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

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

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

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

1. Stop abusing your wife

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The first step in any great relationship of any kind is being well-matched. If you are not well-matched, you may be able to survive together, but the odds of being happy together are slim to none; if you are, you’ll find you can conquer about anything! Unfortunately, some couples live in misery for years without ever asking this most fundamental and necessary of all relationship questions! This is one of those “must read” issues, so dig in…

Today I want to talk more about something that seems to be so logical that it would be self-evident to all, but obviously is not practiced by many, the first step in having a great relationship. We touched on this in another issue of this newsletter concerning what to do if your wife is with another man, and you should read that issue if you missed it. I try to go through this every two to three months because there are so many new people coming in and everyone needs to see it.

Those of you who have been banging your head against the wall after receiving advice from someone claiming that “any relationship can be saved regardless of circumstances” will want to pay particular attention to that and this issue, because this edition may be addressing your biggest relationship or marriage problem. And if people are going so far as to call you a “quitter,” or “loser,” because you’re tired of fighting a losing battle for a lost cause and can’t see how it can end well for anyone, you’ll not only want to read this, but share it with them, to at least get them off your back and possibly even help them get in touch with reality.

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

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

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

Love can only come later, when you’ve had a chance to discover your compatibility, which is the basis of love. “Love at first sight” is poetic nonsense. Attraction can happen at first sight, as can need and lust, but not love, because you can’t just see someone, know that compatibility exists in that instant, and be motivated to love. And this lack of understanding has ruined more lives than you can imagine.

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

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

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

Someone asked once why I didn’t talk about a case wherein the woman is the needy one. I didn’t because I didn’t realize how common it might be for a man to be trying to save a relationship with such a woman, wherein he is independent and she is the needy one. But lo and behold, I have run across them, and the “cognitive dissonance” within the men is overwhelming. They fight between wanting to get away from the stress of being stuck with a needy person and wanting to try to “salvage their investment in their marriage.” The truth is that for many, their protector circuit comes alive and they are driven rather than making a conscious choice, even to the point of self-destruction.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ex's: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Former Relationships and Marriage

Depending on circumstances, ex’s can be a valuable asset, a nightmare, and worst of all, an attraction-killer to your present partner. Let’s explore…

As you may remember from the bio on the MakingHerHappy.com web site, a lot of people have called me “Doc” since childhood, not because am a medical doctor, psychiatrist, dentist, veterinarian, or college professor, but because I’m the guy that makes whatever ails you go away, no matter what it seems to be.

Hence, I spend a large part of my life hearing other people’s problems and providing solutions for them, and one of the problems I hear about most are “ex’s” – ex-husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, employers, etc. I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about it, but how people become “ex’s” in your life and how you deal with them once they do says a lot about you. We need to talk about some of the things it can say, because some of it is really good, and some of it is really, REALLY bad. And whether you have an ex now or there is some chance you may have one in the future, you NEED to know this and think about it.

Let’s start with the worst case first, and work our way to the better ones. The worst case is the ex that became an ex because war was declared, and you got hurt and have never gotten over it. You talk about the relationship and the break-up all the time, even though it’s been years ago. Have you noticed how people react?

Have you noticed that they tend to “glaze over,” look at their watches, or roll their eyes, and suddenly remember somewhere else they need to be or rather aggressively change subjects? If not, open your eyes, because they do exactly that, and it’s costing you. People don’t like hearing the same lament over and over, and they don’t like being around people who harbor pain, depression, grudges, etc., instead of resolving their problems and moving on with their life. It’s annoying, embarrassing, and can be quite depressing. It’s also a major respect and attraction-killer, and labels you as a wuss who can’t deal with life and move on.

Face it, everybody goes through at least one bad relationship in their life, and they get over it. They learn how to better choose a girlfriend, wife, friend, business partner, employer, or whatever, and they move on to have a better life. Or they wallow in unresolved anger or misery and become a pain in the neck to everyone they know.

If you’re not resolving problems and moving on, the only thing keeping you from it is YOU. How you respond to past events is entirely YOUR CHOICE! Make the choice to accept reality and whatever responsibility is yours, stand up, dust off your pants, and step forward. If it was so traumatic that you need professional help, get it, and get it done. Life’s too short to spend it looking backward and feeling crappy (and annoying the hell out of everyone else) instead of moving forward and experiencing the joy that you were born to have if you only step up and choose to earn it.

“But you don’t understand!” you say. Oh yes, I DO understand. You loved her, you needed her, the sex was great, you really loved that job, you never thought that buddy would screw you over. You never thought you’d come home to find your brother or best friend in bed with your wife. You loved being self-employed, or having money, status, and respect. I’ve seen and heard it all. Lived through it, too. And I can tell you with authority that none of those things has any impact on TODAY, unless you CHOOSE to let them.

There are lessons to learn from the bad things that happened to you. Stop lamenting the events and seek out the lessons. Learn them. Consign yourself to using those lessons to be more successful in the future. And relegate those events to the past and never, ever look back. The clock is ticking, and every second that passes can never be regained. You can spend each second looking back and wasting it or looking forward and living a better life. It’s your call. Let that choice and that ability to choose empower you to live well and be happy.

Stepping down off my stump now… ;-)

The next worst case isn’t much better. It’s the dependent that you can’t quite get rid of. The ex-wife or lover that you’re constantly having to bail out of a jam that they stupidly chose to put themselves in but want someone else to pay for, the child who is well into adulthood that you keep bailing out, even though a person their age usually has a family, mortgage, and established a career, the ex-employer who either fired you and continues to call on you for help or the one you left that keeps leaning on you instead of hiring a competent replacement, any of which causes you to complain and be distracted when you’re around people who currently really do matter to you and want to enjoy your company.

Those around you don’t like listening to you repeat the same laments and frustrations any more than you want to hear it out of them. It labels you as a push-over, another breed of wuss who just can’t say “no,” no matter how badly “no” needs to be said. You guessed it, another major respect and attraction killer that will send both genders scurrying when they see you coming down the hall.

People who don’t want to be partners of some sort and share life with you, whether it’s a wife, girlfriend, buddy, employer, business partner, offspring, or whatever, don’t deserve to have you sacrificing yourself to their incompetence, delinquency, etc. Altruists around the world are cringing as I say this, but you know it’s true. Your life is too short and too precious to allow yourself to be bled dry by a bunch of parasites who won’t let go of your jugular vein. Let them keep themselves up instead of sucking you dry, Brother. Do you understand? Their need is not a demand on your life; a poor choice on their part does not constitute an obligation or emergency on yours. Remember that. Quote it daily.

There are good people around you more than willing to share life with you, no matter who or where you are, so why cheat yourself and them of the great things you can do -- and BE -- together while throwing your life’s energy away to these parasites? You’ll find that when you do this, all you will attract are more parasites, as well as a few predators, because good, competent, independent people will shy away, not wanting your problem overload to spill over on them, while parasites and predators will be watching for a sucker like you to come along and latch on as soon as you give them an opening.

What impact do you think this will have on any relationships or marriage you might enter into? If the good people are steering clear of you and the bad ones have you targeted, well…it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see how that will turn out, especially when parasites and predators are masters of using guilt and a person’s own insecurities to manipulate people into doing things they know better than to do just for approval and acceptance. If this is you, you’re going for ride after ride until you either choose to live better or they drive you all the way to the gutter. And again, the choice is yours, not theirs, so make the right one.

The last kind of ex to which I want to call your attention is the only good kind to have, the kind with whom you have shared something for awhile, and as you grew apart or found yourself at odds, you responsibly recognized that you were evolving in two different directions or at incompatible paces or that you started a relationship without sufficient compatibility to sustain it and you went your separate ways on friendly terms. You’ve probably seen this at one time or another, a situation where both of you recognized that you were both good people in a bad match-up, and knew that you’d both be better off at arm’s length than close-up, “better friends than lovers” as the saying goes.

This would be the former employer who keeps you in their Rolodex as a potential consultant and gives you a good employment referral (not just a reference, but calls up somebody in their own network to help get you placement), and to whom you would refer competent sources of help, materials, or whatever. We’ve all seen a bad fit in the work place, and employers appreciate how it can happen and will often treat you much better if you sit down with them to discuss it instead of trying to hide the fact that it’s a bad fit until you’ve found something else and leave them hanging with a job to fill and no warning.

It would also be the ex-wife or ex-girlfriend who steers opportunities your way, and to whom you steer good quality people. Maybe you even double date from time to time to help each other meet new people, steer contacts to each others’ businesses, etc. This is highly attractive behavior to all but the most insecure of women, because it says that you can accept responsibility for your actions and decisions, keep a level head and reach workable agreements with people, and won’t be a needy wuss who hangs onto them if things don’t work out for the long term. It says that you’re strong and of good character, that you focus on the value in people, not their flaws. I don’t know about you, but that’s precisely the kind of thing that I want to be known for, and consequently, am known for.

Fights are neither necessary nor desirable to resolve a bad relationship of any kind. At 47 years old I’ve never been sued, and every conflict I’ve engaged in during my adult life has been settled in a logical and equitable manner by mutual consent, including all former marriages, contracts, employment, and customer relationships. I know of nobody that I’ve ever dealt with that I couldn’t call up right now and have a good conversation, and probably find some way of stirring up a business deal or some kind of fun. It sounds like quite an accomplishment, but while it may be unusual, it has never been difficult, and should not be difficult for you, either.

Why?

Because all it takes is the willingness and respect to deal squarely with those around you, looking for what you can accomplish together instead of what you can cheat each other out of or control. Being known for being such a person makes you attractive to everyone in all respects, and when it comes to women, they want a man who will take the lead, act responsibly and fairly, keep a positive attitude, help them to filter drama, and keep things moving for them, not somebody looking for every possible way to screw them, cheat them, lie to them, etc., or who feeds into their drama instead of trying to keep them from getting lost in it. Sounds rather like an employer, does it not?

They also want someone to share life with, who knows when to say, ‘Yes,” or, “No.” They evaluate men using an iron-clad rule: “If you can’t stand up TO me, you can’t stand up FOR me, and if you can’t stand up for ME, you won’t stand up for US.” They don’t mind you sharing yourself with others, moderately, as long as you save the best part for them, which in a good relationship is a very fair trade for the nurturing, loyalty, and many other things a loving wife will give a good man who’s making her happy.

Knowing how to evaluate and maintain a good relationship at home, how to communicate with people, and how to create attraction in the woman you love has far-reaching effects, much farther-reaching than you might ever imagine before doing it. Look around you. Those men who are happy at home are happy at work as well, and they have solid relationships with all the people in their life. They know how to choose good relationships, how to communicate with people, and how to be the kind of guy that people want to be around.

You’ll find that when you do the things described in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," the rest of your life will start improving at the same pace that things improve at home. Your confidence level increases, your communications skills improve, and you become more fun, interesting, competent, and generally enjoyable to have around. You can keep putting it off because you don’t know if you can do it, or you can accept the fact that a lot have people have already done it, many of which may not be as sharp as you, and you can make just as big a difference in your life as they have, if not even bigger. All it takes is to claim your birthright as a man and BE a man.

Download this fascinating and highly-effective book at http://www.makingherhappy.com/. It’s guaranteed, it’s fun, you can easily afford it, and quite frankly, you can’t afford to not do it, at least not if you realize just how short life really is and don’t want to spend it watching everybody else enjoying it more than you do. Join us, right now!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Heather

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy New Year to all using the Julian calendar! (Yes, I have readers all over the world, on six of the seven continents -- no luck on Antarctica yet, but I doubt anybody who goes there is particularly worried about a relationship!) Today’s edition is something I touch on from time to time because it goes almost entirely unnoticed but wastes more lives than the words, “Let’s wait and see,” the deplorable condition of being “comfortably unhappy.” Yes, it sounds like an oxymoron, but as you may have seen around you, even in yourself, it is entirely too easy to get comfortable with being unhappy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why Is Breaking Up So Hard? Surviving the End of Relationships and Marriage

We’ve talked about stopping a break-up in my free “Break-Up Busting 101” report, but what about those times when a break-up really is the best thing for both parties? Specifically, why is it so bloody hard? Would you believe it doesn’t have to be?

This is one of those newsletters that had to be written; one that a fool would hope that none of you would ever need, but which reality says nearly all of you will find useful, either in surviving your present or some part of your future, or in understanding something very painful in your past, the difficulty of breaking up, even when it’s the best thing for both parties and everybody, including the two parties in the relationship, know that it’s best.

Some people get into relationships that are based on things like faith and hope instead of reality. Others based them on need, attraction, or simple lust instead of a combination of love and attraction. These couples ultimately find themselves painfully mismatched and moving apart is the only solution to the problem they have caused themselves. You can’t put a mongoose and a snake in the same place and expect them to just bend to meet each others’ needs and get along, nor can you expect incompatible men and women. Compatibility doesn’t come from the choices you make, but from the values and tastes that cause you to make the choices you make. Those things just don’t change that much over the course of an entire lifetime, and they certainly don’t change because somebody else wants or needs for them to.

I’m not like most of today’s “relationship guru’s.” I won’t tell you that all relationships can or should be salvaged, and have no respect for those who would. That’s why you’ll find the list of other relationship gurus I do respect and endorse very short. I maintain a list of those who have been recommended to me by my readers in this newsletter and in the margin on my main blog at http://blog.makingherhappy.com/ and those are the only others offering advice on the emotions and issues of relationships that I would have any of you read, because they do embrace this self-evident truth instead of trying to convince you to buy what they are selling to have you save that which should not be and ultimately cannot be saved, playing on your emotions to sell something that won’t help.

Notice that’s a very short list of resources taken from a very large pool of authors. Sad, isn’t it? And by the way, feel free to help me add to it by letting me know if you have had a positive result with any product. Word-of-mouth isn’t just the best advertising; it’s also the best way of weeding out the charlatans and bad ideas that sound good “on paper” but don’t work in the real world.

I’ve been working closely with one of your fellow readers, one whom at this point is facing the possibility that the break-up his wife initiated may indeed be the best thing that could happen to him because they are so grossly mismatched and she’s carrying a ton of baggage that she may well choose to hang onto, in spite of the fact that right now she’s facing the greatest opportunity of her life to drop all that baggage and make some incredible improvements in her life.

I’ll spare you the intimate details of their problems, but the bottom line is that he’s on solid ground, logically, morally, ethically, and every other way I’ve been able to observe, while she is hyper-creative and therefore rejects reality with impunity, is morally ambiguous, and is thirty-nine years old going on about seven.

He’s highly analytical and disciplined, knows what’s before him and how to react to virtually any word or action from her now (he read "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and we’ve been talking as well), and yet, there are times when he still has a hard time accepting what he knows to be reality, that in all likelihood, they never should have come together and he made a bad choice, because his wife appears incapable of growing up and becoming responsible enough to rejoin him as his wife, or indeed as anything more than a chronic, irresponsible and dangerous dependent.

He asked me why he was having a hard time accepting and emotionally committing to that which he knew to be irrefutable reality, and why people generally found breaking up so hard even when it was painfully obvious that it was the only option that could allow either of them to ever be happy.

I answered, "We all make bad choices, and being human, we tend to try to make the best of them and pick up a lot of good memories along the way that end up confounding us when we finally are faced with the reality that our bad choice is working against us."

It struck a chord in both of us. I did not, until the moment I wrote that to him, understand why I had had trouble with break-ups in the past, and those who know me closely would describe me to you as the most ruthlessly logical person they have ever met. I never stopped to ask myself while I was going through it why it was so hard. I was too busy asking myself another ridiculous question: “Why does this have to happen?” when I already knew the answer.

His reply to that pearl was as profound as the pearl itself:

“That needs to go in the evaluation section of your book - over and over! The main struggle in deciding whether it [salvaging his relationship] is a go or no-go is in sifting through all the wonderful memories to decide if they were ‘real’ or not...”

That’s the real rub, isn’t it? Were all those “good times” born of real love, friendship, respect, and loyalty worth celebrating? Or were they just born of two people trying to make the best of a bad situation they had created and didn’t want to face? Or was it something somewhere in the middle? Was it just two people with raging hormones having an adventure with no way to follow through in the long run, a good time that couldn’t be the basis for a life? Trying to resolve those questions, and cope with the reality the resolution presents, is what makes breaking up so hard when every available fact tells you both that there is no other alternative.

So in the event that you have to go through this torture, what do you do?

Look at the whole relationship and weigh the good and the bad. Identify what can and cannot be repaired, and how important those things are to you. In the end, if the relationship can’t be fixed, get out, but do it like a civilized adult, with dignity, and leave the other partner room to do the same. Indeed, LEAD HER to do the same. And if a friendship can be maintained, by all means do so; you may not have enough compatibility to live together happily, but you may still have common interests that you can enjoy together. Think about that...

Not being able to live together happily is by no means an indication that you can’t have an enjoyable conversation or dinner from time to time, help each other with a project or hobby on occasion, or do any of the other things that friends do. It takes a lot more compatibility to live together than it does to visit, as the focus of a visit is much more narrowly defined and creates boundaries that protect you from the things that caused trouble while you were married – if you pay attention to them, that is.

Don’t ever let things fall into the context or perspective of who is or isn’t good enough for the other. It has nothing to do with that. People are who and what they are, and have spent a lifetime becoming so. Thinking that you can or should be “good enough” to induce someone else to change for your sake that which they would not change for their own sake is foolish, arrogant to the point of being narcissistic, and just plain childish!

(Pay attention, Ladies, in case you’re thinking that you’re going to rebuild your man as you want him. If you do manage to accomplish it, you won’t respect him precisely because you were able to change him. A man who can’t stand up TO you can’t stand up FOR you, right? The attitude that "he should love me enough to change for me," has broken more women's hearts than men ever could.)

