Can a Man Work TOO Hard? He Can Certainly Work Hard Enough to Kill His Marriage!

Sometimes a man can do the right things for the right reasons but miss one little detail and have the world of his relationship or marriage come crashing down around him. Learn what REALLY needs to be done for your committed relationship or marriage, and what she REALLY wants, before it’s too late. You don’t want to end up getting punished for trying to do the right thing just because you didn’t know what the “right thing” is…

This lesson is a little longer than usual, but it’s one of those real-world issues that we all encounter sooner or later that never quite work out the way we want them to unless we’re thoroughly prepared, so please indulge the extra text and I’m sure you’ll find it worth the time and effort. I’ve been out of town for a few days, and when I came back, I found a good friend in an absolute crisis that any man can find himself in with no warning whatsoever. I think we’re going to be able to get his problem under control pretty quickly, and I want to share this scenario with you to try to ensure that you never find yourself in this same predicament.

My friend, Danny, is about my age (mid forties), worked in a factory from the time he graduated high school, and really applied himself and was promoted through the ranks to middle management in a large company that bankrupted recently. There wasn’t a position immediately available for him anywhere, and his finances were built around a six-figure income, so he ended up taking two lesser-paying full-time jobs to keep his kids in the private school they were attending and to keep his wife from having to put achievement of her Master’s degree on hold.

One of those jobs requires roughly 45 hours per week running a Quizno’s sub shop franchise, and the other requires another 45 hours per week working as an assistant branch manager for a local bank. That’s a ninety-hour work week; do a little math here. Assuming eight hours sleep per night, there are 112 waking hours in a seven-day week, and he’s working 90 of them, and commuting another eight hours or so, plus about six hours personal time during the week to get ready to go to work. That’s 104 of 112 hours, leaving eight hours per week for meals, chores, paying the bills, bathroom breaks, etc., and time with his wife and kids has to come out of that remaining eight hours as well. What do you think is going on there?

Ladies, tell the guys, all together now, on three…ready?

One…two…three…SHE’S BORED! That’s right, Guys! He’s not there stirring up attraction for her, and she’s getting antsy as hell, and may not even realize it. As you would know if you had read “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” there’s going to be a drama attack coming soon, because if he’s not creating positive drama for her by keeping her amused and her tension bled off, the tension will build until some little insignificant thing is the straw that breaks the camel’s back and she lays into him with something really ridiculous to get him to exhibit the alpha male behavior that excites her by not taking the fit that she’s about to pitch as if he deserves it, which brings us to the crisis…

Again, Danny is in his mid-forties, and there’s a 16-year-old girl there who has his same positive, hard-working, competence- and achievement-oriented attitude, and he’s pretty much taken her under his wing and started grooming her for an assistant management position, much to the chagrin of two other highly competitive but terribly mediocre older coworkers. They retaliate by calling the owner and telling him that his store manager is getting him set up for a sexual harassment lawsuit by flirting with the sixteen-year-old employee, one that he is in fact treating like a daughter, not a girlfriend or “prospect.”

Now, in order to steal a little extra time with each other, Danny’s wife picks him up at his day job and drives him to his evening job at Quizno’s (restaurant managers often take the evening shift because it’s busier and leave the assistant manager to handle the less demanding day shift). Earlier that day, she had gone by Quizno’s to pick up his paycheck to make a deposit on her way home from one of her classes, and guess who is working the counter? Yepper, the two ne’er-do-wells who started the rumor. You couldn’t tempt fate any harder than that!

They told Danny’s wife that the owner had been advised of possible sexual misconduct on her husband’s behalf! (They also conveniently left out the part that they had been the informants.) Now, his wife knows that there is absolutely no time or energy for him to be having an affair, and has seen him working with this girl, and is entirely secure in having him work with her the way he does, and they’ve openly discussed it in the past; it was Danny’s wife that had come up with the idea of grooming her for management. However…

By this time, she’s getting so lonely that her need for excitement and seeing Danny standing tall has put her emotions on auto-pilot, so when she picked him up from the bank, he’s had a bad day and says to her, “Hi Honey! How’s your day been?” to which she replied – while vigorously bobbing her head from side to side – “It was just freaking FINE until I stopped at Quizno’s today to get your damned paycheck!” What the hell are you doing messing around with a sixteen-year old and putting your job and our family at risk???”

Understand, all Danny had to do at this point was calmly but very firmly say, “Look, I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about, so you’re going to have to back up and fill me in. You know as well as I do that I haven’t been messing around with anybody. Even if I wanted to there’s no time with me working two jobs, and you’ve got nine years of history in our relationship to tell you how I feel about us and about affairs, so calm down and tell me what’s going on so we can figure out what’s really happened and what needs to be done to fix it.” BUT! He didn’t know that, and started acting lost and apologetic – wussy! – which often actually comes off as a confession when a woman hears it. So the drama continued…

She dropped him off at work after giving him a royal earful, and I happened to stop by to see how things were going not too long afterwards. He explained what had happened, and we got the owner off his back with a phone call (I know the owner and had been helping Danny to groom the girl by passing her self-improvement materials, and could vouch for the events), but the big problem was his wife. He was scared to death that they were going to have a serious problem.

