extra five minutes to stop on the way to check out the office piece."

To this, she went totally ballistic. "You know what? I don't even want you to go. I'm going by myself. I've got to get my glasses and I don't have time to go running around all over the place." Do you see how the level of absurdity is rapidly escalating (one stop hardly qualifies as “all over the place”), as well as the sudden reversal of both her desire to see the furniture and desire to be driven? (She doesn't see well enough to drive safely without glasses.)

Then I said, "You can't see well enough to drive without the glasses we're going to pick up, we have 90 minutes to get there, it's a ten minute trip, and we can certainly afford the five extra minutes to check out the furniture. Explain to me why you have a problem with this." The response was, "No, I'm not explaining anything. You always want to change my plans, so I'm going by myself." (Big hint: when you "always" do something that you've never done, or "never" do something that you've frequently done, it's said to make you call her on it and you're in this same situation.) At this point she has crawled across the seat of the car and is sticking her keys in the ignition, literally begging for an authoritative intervention.

I reached in, grabbed the keys, and snickered a bit as I said, "Excuse me, but you're not going anywhere unless somebody else drives because you're blind without your glasses. Now, it was your plan to stop and look at the furniture, and your plan to go to the eyeglass store. I suggested stopping one place to pick up one thing on the way there, and that hardly constitutes a change in your plans. You're pushing a bad position in an illogical argument, and until you tell me what's really going on here, I'm not driving your blind ass anywhere."

She went for her spare keys in her purse cursing and I climbed over top of her and grabbed them, and then playfully held her pinned to the seat with my body while she struggled and I said, "Say Uncle!" with a big grin on my face and that was all she could take. She busted out laughing and by the time she was done, she was about too weak to move. She finally scooted over, we went to check out the office furniture, get the glasses, stopped and ran my errand, and just to put the icing on the authority cake, I announced a change in plans for supper (I'm the household chef) and stopped at a grocery store and lingered longer than necessary in the produce aisle, cracking jokes the entire time about how good the cool air felt and "nature's thermometers" (guys if you don’t get this, ask a woman – I’d never get a more verbose description past the spam filters), exiting only when the smile began to fade the slightest bit, indicating that she was on the verge of boredom and starting to feel the cold, and therefore about to stop having fun.

Do you see it? She was trying to goad me into taking an authoritative action, and may not have even been aware of it because it's such automatic behavior. If you respond to this the first time, you can get away with doing it with a humorous flavor as I did above and not having it get too ugly. However, if you just ignore her, or act bewildered and walk out of the room without doing anything, forcing her to find another excuse and launch a bigger attack, you may push it to the point where you have to yell a bit, physically restrain her from running out the door by standing between her and the door, etc.

Please note that one small change in the scenario, especially the failure to grin naughtily as I said, "Say Uncle," could have changed the event from one of fun to one of control and abuse; she would have been scared stiff or genuinely furious instead of amused. Always mind your bearing when in this situation and make sure that it's fun for everyone or it will explode in your face. Again, it’s “leader,” “playmate” and “playing.” You've been warned...

Understand fully that unless she has been severely physically abused she will not be pushing you to strike her in any way (unless the two of you have a history of playfully spanking and slapping each other on the butt or something), and if she has ever in the past kept screaming and maybe even struck you until you slapped or shoved her, it's a strong sign that she has been beaten, still has issues, and really needs professional help to face those issues and begin healing. NEVER, EVER, for any reason physically strike her with the intent of hurting her, even if she begs you to do it or tries to force you. Use no more physical force than it takes to restrain her from hurting either of you, and if she's crying and hysterical, call a counselor and try to get her some help, because she needs it, badly.

There you have it. A bit lengthy I admit, but I wanted you to see a real-world example so you would have something more than just a rule to try to apply - a real episode with distinct characteristics that you could compare with what you have seen in your own life.

Women are constantly communicating things to us, but as you will learn in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," much of that communication goes right over our heads, while they are thinking it just goes in one ear and out the other because we don't care to listen, when in fact we're simply unable to hear it because we don’t know what we’re hearing or what to listen for.

The problem isn't that we ignore it; it's that we don't have the natural tendency to pick up all the non-verbal and verbally indirect ways they use to try to tell us things. They really don't know that we are that under-evolved with respect to communications infrastructure and skill any more than we are born knowing that they are so highly-evolved and sophisticated when it comes to communications without someone pointing it out. It's just not obvious when you don't have a frame of reference. (I'm explaining it to them in their own book, so hopefully, when everybody knows how everybody else does things, life will go a bit smoother for everybody.)

If you want to learn what you need to know to deal with this problem and others, and get your relationship and marriage (not to mention your “bedroom life”) working at full pleasure and intimacy capacity, go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" now, before you do another thing. Recognize that life is too short to spend it unhappy and work daily on making it better until it gets there.

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

Signs That She’s About to Erupt, and What to Do About It: Miracle Cure for Tension and Drama in Relationships and Marriage

A guy asks if there are any telltale signs of a woman needing a drama fix. A few do come to mind… (WINK!!!)

This is one of my favorite topics, and it’s something fun and useful. To start the ball rolling, meet Zane:

Hey David,

I’ve been following you for a while and I see the things you talk about in my home every day, especially the testing and the drama. I got pretty good at handing the testing within a couple of days of reading about it in your book, but the drama thing has me stumped. I know she does it, I even know when she’s doing it and not expressing a genuine problem, but I can’t quite catch the knack of seeing it coming so I can head it off before it gets ridiculous. What am I missing?

Thanks,
Zane

My reply:

Hey, Zane! Always good to hear from a fellow Southerner. (For all non-Southerners, “Hey” is Southern for “Hello and how are you?”) You are indeed missing something, but it’s not hard to spot.

In "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," when I describe why women create drama (emotional boredom) and how they nearly always use negative pressure to create it because it’s both faster and easier to get a drama fix by stirring up a fight than by achieving something exciting, you missed the description of the progression of the problem in her and how it works up into an explosion.

Remember that in a woman’s emotional make-up, it’s boredom, not crisis, that is the biggest enemy. If she doesn’t get relief from the boredom, she gets anxious, and then irritable, and you’ll watch her getting more and more uneasy and unreasonable as the tension within her builds. By the time she gets to the point of nearing an explosion, you’ll notice that her attitude has become very sour…

Let’s say your car broke down on your wedding anniversary and you jogged three miles to your house because she didn’t answer the phone when you called to tell her you were in trouble (okay, she was in the shower getting ready to go), and you hit the door late, sweaty, smelly, and tired. A woman in a normal state of mind would see that as heroic and be thrilled, where a woman in need of a drama fix would ignore the fact that you ran home to her and fight with you because you were late getting home. Get it?

Fights that break out over legitimate issues usually have some identifiable logic in them somewhere, although you may have to look hard to find it if you haven’t yet read "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and become well-versed in what women want and what makes them tick. Drama-induced fights are in a word, absurd. These are the fights in which she seems to be raising the roof over nothing, brings up things that happened 20 years ago, and plays dirty, and your warning signs are pretty much toned-down versions of that absurd behavior – being abnormally bothered by more and more insignificant things, preoccupation with situations and details that she’d normally ignore, etc. Why?

She’s trying to milk enough emotion from those things to get her fix, and getting more and more frustrated by the hour because it’s not working any better as she deviates more and more from her normal behavior. That’s what you watch for. If on a normal day she’s fairly laid back, then she’s acting depressed and tense, then fussy, then negative about everything she speaks of, trouble’s coming.

There are two things you can do. Let her pick the fight, which you will both regret, or you can buck up and admit that you failed to give her some positive emotion that she needed and make up for it with some sort of surprise act of leadership, mystery, and/or fun, but be advised, if she’s too far gone, your efforts may end up being the very thing she uses to start the fight, and all you can do is hang tough. What exactly does that mean?

It does not mean you should be abusive, or play dirty like she is apt to do. It means that when tensions (and voices) start to rise, you must step immediately into that leadership role and exercise some stern – and maybe even tough – love, by calling her on whatever bratty behavior she’s committing. For instance…

She says, “That’s it! I’ve had it! I’m so sick of you ALWAYS buttoning the button in the middle of your shirt first and then bouncing up and down from bottom to top! Why can’t you just start at the top and work your way down like everybody else?!” To which you reply, “Because that’s how I’m comfortable buttoning it, and I don’t really care what you or anybody else thinks about it. It’s ridiculous that you should even bring up something like that, and the only reason you’re doing it is because you’re bored to death and need the rush. Now settle down, stop being a brat and conduct yourself with a little dignity, and let’s find a more productive way of giving you what you need without the two of us saying and doing something that we’ll both regret.”

She may try to further escalate the situation after that to test your resolve, and if she does, there’s an answer to that as well, one that involves getting a bit cocky and having some fun with her, but rather than spell it out in detail I’m going to employ it now and tell you that if you want to know what it is, you’re going to have to read it in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" – LOL!