Admit that there have been problems, and that those problems have been caused by the two of you having too many fundamental differences to be compatible. You gave it a good shot, you had some fun and good times, made some money and accumulated a few things, and have a few fond memories, but the stress of walking on eggshells trying to keep from tripping over your differences is killing you both.

You’re good people, just not good for each other, and if you are the type who needs to or enjoys being married, you need to get out and find someone whom you are good for and who is good for you, compatible with you, and whom you can enjoy living with as your natural self. Work together to divide the rewards of your combined efforts fairly and help each other get a fresh start by introducing each other to friends that are more like them. You may not be worth a plug nickel together as husband and wife but may be great assets to each other in starting over. (This is all assuming that your problems are differences in your values, preferences, priorities, etc., and not that one of you is an abuser of some sort.)

There is no point in your life where being able to evaluate a relationship will not serve you well. You need to know yourself as well as your needs and desires, and you need to be with someone who can naturally fulfill those needs and desires while being fulfilled by you. That in turn requires that you know other peoples’ needs and desires with regard to you, does it not? You don’t want to enter a relationship in which you have no chance of fulfilling the other’s needs and desires, do you?

That means knowing before you get into a relationship what the relationship should look like if it’s good. It means knowing after you get into a relationship if it is going to work based on how well you meet each others’ needs and desires. It means being able to communicate factually and honestly to express those needs and desires to each other, as well as how well those needs and desires are being met.

Contrary to how it often appears, relationships and marriages very seldom fail after ten or twenty years or more. What really happens is that they fail at their inception due to bad choices and that failure isn’t conceded until years later, when every option has been exhausted, there is no longer anything to hide behind (like children), and both partners have become miserable spending so much time and effort trying and failing. If you have a good foundation for a relationship, it’s not hard to tell; there’s little if anything fundamental and significant that you’d want to change about your partner, such as their values, political leanings, etc. You can talk and get along, and have probably just become a bit bored because attraction is waning. That’s fixable.

But…

If you’re in one of those relationships where the only place you get along is in the bedroom, and especially if you find yourself fighting to have an excuse to make up because that’s the only part of your relationship that IS working, you have a serious problem, and believe it or not, there are people with whom you can get along both in and out of the bedroom.

And since so many of you have asked, yes, it is still a good idea to learn about attraction and try to create it for your partner even if you are breaking up. Being attractive is about being a leader, being smart, being fair, handling tough situations and being able to keep your sense of humor about you. Stirring up a little attraction in your partner as you are splitting up will help ease the transition for her and you both, because it tends to keep tempers at bay. It will help her to feel that you are being strong and supportive during this crisis, and make her feel good that you are making the effort to help her hold herself together emotionally while you go through the process together. Nothing bad can come of that for either of you, and may indeed help you to part friends instead of killing each other in a war that never had to be fought, a war in which the only victors are the lawyers.

There you have it, the dark side of relationships and marriage. It is my sincere desire that you never have to go through a break-up, and that if worse comes to worst and you do have to go through one, that you can get through it with your dignity (and assets) intact and help each other to move on to a better life with someone better matched to yourselves by understanding what it is that you’re fighting: the basic human tendency to try to make the best of even the worst situation, no matter how inappropriate or even self-destructive it might be, not each other.

No matter where you are in your relationship, from looking for one to having been in one for 40 years or longer, there’s help waiting for you in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and it’s just a few mouse clicks away at http://www.makingherhappy.com/. Go check it out, and get the straight story while you can; there are very few of us around who can and will give it to you, and your life is too short to fail to have and use it.

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

Lying in Relationships and Marriage, Part 2, A Reader’s Confession About Lying Nearly Ending Her Marriage

A reader tells of her own experience with lying to the one she loves. It’s not pretty, and is a perfect example of what I warned you about in yesterday’s newsletter.

Yesterday’s newsletter on lying to your partner got some pretty predictable responses. If you missed it, see this archived article because it’s one you will definitely want to read.

Those who don’t lie to their partners wrote in agreement, while the vast majority of those who do wrote in defense of their actions, saying ridiculous things like, “Good relationships are based on lies,” “It’s only a problem if you get caught,” etc. I feel sorry for those people, because they will never experience the wonderful feelings that true love, trust, loyalty and respect generate, which I’m glad to say that many of you, based on your responses, do seem to appreciate.

There was one letter in particular that I wanted to share with you, from a woman who got caught in a lie and almost destroyed her relationship with someone who seems to be a really good man. Meet Darla:

Dear David,

I wanted to share with you what really can happen when you tell a lie to the one you love. My story I guess is simple to many people, but it is hard for me to tell because I have to face something horrible to me. I come from a long line of people with addictive personalities. By addictive I mean to drugs and drinking. My mother was and is addicted to pain medication among other things and my brother has spent time in jail for his addictions. As for me I had started down the same road with prescription medications. Every day I thought I had to have one kind or the other, uppers in the morning and downers at night and had lived this way for awhile. I was in a marriage that was the worst of nightmares and two kids who could care less if I were living or dead.

I met this wonderful man, one that loves me and God only knows how much I love him. He noticed right off I could have a problem if I did not control myself. We have had long talks about it and I really had made the choice to give up the drugs. I wanted to be with him and I wanted to love him and to be sober to enjoy what I had finally been given.

Yesterday morning I awoke with a migraine. I have them from time to time and it was bad enough for me to try a new medication my doctor had given me. I took the pill and a short time later he called me to say good morning and I was spaced out on the pills. He asked me about it and in a panic I lied to him and told him I had not taken any medication. It was the worst choice I have ever made. I should have been honest and told him what was going on, but I lied.

He was so upset by what I had done that he would not hardly talk to me and when he did I felt like the lowest life form on the planet, not because he was abusive or belittled me, but because he pointed out to me that there was nothing in our history that gave me a reason to lie to him, and I was mimicking my mother’s behavior, and we both knew that the idea of me turning into my mother was not going to work for either of us.

He has no problem with me taking a pain medication for pain, and has told me so on several occasions. It is just the issue of me abusing pain killers for things other than pain that he has a problem with. We did talk it over and after many tears on my part we decided that since I had not lied to him in the past that the migraine medication may have been responsible for my choice to lie this time, and he forgave me on the condition that I never lied to him again, especially about drug use.

I will never lie to him again ever, because no matter what you think you are getting away with you are not. If you want to lose the man of your dreams because you want to be a dumb ass then you deserve what happens to you. I’m just thankful that my John loves me enough to work it out with me not throw me and nine years away because I was worried about the truth where if I had just said to him I was not feeling well and had taken the pills and since it was the first time and I was not sure what they would do to me it could have been avoided.

What I am saying is tell the truth not matter what. It hurts worse to lie to the one you love and you are not a good person if you can lie to the one you claim you love in the first place. Thank you so much John for loving me and letting me still love you and you still love me.

Darla

My response:

Hi Darla,

That’s quite a confession Darla; thank you for sharing it with us. I’ve studied people a lot over the years, and I’ve seen a few things that I’d like to point out here. Chemicals notwithstanding (a lot of medications can alter your personality, adherence to your value system, inhibitions, etc.), you would be hard-pressed to prove to me how anyone who truly loves and respects another could lie to them, especially to cover their own ass. That’s an act of cowardice and need, not of love and respect. If your partner is claiming to love you but lying to you frequently (or vice versa), you and they need to take a look at the meaning of love, need, attraction, etc. (see the article in my free “Break-Up Busting 101” report), and get a fix on reality, because you’re not in it.

Another thing I’ve noticed, in my marriage, in the world around me and in the hundreds of couples who have been involved in the development, testing, and tweaking of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," is that there is nothing that two rational people who truly love and respect each other can’t discuss, no matter how bad it is. Of all the things that come together to make a good relationship work, unfettered, respectful, honest, and factual communication is the most important tool in the tool chest, because through it, all the other things are achieved.

Take care,
David

Do you know what kind of a relationship you’re in? Do you know if your partner really loves you, or if they’re just clinging on because they’re afraid to be alone? Do you communicate effectively across the gender gap? Has the honeymoon ended and left you as part of that ugly statistic wherein the average couple who has been together longer than two years has sex once every two months?

If you’ve become part of that statistic, it may seem like a problem, but you’ll soon see that it’s merely a symptom of a MUCH bigger problem. In any case, it’s logical to expect that you have or are anticipating at least one of these problems or you wouldn’t be spending the time to read these newsletters, so why keep putting off the solution?

Yes, what you need to know is in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” and it’s not going to get into your head where you can use it until you go to http://www.makingherhappy.com/, download it, and then read it. What you need to know is in there, laid out point by point and step by step, and people are using it every day to make their relationships better and better, some even snatching their marriage from the jaws of the divorce monster in as little as a week after receiving it. Do yourself and your partner a favor; get it and get busy, because life’s too short to spend it unhappy, bored, frustrated, scared, cheating, or celibate.

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

Can You Ever Be Too Prepared for a Great Relationship or Marriage?

A reader reminds us that it’s never too soon to start working toward a better life and relationship, and I provide additional tips on how to get it done.

I got a quick note from a new reader I’d like to share with you. It holds a wonderful lesson for anyone whose eyes are open. Meet Brad:

Hello David, I just bought your book and I just wanted to let you know that it is very insightful. I am still single but you have much needed understanding of the most interesting female mind...you've got to love them. Brad

Here’s an excerpt from my response, followed by additional commentary:

Hi Brad!

I’m glad you’re finding my book useful. I’ve had quite a few readers comment that they wish they had been able to read something like that before they ever got into a relationship, and others go so far as to say that it should be required reading in high school.

Do yourself a HUGE favor and don’t skip the first part of the book, the part on evaluating relationships. That part works wonders in mature relationships to make sure they have a foundation sufficient to warrant improvement, and it also really shines if you use it as you see a relationship starting to develop and do your evaluation as you go in and as the relationship evolves, so you can get out early if you start seeing red flags. An ounce of prevention is worth several tons of cure when it comes to relationships and marriage!

Also remember that the rules for creating attraction are different in the dating world, mainly because your window of opportunity is very narrow in dating, so once you’ve finished my book, if you’re having trouble meeting women let me know and I’ll steer you to the dating gurus who can really help you; most of them are about as full of crap as most of the marriage gurus, selling snake oil and academic theory as if they were solutions, but there are a few that get results every time, and I know who they are and will be happy to point you in their direction if and when you decide the time is right.

Take care, and keep in touch. I can’t tell you how delightful it is to see a young single man taking the bull by the horns and doing his relationship prep work on the front end instead of trying to do crisis control on the back end.

David

Brad has it right. He’s thinking both ahead and “outside the box.” He’s single, but will be looking for a permanent relationship at some point, so instead of just looking for information on how to get phone numbers, he’s looking for what will help him understand women and choose the right one for the long haul. (Remember the old adage about dressing for the job you want, not the one you have? Same principle!) Getting the phone number might get you a date, or even two or three, but being a man who understands women and can converse comfortably with them near or at their own level, and knows what flips their attraction switches will get him his choice of women in a relationship that lasts for as long as he continues to act like a man.

It’s never too early to prepare to succeed, and not just no, but hell no, there is no such thing as being too prepared for success. If your relationship or marriage is anything less than a honeymoon now, it’s because you went in unprepared to sustain it.

If it is at honeymoon status right now, do you know that you know what it takes to sustain it, or are you just guessing that it will go on forever without you needing a back-up plan for when the novelty of the new relationship wears off and reality sets in? Be warned; you do indeed need one, because it won’t. Do you even know that there are chemical changes in men and women at between one and two years into a relationship that stop automatically providing the honeymoon spark? Ask anyone who’s been married more than a couple years where the magic went. They know it’s gone, but don’t know where.

One of the reasons that the average couple who has been married for two years or more has sex six times per year is this body chemistry change, but you can overcome it easily if you know what will compensate for it. And the good news is that compensating for that lost chemical costs you nothing, not even time and effort, once you’ve learned how it works.

So if that spark is gone and even if it’s been gone for years (I got an e-mail from a man a while back that said he and his wife had not slept in the same bed or had sex together in 18 years, they had stayed together by reason of religious convictions, and he had her back in his bedroom permanently the day after finishing my book), that doesn’t mean it’s too late for any of you. Unlike in Brad’s world, where windows of opportunity are very small, perhaps only seconds long, and the window tends to get slammed on your fingers because there are so many possibilities and little or no vested interest in a relatively new relationship, couples that have been together a couple years have a vested interest (“sweat equity,” kids, real estate, time, life, etc.) in continuing the relationship and will only let it go as a last resort.

Hence, where a wrong remark or sideways glance can ensure that you won’t have a second or third date (or maybe even her name and phone number!), a woman will give you months, maybe even years, to straighten up and fly right, especially if she knows that you’re making an effort, not to just do everything her way, but just to try to meet her in the middle on some basic issues, like understanding her when she speaks, being a stand-up guy who exercises a little personal authority, enjoys life with her, and protects her from boredom by giving her some excitement from time to time, all of which is far, far easier than you’d ever imagine.

Being the guy every woman wants is never hard to do; indeed, much of it is quite natural, and the part that isn’t all that natural is still a lot of fun. Imagine, after all those years of telling those jokes about the genie who could build a bridge from Los Angeles to Hawaii but couldn’t grant a man’s wish to know everything he needed to know about women, you suddenly knew! How would that change your life? No matter how much you think it will, based on the history of my readers, I’ll bet it will still be more than you think, and for the better.

Or maybe you’d just rather sit and wait and let things blow up in your face, like it has for your friends. None of your friends saw it coming when it hit them either, did they? And how’s that working for them, by the way? All that business of having their family torn apart, losing half or more of everything they own, plus getting saddled with alimony and child support – yep, sounds like something every man looks forward to, huh?

Frankly, I’d rather have my testicles pounded flat with a meat tenderizer than to go through that mess. How about you?

It’s never too soon and seldom too late to get on the right path, the path to personal authority, success, and happiness. Even if she’s gone, she may not be gone for good, and if she is gone for good, there are a whole lot more that will be lucky and happy to take her place after you’ve read "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and become one of the few of us whom women recognize at first glance as a man “who just knows what a woman wants.” Go to http://wwwmakingherhappy.com and get your copy right now, or wait awhile and let things blow up in your face and catch you unprepared, so you can see if you handle disaster any better than your friends did. It’s your choice; choose well…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Guilt!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Little Changes Can Make a Big Difference in Your Relationship and Marriage

A reader demonstrates how a small change in attitude can make a huge change in a marriage, in his case the excitement, energy, and intimacy levels, and how such changes are not difficult, but fun!

Before I get into today’s lesson, I need to remind you that we’re at the end of October, meaning that Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanza, and possibly other traditional gift-giving holidays are approaching, so do yourself a favor and start thinking about gifts for the women in your life now, while you have time to do it right. See this recent article on choosing the perfect gift for a woman for details.

Now for today’s lesson!

Check out my buddy Steve here, who has had a revelation that brought him the kind of success that every man wants and can have, if he can read on a fourth-grade level and follow a few simple instructions:

David,

It is amazing how sometimes a slight change in behavior by a man can trigger a much bigger response from a woman. A couple of weeks ago, I found myself wondering why my wife was being distant and seemingly uninterested in any approach I made to be even slightly romantic or sexual. In the past, I would have asked her what was wrong and spiraled into wussitude, making things worse.

Instead, I asked myself first if anything I had been doing could possibly be the problem and the light came on. Even though it might have seemed small or even insignificant, I realized that my approach had become more needy than manly. After giving myself a mental bitch slap, I relaxed and changed my approach to a more playful, I-can-take-it-or-leave-it one and dropped the neediness. The results put a smile on my face every time I think about it.

Last weekend, after a late lunch at one of our favorite restaurants, she asked if we could stop in a shop next door before we went home. I rolled my eyes (grinning all the time) and somewhat sternly said “OK, but make it quick.” Inside the shop, while we were walking through an aisle, out of anyone else’s view, she grabbed my hand and pulled it against a private part of her anatomy, for just a second.

Needless to say, the tension grew on the ride home and we ended up having a very hot afternoon. Keeping up with the same, over the next couple of days we teased each other back and forth, and after supper last night, she invited me to accompany her upstairs. After feigning a little indifference, I agreed and once again things continued quite nicely. Before turning off the lights last night, and again this morning, she told me how hot the sex was, and she sent me an email at work today saying she misses me. All this has occurred during the week before her “monthly” when normally her desires are somewhat diminished. And, by the way, we have been married for over twenty years.

David, the things you are trying to teach us really do work, and although I had been putting them into practice, I slipped a little. The good thing is that a quick evaluation of the situation and a slight change can make a big difference, and, as you say, it isn’t hard, its fun!

Thanks again for sharing your wisdom!
Steve

Steve gets a big “attaboy”! He bought his copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" on September 20, 2005, and he was writing me with advanced questions and success stories within a couple of months of that, and consistently up through March 2006. But then…

He got sidetracked and lost focus a little bit (what few details I have must remain confidential) and temporarily eased back into old habits. BUT! He recognized it, and having learned how to recognize problems and what to do about them, made a quick adjustment to eliminate that old wussitude that had begun creeping back in and BOOM! Right back into the honeymoon! And after over twenty years of marriage!

Incidentally, that’s why I repeat some of these newsletters every six months or so and why I recommend to those who buy my book to re-read periodically: so you can make sure that bad programming isn’t slipping back in, unusual work stress isn’t tearing you down, etc. So if you see one with a title or subject that looks familiar, don’t skip it. USE IT to make sure you’re still on track, and explore it to see if your new experience brings you something even better than it did last time.