I finally got him to understand what was really happening by telling him about “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” the research that went into it, and the experiences of the readers so he’d have confidence in what I was telling him, and then explained about a woman’s need for attraction and how drama is used to fill in the void between the attraction level she needs and the one she has, rather like ego fills in the void between the self-esteem level one needs and the level they have. So when she showed up and was bobbing her head and asking if he’d “gotten his sorry ass fired,” etc., he said, “Look, I told you I had no idea what had happened, and if you had told me what you heard instead of raising Cain in the car on the way here, I could have been better-prepared to deal with this when I got here.

“I’ve talked to the owner, explained what had happened, and David came by and talked with him, too. He was aware of the training and suspected this was a ploy from the beginning because he has full confidence in me, as you should have, so the problem is history. Tomorrow I’m going to fire the two people who started this, and temps from another store will be showing up tomorrow morning to take over their jobs. I’ve called the bank and made the necessary arrangements to come in late so I can handle this, so there is no problem with anyone but you, and you can stop being a problem any moment now.

“I realize that I’ve been spending a lot of time here at your expense, but you and I both know that we need the money, so we’re going to have to work together to get past this. That means you are going to have to tell me when you start feeling the strain so I can spend some time with you to keep things from building up to this point again. The only other choice is for me to quit one of these jobs and you put your classes on hold so we can have more time, and we’ve already decided that was the wrong thing to do, so are you going to work with me on this or are we going to be at each others’ throats until the job I want comes through?”

That was all she needed to see and hear. She was all over him, apologizing, cooing, cuddling, smiling, and just thrilled because that alpha male she loved was in front of her doing that alpha male thing she loves and needs so much. Problem solved.

Danny is now reading “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” to keep this from happening again, and he says his wife is going through it with him. They’ll get through this, not just stronger, but knowing and enjoying each other on a much deeper level. You too can go through this exercise without having to go through an(other) episode like this. Join Danny and the rest in taking charge of your relationship and your life by going to http://www.makingherhappy.com and getting your copy today, because life really is too short to spend it learning from your own mistakes when you could learn from those of others much quicker and easier and spend the extra time to make and learn from successes!

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

Giving in -- or Kissing Ass -- Has NEVER Saved a Good Relationship or Marriage

About any trained salesperson will tell you that to resolve any conflict, you should always agree. That’s ill-advised when a woman is involved. Why? Do you relish the idea of wearing the label of “WUSS”?

I generally try to focus on what works and avoid discussion of what doesn’t, but over the years I’ve run into some advice that has the potential to be extremely dangerous, based on what I’ve observed and proven in my own research. Over the next two days, I want to talk about that advice and show you both the pitfalls of following that advice and a much safer tactic that I found to be entirely effective in real-world application.

Today’s issue will concern the advice to “always agree” to resolve conflict, and tomorrow’s will be the idea of trying to stop a divorce (or any kind of break-up) before thoroughly evaluating a relationship to see if indeed it should be stopped, because a great many relationships that break up do so because the participants are horribly mismatched and should have never come together in the first place.

Now, let’s talk about this business of always agreeing to resolve conflict. This is a very old basic tactic used by sales people to overcome objections to a sales pitch, and has been taken out of context for use in relationship problem and dispute resolution. The idea is to agree to get the other person to calm down and let you disagree peacefully while you steer them around to your point of view. It originated from the old “Feel, Felt, Found” negotiating gambit.

You may have run into this with a real estate agent or car or other big-ticket item salesperson. Let’s say they offer you a car with a diesel engine, and you say, “I don’t want a diesel. I heard they don’t have as much power going up a hill.” And the salesperson replies, “Yes, I understand how you FEEL. We FELT the same way for a long time, but then some of our customers FOUND they still liked it, so we recommend everyone try it.”

Simple diffusion of an objection. And it sells a lot of cars. (I won’t venture a guess at how many go to people who end up liking a diesel. ;-) ) But later, psychologists urged people to take that tactic one step farther and just agree with anything to diffuse the objection and then build rapport. Once rapport is built, then ease back into the subject after the defenses are down.