Take care, and keep in touch,
David Cunningham

Face it, Guys; it’s not and has never been a secret that the simple act of wishing your wife a good morning and making it out the door to go to work can be like walking through a mine field. You need to know how to listen to her and how to talk to her to get along with her. You need to know when to be tough and when to be gentle and reassuring, when to indulge and when to reject, when to make her laugh and when to stand tall and get serious.

If things have slowed down in your bedroom, that’s not old age setting in, it’s one of the first symptoms of real relationship problems, the kind that lead to affairs – a symptom of advanced relationship decay – and divorce. In a healthy relationship between healthy people, sex is not something you grow out of, or beyond. It’s part of normal, everyday life, and if it’s not happening, it’s a symptom of bigger problems; whether it’s a physiological problem with one of you (diabetes, high blood pressure, circulatory problems, hormone imbalance or deficiency, etc.) or something afoul in your relationship or marriage, it needs attention, because something or someone is dying, slowly but surely, because of it.

You can let things continue to decay and try to make a heroic save at the last minute, which can be done, or you can take the easier path and employ the same tools now, when you are not under so much pressure and have far less damage to correct, to fix everything that’s broken and keep your relationship running like a precision machine. The cost is the same (at best – it can be MUCH worse if you wait!), and it takes less time and effort to do it now before everything goes critical.

The big question is whether you are the kind of man who puts everything off and unnecessarily risks the future of his family by letting it fall into crisis before doing anything about it or if you are the kind of man who steps up and does what is necessary to keep his family – and himself – happy. So what kind of man are YOU?

If you’re the kind who sees the wisdom of fixing the little problems to keep them from getting big, or if you’re the kind who likes to fix them early but have been unable to find answers before things got bad, then you need to click over to http://www.makingherhappy.com right now and get your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and put things on the right track. If you’re the kind who puts things off until the last minute because you just don’t want to deal with them until you’re forced to, then I’ll be seeing you later, or if not me, your wife’s boyfriend, and probably her attorney. It’s your call; make it a good one!

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

Reader Responses to Emotional Scales and Testing in Relationships and Marriage

The last couple of days’ lessons have brought some great comments from readers that you can learn from, so here they are!

We’re going to do something a little different today. Some of my best students have shared comments over the last few days that are insightful and pertinent, but wouldn’t provide sufficient content for a whole newsletter, so I’m going to put them together here for you so that you may share their insights and hopefully have something “click” that may not have occurred to you.

Regarding article on testing from two days ago, the following paragraph was embedded in a status report from my top student:

“Great newsletter, by the way - if it isn't one of your “must read” reprints, it should be! The whole subject of testing is so critical that it can't be talked about too much. The key, I think, is to get men beyond the recognition of it [we all recognize it, whether we name it or explain it properly or not], and get us to understand that women aren't to be BLAMED for it, just understood. It would get rid of a lot of anger, but deny comedians a ton of material!

“Of course, it wouldn't hurt women to learn a bit about men and stop BLAMING us for things, either. So much of the relationship advice is of the "what men do wrong" type that it leaves women thinking they have to change their husbands or leave them - no alternatives. What a huge disservice to the women that is, not to mention the men. One of my favorite quotes from you is that people need to be concerned about WHAT'S the issue, not WHO'S to blame. Huge.”

He’s right. Blame is for losers; you NEVER see an achiever of either gender engaging in blame at any time. If you look at the people who are respected in the world on any level, they don’t try, they don’t blame, and they don’t wait. They DO. They simply see a problem, figure out what needs to be done, and get it done. The biggest favor you can do yourself in your entire life is to do the same thing, forget about trying, blaming, and waiting for others to act and take responsibility for what’s happening in your life. It’s only then that you can make it better. One of my favorite lines from a movie is when Yoda said to Luke Skywalker, “Do, or do not. There is no try.”

That doesn’t mean you should expect to do the impossible; a rational decision must be made about a solution before the solution is implemented. It means that once you’ve identified the problem, you take responsibility for whatever part of the outcome you can influence and you take appropriate action. For example:

You’re in a hypothetical marriage that started off too young and with the wrong person. The two of you have had a great sex life because there is been abundant attraction, but you’ve fought tooth and nail in all other aspects of your relationship because there is no real love, common values, common or shared goals and interests, etc., to give the rest of the relationship substance, and everything other than sex is a point of conflict. Your wife says she’s had enough and it’s time to move on. What do you do?

You take the only rational action available to you, and you take it quickly and fairly. You move on.

You don’t wait for things to get better, because compatibility problems don’t go away over time. You don’t make some heroic attempt to do the impossible, because it only causes more pain and resentment. You don’t blame her and go to war and punish her or allow her to punish you; it was a mutual mistake that requires cooperation to get out of without further pain and frustration, not to mention totally unnecessary escalated legal expenses. In a nutshell, you just do what must be done.

Second hypothetical situation: you’ve been married twenty years, your lives have revolved around your children, who left home a year or two ago, and the two of you have love, respect, trust, loyalty, and communicate better than most couples you know. But you’re not having fun. You’re in a rut of watching TV every night while you eat dinner, then the two of you go off to your computers to chat with friends or to other hobbies, and you go to bed without saying “good night” to the other whenever the mood to sleep strikes you. Your sex life amounts to one episode every month or two that can be described as “relief without gratification.” Your neighbor starts making advances toward you. What do you do?

Do you succumb to the temptation of the affair? No, because it’s a stupid move. Too easy for it to get out of control and get you caught. Any other affair has about the same probability of the same outcome.

Do you accept the realization that life could be more fun and hope that things get better? Also a stupid move. When was the last time you saw people ignoring their relationship problems and had the problems just fix themselves?

Do you blame your wife for the rut your in and wait for her to take the first action in making life fun again? Utterly ridiculous, given that it’s your job to lead the action because you’re wired to do it and she’s wired to respond to you doing it.

Do you just break it off and get a divorce? Throwing away genuine love is the most foolish and destructive act a person can inflict upon oneself, except for suicide.

So in a nutshell, you have a whole lot of options, but only one good one: Recognize that you have a great foundation for a lasting relationship, but have indeed fallen in a rut. Take responsibility for the rut, find out what it takes to get out, and get out! You may have to “try” a few things to see what helps get out of the rut, but there’s a big difference between experimenting with potentially fun things to help your relationship and failing to commit to fixing the relationship and following through. If you’re attitude and conviction are where they are supposed to be, you’re “trying” activities and solutions, not “trying” to fix the relationship; you’re FIXING the relationship.

This excerpt is from another of my top students:

“Your newsletters and e-book have helped immensely. I saw that I was a wuss. I couldn’t and wouldn’t make choices for a fear of hurting someone’s feelings. Now I make choices or give options and if someone says doesn’t matter, I make a choice and stand to it. I am still in the learning phase of reading my wife. She is a very independent woman and makes decisions without me. I have to learn how to deal with that. One of her hot buttons is the making a decision button. I have learned that when she says ‘it doesn’t matter’, she is testing me and she wants to be led and she wants to follow.”

He’s noticed that some things are simply a matter of choice and attitude, like decision-making, while other require some study. He’s mastered the principles and is now methodically looking everywhere for new opportunities to apply what he knows. Ultimately, he realized that success, self-improvement, and great relationships are not destinations, but journeys that can last a lifetime and take you places that the rest of the world doesn’t even know exist.

From a new student who rapidly went to a seat in the front row of the class, in response to my remark that “I have looked extensively and intensely for a downside to attractive behavior, and have failed utterly to find one”:

“Abso-friggin'-lutely. And we seem to exude that simply by expressing more of what it means to be human; for example, expressing anger or disapproval quickly, but in a calm, controlled, constructive manner...setting boundaries...
having self-respect, taking charge, leading, etc.”

I wish I had said that. Really. I’ve been trying to tell men for years, since long before I took up this project, that…

“…being human is something to which one should aspire, not something for which one should apologize…”

And that being an attractive male is all about doing those things that come naturally to men: leading, protecting, being deliberate and competent, not to mention confident, enjoying their life and being able to laugh at themselves and with everyone else, all with self-love and self-respect…

Yes, self-love is required! Those words cause altruists to cringe, but think back through your own life and identify even one person who was self-abusive that you wanted to be around, indeed, felt COMPELLED to be around (unless you were codependent, of course), and I’ll be thoroughly shocked, to say the least. That’s not to say that narcissism is an admirable trait, because it’s not; EXCESSIVE regard for anything is inherently unattractive, but a man must love himself enough to be able to respect himself before others can.

And one more quickie, because this newsletter is getting longer than some of you may have time to read, regarding the crying incident at the dinner party, after which I gave the crying woman a mug of hot chocolate after I…

“…shot some whipped cream on top of it and set it in front of the woman, who I knew to be a ‘chocoholic’ and very sensitive to the serotonin-boosting effects of the polyphenols in dark chocolate."

“Sir - you are a genius. Great newsletter, thanks.”

No, I’m not a genius, I’m just observant, and I take action where action is prescribed. When you know what a powerful comfort food chocolate is and that women respond simultaneously to the smell, taste, and feel of a mug of hot chocolate in addition to the powerful effect is has on the brain, being ready and able to quickly dispense some when there are women around is like keeping versatile tools like a hammer, flashlight, and screwdriver within easy reach in your home, something that every man does because it is his nature to make problems go away.