It costs you nothing but five minutes or less per day to keep tabs on your attitude, actions, and marriage. That’s a lot less that what fights, hard feelings, affairs, and divorce will end up costing you if you start slipping back into wuss mode and don’t realize it, so do yourself a favor and keep reading. If I can spend a half-hour or more per day to put it out there for you, you can spend five minutes or less doing a quick read and self-assessment.

And yes, fixing life and marital problems does involve change. For some of you, BIG change, even RADICAL change, but still not DIFFICULT change; indeed, it’s quite easy and enjoyable change, because you’re changing from something external forces have programmed you to be back to what you were naturally born to be. All it takes is a release from the programming that is compelling you to do all the wrong things, things that you are in fact not enjoying at all. So embrace this change, revel in it, and celebrate it. Look forward to being better when you wake up every morning, instead of dreading whatever challenges the day might bring.

For some of you it will take a little longer, and for others not as long. It all depends on how much damage has been done to you and how quickly you can accept the simple truth that being a man is fun and easy, political correctness doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in your relationship or marriage except to work against it, and that male-female (“intergender”) communications are governed by three simple rules that any fourth-grader could understand and follow. In a nutshell, how long it takes and how well it works is entirely a matter of choice, YOUR choice. Are you feeling the power?

The power of choice is a wonderful thing when you feel it. You can be feeling it by the end of this day if you want. Just go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and empower yourself to make a few good choices, then watch what happens. I dare you…

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

Reader Feedback on Female Eruptions and 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 (especially since the few who look like slackers seem to unsubscribe almost immediately and leave derogatory comments!). 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; more often than not, calling them on bratty behavior in a firm, calm voice that does not bully will settle things down very quickly. 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; indeed, for some it is much stronger. She saw him as a helpless child and didn’t want to leave him because she knew he couldn’t survive on his own, but she also knew she needed more. 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

Is Somebody Getting the Short End of the Stick in Your Relationship or Marriage?

Some men (and women) work their asses off for all the wrong reasons. Are you one of them? Would you know? There’s an easy way to tell, and there’s a way to fix it, too…

Today I was reminded of something that happened to me a long time ago that really teaches a great lesson about making a contribution in your relationship. I’ll spare you the details of the event because it was both boring and pathetic; I’ll merely say that it involved a broker who had resorted to scamming his clients to feed his wife’s insatiable appetite for shopping and ultimately ended up jailed, divorced, and selling used cars after he got out of jail, all because he didn’t say “no” or “stop” when he should have. (Haley, you knew him.)

Have you ever asked yourself why you work the way you do, and who it’s really for? Whose goals you are trying to meet? If not, you should. That answer is definitely one worth having.

If you and your wife have sat down and planned your retirement together and you have jointly chosen things that you want to accomplish before and during your retirement, great! You’re on the right track. If the two of you are so independent that you keep your finances separated and are both making your own arrangements for retirement, that’s great too, as long as everybody holds up their end. But…

If you’re doing all the working and she’s doing all the spending, or if your both working but she’s still doing all the spending, something’s wrong. And no, I’m not talking about your wife being the one to handle paying the bills out of a joint account. If your wife is better at that kind of thing than you are and you can trust her to do it right and honestly, that’s the best thing to do.

What I AM talking about is when all significant financial decisions -- indeed, all decisions of any kind -- serve her goals and not yours. I see this around me nearly every day, and get letters from men asking for help with the issue. I won’t say that it’s a problem in every household by a long shot, but it’s getting common enough that I feel compelled to address it.

Why does it happen? Because you wussed out! No, there’s no other explanation, so don’t try. You wussed out and gave in and spoiled her rotten, or allowed her to spoil herself rotten because you didn’t have the spine to say, “No, that doesn’t work for me and I don’t want to do it. Working for no reward at all is slavery, not love, and you cannot leave me without reward for my work.”

Maybe it was fear of retaliation, or fear of rejection, or fear of making the wrong decision. Maybe it was fear of her leaving if you didn’t. Maybe it was just being too lazy to make a decision. Maybe you were such a wuss that you thought that you had to buy her love by turning everything over to her and living for her pleasure to the exclusion of your own. Only you can know that, unless you want to give me the details of your history and have me point it out to you. But what I can deduce with 100% accuracy is that it happened because you were not involved in the decisions, except possibly as a “yes man.”

If it hasn’t happened to you, congratulations, but pay attention and make sure it never does. The broker I mentioned was an alpha male sort who ran onto some hard times, and his conniving wife smelled blood and told him that if he didn’t continue to keep her up in the manner to which she had become accustomed, she’d leave and take everything he had. He panicked, plain and simple, and turned against everything he was (he was my futures trading broker for years and was the only honest broker I had ever met until this happened) out of fear that he would lose her.

I hope that it’s obvious to you that a woman who would leave you because you won’t spoil her isn’t worth having anyway, because she’s only there for the money, to take your life, not share it with you. And before anybody goes off half-cocked and sends me a nastygram because I’m saying that “all women are just after money,” NO, I’M NOT. Most women are good women, just like most men are good men. But the bad ones tend to be really, REALLY bad, and if you find you’re with one, you’re options boil down to precisely two: Remain a slave to her desires or free yourself of her and start over with a good woman who will share your goals and desires and help you to attain them – a partner, not a parasite or predator.

There is nothing you can do to change a bad person into a good one; they must do that, of their own free will and because they desire it, if it is ever to happen. You can’t blame a good woman for letting you spoil her, or a bad one for making you spoil her if she succeeds. All you can do is force a correction of the attitude and behavior and let the chips fall where they may. The woman’s character will be indicated by whether she straightens up or hits the door running (or tries to throw YOU out).

The point? It all boils down to who benefits from what you do. If you don’t benefit from your labor, why do it? (And for that matter, if you’re putting all your love and energy into a relationship and not getting any in return, why do that, either???) If you’re not benefiting from the time and effort you spend to generate income (or be a good husband) while others in your family do, that’s not being a man and a provider, it’s being a slave, and there is nothing loving or noble about being a slave.

Stand up and at least share in the benefits of your labor, and if somebody gets mad about it, tell them to either get over it or hit the road, because their days of reaping all the benefits of what you do while you get nothing more than the headache and the backache are over. That leaves them two choices, respect you and stay, or leave. Either one is a good option for you under the circumstances, right? Even if they take everything you have as they exit, you weren’t getting to enjoy it anyway, and with a fresh start, you can enjoy everything you work for and earn. Starting over, if things are bad enough to require it, is not the end of the world; it’s the beginning of a whole new world.

A great relationship and marriage is based on love, which is in turn based upon compatibility, and love brings with it respect, loyalty, trust, and friendship; the absence of those things is an accurate indicator of the absence of love. It also requires attraction to provide the fun and excitement that keeps the relationship alive for the decades that the two of you live together. Without it, life is boring, especially for her, and she’ll find a way to cure her boredom if you don’t cure it for her, either with drama or with somebody else.

Nobody who loves you would allow you to work as their slave, and nobody to whom you are enslaved could ever feel love, respect or attraction for you. It’s really that simple. You have to either turn it around or start over, the right way, with somebody else, if you are ever to be happy. Otherwise, at best, you’ll spend the rest of your life “comfortably unhappy,” settling for trying to keep things from getting worse because it’s impossible for them to be better, holding survival, not joy, as your goal. End of story.

Sometimes mistakes are made and people get off-track, and you can turn it around just by making the choice to correct mistakes and get back on track. Other people start off the wrong way, marrying for need instead of love because they don’t know the difference, and you simply can’t get it back on track because it was never there to start with. How do you know the difference? And how do you respond when you do?

It’s not hard to do, just hard to recognize when you’ve not studied women, couples and relationships, and nobody who has studied them has told you what they’ve found. I’ve studied them, and still have women and couples working with me regularly to expand the knowledge base by testing new ideas and scenarios. Once you get on this road to improving your relationship, you can’t get off. It’s not that it’s an addiction; it’s just so rewarding to feel yourself getting more and more happy, intimate, excited, and safe in the knowledge that you are indeed living with a true partner, not just a dependent who may stab you in the back or leave you for no apparent reason.

Care to join us? We’re literally in a revolution, revolting against the mistaken and life-destroying ideas that bad relationships can only get worse or must be suffered in silence, that it takes months of expensive therapy to get over common problems, that bedroom intimacy is going to die after you’ve been together for a year or two and an affair is the only way that you’re ever going to enjoy that kind of life again.

If you want to know what we’ve found so far, go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and start reading. If you’re already feeling the strain and think a break-up might be imminent, also download my free “Break-Up Busting 101” report and feel free to share it with your friends. Together, we can fix just about anything, one way or another, so climb aboard and let’s get busy!

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

Reader Reponses to How Testing and Emotional Scales Affect Your Relationship 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 yesterday’s article on testing, 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.”

That is absolutely 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 has 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 their problems just fixed themselves?

Do you blame your wife for the rut you’re 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 exists.

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. Come to think of it, I’m 38 IQ points above genius. But what I described was not the result of genius, and you don’t have to be a genius, either. That was the result of being OBSERVANT, and taking action where action is prescribed. That is something ANY MAN CAN DO. 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, and these days a notebook computer or Blackberry for e-mail, 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 recognize facts, truth, and what much be done, and 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

What Women Need Emotionally from a Man in a Relationship or Marriage

Let’s talk about what women want from a man in a relationship, especially their emotional needs, and how knowing this can save your relationship or marriage.

I’ve been working on an interview that has stirred up a lot of new ways of discussing things we’ve talked about in the past, different ways of approaching and explaining the same problem and solution that may shed more light on the age-old questions of what women want, need, and expect from a man in a relationship.

In my free “Break-Up Busting 101” report, you’ll find definitions and ramifications of the four emotions that relationships are most often based upon: love, attraction, need, and lust, all of which are incorrectly thought to be simply love. Please review this article before continuing if you are not familiar with its contents.

Of those four emotions, two of them are both healthy and required in a successful long-term committed relationship, love and attraction. You, as a man, need to be an expert on these two emotions and how they work, if you ever want to be able to be happy in any relationship with any woman, committed or not. You’ll see why very quickly. You may also see very quickly that you don’t have a clue as to what love really is.

Love, being the value and/or importance that you place on someone, is the source of friendship, trust, loyalty, security, respect, etc. It’s the thing that creates the friendship that allows two people to “bond” in any capacity and to any degree. This doesn’t just pertain to your wife, but to all women in your life, and even the men you would call “friend.” It’s not a feeling of duty, or altruistic drive to sacrifice. It’s the source of the feeling of celebration of your next encounter, whether intimate or public, personal or professional, work or pleasure, not the source of fear that it won’t happen.

It’s important to understand this so that you can see both why a woman needs to love and be loved and why it’s not enough. Love provides for a woman feelings of stability and security, and creates the environment in which she can feel safe in letting her natural drive to nurture drive her. If love is lost as partners grow apart, she can become mildly to severely depressed and feel a sense of lack of purpose, and her feelings of loyalty, respect, friendship, etc. for her partner will diminish.

Women can lose their feelings of love and still stay under the same roof with a man, but it becomes a very limited partnership – you’re pretty much just roommates. You can get along, but there’s no trust, no real respect, no friendship, no intimacy, etc., a strained existence at best.

Attraction is an entirely different matter. If you’ve been with me for longer than a few days you’re familiar with the difference in men’s and women’s emotional scales, and how while male emotions run from negative to positive, with crisis being the male emotional nemesis, women’s emotional scale runs from zero to infinity, with little to no discrimination between positive and negative (as far as emotional comfort zone), and their emotional nemesis is not crisis, but boredom. If you never learn another thing from me, learn this:

Attraction is any and every woman’s ultimate salvation from boredom. Boredom is any and every woman’s ultimate torment, the very bane of her existence.

A woman can reach the same feelings of physical and emotional discomfort (desperation!) from being bored that men can reach out of fear, anger, or any other emotion born of crisis. Stop here and think about that and let it burn in to such a depth that you will never forget it, because that one bit of knowledge can do more to save or prevent a troubled relationship than about anything else you can name.

Attraction, that “swept off her feet” feeling is what makes a woman’s life wonderful. There are things that reward her, like seeing that she’s been a good mother, etc., but creating attraction for her is her ultimate reward and the ultimate act of nurturing her, in exchange for all the nurturing that she gives the rest of the family.

So you see, what it all boils down to is that in a committed relationship, women need love to feel secure in giving of themselves, and they need attraction to feel alive and motivated to give their best. If you are going to sit on your duff with a beer and the TV remote control all evening, every evening, don’t expect her to be looking forward to doing anything but sleeping when bedtime arrives, and possibly sleeping with someone else at that.

No kidding. Since attraction and love are two entirely independent emotions and boredom is so utterly devastating to a woman, there may be no amount of love – hers or yours -- that is sufficient to keep a woman from engaging in an affair if you aren’t creating attraction for her. Think about that one for a minute, too…

It’s a double-edged sword. The bad news is that a woman can love you more than anyone else on Earth and still be compelled to engage in an affair to relieve the boredom the same way a man might be compelled to rob a bank to obtain the money to recover his wife or children if they were taken hostage. In extreme cases, it can literally be that overwhelming for a woman.

Yes, there are those who have self-esteem problems and have affairs in rapid succession, just like men do, looking for acceptance, approval, validation, etc., that they will never find, but those women are so consumed with feelings of need that they are not capable of love. I’m talking strictly about a woman who loves you here. And now for the good news…

It’s really the same news: a woman can be driven to have an affair even if she loves you more than anyone else on Earth, meaning that if she does have one and confesses it sincerely, along with a genuine desire to work it out and salvage your relationship, your best bet is most likely to do so. Why?

An affair isn’t a problem; it’s a symptom of a problem. If the problem is a simple deficiency of attraction, you can fix that, easily, and from what I’ve seen from the men who have used "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," pretty quickly, too.

Not so obvious is the fact that a woman who is rational enough and emotionally self-aware enough to realize that the affair was just a tension-breaker, that she loves you enough to discontinue the affair and confess it, and has the strength of character to do so is going to be very vigilant in protecting your relationship from similar problems in the future, so long as you continue to be committed to your marriage with her. Some even say that an affair is like a near-death experience, and those who survive them find they commit to and enjoy their relationships to degrees they never thought possible.

And no, I am absolutely not suggesting that women be given a blank check to have affairs or be categorically forgiven regardless of the reason for the affair, any more than I would suggest that women do the same for a man. I am saying:

1. When a man and a woman have attraction and no love, they have a great relationship in the bedroom, but not anywhere else. These couples fight to make up because sex is all they have together. There relationship is one of those bipolar catastrophes wherein the participants are either having sex or at each others’ throats, no middle ground. If you hear a man saying, “She’s great in the sack, but man, what a bitch!” or a woman saying, “He’s such a jerk, but he gets me off,” they’re in this kind of relationship.

2. When a man and a woman have true love, but have lost attraction, realizing that lost attraction, not lost love, is indeed the problem and addressing that by recreating the attraction creates a stronger relationship and should be pursued if possible. The only time it is unlikely to impossible is if another man has created attraction for the woman; again, attraction is a double-edged sword in the extreme. If you’re not creating it, there are others who can and will, and they’re not far away at any given moment.

3. When a man and woman have both true love and attraction, there’s nothing that can separate or take them down. Their relationship is impervious to outside influence because they will actively protect what they have.

4. When a man and woman have neither, and their relationship is based on need, lust, or anything but the combination of love and attraction, well, I’ll just say that I certainly wouldn’t want to live that life…and way too many couples are stuck in it. Such relationships are doomed to failure before they ever begin.

There you have it, and on the surface, it looks like a mess, but it is in fact a clear roadmap for getting out of a mess and staying out; a roadmap, but not detailed directions…

Those detailed directions, including how to accurately evaluate your relationship, how to accurately communicate with any woman so that you can have the intimate discussions required to overcome hardships and celebrate your life together, and everything you need to know about what makes women tick, what they want, and how to build and kill attraction in your relationship (straight from the mouths of women!), are in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," so go now and download your copy at http://www.makingherhappy.com while there’s still time to save yours, because every day that damage is done makes it just a little harder, and being men, we like to do things the easy way, right?

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

What Are Outside Influences Doing to YOUR Relationship and Marriage?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meet Tanja K.:

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

Tanja

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hi David

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

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

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

Cheers

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

My reply:

Hi Ken!

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

Congratulations on your progress! Keep me posted!
David

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Being the Protector in Relationships and Marriage: When Should You? Part 2, Reader Observations and Lessons

Readers respond to the August 30 edition about knowing when to be a protector and when to let someone learn their lesson the hard way. I found their insight fascinating and adept, and you should find it useful.

In the August 30 edition, I shared with you part of a discussion I had with a student/client/friend, who has correctly identified himself as too mismatched with his wife to be able to salvage a failing marriage. If you missed it, please read it now at before continuing so you can be up to speed as we discuss these reader responses, because this is some really good stuff!

The gist of the lesson was that we as men are biologically wired for behavior that in some ways differs significantly from that of women, and that a tendency to be over-protective of everyone around us (as opposed to the natural female focus on protecting their children) and that there are times when we would be serving those we care about better by letting them make their own mistakes so they can learn from them, and make their own decisions in general so that we don’t communicate a lack of confidence to someone who needs our support as they try to mature and evolve, or to demonstrate to us that they have ALREADY matured and evolved.

What follows are the more interesting letters I received regarding that issue, and I must admit I’m rather proud of those who wrote them, because they are good questions that show analytical minds at work looking for answers, tools and opportunities for improvement. Meet Terry:

David,

You mentioned “a pretty typical story of an extremely intelligent and analytical male hooked up with a not-so-intelligent and overly creative female.” Could you elaborate on what is typical? My wife read that and said you were saying that it was typical for men to be smart and women to be stupid, and I didn’t take it that way at all.