But there are a couple of big pitfalls in this premise, especially with regard to relationships and marriage. First, holding a relationship together is a matter of cooperation, not of salesmanship. Women communicate on a level that is so far above men that they will immediately recognize this as just a tactic more often than not (it has always been known to work better on men than women anyway – remember, I’m also a marketing and management consultant, and this was something I used to be intimately involved in and teach almost daily). To make matters worse, when you give in to a woman to quell a stressful situation, you are instantly labeled a wuss! Really! You think not? You’re gonna love this:

I got several of the women “advisors” on the phone and told them about the “always agree advice,” and the most common response was a tie between “You’ve got to be kidding!” and “Oh my God! They didn’t say that!” Their overwhelming consensus was that a woman will lose any respect she still has left for a man who deploys such a tactic because women hate it when a man just gives in instead of holding out for what’s right. Now, notice I said “holding out for WHAT’S right,” not “holding out to BE right.” Hang with me here…

As a little background, while the biggest cause of rocky relationships, fighting, and destructive competition in relationships is incompatibility, the biggest immediate cause of break-ups and divorce is lost attraction – plain old everyday boredom. This happens to a woman when a man just stops being manly, fun, and interesting, and the woman gets bored and wants out, or gets bored and plays around and gets caught. (Women do things that cause men to lose attraction for them too, but I’m writing to men today.)

The last thing in the world you want to do under those circumstances is something wussy like always agreeing with her every gripe, because some of her gripes are not going to be real gripes, but rather tests to see if you are going to remember that you are a man and stand up against an obvious falsehood. A woman’s first criteria in evaluating a man is “If you can’t stand up TO me, you can’t stand up FOR me.”

The next big thing you want to avoid is use the words “I” or especially “YOU” at the beginning of a sentence during an argument or while the problem is being identified. Once you start pointing fingers, talking about people instead of issues, the conflict escalates and everybody loses. What’s the right move?

First, you must understand that women don’t speak to report information. Everything with them is a negotiation. They make statements to ask questions and ask questions to make statements, and will seldom if ever state the obvious, even if what is obvious to them isn’t obvious to a man. It’s all very diplomatic, even when they are angry. To keep from escalating what’s already a very delicate and volatile situation, you must shift the focus away from “I” or “YOU” to “WE,” and then move her focus to the actual ISSUE. “WE have a problem, and it is [whatever the problem is], so what needs to be done to fix it?” You must absolutely shift the focus from “WHO” is the problem to “WHAT” is the problem as much as possible to address the issues instead of the blame for (and emotions caused by) the issues. For example…

Let’s say you have the stereotypical male habit of grabbing the TV remote and starting to channel surf every time you come into the room, and she resents you being so disrespectful of her to interrupt something she is watching without asking. She starts out by saying, “You really make me mad as hell when you just start flipping channels when I’m watching something.” (That’s the statement she’ll be making with the question that you’ll actually hear: “How would you feel if I changed the channel while you were watching TV?” Or she might take the opposite tack, saying, “Didn’t you see me sitting here watching that?” meaning, “You inconsiderate jerk! I WAS watching that, and now I’m pissed off at you.” Statements are questions and questions are statements, remember?) If you respond with, “Well then why didn’t YOU tell ME?” it comes across as blaming her for your ignorance and disrespect, and that won’t fly.

If you respond with, “I’m sorry. I’LL let YOU be in charge of the remote from now on,” you’ve probably just ensured that you won’t have sex again for about 2 months, whether she does or not, because you just gave in. Something like, “Well, it’s MY house and MY TV and I’LL change the channel whenever I feel like it,” will get you more punishment over the coming months than you could ever fathom, and you won’t know that most of it hit you, although you probably will wonder why your underwear has been starched, your shirts are suddenly tighter and you can never seem to find your keys. ;-)

She wants you to take the lead in decision-making and be a stand-up guy, but in trade for respecting that position of leadership, she reserves the right to an input channel, in ALL negotiations, and you have to respect that or pay a price that you will invariably find you don’t want to pay. So your only option is to recognize that a negotiation has begun, and negotiate cooperatively, responding with something like, “Then WE obviously need to come to some kind of resolution here so that WE don’t continue to have this problem.”

Now you have her attention, and respect, because you have followed the form that she needs to follow to ensure involvement and a fair hearing. At this point it becomes okay to say “I” and “you” as long as you aren’t slinging mud with them. The purpose here is a peaceful and equitable settlement, resolving a problem, not winning a battle, remember?

Follow up with something like, “I didn’t realize that you were interested in that show, and to be honest, I probably never gave it due consideration. In the future, I will make sure that you aren’t enjoying a show before I change the channel. Will that satisfy you?”

Now, there are several really big things that you need to notice in that. First, you will notice that nowhere are you directly apologizing. You are indirectly apologizing by saying “never gave it DUE consideration,” and that is important, because you are acknowledging the mistake without being a big mushy wuss about it. Believe it or not, the words “I’m sorry” should rarely if ever come out of your mouth.