If you watch women, they have their tools, just like we do. They have things like their treasure box and chocolate to fight melancholia. They have gadgets for painting their faces and curling their hair and eyebrows, not to mention removing hair. They have tools like romance novels and chick-flicks to fight boredom and help them manage their hyperactive hormone pumps that can mess with their moods at inopportune times. They are masters of communication and social networking because they are driven to engage in it, and you’ll find they always have things like telephones, notepaper, stationery, etc., within easy reach of them, no matter where they are. A good look into a woman’s “tool box” can teach you a lot about women, if you have the sense to raise the lid and look.

There’s more, and I may continue this tomorrow, but I’ve noticed that many of you say you read this newsletter during coffee breaks at work so I make it a point to keep it short enough to be read in five minutes but long enough to make sure you can really learn something that can help you each day.

There is one other thing I’d like to point out in closing, and that is that all of my top students have a common characteristic: They seek out solid information and they act on it when they find it. They try different information sources, but they don’t try to make improvements or mix and match methods; they just do it.

Plato said, “Fortune favors the bold,” speaking of men of action, but if you’re like me, you don’t put much stock in “fortune” anyway. However, history is another matter, and while history also favors the bold, it seems to favor most THE PREPARED. And it makes perfect sense: The prepared are those who can be the boldest with the greatest chance of success.

So what about you? Are you blaming somebody for your problems? Or waiting for them to just go away? Or waiting for somebody else to fix them? Taking responsibility sounds tough, but in fact it’s the easiest thing in the world to do, because all it takes is a simple choice to seek appropriate action and take it. The decision is most often harder than the action itself.

So go on and make a choice, right here, right now, to make your marriage or committed relationship better and keep it that way. There’s no sense taking a bad trip when you can have a grand adventure, is there? Go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and then join us, the truly happy men of the world who know what men have always wanted and needed to know about women, and make your life one that you want to get out of bed every morning to live.

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

Understanding Our Emotional Scales: Another Key to a Great Relationship and Marriage

MUST READ: Men’s and Women’s emotional scales are calibrated very differently, and understanding how can literally make the difference in being happy and being divorced.

You know how seldom I put the words “MUST READ” in a title or summary, and I promise it will be worth your time to read this time, too.

If I could teach everyone on this planet only one thing above all others to help them get along better, not just in intimate, committed relationships, but in ALL inter-gender relationships, it would be a hard choice between compatibility, our difference in communication skills and protocols, and the difference in the structure of our emotional scales. Both are critical to getting along well, and if I had to choose one, I’d feel like I was being asked by King Solomon to cleave and split a child between three mothers, because the three are so indispensable; the absence of any of them spells disaster.

I discuss communication protocols and compatibility frequently, and today I want to focus on these emotional scales. One you your fellow readers contacted me in crisis a few weeks ago and now has his situation under control, thanks mainly to the understanding of these two points. (His attraction skills were already fairly strong and needed only minimal improvement once he realized he had let them slide.) He’s agreed to allow me to share excerpts from our discussions to help explain both the concept and how important it is to any relationship.

Here’s an excerpt from one of his status reports:

“...It quickly rolled into the ‘emotional scale’ speech (which you'll see later in this post), which she seemed to really listen to - I think it's starting to sink in, and makes sense to her. Taking it slow has allowed her to process that and buy-in piece by piece. Honestly, David, if that were your sole contribution to the world, you should be famous for it. I'm not sure of its origins, but it's absolutely brilliant. Applies to all men and women, and the only trick to applying it is to understand that each woman has different levels of tolerance and varying coping abilities. I was able to give her an awesome example for evidence - a fight we had years ago - that also included a basic communication problem as well, and one where she's always ‘fought to win,’ [instead of ‘fighting to get what’s right’] and never admitted her role in the thing. Tonight, her silence told me she's seeing it, or admitting it to herself. There were a few instances of her processing those things and allowing that she was partially at fault. Big step for her lately - she used to do it, but hasn't at all lately.”

An excerpt from my response, just for clarity:

“As for the emotional scale thing, that was my own, something I've noticed in working with all these women. I looked for weeks on Google and everywhere else for any mention of it, and never found it. I find it utterly absurd that the psychological community has either missed or ignored it, but the psych community is academian and mostly liberal by nature, and it's been a long time since pointing out any differences in men and women was ‘politically correct.’”

(That’s not a political slam against liberals, just a statistical view of relevant environmental conditions, so if you feel your buttons being pressed, stop; the comment is entirely benign.)

And here’s “the emotional scale speech,” as he called it, a suggestion I made to him for explaining to his wife why she had done some things that she was feeling very guilty for and why he had failed to recognize her problem and do something about it:

"I just read a thing about the difference between how men and women build, process, and prioritize emotions, and it sounded weird at first, but after looking back it makes a lot of sense. Our emotional scales are different, at least with regard to what we need to feel to be comfortable. My emotional scale or range runs from extreme negative to extreme positive, with neutral being in the middle of the scale.

“The female scale or range runs from neutral, or emotionless, to extremely emotionally charged, overwhelmed even, with little to no discrimination between positive and negative emotion. Both of us are most comfortable when we are just slightly 'to the right' of the middle of the scale, me feeling a little positive (too much positive makes a man irrational and silly) and you being just a little more emotionally charged than the center of your emotional range (too much emotion, positive or negative, with no way to vent it overloads you as well.)

“What's really interesting is that we act similar when we are at the same place on our scale. Being bored to you feels the same as being scared or angry feels to me: agitated, desperate, ready to do anything, even if it's wrong, to change the situation, and potentially irrational. We’re both very comfortable just a little to the opposite side of the center of the scale, and at the far right, we get irrational, overwhelmed, and don't know what to do next, and have a strong tendency to do the wrong thing because our inhibitions and discipline go right out the window.

“One of the points it brought out of that is that men are naturally a bit comfortable with emotional neutrality, at least for a short time, while it is downright torturous for a woman. I never realized it was such an issue until I read that, and now that I know, I'll never let a woman be bored in my presence again, because I won't see someone tortured like that."

A couple of weeks have passed since that discussion, and it has apparently really produced understanding, some forgiveness, and cooperation where none was possible before. His last comment follows:

“You've really, really got to get that ‘emotional scale’ idea out there - everyone will steal it, but if you put some marketing behind it, you can retain credit as the source. Maybe there's a visual you could create so it instantly made sense to those who see it.”

That’s quite an accolade, having a reader see something as so important as to want to protect the author’s ownership of a concept that he paid to learn. Think about that for a minute…it would take some pretty significant results to convert a “reader” into a “disciple” in any case, would it not?

By the way, the graphic is pretty easy (comfort zone is at the “+” symbol):


Learn this concept and keep it in the front of your mind at all times. Recognize when the women in your life are bored, and try to do something about it whenever and however it’s appropriate. You’ll find yourself attaining a sort of hero status among them, and triggering a lot of appreciation, cooperation, and nurturing. A coworker will watch your back and try to help you out, a friend will be more attentive and supportive, and your partner will reward you with the relationship of your dreams, as long as you don’t blow it by engaging in wussy, deceitful, or abusive behavior.

How do you do something about it? Sometimes a kind or funny word or two will do it, sometimes a smile, sometimes a surprise or even an adventure. It varies from woman to woman, mood to mood, and setting to setting, and there is no laundry list that will get you through. If you need a rule of thumb that will fit all situations, here it is:

“Attraction is any and every woman's ultimate salvation from boredom.”

There is nothing bad that can come from just being a confident, fun leader at any time and many great things that can come from it, so if you’re doing what you should be doing as a man, no woman will ever be able to be bored while you’re around. But your partner deserves more, right? She’s the one you share everything with, and the one you’re trying to fix things for so you can spend the rest of your life with her. For her, you must learn more about women: what they want, what makes them tick, how to listen to and understand them, how to speak to them, and what flips their attraction switches, among other things.

Are you a guy who likes a single source to fill in a whole lot of gaps? I certainly do; the older I get, the more I try to find ways of simplifying everything. If simplifying your life sounds good to you – and you won’t believe how much having a great relationship with your partner will simplify your life until you actually experience it – then you need to jump over to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and get up to speed, fast and easy, and start clearing some of the relationship clutter, nuisances, and even disasters out of your life.

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

Want to Put an End to Fights in Your Relationship and Marriage? Here's How...

A progress report from a female reader proves yet again that personal authority and leadership get results in your relationship and marriage.

I got a letter from an old and dear friend that I want to share with you. She’s not what anyone could call a pessimist or skeptic, just a woman with a logical mind who needs to see proof in her own life before anything can progress from “theory” to “fact” in her own mind. Meet Halle:

David,

Okay, so I've been reading your newsletter for a while now, and of course, I've read your book, but I still wasn't 100% buying into some of your “theories” (don’t spank me, you know how I am about this stuff!)... but my current relationship is slowly but surely striking down each and every one of my "objections." I wanted to tell you about the most recent one.