Thanks,
Terry

My reply:

Hi Terry! You’re quite right. I meant nothing remotely resembling what your wife thought she read. It’s common for men to be more analytical and women to be more creative because of the neuron density in the left and right hemispheres of the brain that you find common to gender. There are exceptions, and there are also cases where you see things like a highly analytical man or woman who is also quite creative. The “norm” is for men to be more analytical and women more creative, but that does not mean that predominately analytical men have no creative ability or that predominately creative women cannot solve a problem.

I also did not imply that it was common for the man to be more intelligent than the woman; it is common for one partner to be a little more intelligent than the other, but if that gap is very wide, it creates a pretty serious incompatibility. What I was saying was typical was that when there is any kind of big compatibility problem, intelligence or the analytical vs. creative mismatch, problems are significant and difficult to handle without a lot of competent help, if they can be handled at all. Sometimes that compatibility problem is a marriage-killer.

In short, I was speaking of general tendencies in partner dynamics, not certainty in gender dynamics. I’ve met some incredibly smart and incredibly moronic members of both genders, as I’m sure everyone else has.

Thanks for writing, and keep in touch,
David

Margot’s insight here is impeccable. I’ve written on “red flags” before and neediness being one of them, but she pulled it out of this lesson as well. Check her out:

Hello David,

I couldn’t help but wonder how long this man had been trying to save this woman if he was trying to fight the urge to save her now. I should think that both a person’s need to be saved and an overwhelming urge to save someone are indeed both big red flags in a relationship. It’s one thing to want to love someone and engage in mutual nurturing, but it’s quite another to be driven to spend your life bailing someone out of one tough spot after another. If my husband were to get in a jam I’d certainly want to be there for him, but a pattern of choices that kept him in a jam would make me at least question how much importance he placed on his life and mine. I’ve found, as you may have, that people who make consistently bad choices aren’t stupid, but rather don’t care enough about themselves or the people around them to exercise the discipline to think and make good choices, which in my mind is a gigantic sign saying “DANGER!”

Cheers,
Margot

My reply:

Hi Margot, and you’ve hit the nail squarely on the head. Finding yourself drawn to people in trouble is not a sign that you love them, but that you are for some reason attracted to their frailty – codependence is a very destructive basis for a relationship to say the least. Lasting relationships are built on love and attraction, which in turn creates friendship, trust, loyalty, fun, excitement, and sex, not on the guilt or need that causes you to want someone to bail you out or be obligated to you after you’ve bailed them out.

Good to hear from you again, and do keep in touch,
David

And this from Daphne, one of the women in the test group that helped with the research for "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” and a regular contributor:

Hey David,

As usual, I have stories about things my girlfriends have done to capture a man that would make your hair stand up on the back of your neck. One they all talk about is the lengths they’ll go to in trying to make a man feel dependent on them to keep him home, and how they’ll create a crisis from time to time to make him feel good about having saved them. Three of my friends got married to men who fell for fake emergencies. They were looking for someone to give them a house and children, and somebody who would run to the rescue was an easy mark. Tell your guys to watch themselves!

Daphne

No, neither Daphne nor I are saying that every woman does that, or even the majority. However, women, especially young ones who haven’t learned they can take care of themselves and developed the means to do so, and who want to get away from an abusive home or who are enamored with the idea of making a baby and too impatient to go about it the right way may go to extraordinary lengths to make it happen, to include ensnaring and marrying a man who will be tolerable to live with and a good provider in order to facilitate her desires of escape (possibly from oppressive parents or an abusive parent) and/or motherhood.

Such relationships can last for years, but they are not happy ones, and are usually focused on the children instead of the whole family. When the children start leaving the nest (if not sooner – often MUCH sooner), one or both parents will start succumbing to the pressure of trying to suppress and work around their incompatibility, and then the frequent fighting, frustration, disrespect, distrust, affairs, etc., start happening. Could this – OR DID THIS -- happen to you?

People unfortunately see these emotions and fights as the cause of their marital problems, but they’re merely a symptom of a much bigger problem. The cause was a bad decision to get together in the first place. That’s why I stress so vehemently in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" that before a man starts working on fixing a broken relationship he thoroughly evaluate the relationship, check for compatibility and other markers of a strong foundation for the relationship, and make an informed choice before proceeding with anything else. Trying to put off the inevitable is a fool’s errand; if it has to end, end it quickly, and with dignity for all involved if possible, instead of escalating the pain until everybody is too engaged in fighting a war to clean up a mess that never should have been made, and children and other innocent bystanders end up suffering for it.

"THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" is truly THE man’s guide to any kind of great relationship with any woman, and it’s become the new title of this book because it’s so fitting and reflects its true scope. Do yourself a favor and go to http://www.makingherhappy.com/ and download your copy today, and start getting things squared away in your life. Even if you’re in your 70’s or 80’s, there’s still time left in your life to be happy; don’t waste it trying to delay the inevitable when you could be enjoying the time of your life.

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

Some Thank You Notes with Great Lessons on Relationships and Marriage

Talk about extreme! There are even some great lessons to be learned in some of the “thank you” notes I got from some of the "King Arthur and the Witch" contest winners! Check them out:

In case you’re curious, here’s a couple of interesting excerpts from “Thank you” notes from the winners of the King Arthur and the Witch contest, in which you’ll notice a common thread:

Hi David,

Thought I'd write and say thanks for my prize. I've started reading your book and it's exactly what I felt was the missing piece in my 'studies' - And It turns out you used about 90% of the same experts as I have been for the last few months.

Much appreciated,

Karl.

Incidentally, after my comment about Karl’s period after his signature being a mark of a confident man, a reader asked me if not putting a period after my name meant that I was not confident. No, it doesn’t. It just means that I adhere rigidly to the rules for formatting correspondence, as everyone should. ;-)

Hi David!

Thanks for the gifts and I am reading "THE Men’s Guide..." now. Boy I should have gotten this some time ago! I have some of David D.'s stuff, John's stuff, Shelley's stuff and get Mary Jo's newsletter. I also have F.J. Shark's Jerk book and have looked at other folk's goodies as well. You could say I'm a lot like you in the sense I have this intense drive to go after things I'm interested in if they catch my attention and fascination.

I have been in 2 marriages of about 8 years each and decided I've got to find out what is really going on before I ever do this again. The pain is just too much. Now I'm learning, observing and watching and yes practicing different things. Yes I have "seen the light" in the sense I was way too much the wussy man trying to please and take care of my little princess.

I guess the big light came on when I finally started understanding, like the story, women want a man who can be the man and be a partner at the same time. Thanks Again BIG TIME!!

Time to get back to reading so I can flush out some more garbage and replace it with pearls.

Take very good care and keep up the truly special "work" you do.

Thanks David,

Dave

Did you notice the recurring theme? They’ve been reading advice from the dating gurus and others, but it didn’t come together until they read "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" because the rules are different in committed relationships than when you’re dating. The basic principles are the same, but the definitions and applications change, radically in some regards.

If you’re in a committed relationship, stick with me. If you’ve been in a committed relationship and trying to figure out what happened so you don’t repeat the mistakes, stick with me. If you’ve never been in a committed relationship that worked and you’re dating now, use the dating gurus advice to meet people, and use the evaluation section of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" to help you choose from among the many candidates you’ll be dating. After all, dating is a time of finding and exploring options, not homing in on one option and trying to convince them and yourself that they are “the one.”

Forewarned is forearmed, and as you have seen if you’re past puberty, there are countless pitfalls in a relationship, but you can be ready for every one of them. Whether you are in a committed relationship or wanting to be, you need to know what’s in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and you should go to http://www.makingherhappy.com right now and download it. The Boy Scouts have it right: BE PREPARED!

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

Past Winners in Our Contest Who Found Their Way to Great Relationships and Marriage

I’ve not received a 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 yesterday’s edition 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 not received even 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 past years here because they are quite brilliant, and I’m also going to extend the contest 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 how 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. After reading "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and my two free reports (linked at the bottom of this page) “Break-Up Busting 101,” and “What Women REALLY Want,” he has become an absolute master and guru in his own right, as well as a very close friend. 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 and are horribly unhappy putting on that act, and wanting relief from the stress of acting against their nature. 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, who is also a friend and truly a man among men, 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.

Here’s a 2008 winner, who also ended up becoming a close friend later:

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 correct conclusion or functional 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 had only been subscribing for a couple of weeks, and we quickly become very close friends after this. He is another guy who has no trouble being a man, but has some issues with evaluating women and relationships and communicating. He had 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 got there, and they’re good now.

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 quickest path to happiness, as anyone who has used this book or whom I’ve counseled will tell you. I don’t buy this crap of needing 10-20 weeks of counseling to straighten out a marriage or determine that it can’t survive. The facts of your life are right there before your eyes, and if you can identify and observe them without bias, you’ll know exactly what to do. After that, it’s just a matter of execution. So get busy! Life is short, too short to waste being unhappy, the clock is relentlessly ticking, and not a single tick can be regained once it has passed.

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

How Honey-Do Lists Affect Your Relationship and Marriage

We all have them. Some of us find them amusing and fun, while others hate them as the bane of their existence, a constant source of stress and a major hurdle to doing anything that they may want to do. Yes, I’m talking about the dreaded “Honey-Do” list. How you handle it has a HUGE impact on your relationship, and it can be good or bad. The good news is it’s YOUR choice, not hers…

I spent almost all of this weekend in my workshop building cabinets, doors, tool storage racks, etc., turning it into a real man cave for a “do-it-yourselfer” like me. In my life, productive work is a person’s greatest virtue, and I love doing anything that helps me to do more competently, or do things more efficiently. Next weekend I may well do the exact same thing, and love every minute of it.

You have another weekend coming up. And many more after that, until the end of your life. What are you going to do with each of them? Or even the next one? According to your letters, for many of you Friday is just your last day of rest before another frustrating and laborious weekend spent trying to shorten your “Honey-Do” list.

I want to ask you a really simple and blunt question: WHY???

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself a single question about your honey-do list, let alone all of the pertinent questions? Well brothers, it’s time.

The first question you need to ask yourself is why you have a honey-do list (hereafter referred to as simply “the list”) to start with! To answer that question, we need to consider the various reasons that women construct the list, and then look at what is on YOUR list to verify their intent. Ready?

Some of the reasons women construct this list are logical and productive, others amusing, and still others downright diabolical. Let’s take a look at these.

1. It makes you look and feel important around the house

2. It makes you unavailable to look and feel important around other women

3. It helps distribute the task load so that you each have equal free time

4. It helps distribute the task load so that she has more free time and you have less or none.

5. It gets things done that she is unable to do herself

6. It gets you to do things that she could do herself so that she’s free to have fun while you’re working on the list.

7. It promotes a feeling of cooperation and teamwork

8. It creates an investment in the relationship that you will be reluctant to cash in even if the relationship or marriage goes bad.

9. It makes good use of otherwise idle time

10. It puts her in complete control of your free time and ensures that you won’t be tempted to have any fun of any kind without her, even though she may be having loads of fun without you while you’re working on the list.

11. It’s more affordable for you to do the work instead of hiring it out

12. It frees up money for her to spend on other things that she wants, without regard for what you might want, which will be purchased when she’s out shopping while you’re working on shortening the list.

13. It lets your wife see you acting competently and confidently to get things done.

14. It lets your wife see just how much crap you’ll put up with from her – TESTING!

15. It helps to maintain or even increase the value of your real estate so that you can upgrade later or contribute profits to your retirement.

16. It helps to maintain or even increase the value of your real estate so that she has more to take with her when she leaves you for the gardener, playboy, or biker she met recently.

What’s the first thing you notice about this list? How about that there are an equal number of good and bad reasons for the list and its elements, and that each good reason has a directly opposing bad reason? That means we cannot make snap judgments and say silly stuff like, “My wife would NEVER do that to me,” or “My wife is such a nagging, selfish witch that she’s just making me do everything so she doesn’t have to,” so drop any preconceptions and let’s look at the facts of your relationship through a few other simple questions.

How many of the things on your list are things that:

…your wife is unable to do?

…your wife is unable to help you with?

…you do well and/or enjoy doing?

…you don’t do well and/or despise doing?

…your wife offers to help you with or you will be doing while she is working on something else?

…your wife informs you that you will be doing while she is out shopping or doing something fun?

The answers to those questions will tell the tale. They will also tell you what you need to do about your list!

If there are things on your list that your wife could do, why isn’t she doing them, or helping you to do them?

If there are things on your list that you hate to do or aren’t skilled enough to do competently and safely, why are they not either being done by your wife or being hired out?

If there are things on your list weekend after weekend that you are doing while she is out having fun, when did you hand over your testicles to her?

Yes, I DID say that. Committed relationships and marriages are partnerships, are they not? (If you just answered “no,” take that as a sign that you need to be on the phone with me within the next 24 hours!) That doesn’t mean that you do all the hard stuff while she has all the fun any more than it means that you drink up your paycheck every week and beat the hell out of her to keep her in submission while you spend her paycheck to keep the bills paid. It’s a two-way street, and if you’re not doing your share of traffic control, somebody else in your house is “wearing the pants in the family,” as the saying goes.

So what do you do? That depends on what answers you have to all these questions, but when you have the answers, what you do about it will be self-evident. If your tasks are on your list for the right reasons, have fun with it. Open some negotiations and playfully challenge your wife on her contributions, get her to help you with the items on the list, etc. Tit-for-tat (no pun intended) can be a lot of fun.

If however, your list turns out to be a “massive cargo of bovine fecal matter” (a big load of bulls**t), it’s time to turn the tables. Tell your wife that you’re done spending every free minute you have working on the list while she’s out having a good time, and that she’s going to share responsibilities, to include taking up a part-time job to help pay for things that need to be hired out if your financial situation calls for it. If she threatens to leave over it, let her go; either she’s testing (women do a lot of that, remember?) or you just flushed out a spoiled brat or a gold-digger who was taking a free ride at the expense of your life and hard work, and life’s too short to live like that.

Gentlemen, it’s really just this simple: If you are referring to your wife as your “ball and chain,” you’re either married to the wrong woman, you’re allowing her to take advantage of you, or you’re being punished for not stepping up to the leadership position that you are supposed to be filling, whether it’s intentional or not.

These problems are entirely correctable, and only serious cases of incompatibility or skullduggery require divorce to correct them. Most problems, honey-do list and others, require only that you stand up and act like a man, taking a leadership role (not a bullying, controlling role, mind you) in the decision-making, resource allocation, etc., and then inviting, listening intently to, and considering your partner’s input if she has any before finalizing decisions. Can you do that?

Certainly, but maybe not in your present condition. To lead you need to know about leadership, and to lead a woman you also need to know about women: how they think and communicate, what they want, need, and expect, and what turns them on and pisses them off. You got all that under control there, Sparky?

If not, go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and get it under control, quickly and effectively, as have the many before you who have done everything from stopping divorces dead in their tracks to making mediocre relationships the envy of the community.

Who am I to make such a claim? The translator for several hundred women who contributed to the content and have watched their husbands become the man of their dreams. If you’re going to ask for advice, go to the source, somebody who HAD the same problems as you and fixed them, not somebody who HAS the same problems you do and miserable, or worse yet, has never had the problem and has only an opinion as to why you do or what to do about it.

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

Competition and Cooperation: How to Destroy or Build a Great Relationship and Marriage

Committed relationships thrive on cooperation, not competition. Is competition killing your relationship? Would you recognize it if it were? Believe it or not, many don’t, because it’s not always obvious…

I hope you’re enjoying your day. I had to run some errands a while ago, and everywhere I went I noticed couples in heated competition, arguing about purchases, project details, child-rearing issues (one couple was standing in the middle of a shopping mall concourse yelling at each other over whether their 14-year old daughter was going to date a college-age young man!) and it was so painfully obvious that if these couples were focused on WHAT was right instead of WHO was right they’d be living much happier lives.

A committed relationship or marriage requires two people to coexist, preferably in the pursuit of mutual goals, or at least compatible goals that conform to shared values. That’s what being well-matched is all about; and what gives you something to talk about and work together to achieve, without which the relationship eventually falls apart, being unable to withstand the pressure of the vacuum that forms between the two people.

This requires cooperation, which in turn requires that you have compatible values; otherwise, the two of you will be competing to force your values to be the standard by which the whole household conducts its business. Let’s look at an extreme example just because the extreme ones are the easiest to see and take the least explaining:

Imagine a capitalist and an altruist are married. The capitalist will make decisions based upon what promotes his or her well-being and that of their family, while the altruist will make decisions based upon the ideal that he or she is his or her neighbor’s keeper, seeking to give away everything that the capitalist wants to use for the family.

Their value systems are stark opposites, and therefore there can be no cooperation; the directly opposing value systems cause the couple to constantly compete to try to live within the constraints of their value system, which will destroy a relationship every time because there is no win/win scenario for the majority of decisions they have to make, and compromise fulfills nobody. The bottom line is that they never should have entered into the committed relationship because it was doomed before it ever started.

HOWEVER…

Not everything is a question of values. Two people can have common values and be striving toward a common (or again, at least compatible) goal, but have different ideas about how to achieve it, and all too many couples make the mistake that I’m about to describe, especially when one is creative and one is analytical:

THEY COMPETE OVER WHOSE WAY IS THE RIGHT WAY…

…or whose idea is the right idea, etc. The creative person will incorrectly see the analytical personality as a stifling constraint to their artistic liberty instead of a very valuable filter that can keep them out of trouble and from wasting time, life, and other resources in the pursuit of the unattainable or self-destructive. Conversely, the analytical will often incorrectly see the creative as a flakey pain in the buttocks who is too busy going off on absurd tangents to focus on the issue at hand.