Acknowledging your mistakes in a manner that says that you should have performed better or with more consideration of her input is almost always enough and often even preferred because it refers to something specific instead of a generic apology that everybody gets all the time. (If there’s ever a time that it’s not enough, she’ll let you know.) The words, “I’m sorry” have come to be associated with deceit, incompetence, and inconsiderate jerkitude, the epitome of the principle that it is far easier to get forgiveness than permission and that you can do as you please and apologize if it isn’t good enough, and you need to separate yourself from that stigma no matter what you do, in everything you do.

Next, you are offering the first suggestion for the resolution, again, taking the lead, but not dictating terms. It doesn’t matter whether your idea is perfect for her or not, just as long as it’s not asinine. It’s a negotiation, and she will let you know if she sees any part of your suggestion as unsatisfactory. Taking the lead like this is a HUGE deal to a woman; a man who won’t lead, can’t make decisions, and can’t consider the input of others in decisions isn’t worth having around, just as any man who can’t stand up TO her can’t be expected to stand up FOR her. It’s really that simple.

Also notice that you ask if your suggestion will “satisfy her.” (Or if you prefer a more casual, phrase, ask if it will “work for her.”) You are not asking if it is “okay for her,” or anything that sounds even remotely like you are asking her permission to proceed in this manner, which is also good for several months of celibacy as you shatter any respect for you she may still be holding. You are asking for her input, inviting her to take part in the negotiation in which she expects to engage. Incidentally, she will punish you severely for shutting her out of it or giving in to avoid it. What’s next?

Chances are, in this simple example, she would have been satisfied with this plan because it fully addresses her issue, but you’re not done yet. She cannot have the last word, because whomever has the last word makes the decision, and you must be the one to formally declare the decision made. After she says, “Yes, that will do,” or whatever, then you must wrap it up with the formal declaration, something like, “Then that is precisely what I will do in the future, and if you catch me slipping, I expect you to remind me of it and let me fix it instead of jumping down my throat about it. I will do my best to treat you with the same respect. We are adults and partners and we can both do a much better job of handling problems. I don’t want us to be one of these couples that fight all the time over everything any more than you do.”

That’s leadership, and it gets you more than a solution to your problem, it gets you respect and trust, which in turn creates attraction, which breeds intimacy, and starts an upward spiral that may last anywhere from minutes to years, depending on how diligent you are about acting like a man – a REAL man.

Relationships aren’t always easy, especially when they start coming apart. Indeed, they’re a lot like houses. If the relationship has a solid foundation, it can usually be repaired; if not, it’s better to tear it down and start over. We’ll be talking about how to determine that tomorrow.

For today, just realize that as a man, to make any relationship work, you have to be able to assess the relationship to see if and how well it is working and compare that to how well it can work. You have to be able to communicate with a woman in a way that is considerate of her communication style, which is grossly different from a man’s to say the least; otherwise you can never even identify the strengths and weaknesses in your relationship, let alone fix them.

You also have to understand what it is that makes a woman tick -- what she wants, out of life, her relationship with you, etc., and what flips her switches, especially those that trigger sexual interest and excitement and create that emotion that women will literally kill to have and maintain, full-blown swept-off-her-feet sexual attraction. Sounds like the Holy Grail of relationships, doesn’t it? While it’s true that men have searched for centuries to find such knowledge, this grail has been found, it’s been right under our noses the whole time, and to make things about as embarrassing as they can possibly get, the women have been trying to tell us where it is!

Well, I finally listened to nearly 200 of them, wrote it all down, gave it back to the women it came from to see if I had translated it right and then gave it to their husbands to use to make sure it was accurate. It was then refined and tested again until it was working for everybody involved after we found that there were a few things that women thought they wanted that they didn’t want at all after they got them. I did all of this to save my own marriage, not to write a book. The book was simply a by-product of the success of the research I needed to conduct to find a way to get my own marriage and life in order. It will work for you, too. Really.

No matter what you have tried, no matter what the state of your current relationship, there’s a lot of information in this book that will help you make it better. Readers have busted their own divorces with it in as little as a week, others have kicked their relationships up to notches previously unknown, while some have found that they have been in the wrong relationship with the wrong person and that getting out was the first step in getting on the real path to happiness, for EVERYONE involved.

This book is called "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and you can download your copy now at http://www.makingherhappy.com. Don’t wait, don’t sit there wondering if it will work for you, and don’t waste time asking me if it will work for you. It will, so just grab it and growl, because life is too short to spend it unhappy, scared, frustrated, bored, celibate, angry, or any of those other nasty things that bad relationships make you feel.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The answer has several parts:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Are You Doing to Kill Attraction in YOUR Relationship or Marriage?

Among all the wuss behavior that men have been taught over the centuries, appearing inferior, submissive, and/or subservient to a woman is one of the most powerful attraction killers in existence. You may not realize when you’re doing it, and what’s worse, they may be expecting you to do it, not realizing that once you have, attraction has been damaged. Men and women alike need to understand this, because we must start undoing centuries of damage to how men and women get along.