I've been dating this guy for about 4 months ... we have progressed VERY slowly due to a combination of work schedules (both very busy) and our combined set of "baggage," which, although small enough to fit neatly in the overhead compartment or underneath the seats in front of us, is still sufficient to cause us each to slam on the brakes every now and then. So after 4 months, we've JUST had our first "argument."

It wasn't a particularly bad one by any stretch of the imagination, but due to the late (or rather, EARLY hour - it was about 3 AM), it did go downhill towards the end. I was having a very hard time articulating what I was trying to say, which resulted in several long, uncomfortable silences -- never a good thing when you're having a discussion in a dark room at 3 AM. At one point, I got upset because he was nodding off, so I got up and went into the bathroom.

Actually, to be honest, I probably did more of a "storm" into the bathroom - and closed the door loudly so that he would hear it. He did hear the door close, which jarred him out of his nodding off, and he yelled through the door, "Do NOT get up and walk out on this conversation. If you've got something to say, SAY IT. It's late and I'm tired, so let's get this settled and MOVE ON!" Now, my first reaction was to think, "How DARE he talk to me like that? Who does he think he is?? Talking to me like I'm a bratty little kid and he's my father ... the NERVE!"

But the truth is ... I WAS being bratty. It took about 7 seconds for me to realize that, and his tone of voice was what did it. In theory, I would have told you that an authoritative attitude would NOT have worked to snap me out of any negative behavior patterns ... it sounds like something that just wouldn't work for me. In theory, I would have told you that kind of tone of voice and those words would have hurt my feelings or made me cry ... or just made me mad ... but it didn't.

That one statement was all it took to straighten my ass out! :-) The fact is, I was subconsciously testing him to see what I could get away with, and to see if he was man enough to stand up to me and pull me back in line. I think he's the first man in my life who's ever talked to me that way ... and he's probably the first REAL man that I've ever been in love with. It should be interesting to see where this relationship goes ...

Thanks for your advice and your perspective -- I continue to be amazed at how RIGHT you are!!! :-)

Halle

My response:

Well, Sweetie, I thought you knew me better than to think I would indulge in anything that was merely a theory. That would amount to selling people the privilege of testing my theories in that book, which I would call “theft by fraud,” among other things.

I wasn’t kidding about the 118 couples who helped in the research of this book, nor was I theorizing about anything that is in it. That’s the result of working with all those couples and quite a few more after the first edition of the book, and one of the first things that became immediately obvious in doing so was that what women think and say they want and what they respond to are quite often very different, and even opposite, like wanting a “nice guy.”

In any case, I’m glad it’s helping. It will help a lot more if you just accept what you read in that book and seek understanding, benefit, and protection from your vulnerabilities through it. I’m not saying, “Trust me.” I’m saying, “It’s been proven beyond any reasonable doubt through application on a significant scale.” You’ll find it quite empowering to be able to prepare for the unexpected and dispatch most if not all of those secret fears that every woman is programmed to have throughout her life, which is the main reason I wanted you to have it.

Take care, and keep in touch,
David

You see, Gentlemen, what I keep telling you isn’t theory at all. It’s the result of studying and interviewing real people with real problems and making adjustments that brought real successes in their relationships. Some people are good at visionary things, like inventing or composing. Others are good at organizing things. Still others are good at following instructions and consistently producing a quality result. I’m good at studying cause and effect and developing operational models, policies, procedures, and at using these things to manage and eliminate crisis, not to mention PREVENT it.

That’s how "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" came to be. My relationship with my wife was cooling after a couple of years, and I had a lot of friends whose relationships were somewhere between “strained” and divorce court. I started researching, found a lot of good information (by filtering through and trying a lot of BAD information!) that was making fast improvements in my own relationship, and knew that it was so universal in nature that if it could work for me it could probably work for a lot of other people.

I contacted my troubled friends and invited them to participate in a study and to contact their own friends with problem relationships and invite them in as well. We ended up with 118 couples, plus my own relationship, and all of us found major improvements, literally returning to honeymoon status: being fully engaged instead of going our separate ways after dinner, indulging in romance regularly, holding hands when we walked somewhere and talking about anything and everything with renewed interest, and returning to a satisfying sex-life after having slipped into that “the average couple has sex six times per year” status.

The best news of all is that the key to much of it is to start aspiring – or resuming -- to be a man instead of apologizing for being one. Can you remember how much fun it is to just be a guy? Can you even remember back that far? Were men still acting like men when you came into adulthood, or did you grow up in the age of political correctness and men crying in front of their women because some New Age idiot had told them that’s what women want?

Women want men, real men, manly men who do manly things. Not thugs, not predators or parasites, and although you couldn’t convince one of it until she’d tried it, not metrosexuals, either, because they end up being girlfriends to shop with instead of men. They want a real man with a real purpose and a real smile, who can protect them from their worst enemy, boredom.

They want more than that, but you’re going to have to go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and get your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" to find out exactly what that is and how to make it happen. You’d better do it now, because every day that passes is another day that you get to spend either happy or unhappy, and you don’t have any idea how many you have left. Neither do I, but even if it were millions more, I’d much prefer to spend them in a great relationship than in misery wishing I could have my great relationship back.

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

Cheating in Relationships and Marriage, Part 1, It's a Symptom, Not a Problem

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Her primary reason for being in the chat rooms is to combat that terrible boredom that grips women when their man isn’t creating enough attraction for them, which is good news for him, because it means he certainly can fix it, UNLESS SOMEBODY IN A CHAT ROOM HAS CREATED ATTRACTION ALREADY, in which case he will have to compete with the new guy and while not impossible, it is VERY difficult to catch up. I cannot overstress this. But as I’ve told you before if you’ve been with me for a while, because the chat rooms, excessive phone use, and affairs, both emotional and purely sexual, are all symptoms of the same problem, BOREDOM, solving that problem eliminates ALL of the symptoms that are or may become present.

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

Let me be perfectly clear on something here, spending a few minutes a few times a week to check in on friends by phone, e-mail, instant messaging or in chat rooms is not cause for alarm; even a little while each day is not excessive. Women are social creatures and if they become cut off from the rest of the world, as is common in new relationships and with young children, she will find a way to maintain a social circle, no matter what. HOWEVER, if the majority of the day that she has available to spend with you is spent avoiding you and seeking the company of others, it’s a problem, and no different than if she’s disappearing every evening to socialize or even have sex with someone else. Luckily, it’s a problem you can fix, and if you haven’t let it run on to the point she’s done with you (which WILL happen if some other man creates attraction for her – it’s a double-edged sword, and a powerful one!), she’ll be more than willing to let you -- or even help you – to fix it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Can't You Just Let Me Feel Bad for Awhile?" -- Understanding Female Emotions in Relationships and Marriage

Sometimes women say they want to feel bad, and it drives us absolutely nuts, because we don’t. What’s happening, and what can you do about it?

As you might guess, the women in my life (wife, mother, sister, friends, readers, etc.) are usually a great source for material for these newsletters, as are their husbands and boyfriends and my male friends on occasion. One such occasion was one day while she was having her lunch and was watching television.

My wife, and a lot of other women, because they are inherently attracted to anything where they can see authority figures, will watch just about anything that has a cop, a lawyer or judge, a pilot, or a doctor in it. (They also like mysteries because they enjoy the anticipation and suspense, so take the hint!)

I walked into our living room to join my wife for lunch as the end of an old episode of “Judging Amy” was on television, and saw a woman jump off the ledge of a tall building after letting her daughter loose to run to the judge. My wife says that Judge Amy had refused to alter a custody agreement due to lack of evidence, and said that the woman had contrived the “drama of the issue” as part of an ongoing fight. Witnesses has described her as “paranoid,” and “dramatic” during the proceeding.

The scene then changes to Judge Amy sitting in front of a fire in the dark drinking something that looked like Scotch on the rocks and her mother, the social worker, walks in looking concerned and sits down, and starts telling Amy how the woman was unstable, she’d made the right decision, sounding very much like a man would sound under the circumstances. (There’s nothing masculine about Tyne Daly, even in her “golden years,” but there are times when her character is quite direct and masculine, but in a matronly kind of way.)

Amy interrupts her by saying, “Mom, I feel bad because something bad happened today. Can’t you just let me feel bad for awhile?”

Yes, that sounds crazy because no man would ever say something like that, unless of course he was pretty effeminate, but I would bet the farm that eight out of ten men reading this will have heard a woman say that at one time or another because I’ve heard eight out of ten of the women I’ve ever known well enough to want them to feel better say it. Why?

It’s that same problem of our differing emotional scales. (See this article for details.) Ours runs from negative to positive, with neutral in the middle, while a woman’s runs from zero to extreme without a lot of discrimination between positive and negative. They would prefer to feel good over bad if handed the choice of two doses of equal intensity, but there are times when a woman has a choice between feeling a little good and really bad that she’ll choose to feel really bad just to feel SOMETHING intensely. Again, why?