Notice that I said that BOTH are incorrect!

If these people were focused on WHAT was right, and the most efficient and rewarding way to achieve whatever was before them (COOPERATING!) instead of being focused on WHO was right, meaning who’s smarter, who’s in control, who’s getting their way this time, etc. (COMPETING!), the creative could see and be thankful for the analytical’s ability to work through the various options and find the one with the least risk and greatest reward, and the analytical could see that the creative was capable of brainstorming and presenting options that may not occur to the analytical, some of which may be far better for their mutual success.

By taking advantage of their functional differences through cooperation, the couple is brought closer together, seeing each other as complimentary and therefore valuable instead of irritating, building trust and intimacy through cooperation instead of frustration and resentment at having to endure and lose frequent arguments.

The former of these scenarios builds self-esteem, love, trust, respect, and loyalty, while the latter destroys them all. While you would be hard-pressed to put a capitalist and an altruist, an atheist and a zealot, a soldier and a pacifist, etc., under the same roof for any length of time and expect anything but misery and a break-up, putting two people together who have different “brain-wiring” but common goals, values, and interests can actually be a very intense and rewarding relationship instead of a recipe for divorce.

It’s all in the choice to focus on what is right or best and cooperate to identify and do it instead of focusing on who is right or best and having to compete to see who is going to win each battle while both ultimately lose the war, a war that shouldn’t be fought in the first place.

I saw at least fifty couples today in a three-hour period for whom this concept would have been one of several “magic pills” that could have made their obviously strained relationships happy and rewarding. Many of these couples looked like they’d been together for several years (to wit, having a fourteen-year old daughter), and had been miserable for most of that time since they had worn down to the point of no longer trying to paint on a smile in public and opening fire on each other like that, at the top of their voices in the middle of a crowded mall.

Would you have been one of them?

Do you see where you could slowly be becoming one of them?

If so, you don’t have to live that way. Cooperation starts with a CHOICE to cooperate, to know, recognize, and value your partner’s differences as something that can benefit the two of you instead of something that rubs you the wrong way. It requires open, deliberate communication, and a healthy amount of self-esteem, trust and respect – all things that you should have had from the start, and unless you have opposing, competing values, can still be developed much quicker than you might imagine.

To learn how, go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and get your relationship back on track. You and your partner should be and can be cooperating as partners, not hacking at each other as competitors; life’s too short to spend it competing with the people you live with.

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

Distant Early Warnings Can Help Save Your Relationship and Marriage

Let’s talk about some of the most commonly-missed early symptoms of relationship trouble, and what needs to be done about them.

Like many of you, I grew up in the Cold War era (will politicians never figure out that the vast majority of us, in all nations, don’t care about spreading political and economic ideas around the world and just want to try to get along with our families and our neighbors, and that we’re far more interested in the exchange of goods and information with others and raising our standard of living through those activities than exchanging bullets and bombs and destroying the wealth that generations have worked to build, lowering the standard of living for everyone? Sorry…getting off my stump…), and one of the things we learned about in school was a surveillance system called “The D.E.W. line.”

“D.E.W.” stands for “Distant Early Warning,” and iss basically a line of radar “listening posts” along or near the Artic Circle in Northern Canada that would detect an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) coming over the North Pole (the shortest distance from the launch sites in the former Soviet Union) to strike U.S. targets. Thankfully either they never heard anything coming over, or we never heard about it.

The Soviets had their own version of the DEW Line, and frankly, you should, too. You should look around you and determine what is in your life that could prove as an early warning of impending trouble and allow you to take whatever is necessary to fix the problem before it gets out of hand. Let’s face it, it’s a lot easier to work out a problem or even shoot down a missile than to bury the remains of a million people and treat another five million for burns, injuries, and radiation exposure, then live with nuclear fallout for a few thousand years, right? The same principle applies to your career and your family life.

I’ll let you address your career observation system on your own, but I can help you to identify early warning signs of relationship problems, and you’ve no doubt noticed that it’s also easier to smooth a few ruffled feathers or even better, tie a string around your finger to remind you of your anniversary than it is to work your way out of a break-up or divorce. It just doesn’t make sense to wait for a catastrophe, hence that old adage: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

So what are some early warning signs of relationship trouble? I’ve been alluding to some of them in the closing paragraphs of a lot of these e-mails, but apparently a lot of you aren’t reading the last paragraph because you know there’s a sales pitch in there somewhere (wink!), and you’ve missed some pretty crucial information as a result. Instead of just listing them all, I’m going to lead you through the thought process of identifying them to help you learn how to construct your own “DEW Line.”

First, women like to talk, a lot, right? They like to discuss feelings and events, and many of them have a powerful drive to give an accounting of the events of their day and the people they interact with, even when the parties don’t know each other and really don’t care. For example, I once had a really great secretary who was also a really great friend, and she would tell me about her cat’s activities and what her elderly father had for dinner the night before, knowing full well that I despised cats because of allergies and didn’t like the way her father brow-beat her, and knew I didn’t want to hear about either of them. It’s a drive that is so powerful that I’ve never seen any proof that it could be overcome.

Their biological wiring compels them to be extremely social and share tons of information, and their need to escape boredom causes them to sift through their own and each other’s experiences looking for relief via adrenaline spikes from the emotional reactions to memories. Most of them don’t know or understand that we men don’t do this, and find much of it truly annoying, especially the drama, so they’re driven to give us big doses of it, too, thinking that we do the same thing for the same reason. So what do you think it means if your wife is talking to you less and less, and has devolved from answering “How was your day, Dear?” with a 20-minute account of everything she did, saw, heard, tasted, felt, thought, etc., to simply “Fine”???

It doesn’t mean that she’s learned that drama annoys you. It means that she thinks that you don’t want to listen to her at all and are asking as a formality because you’ve shut her down in so many other conversations. Women who learn that you find the drama annoying will simply filter out some of the drama, not give you curt, monosyllable answers. Communication is one of the primary ways they seek intimacy, and if she’s not communicating, she’s no longer interested in intimacy with you on any level. See how that works?

How about the bedroom? How often in your life have you ever really been too tired for really great sex? Or had a headache so bad that it would prevent it? I grew up on a farm and have worked my butt off frequently since leaving the farm, and have been too tired precisely once, and that was in my military days when I was injured, hadn’t slept in two days, was dehydrated, and my muscles were so fatigued and stiff that I literally couldn’t stand up. People just don’t get that tired but a few times in their entire life, no matter what’s going on, if they’re even of average health and mobility.

The same goes for headaches, unless there is some kind of migraine or brain tumor issue, or possibly a neck injury. The really bad ones just don’t come that often, and if they do, whomever is suffering them is looking for medical help, not just sitting around complaining, right?

By the way, medical studies have shown that what they call “frequent headache sufferers” have a headache once every two months. Not every night or even several times per week. It’s just not that hard to pop a couple of aspirin or something, and there really aren’t that many people around who prefer the attention they get from the martyrdom of drug-free endurance of a headache so much that they’d actually do it. There’s no logic to it.

When you hear hooves beating the ground, expect horses, not zebras, unless of course you happen to live somewhere in Africa where zebras are more common than horses. That’s a very common way of expressing “Occam’s Razor,” which states that the simplest explanation or solution is most often the best. You could call that one of the laws of the universe with regard to troubleshooting, right up there with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s formula for finding truth, as spoken through Sherlock Holmes, “When you have eliminated the possible, whatever is left, no matter how unlikely, must be the truth.”

So if you’re hearing excuses like that, what does it tell you? What MUST it tell you? That you’re not creating attraction and desire, and it’s just easier to tell a common lie than to hurt your feelings with the truth and deal with the confrontation, the pressure, and the guilt that is likely to follow. Hence, if you’re hearing frequent medically-oriented excuses and not seeing medical bills, somebody’s trying to let somebody off easy.

What if there are no excuses, and just no sex? What if you were “throwing down” (as one of my best friends calls it) 4-7 times per week, and now you’re at once per week, or once per month, or have fallen all the way down to that nasty statistic of once every two months, the average frequency for couples world-wide who have been together more than two years? This one is going to scare the pants off of you, because it’s two-fold…

Why? Because it’s a symptom of a big problem, and in the bigger picture, it’s also a cause of a bigger problem. Decreasing frequency is a symptom of lack of attraction and increasing boredom, and it’s also a cause of non-sexual marital boredom and affairs, the lack of intimacy that destroys solid relationships, and ultimately causes break-ups and divorces. Didn’t see that one coming, did you? Marriages seldom break up solely because of sexual infrequency, but they nearly always break up because of the things that cause sexual infrequency and lack of interest, so it’s yet another early warning sign of current problems with bigger ones to come.

By the way, I’m talking about a change in behavior here, not somebody who has had a diminished libido all their life because of low hormone levels. And even then, according to my readers, many people who have had diminished libido, upon gaining love and intimacy with someone, will more often than not seek a hormone supplement or other libido booster from their physician or over the counter. So in the end, there is very likely something that can be done for nearly anyone to help them have physical intimacy with their mate. Men are paying $15-$20 per tablet for prescriptions or some other enhancer, and there are some testosterone supplements that cost less for a whole month’s supply than a single dose of some sort of enhancer. It’s not beyond your reach. But I digress…

What about not talking because there’s nothing to talk about? What does that tell you? If it’s happening frequently, and you’re both finding yourselves driven to outside hobbies and friends and avoiding spending time together doing anything that requires conversation (like one of the few things you do together is watch television or a movie or sit in the same room reading but not discussing what you read), it tells you that now that you’ve come to know each other you have nothing in common to keep the relationship going (common values, common interests, etc.) and may well be so mismatched that you don’t make it.

Look for common ground to give you something to talk about, and if you don’t find any and can’t make any, consider easing out gracefully before you wind up getting frustrated with keeping up pretenses and bored to death because there’s nothing fun, interesting, or important to do together, and can logically discuss what is happening without the interference of being angry with each other over problems that developed and couldn’t be fixed; don’t get into “the blame game.” It’s a lot easier to part friends who acknowledge the common mistake of being incompatible than to fight a war because you’re hurt and frustrated and wanting to punish each other for making you feel “not good enough to change for.” You can’t change who you are to suit someone else any more than someone else can change for your sake.

There are lots of early warning signs because there are many potential pitfalls in committed relationships. Being able to identify the pitfalls and warning signs are a simple matter of knowing what it really takes to make a relationship work, which in turn takes knowing what your partner needs and wants from both you and the relationship. That will require knowing how to communicate effectively with her, which is a lot more complex than simply marrying someone who speaks the same language; a man and woman can say the same words in the same tone of voice and the meanings be very different, even stark opposites.

Yes, it’s pretty much a minefield, but there’s a map through the minefield, called "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and you should download your copy at http://www.makingherhappy.com right now, and get your own DEW Line developed and in place, or if the missiles are already inbound, find out how to shoot them down and get yourself into some “intense diplomatic negotiations,” fast!

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

Time Is On YOUR Side When Saving a Relationship or Marriage

The rules for creating and maintaining attraction can be slightly to radically different when moving from the “first encounter” scenario (like bumping into a stranger or trying to pick up a stranger in a bar) to a committed relationship. One such rule is the one governing your “window of opportunity,” which is as short as a few seconds when meeting someone new but can be months long when trying to rekindle the fire in a mature but stale or damaged relationship, because the woman would rather have her partner being a “naughty hottie” than being bored or having an affair; she has a vested interest in giving him a chance to enliven the relationship.

I received an interesting letter over the weekend from an achiever who has not yet read “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” but has subscribed to this newsletter, has bought materials from some of the dating gurus like John Alanis and David DeAngelo, and subscribes to their newsletters, and has noticed a discrepancy between my material and theirs:

Hi David,

I bought books and CD’s from John Alanis, David DeAngelo, and others, and subscribe to everybody’s newsletters trying to find a way to get things back into gear here at home. After 6 years of marriage, things have been in a downhill slide for awhile, and it’s obvious that there is an attraction problem, and they’re all saying that once attraction has died it’s nearly impossible, if not entirely impossible, to rekindle, yet you guarantee I can do it. What am I missing?”

Buddy G.

Well, Buddy, it’s pretty simple. They’re absolutely right, and so is what I’m telling you. The difference is in the context, particularly the timeframe. Remember, they are talking about creating attraction and keeping it going in order to ESTABLISH a relationship. In the dating world, there’s no commitment yet formed and nothing invested; you’re on strict probation before you ever approach her and introduce yourself, and at your first slip-up she’s gone because there are hundreds of other men in her world still left to inspect. She has no motivation to wait around for somebody exhibiting the same nice-guy, loser behavior that every other nice loser exhibits when she could be hooking up with a guy who “gets it” and trips her attraction triggers, giving her that swept-off-her-feet feeling women will kill for.

HOWEVER! As you’ll find in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” the rules of attraction in committed relationships are often quite different from those of attracting someone new. In your case, and the case of anyone in a committed relationship that has survived long enough to get a little stale and boring or damaged, you’ve already made the grade and fallen from grace.

In the meantime, ties have been built, maybe kids, mortgage, and other commitments and/or motivations for further commitment have come into the picture, and it’s to your mutual advantage to put things back together. Nobody likes break-ups or divorces, even when they come out ahead, because they almost always entail fighting, complications, and extreme changes in the way you live. I don’t know about you, but I hate it when that happens. ;-)

Look closely at the two situations, the requirements of the participants, and think with me for a minute. The “chick in the bar” would have no reason to give you a second look or thought if you said the wrong thing because there will be at least a hundred other opportunities for her that same evening, but the woman with whom you’ve been partnered, in whatever capacity, for months or years has a vested interest in the relationship!

She wants you to straighten up because having you “back in true form” (read “that attractive stud muffin you used to be, and even more so if you can do it”) is much more enjoyable and far less scary than dropping back into the dating world and having to go back to defending herself from perverts, stalkers, geeks, losers, liars, philanderers, and others who would either use, hurt, or bore her.

(And if there are kids involved, her drive to protect her children from a destabilized environment will make her want you to work with her to work things out ten times more than if there were no kids!)

Think about that! If you screwed up with the chick in the bar and she would say, “What for?” when you asked if you could try another date and attempt to make up for your transgression, the woman who has been in your life and enjoyed it would usually try to help you get it done! (To wit, one third of my book sales have consistently been to women!) She wants that feeling back, and would do about anything to have it back, and her choices are to:

a) leave you and find somebody else who gives it to her, or
b) don’t leave you, just find a “toy boy” and cheat
c) wait for you to get it done
d) help you get it done so she can have it back faster!

Now, which one do you think she’s most likely to choose if she has a choice of the four options above? Where most men screw up is only offering her “a” and “b,” and a few more will offer her “c”. You have before you the option of a book that, according to a great many people, will give you the knowledge you need to get the job done if you’ll just do it, and if your wife knows you’re genuinely trying she’ll help!

Seriously, if you were trying to date this woman, your chances of success would be pretty slim at best, but you’re married to her, and she doesn’t want to have a boring marriage any more than you do, nor does she want her whole world turned upside-down by a divorce unless that’s her only option. Download your copy of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage.” Read it. Study it. Learn from it. Have a laugh or two along the way, too!

And do it NOW, because attraction is a double-edged sword; the only thing that can keep her from responding to you when you straighten up and act like a man is if ANOTHER MAN creates intense attraction for her before you do, in which case attraction still wins, as always, but it wins the fight for the other guy, not you. But you can be certain that where women are concerned, attraction will be the deciding factor the vast majority of the time, no matter who wields it, so proceed in earnest.

If you get through the evaluation section and you know that you’re with the right woman, get her to read it with you. That way she’ll know that you’re trying to make things better for both of you and that the positive changes that she’s about to see in your behavior are because you’re committed to making things better with her, not because you have a new girlfriend making you feel sexy again. (Yes, they really do that!) Get it done, and get on with your new, sexy, exciting life with your wife. Why? Because it’s a whole lot easier and better than being bored or risking getting caught in an affair. You love her, so treat her like you love her! ‘Nuff said…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The first step in any great relationship of any kind is being well-matched. If you are not well-matched, you may be able to survive together, but the odds of being happy together are slim to none; if you are, you’ll find you can conquer about anything! Unfortunately, some couples live in misery for years without ever asking this most fundamental and necessary of all relationship questions! This is one of those “must read” issues, so dig in…

Today I want to talk more about something that seems to be so logical that it would be self-evident to all, but obviously is not practiced by many, the first step in having a great relationship. We touched on this in the July 14 issue of this newsletter, concerning what to do if your wife is with another man, and you should read that issue if you missed it. I try to go through this every two to three months because there are so many new people coming in and everyone needs to see it.

Those of you who have been banging your head against the wall after receiving advice from someone claiming that “any relationship can be saved regardless of circumstances” will want to pay particular attention to that and this issue, because this edition may be addressing your biggest relationship or marriage problem. And if people are going so far as to call you a “quitter,” or “loser,” because you’re tired of fighting a losing battle and can’t see how it can end well for anyone, you’ll not only want to read this, but share it with them, to at least get them off your back and possibly even help them get in touch with reality.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So you say, “What if I’m myself and nobody wants to be with me after the third date?” or “I’ve been married three times and none of them lasted longer than a year!” That’s where the work comes in! Not in faking your way into having someone keep your company, but by going through a self-evaluation and self-improvement period.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Stop abusing your wife

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Emotional Pain and Clear Thinking Don't Mix, Especially in Relationships and Marriage

A reader’s letters over a three-month period demonstrate how the pain and stress of a troubled relationship or break-up can kill your ability to think clearly and make you very vulnerable to having your buttons pressed by people trying to help you, and how you can recover if you choose to.