A reader’s letter today (one that I must keep private for the time being because it involves on-going issues that could be used to violate his privacy) made me ponder just how many things do we do that we think are polite (John!), cool (Raymond!), cute (Allan!), sexy (Dale!), romantic (Brent!), etc., that in fact are wussy and kill attraction? Remember, attraction is a subconscious/subliminal/biological mechanism, about the last remnant we have of “instinct,” and it doesn’t matter what we think or choose to believe about behavior, because it’s not our beliefs that determine the response of other people; indeed, for the most part, it’s biology and chemistry, not volitional choice.

Guys, poll the women you know and see how many think a dozen roses are romantic these days. You’ll find that most of them think they are cliché, and therefore boring, not romantic, and if they are received at any time other than an anniversary, they are a good sign that you’ve done something bad and you’re feeling guilty! Sucks, huh? (Some of you guys in your teens and early twenties may get away with it once in awhile, but you’ll find that a single flower, especially one you hand-picked and know that she likes, will get a much better response.)

What about cards? Well, if it’s a really good card with a verse that somehow manages to accurately express something that is happening in your relationship, which is unlikely at best, it’s a start, but then comes that ugly truth that there were probably millions of those cards printed, and women would prefer a unique gift that cost nothing or pennies to an expensive, mass-produced thing that doesn’t show that you put a lot of thought into it.

Compliments? Everybody’s supposed to like compliments, right? The more the better? Think again. Excessive compliments aren’t just meaningless, they’re just plain ass-kissing, and the short spelling of that is “W-U-S-S”. Occasional genuine compliments are always appreciated, but when you spit them around you indiscriminately it’s plain flattery, and very annoying, to everyone, not just the ladies.

Mama said we’re supposed to be nice guys, and cater to our women, and let them make as many decisions as possible, especially about dating things, right? Sure, because every woman wants a “nice guy,” don’t they? Wrong answer. Women want a man who has brains, decent manners, and doesn’t get loud and violent every time things don’t go their way, but the last thing they want or find attractive is to have all the decision-making dumped in their lap. They’re not wired to enjoy it like we do.

(And sometimes I wonder if mama’s know that and tell us to do the wrong thing to delay our getting too close to a woman, because while they are our mothers, they are also women, and they know how they would respond if a man did it to them. Go figure.)

Women are very social in nature, and decision-making for them is a committee process; unilateral decision-making is something they can do when pressed, but it frequently pisses them off and makes you look like a wuss who can’t make decisions. Give your partner full latitude for input into the decision-making, because as your partner deserves that, but once you have your information in hand, including her input, make the decision and follow through! It presents an image of competence and confidence that trips the whole row of attraction triggers.

Do I even need to mention “baby talk,” and those sickening pet nicknames like “pookums” and “honeybunch” that seem to enthrall the newly betrothed but make the rest of us want to gag? Even when you’re talking to a child, “baby talk” is a bad idea, because the child is looking to you for strength and protection, not squeaking, giggling, and “cooing.” Let their mother do that.

As for “pookums,” etc., several of the women in the test panel admitted to deliberately employing the practice to see if the man could be dragged into doing it (see the movie “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, the scene at the poker table), and nearly all admitted to noticing a marked decrease in respect for a man who would succumb. It was also fun to note that the six who wouldn’t admit to it were the most dramatic and flamboyant of the group (real “drama queens”), who were known to have self-esteem issues like narcissism and the control issues that go with narcissism.

How about something not-so-obvious? Ladies, brace yourself, because this one is going to go even a bit against your grain, until you think about it. The subject: marriage proposals! Specifically the deplorable tradition of a man kneeling before a woman, as if begging, to ask her to marry him. Okay, ladies, catch your breath and think, what happens when a man begs you for anything? Right. Wuss image. It may not keep you from saying “yes” to the proposal, and you may not even notice at the moment because it’s one of the most emotional moments of your life, but what does that do?

It locks that image of this man in front of you on his knee begging into your head as one of your most prominent memories, and sets a terrible precedent. With regard to attraction, having your man standing in front of you, standing a little taller than you and looking down from a position of strength and authority, the subliminal image of a protector, like any really steamy scene in one of the classic movies, like Clark Gable and Scarlet O’Hare in “Gone with the Wind” or Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal in “The Fountainhead” is probably a far better image to take through life, wouldn’t you? The emotion of the moment will be the same because of the nature of the moment, and let’s face it, the down-on-one-knee bit is about as cliché as the dozen roses – all downside, no upside.