We both tend to stay near the middle of our emotional scales, which is our comfort zone. Men don’t like to stray too far from neutral in either direction. Feeling bad creates an urgent need to fix something, while feeling too good makes us irrational (it will be a long time before the world forgets Alan Greenspan’s words, “irrational exuberance” and the fallout from that) or makes us paranoid, wondering so intensely when the good time is going to fall apart that we cause it to fall apart.

Women, on the other hand, have a higher level of emotional involvement and energy at the middle of their scale, and if they go too low, they get bored (and start exhibiting a lot of the same behavior we exhibit when we’re at the low end of our scale – scared, hurt or angry – including in extreme cases nausea, trembling, disorientation, feeling of desperation, etc.), or if they go too high on the scale, they tend to get irrational and get lost in the emotional overload, unable to return to the middle of the scale until they bleed off that excess emotional energy.

So what does this have to do with Amy? She was trying to bleed off that excess emotional energy by just experiencing it and letting it burn her out and make her bored with the issue to sufficient degree that she could get back in balance, recentered, and refocused. So what does this mean to you?

First, that when one of the women in your life is feeling bad, giving her logical, rational reasons why she should feel good isn’t going to do anything but frustrate her. She’s not stupid, and she likely already knows most or all of the reasons available to feel good and has tried thinking about them. Throwing them in her face is the equivalent of telling her she’s too stupid to think of something like that herself.

Logic and reason can very rarely be used to bring a woman out of a heightened emotional state unless you are a very strong leader, so with a low chance of success and a high risk of insulting her and royally pissing her off, just don’t go there until you have mastered alpha male leadership and can jolt her out of her distress with a strong, alpha male maneuver that will cause a massive and rapid bleed-off of all that emotion. As a novice, there are really only two things you can do.

The first is to do as Amy asked, and just let her get through it. Be supportive if you can without acting like you’re trying to be a father or coddle her; otherwise just let it go. Or, there’s a better option, if you’re a pretty strong leader…

In some circumstances, especially when she’s feeling bad about something that happened to somebody else, such as a friend’s mother dying (as opposed to her own), you can convert that negative energy to positive energy by finding something utterly outrageous to do to distract her, and when she acts pissy and says something like, “Can’t you see I’m upset?” you just turn it up another notch with something like, “Do you think I’d be acting this ridiculous if I couldn’t?” and crack the big naughty grin.

She might smack you a good one, but she’ll be pouting and smiling at the same time, a sign that you’ve won, so keep it up and lead her out. If however, she says something like, “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I’m just going to have to get past this myself,” give her a hug and tell her that you’ll be somewhere doing whatever you’re going to be doing when she’s over it or if she wants to talk.

Be perfectly clear on this point: You can lead her if she wants to be lead, but you cannot force her out of a bad mood or pain, so forget any notions you have to the effect of “I have to save her or die trying.” No, you don’t, and if you try to save her when she doesn’t want to be saved you’ll just make her mad. Besides, as her partner, your job is protection and nurturing, not salvation. Some would say that’s the job of religion, not men; I say it’s the job of the person needing saved. In any case, give her the respect of assuming that she can save herself when she’s ready and will at most let you help a bit. Women who can’t save themselves from their problems aren’t partners; they’re dependents, just like men who can’t save themselves.

As I’ve been saying, lessons are everywhere if you look for them. Some of us are better at identifying them and organizing them than others, and we tend to be counselors, trainers, consultants, and teachers. I’m all of the above, and an author as well, so you lucked out!

I’ve put a whole lot of these kind of lessons in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," so go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy right now and have the benefit of all the testing and experience that went into it now, while it’s easier to do something with it than after everything blows up in your face. (You can fix it after the blow up, but why do it the hard way when you have an easier choice???)

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

The Final Lesson in the King Arthur Contest, One That ALWAYS Makes for a Great Relationship and Marriage

We’ve reached the contest deadline, and It’s my sad duty to report that we don’t have another winner, but tune in for the greatest lesson of all!

Our King Arthur and the Witch contest is over, and there were several entries, most of which were pretty good and a few that were excellent. Some of you are quite the philosopher, submitting observations that were totally off-topic but still quite astute!

I’m also quite proud to report that there was still not a single lame entry, which holds a couple of lessons in itself: “it is far better to be silent and thought a fool than to speak up and remove all doubt,” and “When you don’t know, don’t try to fake it; listen and learn from those who do know!”

There are lessons everywhere you look if you take the time to seek them out. Many people just go through each day doing whatever it takes to get to the end of the day without looking for the lessons each situation has to teach. That’s a recipe for stagnation and failure.

One of the wisest men I ever knew told me something very early in my career about both life and business that I will never forget: “If you’re not growing, you’re dying.” You grow by seeking out lessons to learn, right?

Yeah, I know, shut up and give you the lesson that was missed! See, it’s that kind of impatience that drives women into the arms of the gardener, milk man, pool boy, etc. You need to learn the value of anticipation, yet another lesson found where you weren’t looking for it.

Okay, time for the real lesson, as submitted by a 2006 winner:

Hi David,

The biggest lesson I saw is contained in the latter half of the story. The Witch is a real witch, until a man makes her happy, and then she is compelled to make him happy. I’ve noticed in several of your newsletters that you say “If mama ain’t happy, nobody’s happy, and if mama is happy, everybody’s happy.” That’s the lesson, so I win too!

Max

Yepper, Max won because he spotted the biggest lesson of all, and the reason behind my choice of domain name, “makingherhappy.com.” (And I must commend you all for behaving honorably, because it’s obvious that nobody went to my newsletter archive and looked up the winning answer from last year, but that’s the only time you’ll ever hear me compliment you for not taking advantage of that archive!)

I get a lot of flack from some guys (who speak before they read or think) about how I’m promoting ass-kissing and pandering to a woman’s whims by having a web site with that name. In a nutshell, they’re idiots. Lancelot didn’t pander to the witch at all. He did nothing more than empower her to do something that she already had every right to do and was entirely capable of doing it. Other than that, he was just being himself.

Real women are the same way! They don’t want us to pander to their whims, cater to them, etc. They want us to stand up and act like men, like leaders, like the guys we were born to be, and break up their boredom and tension with a witty remark or adventure of some sort from time to time. They want us to listen to them speak and take them seriously when they’re serious, not join in on their drama and help them to drown in it.

They want us to tell them when they’re being a brat and unreasonable, and help them snap out of it and get back to being happy and having fun. Their emotional nature is at times their greatest strength and at others their greatest weakness, and part of our job as men is to help them keep it from hurting them.

When we do our job, we get rewarded with all the fun, nurturing, respect, loyalty, friendship, and support they can muster – they’re biologically wired to do it, so you needn’t worry about wasting what little time and effort it takes to go back to being yourself and shedding all that man-killing programming we all received in the 80’s that had many of us sitting on the couch watching chick flicks and crying.

So there you have it. More or less a dozen good lessons for men about women and life from a simple joke that may have never been intended to do anything but make somebody laugh. Valuable lessons are everywhere, if you take the time to look for them.

Speaking of which, I can save you a whole lot of time, because I’ve got a book for you full of valuable lessons, the combined experience of several hundred couples and my own. Go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and see what other of life’s great lessons about women, committed relationships, and marriage you have been missing. Here endeth the lesson… ;-)

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

Some Winners in Our Contest, Obviously on Their Way to Great Relationships and Marriage. Learn from Them!

I’ve received only one response so far this year in our contest from the King Arthur and the Witch story that is worthy of winning a prize, so I’m extending the contest for more winners to enter!

For those of you joining us late, in Wednesday’s edition (scroll downa and catch up if you need to), I announced a contest for the best lessons from that story that readers could pick out and submit, because it was full of them.

I’m disappointed to say that I’ve received only one mentionable response to this contest so far this year, because in years past, there have been some very insightful comments made by some of you. I’m going to print the winners from the last two years here because they are quite brilliant, and I’m also going to extend the contest for another day or two so if I receive any more really good ones before the deadline Sunday night at midnight, Mountain Time, the submitter will still get the prize. Get a load of these:

Hi David!

Yes I loved the story too! You did bring out some amazing points and very possibly the most important ones.
I have a few you may find interesting as well. I think one very understated one but is so easily overlooked in many, many stories is the Ugly Swan.

Yes everyone else saw the "old crone", what a sacrifice it would be, etc., etc. Something which could be very easily overlooked is she obviously had the potential to be WHATEVER she chose at any moment all along. She, or any woman is perfectly capable of being as beautiful or as "crony" as she wants at ANY time.

Let's face it, we have all had relationships where the lady we couldn't be without, "turns" in to a waspish, mean, nagging crone we can't wait to be away from. Little realizing WE kept pushing her in that direction because we weren't being the man she needed. Responsibility can be a tough taskmaster unless we relish and see it for the liberating force it can truly be. I don't have your course but from the emails I've seen from you a lot of the principles are perfect for turning your crone back in to your queen.

Another part of this is it illustrates the women could very well be a cackling witch simply waiting for a real man to lead and allow her to be the woman she really wants to be all the time. How many "bitches", sorry for that, are really simply screaming for help, for a real man to stand up and say it like it is so she can relax, breathe and enjoy truly being herself? And making the man who reached her the luckiest guy this side of heaven in all the ways he never even imagined? Look out and make sure your health is tip-top because you're in for a ride buddy!