I want to get away from the subject of break-ups for awhile, but I have to give you this one last lesson before we get completely away from the subject, because this level of stress may happen to you someday and I need to prepare you for it.

Fair warning, this is a little longer than usual because I’m quoting several e-mails, but men and women alike can learn a lot from this if you’ll take a few extra minutes to read it.

Fights, fear, insecurity about your future, etc., those things that eat at you when your relationship isn’t going well or has ended, are a lot more destructive than most people imagine. Yes, it’s obvious that it hurts and makes you lose sleep, but the degree to which it can inhibit logical thought and even make you lash out at those who want to help you through tough times is not so obvious.

I’m going to share with you three letters, all written by the same reader, two of which were written within less than a week of his subscribing to this newsletter, and the third one today. Bear with me, as the point will become very clear toward the end. Meet J., a man who has been in a lot of pain but is obviously finding his way out of it and back to mental clarity and stability:

(His first letter, captioned “ohmigod,” received after he had read only one issue of this newsletter:)

astounding

does anyone actually believe any of this?

so - if your partner is bored of you, its your fault

my parents told me that only boring people get bored

its you, the man's job, to dance attendance on her and make her feel special

just what kind of relationship do your readers have with their women - and what kind of woman is it who lounges around like a spoiled teenager expecting to be "swept off her feet" by her man

maybe if she made an effort to find stimulating shared experiences and PUTTING SOMETHING INTO the relationship, instead of seeing her husband as some kind of personal satisfaction service, she might not be quite the miserable self-centered bitch you think all women are

holy cow, get a grip - if you REALLY think this kind of woman is the best a man can get you're lost lost lost buddy

kind regards,

J

Kind regards, huh? I didn’t know it until later, but he had just come out of a bad relationship, and pretty much got the meaning of the newsletter he read entirely backwards, as any of you who have been reading my newsletters longer than a couple of days already realize. It was pretty obvious that he was angry and in pain, especially in the level of sarcasm in his writing, but I wasn’t yet sure that it was a relationship at the core of his problem.

I wrote back to tell him so, and not realizing that he had just been through a break-up and was looking for an outlet to ventilate, replied with a fairly short and demure response:

Good morning, J.,

I'm sorry, but you have taken whatever it is that you're responding to so far out of context that I can't even determine what post or newsletter you might be speaking of. I don't ever speak of fault, except to tell men and women not to preoccupy themselves with fixing fault and blame, and to take responsibility for whatever they may be able to improve in their relationship instead.

As for being part of the problem, yours is the first negative comment I have received from anyone since I began this, and I can forward you hundreds of e-mails from readers of both my newsletter and my book where these people are telling me that they have turned their relationships completely around and that they are now better than they have ever been, including their original honeymoon period. I can only guess that you either have a hot button that was pressed by something you read or that this is yet another case of two peoples being separated by a common language.

I appreciate you taking the time to write, but frankly, I might have been a lot more interested in what you have to say had you exercised a bit of tact in lieu of sarcasm about how I write and where I live. I hope you find whatever it is that you are missing, because you are obviously not a happy man.

Regards,
David

…and he replied with the following, captioned “OK” the next day:

read your latest contribution with interest

of course men shouldn't habitually complain about how little support they get from their wives

but its my experience that men are caught in a double bind, their women are allowed to be behave like dependent irrational little girls and be as assertive and independent as they like - they are encouraged to be both - "girls" and "women" - and woe betide any man who questions their right to be which they want to be at any given time

men on the other hand are expected to be supportive and independent at the same time, and find their support away from the relationship - "Big Guys"

support, unfortunately, is often needed at inconvenient times

so men are screwed, not by women, but by blogs like yours which tells them to stop being a "wuss" and insists that its their fault that they can't be superheroes and not have ordinary human needs like everyday love

well, buddy, you seem to be part of the problem and not the solution

and you use 10 words (badly written American corporate-speak at that) where one will do

keep up the good work!

kindest fraternal greetings

J

"Keep up the good work!" and "Kindest fraternal greetings"??? At this point it was pretty obvious that he’d been through a break-up or two, was awash in a sea of negative emotions, and needed somebody to rough him up a bit to wake him up to the fact that he was indeed reacting emotionally and needed to pull back and look at what he was doing, attempting to alienate me with sarcastic remarks and possibly others who were interested in helping him.

I hate having to “read somebody the riot act” as the saying goes, but every man knows that there’s nothing like getting stomped on a bit to make you realize that somebody does care about what’s going on with you, else they would just leave you, exposed and vulnerable, to wallow in pain and self-pity, so I sent him the following:

J.,

You'd probably be a much happier person if you spent a little more time listening and learning and a little less time trying to argue with people to defend the mistakes you've made in your life. People use all of this, every day, and they write letters to confirm how well it works. Before it was ever published, it was tested on over a hundred couples with complete success. The information I use concerning attraction is based in part on information that people like John Alanis, David D'angelo, F.J. Shark, and Ross Jeffries (dating gurus) proved effective as much as ten years or more before I ever took it up and adapted it for use by people in committed relationships.

I couldn’t care less what your parents taught you. Mothers teach their sons to be "nice guys" and kiss women's behinds, try to buy their affection, and dump all the decisions in their laps with regularity, because it's what they think they want, but when they get it, it turns them off completely. Making a woman feel special is done by listening and responding, and by acting like a man, not by "dancing attendance on her" or any other form of serving her.

I have no idea where you get this idea that I said anything about a woman lounging around like a spoiled teenager. Women do day-dream frequently throughout the day about feeling sexual attraction. It's why they read romance novels, and why they start fights when men ignore them. It’s how they prevent boredom if left to their own devices, and is far preferable to affairs and such. Women do try much harder than men to put something into relationships, but it usually comes after attraction is triggered and after they feel commitment. I don't know of any mentally healthy women who see their husband as some sort of personal satisfaction service, and I see no evidence of them being miserable or self-centered.

This is the last time I'm going to waste my time writing you. You've read one of my newsletters, apparently half-assed because you have no clue what I am telling people, and you're trying to argue with me that what I'm teaching doesn't work when (a) you don’t even know what I'm teaching, (b) if you were such an expert, you wouldn't be reading anything I've written to start with, you'd be getting rich selling what you know, and (c) everybody who has and is using it is doing so with outstanding success. Nobody who has ever used my information has ever said anything about it except how well it works, and nobody who has ever used it has asked for a refund, and I extend a satisfaction guarantee for a full year after purchase, so if they wanted to do so, they would have. That speaks for itself, as does the reality of the results that my material is giving those who use it.

Your options now are to either read and learn or argue with somebody else, because I don't really care what you think, what you agree with, or what your parents told you, and until you understand what I'm saying and have tried it, you're not in any position to criticize it. What I'm teaching came straight from working with hundreds of women to find out what they respond to, and then working with their men to make sure that men can understand and do what is required. It's reality, there is no arguing with it, and if you don't like it, you can sod off and be miserable while the rest of us are enjoying a great relationship with our wives and girlfriends. I don’t deal in opinions and have no time for armchair pundits; either get in the game or get off the field.

David

I didn’t hear back from J. for awhile, and he did exactly what every real man does when confronted with such a wake up call. He dug in, paid attention, found his way out of the pain and frustration, and put his brain back in charge of his well-being, proving to himself and the rest of the world that the pain of even the worst break-up can be very temporary if you can keep your wits about you, with or without the help of friends and other concerned parties. This message was received captioned “from your (former) tormentor”:

Hi David,

Remember me? I was the guy who pissed you off a few months ago.

Well, I still haven't read your book, but I have been reading your daily emails and I am not too proud to admit when I have made a misjudgment. I'm looking forward to reading your book, but a lot of what you say in your emails makes rock solid sense to me (and at 41, I've had enough unhappy girlfriends/bad relationships to realise that I must be getting something wrong).

I'm going to recommend your project to friends, read your book and come back with some constructive comments (I am presumptuous to say). I think you come from a good place.

I latched onto "makingherhappy" in a bad way, because, in my last relationship, I spent a huge amount of energy trying to make an immature girl happy and made myself very unhappy and ill in the process.

Here's a thought though: I have to go into a workplace where this girl will be. Ex-partners and work, now there's a thorny issue. Maybe not for you, but it’s a tricky one nonetheless.....

with all good wishes,

J

So, J., no, you didn’t piss me off, and this time I believe you when you send “best wishes.” And you’ll know how to handle the girl in the workplace after you’ve read "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," so don’t worry.

You see, Folks? When you’re having relationship troubles and feeling like your guts are being ripped out at every turn, you need a release for that frustration, and the most likely and unfortunate outlet is someone who is trying to help you precisely because you have their attention. Remember that, and guard yourself against it, because not everyone is able to recognize that an outburst is an act of reaching out for help, and you have to admit that it’s a very poor way to ask for help in any case.

What I recommend when anyone is having relationship or other problems that breed frustration, fear, pain, etc., is ACTION! Don’t sit back wondering what will happen next and waiting for it to happen. Dig in and find the cause of the problem and do something about it. It’s an excellent outlet for all that negative energy because it converts it into something constructive, achievement and stress relief, and it has the added benefit of MAKING THE PROBLEM GO AWAY! You can’t beat that with a stick, can you?

Whether you’re facing nuisance or disaster, the key to making it go away is two-fold: knowing what to do and then doing it. “Think things through, then follow through,” was famed U.S. Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager’s “six-word formula for success,” and it works. “Thinking things through” in your relationship requires a sense of reason and a solid working knowledge of what you and your partner want and need and how you can best communicate.

Yep, that’s in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," which you will find at http://www.makingherhappy.com. The best news is that if you read it before you have problems, you’ll likely never have any because you’ll work together to keep them out of your relationship, but if you do have problems, you can fix them. Just don’t alienate everybody you know while you’re trying to get through it.

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

Why Is Breaking Up So Hard? Surviving the End of Relationships and Marriage

We’ve talked about stopping a break-up in my free “Break-Up Busting 101” report, but what about those times when a break-up really is the best thing for both parties? Specifically, why is it so bloody hard? Would you believe it doesn’t have to be?

This is one of those newsletters that had to be written; one that a fool would hope that none of you would ever need, but which reality says nearly all of you will find useful, either in surviving your present or some part of your future, or in understanding something very painful in your past, the difficulty of breaking up, even when it’s the best thing for both parties and everybody, including the two parties in the relationship, know that it’s best.

Some people get into relationships that are based on things like faith and hope instead of reality. Others based them on need, attraction, or simple lust instead of a combination of love and attraction. These couples ultimately find themselves painfully mismatched and moving apart is the only solution to the problem they have caused themselves. You can’t put a mongoose and a snake in the same place and expect them to just bend to meet each others’ needs and get along, nor can you expect incompatible men and women. Compatibility doesn’t come from the choices you make, but from the values and tastes that cause you to make the choices you make. Those things just don’t change that much over the course of an entire lifetime, and they certainly don’t change because somebody else wants or needs for them to.

I’m not like most of today’s “relationship guru’s.” I won’t tell you that all relationships can or should be salvaged, and have no respect for those who would. That’s why you’ll find the list of other relationship gurus I do respect and endorse very short. I maintain a list of those who have been recommended to me by my readers in this newsletter and in the margin on my main blog at http://blog.makingherhappy.com, and those are the only others offering advice on the emotions and issues of relationships that I would have any of you read, because they do embrace this self-evident truth instead of trying to convince you to buy what they are selling to have you save that which should not be and ultimately cannot be saved.

Notice that’s a very short list of resources taken from a very large pool of authors. Sad, isn’t it? And by the way, feel free to help me add to it by letting me know if you have had a positive result with any product. Word-of-mouth isn’t just the best advertising; it’s also the best way of weeding out the charlatans and bad ideas that sound good “on paper” but don’t work in the real world.

I’ve been working closely with one of your fellow readers, one whom at this point is facing the possibility that the break-up his wife initiated may indeed be the best thing that could happen to him because they are so grossly mismatched and she’s carrying a ton of baggage that she may well choose to hang onto, in spite of the fact that right now she’s facing the greatest opportunity of her life to drop all that baggage and make some incredible improvements in her life.

I’ll spare you the intimate details of their problems, but the bottom line is that he’s on solid ground, logically, morally, ethically, and every other way I’ve been able to observe, while she is hyper-creative and therefore rejects reality with impunity, is morally ambiguous, and is thirty-nine years old going on about seven.

He’s highly analytical and disciplined, knows what’s before him and how to react to virtually any word or action from her now (he read "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and we’ve been talking as well), and yet, there are times when he still has a hard time accepting what he knows to be reality, that in all likelihood, they never should have come together and he made a bad choice, because his wife appears incapable of growing up and becoming responsible enough to rejoin him as his wife, or indeed as anything more than a chronic, irresponsible and dangerous dependent.

He asked me why he was having a hard time accepting and emotionally committing to that which he knew to be irrefutable reality, and why people generally found breaking up so hard even when it was painfully obvious that it was the only option that could allow either of them to ever be happy.

I answered, "We all make bad choices, and being human, we tend to try to make the best of them and pick up a lot of good memories along the way that end up confounding us when we finally are faced with the reality that our bad choice is working against us."

It struck a chord in both of us. I did not, until the moment I wrote that to him, understand why I had had trouble with break-ups in the past, and those who know me closely would describe me to you as the most ruthlessly logical person they have ever met. I never stopped to ask myself while I was going through it why it was so hard. I was too busy asking myself another ridiculous question: “Why does this have to happen?” when I already knew the answer.

His reply to that pearl was as profound as the pearl itself:

“That needs to go in the evaluation section of your book - over and over! The main struggle in deciding whether it [salvaging his relationship] is a go or no-go is in sifting through all the wonderful memories to decide if they were ‘real’ or not...”

That’s the real rub, isn’t it? Were all those “good times” born of real love, friendship, respect, and loyalty worth celebrating? Or were they just born of two people trying to make the best of a bad situation they had created and didn’t want to face? Or was it something somewhere in the middle? Trying to resolve those questions, and cope with the reality the resolution presents, is what makes breaking up so hard when every available fact tells you both that there is no other alternative.

So in the event that you have to go through this torture, what do you do?

Look at the whole relationship and weigh the good and the bad. Identify what can and cannot be repaired, and how important those things are to you. In the end, if the relationship can’t be fixed, get out, but do it like a civilized adult, with dignity, and leave the other partner room to do the same. Indeed, LEAD HER to do the same. And if a friendship can be maintained, by all means do so; you may not have enough compatibility to live together happily, but you may still have common interests that you can enjoy together. Think about that...

Not being able to live together happily is by no means an indication that you can’t have an enjoyable conversation or dinner from time to time, help each other with a project or hobby on occasion, or do any of the other things that friends do. It takes a lot more compatibility to live together than it does to visit, as the focus of a visit is much more narrowly defined and creates boundaries that protect you from the things that caused trouble while you were married – if you pay attention to them, that is.

Don’t ever let things fall into the context or perspective of who is or isn’t good enough for the other. It has nothing to do with that. People are who and what they are, and have spent a lifetime becoming so. Thinking that you can or should be “good enough” to induce someone else to change for your sake that which they would not change for their own sake is foolish, arrogant to the point of being narcissistic, and just plain childish!

(Pay attention, Ladies, in case you’re thinking that you’re going to rebuild your man as you want him. If you do manage to accomplish it, you won’t respect him precisely because you were able to change him. A man who can’t stand up TO you can’t stand up FOR you, right? The attitude that "he should love me enough to change for me," has broken more women's hearts than men ever could.)

Admit that there have been problems, and that those problems have been caused by the two of you having too many fundamental differences to be compatible. You gave it a good shot, you had some fun and good times, made some money and accumulated a few things, and have a few fond memories, but the stress of walking on eggshells trying to keep from tripping over your differences is killing you both.

You’re good people, just not good for each other, and if you are the type who needs to or enjoys being married, you need to get out and find someone whom you are good for and who is good for you, compatible with you, and whom you can enjoy living with as your natural self. Work together to divide the rewards of your combined efforts fairly and help each other get a fresh start by introducing each other to friends that are more like them. You may not be worth a plug nickel together as husband and wife but may be great assets to each other in starting over. (This is all assuming that your problems are differences in your values, preferences, priorities, etc., and not that one of you is an abuser of some sort.)

There is no point in your life where being able to evaluate a relationship will not serve you well. You need to know yourself as well as your needs and desires, and you need to be with someone who can naturally fulfill those needs and desires while being fulfilled by you. That in turn requires that you know other peoples’ needs and desires with regard to you, does it not? You don’t want to enter a relationship in which you have no chance of fulfilling the other’s needs and desires, do you?

That means knowing before you get into a relationship what the relationship should look like if it’s good. It means knowing after you get into a relationship if it is going to work based on how well you meet each others’ needs and desires. It means being able to communicate factually and honestly to express those needs and desires to each other, as well as how well those needs and desires are being met.

Contrary to how it often appears, relationships and marriages very seldom fail after ten or twenty years or more. What really happens is that they fail at their inception due to bad choices and that failure isn’t conceded until years later, when every option has been exhausted, there is no longer anything to hide behind (like children), and both partners have become miserable spending so much time and effort trying and failing. If you have a good foundation for a relationship, it’s not hard to tell; there’s little if anything fundamental and significant that you’d want to change about your partner, such as their values, political leanings, etc. You can talk and get along, and have probably just become a bit bored because attraction is waning. That’s fixable.