Giving in just to stop a fight when no agreement has been reached? Cooperation has to be good, right? Wrong! That’s not cooperation, it’s capitulation – outright surrender -- a wuss maneuver if ever there was one. If you were leading the discussion (not dominating or bullying it) as you should be doing and keeping everybody focused on WHAT was right instead of WHO was right, you probably wouldn’t be fighting to start with, unless you had let your wife get bored to the point that she sparked a fight to bleed off and reset her emotional chemistry. Seek resolution, not victory, not compromise, and not just the path of least resistance.

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are hundreds of ways that attraction can be created and killed; indeed, thousands of ways, and it doesn’t matter how much attraction you create if you inadvertently blow it every time you turn around. I’m sure you’re familiar with the ancient truth that one “oh sh*t” erases a thousand “atta-boys.” One “We’ll do whatever you want” can erase a hundred nights of true romance if it comes out just right.

I’ve not listed all the ways you can make or break attraction in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage.” I did something far better. I gave you the fully detailed and accurate explanation of the attraction process, both how and why it works, so you’ll always know whether any particular act creates or kills attraction, no matter where you are or who you’re with, because you’ll know the attitude proper to a man to enjoy his life and be attractive to all women. You don’t dare miss this information, because lost attraction will kill a relationship long before the love is ever gone. You think not?

How many times have you heard things like “I love you, but I’m not ‘in love’ with you…”??? That “in love” thing isn’t love at all; it’s attraction. With it, life is grand, a fun and intimate adventure, and without it, it’s a boring cesspool, because it is truly what makes the world of relationships go ‘round. Attraction brings you together and keeps you together, while love adds the friendship, respect, trust, and loyalty that makes the relationship exclusive, strong during tough times, and intimate in all the non-physical ways necessary to keep you together for the long haul and weather the storms together.

It always takes longer to bring it back than it does to kill it, and you need to max out attraction as soon as possible, because for a woman, life without it just really isn’t living at all; rekindling it is the first thing that she needs to see to believe that things are going to be good again. So go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” right now, and get ahead of that curve, because you should never put off until tomorrow the success and happiness you can have today.

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

Sex As a Weapon in Relationships and Marriage, Part 2: The Tail Swings Both Ways

A woman writes to remind us that women aren’t the only ones who use sex as a weapon, and that it’s just as catastrophic when a man makes this mistake.

Before we get into today’s lesson, I have a few announcements. First, I am attending a reunion of my military unit this weekend, and may not be able to post a newsletter edition or two. So don’t worry if you miss one; it’s me, not you.

Second, after a false start with inadequately-appointed software, the forum is coming along nicely. It is going to become the new center of activity for all of us, although I will continue to distribute my newsletter and echo it through blog posts. The envisioned purpose and operation of the forum is still evolving, so if you have suggestions, please write. There will be both free and premium features and areas, and there should be something for everyone.

Ladies, you will have free access to all features and areas, in exchange for your participation in helping the men to understand the female perspective, communications issues, etc. You will find it both educational and entertaining, and it will be worth your while to participate. And now for today’s lesson…

Gentlemen, I hope you realize how privileged you are to have access to the experience and input of the women on my mailing list. They frequently provide extremely valuable insight anonymously, to you as a stranger, that you can bet you would not hear from a woman you know. Take full advantage of this and use it to make your life and relationship better, because their knowledge and experience has been paid for with pain, embarrassment, frustration, etc., and you can bet that they don’t have an easy time reliving bad times to help you out.

I can certainly vouch for that in this case. This reader is a close friend of many years, single after two bad marriages to two bad men who on the outside would appear to be good men, or at least “the average Joe.” Meet my friend Elizabeth:

Dear David,

I read your newsletter today about women holding out in order to get something from their men. I wanted to tell you that the converse is equally true and just as revolting.

When I was married to a fairly wealthy doctor, I distinctly remember one Christmas party event (we had a buffet party for 45 persons each Christmas) where my husband gave me $500 to go to the mall and pick out a couple of new dresses for the party. He said that I had been working so hard preparing for the party (I did all the cooking) that I deserved something nice to wear to it.

I came home with two beautiful dresses and did wear one to the party that evening and received several nice comments on it, to which I told the story about my wonderful husband giving me money to buy the dress because of my hard work for the party, etc., etc. Everyone thought he was so great.
That night, after cleaning up the kitchen and house, I collapsed in bed, exhausted, and he wanted to start messing around. I told him that I was totally bushed and wanted to just get some sleep to which he replied, "didn't I get you two really nice dresses today?"

It has been twenty four years and I still remember how small and insignificant that question made me feel. I called him on it saying that I didn't realize that I had to repay him for my dresses with my body, to which he immediately backed down, but the comment stuck, and it was hurtful and demeaning.

Here I thought that I was making love when, in fact, I was repaying with sex any nice things my husband did for me. The marriage ended about two years after that incident and after many more similar situations, but please tell your readers that we don't want to pay for things that you give us with our bodies any more than you want us to withhold from you until we get what we want!