You can also learn from this story people will rarely tell you the real reasons why they do something. I am reading "Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion" by Robert Cialdini and this is brought out in many ways where people consistently never see the reasons why they acted why they did and even refused to accept those reasons when directly confronted with them. If asked, many women will say they want the wussie, fawning, put me on a pedestal little boy. But their actions, romance novels, magazine stories and certain movies all say something completely different.

Choosing your sources of information is absolutely crucial. We may not like or be afraid of finding out because if we do it will mean we will have to take responsibility and OWN it. That can be a very scary thing especially if we are already having confidence issues. It can seem like your being asked to throw yourself down and asking someone to kick you. That's not the case at all because when you find the answers you need, see them make the changes you want and create the excitement, the thrill you want so terribly in your relationship, you'll treasure that moment for life.

I could go on but this is already long so I will close and say THANK YOU for all of your great emails.
I truly believe if people would just act on the emails alone it would give them a HUGE leg up on creating the success they want in their relationships. It just boggles the mind to think what it would be like putting your emails together with your book.

Sleep soundly and enjoy knowing you are reaching a great many more people and making a difference whether they say so or not. I will take this time as well to again say thank you and I look forward to all your emails. They are very special in every way. Just like you.

Thank You Very, Very MUCH!!

Sincerely,

Dave (2006 winner)

Dave is obviously an achiever, and very insightful. I expect he’ll be a full-fledged “disciple” as soon as he finishes reading "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and “Break-Up Busting 101.” And by the way, he’s right; the content of these newsletters means a lot more to those who have read my book. They’re like continuing education lessons for them.

Now check out Karl, who’s letter clearly demonstrates the appropriate attitude for a real man and achiever:

Hi David,

The best lesson in the story is in the first paragraph - That being: If you can't figure something out for yourself, ask someone who CAN figure it out. It's worked a treat for me.

I win,

Karl. (2006 winner)

Karl entered expecting to win, and said so! Also notice that he placed a period after his name in closing, emphasizing that his is the last word on the subject, something you see in very confident personalities. Not everyone who comes to me is a wuss; some are very manly men who need help understanding women, others who need help communicating with them. Many are very manly men who have been led to believe that they need to act wussy in order to get on with women. All of them are getting help, because they’re taking Karl’s lesson one step further:

To deal with something they can’t figure out for themselves, they’re asking someone who has already figured it out, tested it, and succeeded with it, then went on to help others succeed with it, the very definition of a trusted source of information for those who know how to recognize it. Which brings me to an entry that I couldn’t have made up if I’d tried, and made me laugh so hard that I had to send him one just for the laugh. Meet Paul (who by the way, is a VERY important guy for reasons I can’t divulge without violating his privacy, but if any of you single ladies are in the NYC area, I really should introduce you to him, so e-mail me at support@makingherhappy.com and I’ll pass your address along to him):

Hello David,

I gather the lesson is as follows:

When your questions go unanswered and something is not working after a year and many people are advising you about a suggestion take their advice and spend whatever the advice will cost. Example: In this case many people advised King Arthur to seek the advice of the Old Witch, however Arthur felt the price would be too high and wasted precious time. How to relate this to today's time: When David is doling out terrific advise and your marriage is in the rut and all it cost is about what you would pay for a couple of movies and popcorn or beer and cigarettes then stop wasting time and purchase and read "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage." and save your Marriage.

PS David, if this entry wins, as I am still single, please donate your copy to next e-mail that you receive from someone whose marriage is on the rocks

Kindest Regards
Paul (2007’s winner)

As I told Paul, many of my readers have said that this book should be required reading in high school because in addition to helping you fix problems, it does a great job of preparing you to FIND that one in a million relationship that can be an effortless, happy, and life-long marriage. He’s single, and by the time he gets to the end of this book, he’ll be ready to find happiness in what I suspect is one of the world’s richest concentrations of high-quality single women, New York City.

And now, 2008’s only winner so far,

Hello, David,

I found several lessons. Like you, I am an Objectivist. So I saw Lancelot trade his single life for life with a crone because he would not choose to live without Arthur as king, just as a man might trade his single life for life with any woman because he would not choose to live without someone to lead, protect, and provide for, recognizing that there are benefits in both single and married life, some of which are mutually exclusive, and having the guts to make a decision about which he wanted and stick to it.

I saw that there is a lot of free information around, and that not much of it is useful. “Common sense” is today a misnomer. “Uncommon sense much more accurately describes what common sense used to refer to, the ability to think through something to a good conclusion or remedy. There are always people around ready to give free advice, and most of them are merely parroting what they’ve heard others say with no idea of whether it works, or else telling you what they’ve done that didn’t work, but they think it should have and are looking for personal validation through your success where they failed, rather than hoping that you succeed.

Another thing that I noticed was that Lancelot went through with the wedding, and was going to go through with the honeymoon consummation as well. Just as many real men try to make the best of any situation without complaint. He “steeled” himself, instead of whining and lying about a headache or some other ailment.

And the part that struck me most was that he trusted his wife to make a decision if she had the guts to make it. I personally would never trust any decision a woman made after consulting a dozen girlfriends, because girlfriends are often too good at persuading other women to do something that is not in their best interest purely for the sake of drama, but I would trust a woman who would skip the drama and realize the gravity of the situation to make the best decision she was capable of and be open to discussing and negotiating it afterward.

Thanks in advance for the book!
Joel

I really don’t think I can or should add anything to Joel’s comments. His points struck me as self-evident as I read them. Joel has been subscribing for a couple of weeks, and we’ve corresponded a bit. He is another guy who has no trouble being a man, but has some issues with evaluating women and relationships and communicating. He’s having to work a bit at growing tolerant of the indirect communications style his wife uses, because he’s hyper-analytical and efficiency-oriented and therefore driven to take the shortest path to anything, but he’s getting there, and he’ll get there a lot faster now with my book in his head.

So what about the rest of you? What lessons do you see that haven’t already been disclosed? There are still a few, and you’ll recognize them when pointed out after midnight if not before, but try to dig them out and send them in because I’m still inclined to award another copy if someone spots the one really super lesson that has yet to be reported. And if you don’t see one…

…take it as proof that you need to step up your efforts to learn and go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage". It is THE man’s guide to a great relationship, and I’m seriously thinking about retitling it as such because it really reflects the true scope and purpose of the book. Any comments on that subject from any of you who have read it will be welcomed.

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 charged.

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 scenes, 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 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.

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 if the man is strong and exciting enough. It’s a matter of biological wiring, just like their more-sophisticated communications skills, responding to 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, 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.

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 Tuesday, August 22, 2008. I held this contest last year, 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

Women's Replies to How Feminism Destroyed Real Men and Beating the Politics of Relationships and Marriage

Some women responded to yesterday’s quote of Nirpal Dhaliwal’s “How Feminism Destroyed Real Men,” and guys, you’d better pay attention!

The responses to yesterday’s newsletter were enlightening and entertaining, to say the least. I’m going to break from tradition and let the ladies do most of the talking today, because what they had to say is both valid and valuable.

Let’s start with Peggy, a divorced mother who made a career change to be near her son who is serving in the military who has written before and always has something brilliant and insightful to add to our discussions:

David,

I couldn't agree more with the article.

There are a couple of stories I would like to share involving my ex-husband. He remains my best friend; but we divorced because of his infidelity. He became extremely depressed over a two-year period after losing his job in Saudi Arabia. His whining about how "unfair" life was caused me to feel nothing but pity for him. He advanced into a more depressed state and became slothful in his appearance. He did little around the house and didn't even venture out to look for work.

There was no way this pathetic creature was getting anywhere near me. His depressed condition caused him problems in the bedroom. I was working one full-time job and two part-time and I totally lost respect for him.

I'm glad to report that he is now working and we remain good friends. The point is the "emotion" of his despair is what turned me off. If he had said, "I don't know how I'll get through this or when; but I will," I would have worked the extra jobs as long as necessary.

Two of my favorite stories concerning my ex. One Saturday I was cleaning the bathroom toilet. He called for me and I answered "I'm cleaning the bathroom". He said, "Something so beautiful should not be bent over cleaning the toilet. From now on, I have toilet duty." That meant more to me than five dozen roses and a hundred boxes of chocolate!

Another cherished memory: One cold winter’s evening, I started the car and heard a loud thump. I got out and to my horror, discovered the neighbor’s kitten had been inside the engine. I'm an animal lover and ran inside crying and told my husband what had happened. He said, "There is no way you could have known, just go tell her." I said, "Please don't make me go." He then went to the neighbor, buried the kitten, and told me the neighbor was fine and understood completely.

That evening the attraction was so strong, I almost attacked him. He said, "If you kill anymore kittens, just come get me!"

I think these stories support the author's point.