But…

If you’re in one of those relationships where the only place you get along is in the bedroom, and especially if you find yourself fighting to have an excuse to make up because that’s the only part of your relationship that IS working, you have a serious problem, and believe it or not, there are people with whom you can get along both in and out of the bedroom.

And since so many of you have asked, yes, it is still a good idea to learn about attraction and try to create it for your partner even if you are breaking up. Being attractive is about being a leader, being smart, being fair, handling tough situations and being able to keep your sense of humor about you. Stirring up a little attraction in your partner as you are splitting up will help ease the transition for her and you both, because it tends to keep tempers at bay. It will help her to feel that you are being strong and supportive during this crisis, and make her feel good that you are making the effort to help her hold herself together emotionally while you go through the process together. Nothing bad can come of that for either of you, and may indeed help you to part friends instead of killing each other in a war that never had to be fought, a war in which the only victors are the lawyers.

There you have it, the dark side of relationships and marriage. It is my sincere desire that you never have to go through a break-up, and that if worse comes to worst and you do have to go through one, that you can get through it with your dignity (and assets) intact and help each other to move on to a better life with someone better matched to yourselves by understanding what it is that you’re fighting: the basic human tendency to try to make the best of even the worst situation, no matter how inappropriate or even self-destructive it might be, not each other.

No matter where you are in your relationship, from looking for one to having been in one for 40 years or longer, there’s help waiting for you in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and it’s just a few mouse clicks away at http://www.makingherhappy.com. Go check it out, and get the straight story while you can; there are very few of us around who can and will give it to you, and your life is too short to fail to have and use it.

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

An Accurate Barometer of Your Relationship or Marriage Status

Did you ever want a really accurate barometer of the nature and status of your relationship and marriage? One so accurate that it could tell you whether you needed to be deepening commitment or bailing out as of this minute? I have one for you, and one of your fellow readers spotted it!

I keep saying that I have the smartest readers on the planet, and I dare anybody to argue with me, because I have some pretty solid proof. Many of you pick things up from my book and newsletters that while sitting there in plain sight, most people would just skim right over and not notice how incredibly useful they are and what an impact they could make on the rest of their life because they’re too busy looking for things like magic bullets or validation for their mistakes.

Such a pearl is displayed here, brought out by Joe, one of my top students, from a recent newsletter, and “Jeff” in Queensland, this one just happened to be something that you need to pay extra attention to, Buddy:

Hey David,

Reading through the entire text of today’s post I found this passage:

“Committed relationships are either synergistic partnerships or they are something that will destroy you; there is no middle ground. If your relationship isn’t fulfilling you and giving you cause for celebration, it’s killing you, either through the slow poison of the erosion of your self-worth and self-respect, or the explosive shockwave of excessive demands and manipulation that continue until you are wiped out, when the fatal blow is delivered, the break-up, accompanied by the news that everything you did just wasn’t quite good enough.”

...to be a revelation and the best barometer I've seen. It's been printed out and will be posted and read every day. Often I feel like a slow learner, but I also know that lessons tend to be repeated until we gain the requisite knowledge.

Joe brings out two VERY important points, and I want all of you to study and reflect on them, because your life and happiness depend on them. Yes, it is that serious!

First, the obvious, that your relationship or marriage is either making your life better or it’s sucking it dry. There is no middle ground. And you may say, “Well, it’s not so bad. I can tolerate it. It’s better than getting out and having to date again, even if I’m not particularly happy.” Masculine bovine feces!!! (B.S.!!!)

If the latter is your response, you’re just killing time, waiting, and enduring. One of the wisest men I ever knew was fond of saying, “Son, you can’t kill time without injuring eternity.” (I wonder if he picked it up from the same church sign that I saw it on!) And it’s true. Every minute you spend in a bad relationship is a minute you can’t spend finding and enjoying a good one, trapped in your “comfortable unhappiness.” And “sucking it up” is the act of a coward in this case; a real man will love himself enough to fix the situation if it can be fixed or find a new situation if his current one can’t. Commitment to a doomed situation isn't commitment to anything except status quo and the easy way out if you're just using it as an excuse to not take necessary action.

The other, less obvious but equally profound thing that Joe points out is that we will make the same mistake over and over until we learn better. It’s sort of a corollary to “He who isn’t familiar with history is doomed to repeat it.” It won’t do you any good to exit a bad relationship if you don’t make the effort to learn how to enter into and maintain a good one, one that is based on love and attraction instead of need, lust, etc., and one in which there is genuine, deep compatibility, open and fulfilling communication, and fun and adventure.

So there are the big questions: How are you getting along? And what are you going to do about it? Is it good, but can be better? Is it salvageable? Is it doomed? Can you kick it up a notch? Notches even? If this one is bad, can you find a wife? Or just the next future ex-wife? If you find a wife, can you hold her love, respect, interest, and attraction? Or will you bore or frustrate her into affairs, or into shutting down so that you have affairs?

That’s a pretty scary list of questions for most people. Are you one of them? If so, would you like some answers?

I have them for you, really! Ask anyone who has ever read and applied my book, "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" to their relationship or marriage. Some have found that they could indeed kick things up, others that they could fix some pretty serious problems and then kick things up, often to better than they had ever been. Others have found that they were in a marriage that was doomed before it ever came together, and found their way out gracefully, peacefully, and with their dignity (and assets!) intact, and went on to find a good partner and a happy life.

So what will you do? Sit and sulk, saying, “Well, it could never work for me?” Or will you go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of this book that has worked for everyone who has used it and start making the kind of changes that make the difference between suffering, merely existing, and living? I STRONGLY suggest you do the latter, because life is too short to do anything else.

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

Why Are You With Her? Know the Right Reasons for a Great Relationship and Marriage

The following is actually chapter two of my free Break-up Busting 101 report; I’ve noticed that many people are not taking advantage of this wealth of information and I want to show you what you’re missing. In this chapter, we’ll talk about the four basic reasons people get into relationships and how to know if you’re there for the right reasons or the wrong ones.

Welcome to Lesson 2 in our Break-up Busting 101 crash course. I’ve noticed, just as you have, that a lot of so-called “free reports” are actually no more than glorified sales letters, but not so with mine, and I want to show you that today so that you will take full advantage of this genuine gift of valuable information. Indeed, I’ve included a condensed version of one of the most important – if not THE most important – chapters in my book, both to help you get a new understanding of how bad things can get when you think you’re doing the right thing and to prove to you beyond any doubt that if you are really interested in making life better, I can and will help you.

By the way, you can download this free report in its entirety and you should do so now, because I don’t know how much longer I’m going to leave it posted. If it goes, you’ll be out of luck.

So let’s talk about the reasons and emotions that cause people to come together in long-term relationships, how to identify them and distinguish between them, and most important of all, how to know if you’re in a relationship for the right or wrong reasons.

I write about this subject frequently because it is so vital to the success of anyone seeking a happy life in a relationship, and I want to write about it every day, because it is indeed the cornerstone of every well-rounded, well-matched, and happy relationship. These emotions, needs, and reasons are love, attraction, need, and lust. What happens if you confuse them? Did you know that they are different?

Unfortunately, most people don’t, and they are indeed not only different, but entirely independent of each other, as you are about to see. Thanks to Hollywood, poets, and poor grammar, among other things, many people use the word “love” in referring to all four of these very different and entirely unrelated conditions. Do you have any idea of the potential impact of such a mistake?

What if you feel as if you can’t live without somebody, which is need, and mistake that for “love,” which simply is “to value”? Will you be valued by someone whom you need, treat with jealousy and fear of losing them, causing you to try to control them and abuse them when they scare you? Hardly.

What if you are addicted to sex, and confuse the gratification it gives you with love, or if your sense of self-worth mistakenly comes from self-medicating your insecurities about your masculinity with frequent sex and marry someone thinking that the feeling you have will make the marriage work, when you don’t value the other person, and worse, don’t share their values? It’s a disaster that you can look around you and see every day, and an all-too-common cause of broken marriages.

Let’s stop with the what-if’s, since many may not see the difference at this point, and define these four conditions:

• To love is to value, to hold in high regard. Over the years, dictionary writers have included the other three conditions in their listed definitions for love, not because it was correct, but because it had become prevalent in our language as everyone sought prudish euphemisms for emotions and conditions they did not want to name because they would then have to face them and their true nature.


• Lust is a purely physical, biologically-caused desire to engage in sexual acts with another person – any person. Lust can even be at least partially satisfied by masturbation because it is just physical. The orgasm (sometimes multiples are required) sets off a cascade of chemical reactions that ends the state of heightened sexual desire. Neither love nor attraction is required to experience lust; it can indeed by induced by oral or injected medication, especially testosterone, the male sex hormone, which is the only true aphrodisiac known to science.


• Attraction is also biologically-triggered, automatically and consistently, but it manifests as emotional excitement and desire for intimacy and sex with a specific person who has triggered it; engaging a person for whom you do not feel attraction will not fulfill the desire it creates, which differentiates it from lust. It is not, however, a feeling or indication of value, because a person can feel attraction for someone they literally despise, such as women who crave the attention of men who beat them and wait for them to come home for prison, telling themselves it will be different this time, or men who try to drink themselves to death or engage in other self-destructive behavior because they can no longer sleep with the wife that just left them and took everything he owned to boot and become reckless, showing a disdain for rules and stability.


• Need is a demand placed upon another person for something they have, usually their life. Where love is characterized by a strong feeling of happiness when with its object, and wanting the object of your love to be happy as well, looking forward to your next meeting, etc., need is characterized by a fear of losing another person, and thoughts center around what will happen if they are no longer in your life, creating an overwhelming concern for not being able to live without them. Where love causes one to do nice things for another and enjoy it, need causes one to either try to “buy off” someone with nice gestures or to overwhelm, manipulate, and/or control them, resenting them and the power they hold over one at some – if not all – times.

The epitome of need is the codependent pair. You’ve seen them, the couple comprise of one who is dedicated to self-destruction and one who is dedicated to saving the self-destructive one. The self-destructive person needs the other to bail them out of jam after jam after jam, and the other does bail them out, because they are driven by guilt to keep saving them, but the price of their salvation is to submit to control. And I know a lot more of these couples than I care to think about. They think they love, and love is more impossible for them than anyone else, because they hate themselves; loving each other is not possible until that hate is corrected, and that often takes a lot of counseling, if it can be done at all.

Not one of these four conditions is in any way related to or dependent upon another; any of the four can be experienced in the total absence of the other three. This blows a lot of poetic notions and language right out of the water, such as “making love,” “in love,” “love child,” etc., but that’s irrelevant. What is supremely relevant is that you must accept these conditions and their differences as they are, understand them, and appropriately create them, enjoy them, or guard against them (as in the case of need, lust, and at times, even attraction) in your own committed relationship or marriage:

Yes, you want to love and be loved. If you’re not valued by the person you value, or don’t value a person who values you, you’re mismatched, and doomed to a life of boredom and resentment at best, and most likely headed for conflict, resentment, affairs and divorce.

If you experience lust and indiscriminately desire sex with people outside your relationship, your partner may resent it tremendously, as you might if the shoe is on the other foot (not all people regard sex as exclusive to a single partner – “open relationships,” etc.). Such hedonistic desire and values can only work in a relationship where both partners share such a value structure and view of sex, and rarely if ever is it enough to support a long-term relationship or marriage; love and attraction are still required.

Attraction for your partner is a wonderful thing, as is having them attracted to you, but attraction outside the partnership can be disastrous in the same way and for the same reasons as lust, except it can be worse because of the emotional element that goes with attraction. A relationship without attraction between the partners is a simple friendship, and usually a boring one. Such a relationship with love but no attraction is the relationship where you hear about partners having affairs, saying, “I love my husband/wife dearly, but I need more.” That “more” is the excitement, fun, etc., that are created by attraction, and if they are missing, trouble’s coming or already upon you. Or worse, you hear the poetic “I love you, but I’m not IN LOVE with you,” as if everyone knows what that bit of euphemistic tripe really means.

Need is bad for everybody. If you or your partner is being needy, the negative emotions described above will be present, especially in a codependent pair. If the symptoms of need are observed, somebody needs to start an intense effort to increase self-esteem to a healthy level. If it can’t be done, the relationship is virtually doomed, and a “defensive exit” must be considered after all other options are exhausted. Partners want partners, not dependents, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard women say, “He was fun when we met, but he turned out to be so needy I just couldn’t stomach him,” or men say, “Well, she waited on me hand and foot, and that was the problem. It wasn’t because she cared that much about me, it was that she was that insecure and just smothered me to death.” Sure, every man enjoys a woman’s natural nurturing, a lot, but smothering and the hovering and constant interrogation that goes with it are enough to drive one to drink, or more appropriately, leave.

Gentlemen (and Ladies!) I know many of you may be thinking that this is a load of crappy opinion and that it doesn’t work that way for you, but it’s not. It works this way for everyone, and unfortunately, many are unable to see it until so much damage has been done that they are forced to drop all pretenses in a last-ditch effort to salvage and redeem their lives. Don’t let this happen to you; arguing with reality is a self-destructive fool’s errand. Accept reality and make the choice to use it to your advantage in fixing and enhancing your relationship instead of fighting it while your relationship continues to come apart. It’s not hard to do when you know how.

I won’t tell you that everything that you could possibly ever want to know is in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage.” BUT! There is more than enough included to fix issues that can be fixed and help you identify both major and minor issues that can’t be fixed (such as drug addicts, abusers, codependent partners, needy losers, incompatibility, etc.) and deal with them appropriately as well, allowing you to move on and have a life instead of being stuck with someone who simply wants to suck the life out of you.

This information has been tested and worked for everyone that has used it so far, and to this date I have yet to be asked for a refund by anyone who has tried it (and only two refunds for any reason!) – can you imagine how significant that is in an industry where people frequently buy downloadable information with full intention of asking for a refund and keeping the information??? It’s so profound and works so well that even people who may not be intending to pay for it are deciding it’s worth every penny. Read the writing on the wall, make the choice to take responsibility and improve your life and relationship, and take charge by downloading your copy today at http://www.makingherhappy.com. I know I sound like a broken record, but life really is too short to spending it wishing you had answers when they are this readily available and affordable.

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

What Women REALLY Want in Relationships and Marriage, Part 3, The Dark Side

Is your relationship a good one, or are you just swimming in wishful thinking? My old friend Matt was drowning in it, but he – and YOU – can do better, if you know what the woman in your life really wants…

As we continue to talk about what women want from a man, we’re going to deviate momentarily to the dark side, and call your attention to the calamities that can occur if you don’t know what the woman in your life wants. We’ll start with my old friend Matt:

I ran into him over the holidays, and it really made me realize just how great a life I live; it’s not a perfect life, as any life has room for improvement, lest it get too boring to bear, but I know exactly where I stand on every aspect of my life, and know what’s working, what could be better, and at any given moment, if something isn’t working, I can make a rational decision as to whether to fix the problem or separate myself from the situation because there’s nothing to be gained by making the effort. I know what my wife wants, expects, and responds to at all times, and there are no nasty surprises.

No so for my old friend Matthew…

“Matt” was a pretty mediocre guy in most respects when we were growing up together, but he’s a great communicator, has an eye for detail, and hence has made a very successful career in business-to-business technology sales, but he’s never been able to really accept that success, and has a huge self-esteem deficit. To make matters worse, to try to feed his ego – that nasty stuff that fills the void between a person’s current self-esteem level and their needed self-esteem level – he’s surrounded himself with the trappings of success – big house, expensive cars and jewelry, private aircraft, and unfortunately, a totally unappreciative trophy bride – to try to make himself feel better about himself.

There are a few laws in this universe that cannot, under any circumstances, be broken, no matter how much one wishes to break them; one of these is the law of cause and effect. Unfortunately, this seems to be the one that everybody wants to try to break routinely, and nobody has ever gotten away with it. In the case of success, success causes the attitude and trappings of success; faking a successful attitude and surrounding oneself with the rewards does not create success, nor the genuine attitude or self-esteem of success. In Matt’s case, because he was never really able to see himself as having risen above his mediocrity to excellence, in spite of having been the top salesman in his company since the first year he was there. He’s trying to fool himself into believing what he should already have accepted long ago. As if that weren’t bad enough, there’s his trophy bride…

His trophy bride is a gold-digging predator. They’ve been together fourteen years and he catches her in a new affair about every month. She knows just what buttons to push to keep him seeking her approval, and blaming him for her affairs in such a way that he accepts the blame and works harder at his job to try to buy more of her attention! I didn’t get to talk to him long enough to find absolute proof, but at the time we parted, there was a huge body of evidence that she was in fact the sole cause of his total lack of self-esteem and acceptance of his success, because he had never been “good enough” for her to accept him and be happy with him instead of having all of her “toy boys” while managing to keep him on the edge of bankruptcy the entire duration of their sham of a marriage.

As we talked, she would disappear for long periods, show up for a few minutes to push his buttons, and then flutter off again as a social butterfly constantly does. When he finished describing his situation, I asked how he saw their future, he said, “Well, we’ve been together for fourteen years and she’s not left yet, so she must be incredibly patient with me. I’ve just got to work harder to find a way to satisfy her and when I do, I’m sure everything will finally come together.” My jaw about hit the floor.

In fourteen years, she’s had a dozen affairs per year on average (that’s 168!), she’s spent everything he’s made and has them pretty deeply in debt with no retirement savings, despite his million dollar-plus annual income, and he thinks she’s “patient”??? Sure she is! She has a very generous sugar-daddy footing the bill for her “brattitude” and excesses thinking he needs to work even harder to buy her love! There’s no way she’s going to get impatient with him, except to the extent required to keep him in approval-seeking mode!