The tail swings both ways.

Sincerely,
Thanks, but no thanks

Think about that long and hard, guys. The way to make a woman love you and feel attraction for you is not to make her feel like a common prostitute who should trade her body for whatever it is that you have – or think you have – given her. It’s true that every exchange in a good relationship should be in trade, not in sacrifice, but trades should be “like kind swaps,” as the Internal Revenue Service likes to call it; love for love, nurturing for nurturing, trust for trust, respect for respect, good sex for good sex, etc., not lopsided arrangements that cheapen the traders as well as whatever is being traded.

Sex is the strangest weapon in existence. It’s devastating, yet no real victory can ever be won by using it; in any contest where it is deployed, everybody loses. Used properly, sex is not a weapon at all, but a celebration of life, living, love, and achievement. Used as a weapon, everybody loses.

Besides, if you’re doing what you should be doing and firing those automatic attraction triggers with leadership, authority, humor, mystery, adventure, etc., you don’t need any kind of “weapon” to have all the sex you want, and have your girlfriend or wife jumping on you to have it. And when every man is born to behave that way, why in the world would you use such a self-destructive tactic in the first place? All it takes is knowing a few things about women and yourself that you don’t know yet.

You may recall my favorite quote of Sigmund Freud, “The great question, which I have not been able to answer, is, ‘What does a woman want?’” It is a great question, maybe the greatest of all, and with the help of a few hundred women, I’ve answered it, and that answer can be yours in a few mouse clicks and keystrokes for little more than the asking.

So get ready to know what Freud never figured out and live the life you always thought being married should be about! Go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and get started.

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

Don't Air Your Dirty Laundry in Public If You Want to Keep Your Relationship or Marriage

Problems at home can be so frustrating that you want to vent them outside the home. Don’t do it, unless of course you like the idea of sleeping alone…

We’re going to do something just a bit different today. I usually write primarily to and for the benefit of the men, occasionally throwing in something that the women reading will also find useful or at least amusing, but today I’m speaking to everyone equally, and I hope that the majority of you will have at least one person to whom you can forward this little wake-up call to help them stop making this really big mistake. It’s not just an attraction-killer, it’s a relationship-killer, as sure as the sun rises in the east every morning. It’s also a symptom of a pretty big problem, much bigger than the one being voiced when this happens, as you will see.

One of the two couples who live next door to me are an elderly couple who married late in life, and for the life of me, I don’t know why they got married or have remained married. They don’t even like each other, let alone love each other, and don’t seem to need each other either, unless it’s simply in the capacity of having someone available to call for an ambulance if they collapse from a heart attack or something. They seemed okay when I first met them several years ago, but either their relationship has steadily declined or they have become less concerned with keeping their problems private, and they are now constantly at each other’s throat whenever I visit them or see them away from their home in a public place.

The main problem seems to have started because they don’t communicate very well. They’re both head-strong, and neither are good listeners, but people manage to live like that for fifty years or longer without the kind of malicious behavior I see these two engaged in regularly. So what’s continuing to escalate the hostilities?

Every time I talk to either of them, they are demeaning and insulting the other, and even worse, wanting me to validate their insults and other behavior, and they both know this is going on, so when I see the two of them together, it’s like a competition to see which of them can say the nastiest things about the other to me and another competition to see who can defend themselves against whatever insults they suspect have been dealt in their absence. Hence, they’re both hurt, mad, and frustrated all the time, and quite paranoid about what is being said about them while they aren’t present to defend themselves.

I remember the day it started like it was yesterday. The man and I were standing in my front yard talking about grass seed, fertilizer, weed killer, etc., as our lawns had not fared well through the winter, and she drove up, having been out shopping. He had remarked to me earlier that she was out and he’d had to give her all his cash because they were out of checks and they had cut up all their credit cards, much more personal information than I would have ever been comfortable hearing from a neighbor. He went on to say that he hoped she’d not spent all his cash while she was out because the home center where he was going to buy fertilizer and seed was only a little over a mile from our homes but his closest credit union branch was across town and he didn’t want to have to drive that far out of the way to get more cash. When she got out of the car, he said, “Well, I’d better go see if I have any money left,” and she heard him. Most unfortunate…

She exploded! “What are you doing telling our neighbor that I spend all your money all the time??? What else are you saying about me behind my back???” she yelled. That one remark, taken almost entirely out of context, caused an explosion, the shockwave from which is still tearing their relationship down and the fallout from which has not begun to settle, several years later. What do you think happened next?

You guessed it! She found occasion later that day to come over to my house to defend herself, and make a few nasty remarks about him in retaliation. He walks up quietly behind her while she’s railing about him using her good towels (“the show towels”) and messing up the kitchen, stands listening for several minutes before clearing his throat to let her know that she’s busted, and then says, “And you had the nerve to jump on me about talking behind your back???” War was at that moment declared.