Keep up the good work!
Peggy

They do indeed, and they support some things I’ve been telling you gentlemen for a long time. For starters, women know that drama sometimes gets the best of them and they get caught up in the emotion of crisis, and when that happens, they want a man who is strong enough to cut through the drama and lead the charge out of the crisis instead of a man who gets caught up in the drama, wusses out, and wants to turn into a girlfriend or an object of pity.

Also notice that in spite of infidelity and problems, they remained friends. A divorce is a declaration of irreconcilable differences, not a declaration of war, and it can be handled with reason and dignity if those involved simply choose to handle it appropriately.

What do you see in the “toilet duty” story? What was the cause of Peggy’s happiness? Was it flattery? No. Was it being told that she was beautiful? Hell no. Was it the fact that she didn’t have to clean toilets anymore? Hell no, again. It was the fact that he recognized her effort, appreciated it, and found a rather poetic way of announcing that he was going to join in and help out. It was shocking, bigger than life, and delightful, and there’s a word for that: ROMANTIC. And yes, romance is indeed where you find it, even in the toilet. ;-)

What about the kitten story? He could have been afraid to face the neighbor like she was, or could have been a jerk and just said, “you made the mess, you fix it.” But, recognizing that she was genuinely distraught because she was an animal lover, had killed an animal, and didn’t want to be the one to hurt the neighbor with the bad news if they were also an animal lover like she was, he took the heroic leader’s role and just handled it. She could have done it, and would have if she lived alone, but he saved her from a pain that she didn’t want to inflict on someone else. Being heroic is highly attractive, but being sensitive enough to recognize the real reason behind a woman’s emotions and respond to that is a super-aphrodisiac that amplifies the heroism a hundred-fold.

Now let’s hear from Margaret:

Hi David,

I thoroughly enjoyed that article and would like to comment. Cheating on his wife notwithstanding, this young man is wise beyond his years. I rather envy his wife. He may be a pain in the neck sometimes, but she’ll certainly never be bored.

Margaret

Okay guys, remember what I said about boredom after hearing it from several hundred women? Boredom is their worst enemy, and a man who acts like a man is anything but boring. Add to that the sensitivity that comes from good communications skills, compatibility, and a good understanding of women and you’ve got a recipe for a happy relationship that will last a lifetime.

Susan, another regular, had this to say:

Hello David,

Another great newsletter. My husband read this and his only comment was, “Why did she stay with him if he cheated on her?” He’s such a moron sometimes, and I’d give anything if I could get him to read your book. I bought it and he refuses to look at it, and it’s about to cost him dearly, because I’ve about had it. Anyway, it was obvious to me that she stayed with him because he has that one-in-a-million personality that makes a woman feel alive, and she missed having that feeling. There’s no other explanation for the sex they had when he came back. He may think he was in control, but she wanted it more than she wanted to breathe.

If I would have been her, I wouldn’t have kicked him out. I would have gone after her and made sure she didn’t come back around. When I finally find that feeling again I’ll not let anything or anybody get between it and me.

Susan

Are you paying attention here guys? These women are literally handing you the keys to the universe; I hope the message is getting through. If not, here’s Gina with a last attempt to open your eyes and ears:

Hello again, David!

Did this author read your book? I’m kidding, of course. No man who read your book would be cheating on his wife. But he understands a lot about us, in spite of saying that a man shouldn’t try to understand a woman, which is crap. A man doesn’t need to understand us so he can make excuses for us, but he certainly does need to understand us to know when to listen to us and when to tell us to “go tell it to a girlfriend.” As you say, maybe he’ll grow wiser as he grows older. Maybe he will end up reading your book after all! LOL!

Best wishes, and thanks again for all you’ve done for us,
Gina

There’s more, but if you’re not getting the message by now you’re not going to get it. Women aren’t stupid. Whether they were actively involved in Dhaliwal’s alleged “feminist conspiracy” or not, they recognize that they miss the men of old just as much as we miss being the men of old. It’s time to rise from the ashes of wussitude and be the man you were born to be. All it takes is to shed some long-standing bad programming…

…and if you want to kick it up a few notches, you can add inter-gender communications skills and a thorough understanding of women to the mix and be the guy that every woman wants and yours will kill for. Interested?

If so, it’s easier than you’d ever dream. A few hours reading and studying to gain understanding, and a lifetime of applying what you’ve learned, and having fun and reward as you do it. Want me to twist your arm a little harder?

Okay, just go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” and get started. Or do you want to stick with what you have now, the unexplained fights, the bedroom boredom, the frustration and isolation, or maybe it’s the confusion when she gives you “that look” and stomps out of the room that you enjoy so much…

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

A Woman Lives Briefly As a Man, and Here Is the BIG Relationship and Marriage Lesson For All to Learn From Her Experience

Part 2 of 2: EXCLUSIVE MUST READ! A female reader gets an accidental overdose of testosterone and spends a couple of weeks feeling what many men feel every day, and there are lessons for all in her experience! Yesterday we studied the letter, and today I show you what you should have seen…

I’ve waited as long as I can to publish this edition because I was really hoping to hear from someone who saw the most important lesson to be had here, but I’ve not yet. However, I will say that based on the answers to surveys and other questions, many editions, even the ones marked “urgent” or “must read,” don’t get read for several days or until the weekend because we’re all getting too busy for our own good, so I’m not going to construe this to mean anything more than that the majority of people simply haven’t had the time to read and think about it yet.

In case you missed yesterday’s edition, here’s a letter from a reader who, in a nutshell, got an accidental overdose of testosterone in her hormone replacement therapy dosage and got to spend several days being influenced by it as a man does, especially young men, and there is a glaring lesson for all men embedded in her response. If you’ve already read it, skip past it to the commentary that follows to discover one of the most important things you’ll ever learn about women.

Dear David,

All my life I have heard people say if you could walk a mile in someone else’s shoes you would not be so fast to judge them. I have to tell you of such an experience that has proven this to me, and this was so serious I felt like I should share part of it with you. I will be giving you only a small portion of what I went through, but I hope it will be enough that you will understand that I really know what it feels like to be a man.

I’m 40 years old, had a hysterectomy twelve years ago, and a few weeks ago I went to see my gynecologist about a problem I was having with my hormone levels. Every time I was tested my hormones were lower than the doctor felt they should be, and he made such a big deal of it that I became concerned and made the choice to let the doctor give me strong shot to see if this could get me back on the right track. In doing so I was given a very large dose of testosterone, which turned my body totally opposite of what I had ever been before. I started to view life on a whole new level.

It started out with me looking for sex everywhere. I was suddenly looking at every man I saw and some women as possible sex partners, and I had never done this, especially toward women! I thought at first I was going crazy. I would sit and look at them and could play out in my head all the thoughts I was having about them and what I could imagine we could do together.

I was also terribly aggressive and easily angered, wanting to get into fights with people who would piss me off and I never wanted to do that before, ever! For example during all this I was pulled over by a policeman and was given a ticket. Now most of the time I would cry or flirt or do whatever I had to get out of it and for the most part that would work for me, but this time all I wanted to do is punch the cop right in the face for being an ass to me.

There were so many changes in my life I could not possibly describe all of them for you right now. The point I wanted to get across is after I went through days of strange feelings and urges I had never had before I told my best friend about them and he looked at me and smiled and told me that all of what I told him about was what a man went through everyday of his life until he got old enough for his testosterone levels to drop severely, which he said was somewhere between the late twenties and early fifties, depending on the man, and could be even later for some men.

I was blown away. I called my gynecologist and told him what my friend said and he confirmed that the dosage may have been too high and that I could be experiencing such side effects for several days, but not to be alarmed because they would stop when the testosterone was used and it returned to a more tolerable level.

Ladies if what I went through just for those few days is what a man goes through every day there is a lot more to being a man than we as women think. All I can say is I hope I never go through anything like this again. If the feeling of gladly passing up food for sex is a small part of how they feel then I say give them sex, I will never again tell my love that I do not feel like it or I have a headache for during that short period of time I got mad at my boyfriend for not giving me all the sex I wanted, and wanted it I did. With every single breath I took I wanted him, and sometimes not just him. When he did not want to give it to me I would look around and wonder where I could get it from.

Like I said, this is only a small part of what I went through and there is much more I could tell you and I might write it all down and send it to you one day, but I am just now starting to get some of the old me feeling like I should again. The main reason I wanted to write this is so that you woman readers might get a little better understanding of what our men go through all the time. I will promise you this before I ever tell my husband no again I will think about the experience I had and how I felt when he told me that he didn’t feel like it.

Daphne

Okay guys, does anybody see it? It’s staring at you from within the next to last paragraph:

“Ladies if what I went through just for those few days is what a man goes through every day there is a lot more to being a man them we as women think. All I can say is I hope I never go through anything like this again. If the feeling of gladly passing up food for sex is a small part of how they feel then I say give them sex, I will never again tell my love that I do not feel like it or I have a headache for during that short period of time I got mad at my boyfriend for not giving me all the sex I wanted, and wanted it I did. With every single breath I took I wanted him, and sometimes not just him. When he did not want to give it to me I would look around and wonder where I could get it from."