Of course, when I asked him why he hadn’t ended the relationship long ago because he obviously wasn’t getting anything but an early trip to the grave out of the deal, his reply was, “But she’s such a great person, and she really loves me!” Yeah, she was great alright; she looked like something off the cover of a fashion magazine, indeed, quite a bit like super model Christy Brinkley in her prime, and that was about as far as great went.

She was haughty, aloof, thoroughly abusive to him (she said some things to him while he and I were talking that I would say to somebody to try to start a fight), and was coming on to other men just a few feet away from where we were talking, not just in plain sight from where we were sitting, but she would even look over at him and toss her head with a smug look on her face like he wasn’t good enough to watch her enjoying herself with another man and wasn’t man enough to stop her. It was truly pathetic.

So what’s the point? Matt could have saved himself years of a pretty bad life if he has just accepted the law of cause and effect, especially with regard to his wife. Her actions did not in any way support her – or HIS -- claims of loving him; she said she did, but her affairs and disrespect for him said otherwise. He knew nothing of what she really wanted, even though it was plain as day in front of him the whole time.

Matt’s case is a great example of the more sinister side of female desire, but what about the more benign or even nurturing woman whose needs are not being met? Meet reader and counseling client “Jack,” whose name has been changed to protect the blind and knuckleheaded:

Hi David,

I can’t thank you enough for your help and your insight. After a bitter divorce and custody battle, losing most of what I had in the world and getting saddled with alimony and child support payments that reduce my take home pay to about minimum wage, I finally got her to talk to me, stop treating me like the enemy, and tell me her version of what brought us to where we are. There was a lot of drama, a lot of finger-pointing, a lot of what I would have called rhetorical questions in the past, and a lot of anger and tears, but along the way there emerged two repeating themes. I never listened to her and I never gave her the chance she gave me by helping her to finish college.

You know all about the listening problem from our sessions, and it was just like you said on the phone and in your book. She never uttered a direct word in her life, did the whole questions and statements reversal thing and always assumed that what was obvious to her was obvious to me so she never stated the obvious, but this time I heard her, drew her out with questions to show interest and led the discussion when she stopped talking like you said, and found out along the way that she didn’t quit school because she wanted to have babies, she quit because she was GOING TO HAVE A BABY, and wanted to go back to college when our son entered grade school! In my deafness and arrogance, I thought she wanted to be a stay at home, full time mother and homemaker, because I misunderstood what she said when I asked her about it and didn’t press her for more detail, making her think I’d closed off the discussion and her desire and need for achievement didn’t matter.

We have called a truce, we’re talking daily, and there is a lot of testing going on right now, but she has brought up the subject of getting back together twice, and a discussion of her going back to school and having a career has followed that quickly both times. We’re putting our life and our family back together now, thanks to you. If there’s ever anything I can do for you, let me know.

“Jack”

Jack leaves out a few details that we spoke about on the phone later when I called to follow up, such as the motivation behind his wife’s desire to have a college degree and a career. She didn’t want to be a kept woman, resented kept women (which sounds like an issue that she needs to see a therapist about, because resentment is never healthy and she could just ignore them), and wanted the degree and career to make a fair contribution to the household and help facilitate early retirement for both of them.

Do you see what she was upset about? Her husband had so badly misconstrued what he saw and heard that he thought of her and her desires as exactly opposite who she really was and wanted! No wonder she left! And her desires, unlike Matt’s wife, were about as honorable and loving as they could be! It’s not just what all women want, think and respond to that is important to you as a man; what your partner wants, thinks and responds to as an individual is equally important, and if you know what you should know about women in general, especially how to listen to and talk with them, you will have everything you need to know the specifics that make your partner who she is.

What’s going on in your relationship? Do you know where you stand? Do you know what needs to be done to make things as good as they can be? Are your partner’s actions consistent with her proclamations of love? Do you know enough about the emotions of love, attraction, need, and lust to know if it’s really love that she’s professing – that being “in love” has nothing whatsoever to do with love? (And by the way, what exactly are YOU professing and feeling?)

Are your communications skills such that if she were to tell you what she needed that you would hear her and understand what she wants, or are you one of those men who thinks that his relationship is going great when he finds his wife in his bed with another man or opens the envelope and finds divorce papers? If you don’t know whether you do or not, or if you know that you don’t know, you don’t know enough, and I can help.

“THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” was developed to serve precisely this purpose, to help you assess your relationship, see what might be lacking, determine whether or not it’s worth fixing, and either get out gracefully or go for the gold with determination and confidence. It teaches you what is known about all women so that you can probe for and discover these fine points about your partner, and bring things in line to a degree you’d never dream possible.

Jump over to http://www.makingherhappy.com and see what it can do for you. Download it. Put it to work. Make your relationship everything it can be if it’s a good one or get out and start over if it’s not, because life is too short to spend it bored, frustrated, scared, cheating (or with a cheater), or celibate.

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

Can You Ever Be TOO Prepared for a Great Relationship or Marriage?

A reader reminds us that it’s never too soon to start working toward a better life and relationship, and I provide additional tips on how to get it done.

I got a quick note from a new reader I’d like to share with you. It holds a wonderful lesson for anyone whose eyes are open. Meet Brad:

Hello David, I just bought your book and I just wanted to let you know that it is very insightful. I am still single but you have much needed understanding of the most interesting female mind...you've got to love them. Brad

Here’s an excerpt from my response, followed by additional commentary:

Hi Brad!

I’m glad you’re finding my book useful. I’ve had quite a few readers comment that they wish they had been able to read something like that before they ever got into a relationship, and others go so far as to say that it should be required reading in high school.

Do yourself a HUGE favor and don’t skip the first part of the book, the part on evaluating relationships. That part works wonders in mature relationships to make sure they have a foundation sufficient to warrant improvement, and it also really shines if you use it as you see a relationship starting to develop and do your evaluation as you go in and as the relationship evolves, so you can get out early if you start seeing red flags. An ounce of prevention is worth several tons of cure when it comes to relationships and marriage!

Also remember that the rules for creating attraction are different in the dating world, mainly because your window of opportunity is very narrow in dating, so once you’ve finished my book, if you’re having trouble meeting women let me know and I’ll steer you to the dating gurus who can really help you; most of them are about as full of crap as most of the marriage gurus, selling snake oil and academic theory as if they were solutions, but there are a few that get results every time, and I know who they are and will be happy to point you in their direction if and when you decide the time is right.

Take care, and keep in touch. I can’t tell you how delightful it is to see a young single man taking the bull by the horns and doing his relationship prep work on the front end instead of trying to do crisis control on the back end.

David

Brad has it right. He’s thinking both ahead and “outside the box.” He’s single, but will be looking for a permanent relationship at some point, so instead of just looking for information on how to get phone numbers, he’s looking for what will help him understand women and choose the right one for the long haul. (Remember the old adage about dressing for the job you want, not the one you have? Same principle!) Getting the phone number might get you a date, or even two or three, but being a man who understands women and can converse comfortably with them near or at their own level, and knows what flips their attraction switches will get him his choice of women in a relationship that lasts for as long as he continues to act like a man.

It’s never too early to prepare to succeed, and not just no, but hell no, there is no such thing as being too prepared for success. If your relationship or marriage is anything less than a honeymoon now, it’s because you went in unprepared to sustain it.

If it is at honeymoon status right now, do you know that you know what it takes to sustain it, or are you just guessing that it will go on forever without you needing a back-up plan for when the novelty of the new relationship wears off and reality sets in? Be warned; you do indeed need one, because it won’t. Do you even know that there are chemical changes in men and women at between one and two years into a relationship that stop automatically providing the honeymoon spark? Ask anyone who’s been married more than a couple years where the magic went. They know it’s gone, but don’t know where.

One of the reasons that the average couple who has been married for two years or more has sex six times per year is this body chemistry change, but you can overcome it easily if you know what will compensate for it. And the good news is that compensating for that lost chemical costs you nothing, not even time and effort, once you’ve learned how it works.

So if that spark is gone and even if it’s been gone for years (I got an e-mail from a man a while back that said he and his wife had not slept in the same bed or had sex together in 18 years, they had stayed together by reason of religious convictions, and he had her back in his bedroom permanently the day after finishing my book), that doesn’t mean it’s too late for any of you. Unlike in Brad’s world, where windows of opportunity are very small, perhaps only seconds long, and the window tends to get slammed on your fingers because there are so many possibilities and little or no vested interest in a relatively new relationship, couples that have been together a couple years have a vested interest (“sweat equity,” kids, real estate, time, life, etc.) in continuing the relationship and will only let it go as a last resort.

Hence, where a wrong remark or sideways glance can ensure that you won’t have a second or third date (or maybe even her name and phone number!), a woman will give you months, maybe even years, to straighten up and fly right, especially if she knows that you’re making an effort, not to just do everything her way, but just to try to meet her in the middle on some basic issues, like understanding her when she speaks, being a stand-up guy who exercises a little personal authority, enjoys life with her, and protects her from boredom by giving her some excitement from time to time, all of which is far, far easier than you’d ever imagine.

Being the guy every woman wants is never hard to do; indeed, much of it is quite natural, and the part that isn’t all that natural is still a lot of fun. Imagine, after all those years of telling those jokes about the genie who could build a bridge from Los Angeles to Hawaii but couldn’t grant a man’s wish to know everything he needed to know about women, you suddenly knew! How would that change your life? No matter how much you think it will, based on the history of my readers, I’ll bet it will still be more than you think, and for the better.

Or maybe you’d just rather sit and wait and let things blow up in your face, like it has for your friends. None of your friends saw it coming when it hit them either, did they? And how’s that working for them, by the way? All that business of having their family torn apart, losing half or more of everything they own, plus getting saddled with alimony and child support – yep, sounds like something every man looks forward to, huh?

Frankly, I’d rather have my testicles pounded flat with a meat tenderizer than to go through that mess. How about you?

It’s never too soon and seldom too late to get on the right path, the path to personal authority, success, and happiness. Even if she’s gone, she may not be gone for good, and if she is gone for good, there are a whole lot more that will be lucky and happy to take her place after you’ve read "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and become one of the few of us whom women recognize at first glance as a man “who just knows what a woman wants.” Go to http://wwwmakingherhappy.com/ and get your copy right now, or wait awhile and let things blow up in your face and catch you unprepared, so you can see if you handle disaster any better than your friends did. It’s your choice; choose well…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Getting the Mix Right for a Great Relationship and Marriage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or worse, what’s two or three months compared to the years you might continue to be unhappy and/or alone, or stuck with the wrong person, if things continue the way they’re going? Not much, not much at all. Let’s see, three months study and self-improvement for 30 years of happiness. That’s a 12,000% return, and unlike the stock market, you’re in total control of whether that investment pays off, because it’s based on choices you make and actions you take, not the choices and actions of others.

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

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

Is Somebody Getting the Short End of the Stick in Your Relationship or Marriage?

Some men (and women) work their asses off for all the wrong reasons. Are you one of them? Would you know? There’s an easy way to tell, and there’s a way to fix it, too…

Today I was reminded of something that happened to me a long time ago that really teaches a great lesson about making a contribution in your relationship. I’ll spare you the details of the event because it was both boring and pathetic; I’ll merely say that it involved a broker who had resorted to scamming his clients to feed his wife’s insatiable appetite for shopping and ultimately ended up jailed, divorced, and selling used cars after he got out of jail, all because he didn’t say “no” or “stop” when he should have.

Have you ever asked yourself why you work the way you do, and who it’s really for? Whose goals you are trying to meet? If not, you should. That answer is definitely one worth having.

If you and your wife have sat down and planned your retirement together and you have jointly chosen things that you want to accomplish before and during your retirement, great! You’re on the right track. If the two of you are so independent that you keep your finances separated and are both making your own arrangements for retirement, that’s great too, as long as everybody holds up their end. But…

If you’re doing all the working and she’s doing all the spending, or if your both working but she’s still doing all the spending, something’s wrong. And no, I’m not talking about your wife being the one to handle paying the bills out of a joint account. If your wife is better at that kind of thing than you are and you can trust her to do it right and honestly, that’s the best thing to do.

What I AM talking about is when all significant financial decisions -- indeed, all decisions of any kind -- serve her goals and not yours. I see this around me nearly every day, and get letters from men asking for help with the issue. I won’t say that it’s a problem in every household by a long shot, but it’s getting common enough that I feel compelled to address it.

Why does it happen? Because you wussed out! No, there’s no other explanation, so don’t try. You wussed out and gave in and spoiled her rotten, or allowed her to spoil herself rotten because you didn’t have the spine to say, “No, that doesn’t work for me and I don’t want to do it. Working for no reward at all is slavery, not love, and you cannot leave me without reward for my work.”

Maybe it was fear of retaliation, or fear of rejection, or fear of making the wrong decision. Maybe it was just being too lazy to make a decision. Maybe you were such a wuss that you thought that you had to buy her love by turning everything over to her and living for her pleasure to the exclusion of your own. Only you can know that, unless you want to give me the details of your history and have me point it out to you. But what I can deduce with 100% accuracy is that it happened because you were not involved in the decisions, except possibly as a “yes man.”

If it hasn’t happened to you, congratulations, but pay attention and make sure it never does. The broker I mentioned was an alpha male sort who ran onto some hard times, and his conniving wife smelled blood and told him that if he didn’t continue to keep her up in the manner to which she had become accustomed, she’d leave and take everything he had. He panicked, plain and simple, and turned against everything he was (he was my futures trading broker for years and was the only honest broker I had ever met until this happened) out of fear that he would lose her.

I hope that it’s obvious to you that a woman who would leave you because you won’t spoil her isn’t worth having anyway, because she’s only there for the money, to take your life, not share it with you. And before anybody goes off half-cocked and sends me a nastygram because I’m saying that “all women are just after money,” NO, I’M NOT. Most women are good women, just like most men are good men. But the bad ones tend to be really, REALLY bad, and if you find you’re with one, you’re options boil down to precisely two: Remain a slave to her desires or free yourself of her and start over with a good woman who will share your goals and desires and help you to attain them – a partner, not a parasite or predator.

There is nothing you can do to change a bad person into a good one; they must do that, of their own free will and because they desire it, if it is ever to happen. You can’t blame a good woman for letting you spoil her, or a bad one for making you spoil her if she succeeds. All you can do is force a correction of the attitude and behavior and let the chips fall where they may. The woman’s character will be indicated by whether she straightens up or hits the door running (or tries to throw YOU out).

The point? It all boils down to who benefits from what you do. If you don’t benefit from your labor, why do it? (And for that matter, if you’re putting all your love and energy into a relationship and not getting any in return, why do that, either???) If you’re not benefiting from the time and effort you spend to generate income (or be a good husband) while others in your family do, that’s not being a man and a provider, it’s being a slave, and there is nothing loving or noble about being a slave.

Stand up and at least share in the benefits of your labor, and if somebody gets mad about it, tell them to either get over it or hit the road, because their days of reaping all the benefits of what you do while you get nothing more than the headache and the backache are over. That leaves them two choices, respect you and stay, or leave. Either one is a good option for you under the circumstances, right? Even if they take everything you have as they exit, you weren’t getting to enjoy it anyway, and with a fresh start, you can enjoy everything you work for and earn. Starting over, if things are bad enough to require it, is not the end of the world; it’s the beginning of a whole new world.

A great relationship and marriage is based on love, which is in turn based upon compatibility, and love brings with it respect, loyalty, trust, and friendship; the absence of those things is an accurate indicator of the absence of love. It also requires attraction to provide the fun and excitement that keeps the relationship alive for the decades that the two of you live together. Without it, life is boring, especially for her, and she’ll find a way to cure her boredom if you don’t cure it for her, either with drama or with somebody else.

Nobody who loves you would allow you to work as their slave, and nobody to whom you are enslaved could ever feel love, respect or attraction for you. It’s really that simple. You have to either turn it around or start over, the right way, with somebody else, if you are ever to be happy. Otherwise, at best, you’ll spend the rest of your life “comfortably unhappy,” settling for trying to keep things from getting worse because it’s impossible for them to be better, holding survival, not joy, as your goal. End of story.

Sometimes mistakes are made and people get off-track, and you can turn it around just by making the choice to correct mistakes and get back on track. Other people start off the wrong way, marrying for need instead of love because they don’t know the difference, and you simply can’t get it back on track because it was never there to start with. How do you know the difference? And how do you respond when you do?

It’s not hard to do, just hard to recognize when you’ve not studied women, couples and relationships, and nobody who has studied them has told you what they’ve found. I’ve studied them, and still have women and couples working with me regularly to expand the knowledge base by testing new ideas and scenarios. Once you get on this road to improving your relationship, you can’t get off. It’s not that it’s an addiction; it’s just so rewarding to feel yourself getting more and more happy, intimate, excited, and safe in the knowledge that you are indeed living with a true partner, not just a dependent who may stab you in the back or leave you for no apparent reason.

Care to join us? We’re literally in a revolution, revolting against the mistaken and life-destroying ideas that bad relationships can only get worse or must be suffered in silence, that it takes months of expensive therapy to get over common problems, that bedroom intimacy is going to die after you’ve been together for a year or two and an affair is the only way that you’re ever going to enjoy that kind of life again.

If you want to know what we’ve found so far, go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and start reading. If you’re already feeling the strain and think a break-up might be imminent, also download my free “Break-Up Busting 101” report and feel free to share it with your friends. Together, we can fix just about anything, one way or another, so climb aboard and let’s get busy!

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

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

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

Now that you have a better and hopefully thorough understanding of the nature, causes, and appropriate action to take in dealing with an affair, let’s talk about how to detect one. These methods are n