Women have the capacity to understand what it feels like to live with the burning drive of testosterone all day every day, and will respond to that understanding with the same nurturing behavior they exhibit for us regarding any needs or desires we have, IF THEY ARE PRESENTED WITH THE INFORMATION CORRECTLY.

What constitutes correctly? Think about it. What do girls grow up hearing about boys, and women continue to believe about men? That ALL WE THINK ABOUT IS SEX, and will lie, cheat, steal and rape if necessary to get it. But that’s not true, is it? We don’t choose to be driven to think about sex as often as we do, and in fact, we don’t THINK about it often at all. We desire it, and often need it, when something sexual is in front of us. It’s a subconscious eruption or a reaction to a stimulus, not something we contemplate. But that’s not what women grow up and live believing.

They grow up hearing from their parents and each other that “guys just want to get into their pants,” and it’s said as something dirty, demeaning, diabolical, and deceitful. When they grow up, they are surrounded by a bunch of pushy, grab-asstic boys who don’t care who they insult or hurt and by a bunch of socially-inept wusses who never learned that neither women nor sex is scarce and are under the influence of myths like "women don't like sex," “women want a nice guy,” and “a guy has to be considerate and let the woman make all the decisions.” So how would you expect them to react?

The lesson is that if you can really talk with your partner about how things really are in your life, openly, honestly, and in detail, help her to understand how things are, and show her the same courtesy and respect by listening when she tells you how things really are in her life, world, etc., or how she feels about how things are in your life or hers, it comes across far differently than if it is presented as some sort of demand on her (“I’m your husband and it’s your duty to have sex with me”) or as some sort of wussy plea of need (“I just can’t help myself, and if you don’t sleep with me, I’ll feel bad about myself and it will be all your fault,” or the classic wuss-out, “A man has needs, you know…”). Understanding of needs and conditions motivates a woman to nurture to deal with the situation, while bullying, badgering, whining, and sulking motivate her to separate herself from the situation, and YOU!

This doesn’t just apply to sex, or even just to intimacy in general. It applies to everything that goes on between the two of you. If you have goals that you want your wife to help you meet somehow, or even just goals that you don’t want he to resent or resist, explain to her what these goals are, and why they are important to you, and tell her that she can help if she wants and it will be appreciated if she does, instead of demanding that she “get her ass in gear and get with the program,’ telling her to keep her nose out of your business, or whining about how you never got a break and the system is against you and that she owes it to you to pitch in and cover your ass. Invite her to tell you about her goals and interests as well. And listen with interest as she responds with how she feels about what you’ve told her and what she’s told you. That simple act will do more for your trust, respect, and intimacy than you can imagine until you see it in action.

There is no way that two people in a committed relationship can ever know too much about each other’s goals, desires, needs, preferences, etc., and talking openly and honestly about them is by far the best way to make things understood. Aside from the obvious benefits of the building of trust and friendship as these things are discussed, there will also be the building of intimacy and excitement as you come closer together and celebrate your victories together. It’s as automatic as the rising and setting of the sun.

Oops! All that talking and listening requires bridging that inter-gender communications gap that we’re all born into and few of us ever find out way across. What’s the old cliché, “Drat! Foiled again…”? Well, no, not this time…

You guessed it: It’s all in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," which is available for download right now at http://www.makingherhappy.com, and once you’ve learned what it has to offer, you’ll be having frequent picnics on that inter-gender communications bridge you’re going to quickly build. Could life get any better? Sure, and you’re going to make it so, if you start now…

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

A Woman Lives Briefly As a Man, and Learns a BIG Relationship and Marriage Lesson

EXCLUSIVE MUST READ! A female reader gets an accidental overdose of testosterone and spends a couple of weeks feeling what many men feel every day, and there are lessons for all in her experience!

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is HUGE. One of your fellow readers, Daphne, whom we’ve heard from before on a couple of occasions, is 40 years old and using hormone replacement therapy (HRT) after a total hysterectomy. The strangest thing happened!

For those of you who don’t know a lot about endocrinology, after a hysterectomy or menopause, women are often given a cocktail of hormones to try to replace the ones that were produced by the organs that were removed. Many claims are made about preventing osteoporosis and other things, but the only thing that estrogen HRT has been clinically PROVEN to do is curb hot flashes and some forms of it (especially the one derived from horse urine, called “equione,” which is estimated at 1,000 times the cellular reproductive power of human estrogen) have also been proven to raise a woman’s chance of contracting cancer, especially if her HRT regimen includes synthetic estrogen (like equione) or high doses of natural estrogen.

What is not common knowledge is that testosterone, the male hormone, is also needed and used by women to combat fatigue, heighten libido (it’s the only true aphrodisiac known to science), and actually does help with the formation and repair of bone and tissue. Indeed, estrogen is a metabolite (a by-product of the metabolism of) of testosterone; men metabolize more as DHT and other non-estrogen substances, while women metabolize more as estrogen, which is needed by all for cellular reproduction but in higher doses causes the femininization of the body, including the brain, skin, and other non-sexual organs.

When women have significantly too much testosterone for an extended period, it causes their voice to deepen, facial and other body hair to grow, libido is put into overdrive, and they get more aggressive; a lesser overage will cause minor symptoms like being less creative and more analytical, a more masculine communications protocol (speaking more directly and less in tune to non-verbal messages, among other things), less emotionally driven, more aggressive, etc.

This woman was given a dose that was determined to be WAAAAY beyond her natural tolerance in an injection, and she describes an experience that you simply must read for yourself. There are multiple lessons, some not so obvious, for both men and women in this letter, but I’m not going to go into those until tomorrow. In the meantime, I challenge you to read this letter and see what lessons you can derive from it yourself, and if you wish to share your observations, simply reply to this newsletter, and don’t forget to indicate whether you want your observations shared with the other readers.

Without further ado, here again is Daphne, with a tale that you really should study, because she has a unique perspective after this experience, possibly the only woman alive who has lived feeling the male drives and testosterone-driven emotions, and her reaction to them contains the biggest lesson of all:

Dear David,

All my life I have heard people say if you could walk a mile in someone else’s shoes you would not be so fast to judge them. I have to tell you of such an experience that has proven this to me, and this was so serious I felt like I should share part of it with you. I will be giving you only a small portion of what I went through, but I hope it will be enough that you will understand that I really know what it feels like to be a man.

I’m 40 years old, had a hysterectomy twelve years ago, and a few weeks ago I went to see my gynecologist about a problem I was having with my hormone levels. Every time I was tested my hormones were lower than the doctor felt they should be, and he made such a big deal of it that I became concerned and made the choice to let the doctor give me strong shot to see if this could get me back on the right track. In doing so I was given a very large dose of testosterone, which turned my body totally opposite of what I had ever been before. I started to view life on a whole new level.

It started out with me looking for sex everywhere. I was suddenly looking at every man I saw and some women as possible sex partners, and I had never done this, especially toward women! I thought at first I was going crazy. I would sit and look at them and could play out in my head all the thoughts I was having about them and what I could imagine we could do together.

I was also terribly aggressive and easily angered, wanting to get into fights with people who would piss me off and I never wanted to do that before, ever! For example during all this I was pulled over by a policeman and was given a ticket. Now most of the time I would cry or flirt or do whatever I had to get out of it and for the most part that would work for me, but this time all I wanted to do is punch the cop right in the face for being an ass to me.

There were so many changes in my life I could not possibly describe all of them for you right now. The point I wanted to get across is after I went through days of strange feelings and urges I had never had before I told my best friend about them and he looked at me and smiled and told me that all of what I told him about was what a man went through every day of his life until he got old enough for his testosterone levels to drop severely, which he said was somewhere between the late twenties and early fifties, depending on the man, and could be even later for some men.

I was blown away. I called my gynecologist and told him what my friend said and he confirmed that the dosage may have been too high and that I could be experiencing such side effects for several days, but not to be alarmed because they would stop when the testosterone was used and it returned to a more tolerable level.

Ladies if what I went through just for those few days is what a man goes through every day there is a lot more to being a man than we as women think. All I can say is I hope I never go through anything like this again. If the feeling of gladly passing up food for sex is a small part of how they feel then I say give them sex. I will never again tell my love that I do not feel like it or I have a headache for during that short period of time I got mad at my boyfriend for not giving me all the sex I wanted, and want it I did. With every single breath I took I wanted him, and sometimes not just him. When he did not want to give it to me I would look around and wonder where I could get it from.

Like I said, this is only a small part of what I went through and there is much more I could tell you and I might write it all down and send it to you one day, but I am just now starting to get some of the old me feeling like I should again. The main reason I wanted to write this is so that you woman readers might get a little better understanding of what our men go through all the time. I will promise you this before I ever tell my husband no again I will think about the experience I had and how I felt when he told me that he didn’t feel like it.

Daphne

What a story! I sincerely hope that Daphne chooses to share more of this story with us at sometime in the future, but aside from the drama of spending a few days feeling the urges and emotions that many of us men feel every day, there is a HUGE and significant lesson here for men. As I mentioned above, see if you can spot it, write to me at support@makingherhappy.com