Since that time, they’ve thrown each other out of the house regularly; every other week I’m outside getting the mail or something and hear, “Why don’t you just pack your s**t an get out?!” and they’ve become the two unhappiest people I know; combatants seemingly locked in a duel to the death to see who can get in the last and worst word about the other.

The lesson? Keep your problems to yourself, especially your relationship problems, and don’t succumb to the temptation of verbally bashing your partner, whether in front of them or not.

Ladies, I know that is a particularly hard pill for you to swallow, but face it, if there’s a problem between you and your man, it’s between you and your man, not between your man and your fourteen girlfriends with you acting as the mediator. You know as well as I do that your girlfriends will most often say either whatever they think you want to hear or whatever they think will keep you upset so they can continue to feed on your emotion, and that’s okay when you’re discussing a television show or a party that didn’t work out well, but don’t take chances on screwing up your relationship or marriage by inviting your girlfriends into your intimate life. You never know which of them has secretly wanted your husband since she met him and might take the opportunity to drive a wedge that will help her get him, right?

Nor do you know which of them is competitive and jealous of your relationship and secretly watching for a way to help you become as miserable as she is, do you? Or what about the one who wants to break up your relationship or marriage because she wants more time with you? Or doesn’t like your husband and thinks she knows what’s best for you better than you do?

I know you’re driven to share and commiserate, but the stakes are too high when it comes to marital issues to risk having someone say something to you to manipulate your emotions or sabotage your relationship under the guise of helping you. And before you say, “Oh, my friends would NEVER do that, that’s what every woman I’ve interview on the subject has said before or while her friend did EXACTLY that.

And guys, even though we’re generally not as socially-oriented as women, there are still times when you’re sitting in the bar, the barber’s chair, a coworker’s office or the break room, etc., during which you might be sorely tempted to vent as well. For some of you it’s like some kind of bonding experience. Don’t do it. Nothing good can come of it. Be a man, and deal with the problem at its source, and don’t wait for your partner to take the lead. That’s your job, and if you can’t do it, there are others who can. And you can bet she knows where to start looking for them and has plenty of time to do so while you’re out with your friends bitching about her instead of being at home fixing your marriage.

And do I need to remind either gender that anything you say can eventually make it back to your partner or spouse? Would you care to guess how that news will be received and the damage that will be done?

If you have a problem with your partner, you need to be at home fixing it, not bitching about it to someone outside your family. The person you need to be talking with is your partner, not your bowling buddy, your drinking buddy, your girlfriend, your hairdresser, or anybody else, other than maybe a professional counselor if the two of you can’t work it out on your own. The likelihood of anyone else being able to give you much appropriate and competent input is very slim at best, unless that person’s own marriage is such a shining example of a truly great marriage that they’re a bona fide expert, and that’s going to be hard to know if they are keeping private things private like they should. You never know what really goes on behind closed doors.

Look at what usually happens in such a situation, attacks bring defensive action and then counter-attacks, and then the feud has started and isn’t going to go quietly into the night. The fastest way on Earth to escalate such a feud is to bring the outside world into it, especially by trashing your partner in front of his or her friends. It’s embarrassing, demeaning, even humiliating, and if you think trying to take back something you’ve said in anger to your partner is hard to take back, trying taking something back that you’ve said to or in front of your partner’s friend or coworker, or to anyone who lets something you said get back to her.

Treat each other with respect. If some of your friends start trashing their partners or your partner’s gender in general, try to break the momentum quickly by saying something positive about your partner, especially if they are standing there listening, before your partner has too much time to wonder if you’re thinking the same thing about them. When you show each other that kind of respect and support instead of publicly airing your dirty laundry, you will be more willing and able to work your problems out peacefully, and will try harder to work them out before they become a heated debate or a fight that you’ll later regret. It creates trust, which is crucial in any problem-solving operation, not to mention a secure relationship or marriage.

There is nothing about heated conflict that is good for a relationship. If you’re in one of those relationships where you’re constantly at the extremes, either fighting or in bed together, you need to take a good hard look at your relationship, your life’s desires, yourself, and your partner. I can tell you what you’ll find: a relationship that is based on attraction or need, not compatibility and love coupled with attraction. Lacking anything in common, your life together is one contest or conflict after another, one fight after another, and the only part left to enjoy, or escape to, is the sex. That’s no way to live, and you can both do a lot better.

Good relationships that last require being well-matched to your partner, communicating effectively, and keeping the fun and attraction level up to the point that you enjoy living your life and living with each other. That sounds difficult because you see so few couples doing it successfully in the long-term these days, but it’s not. The reason that you don’t see it often isn’t because it’s hard; it’s because very few remember how or ever learned how. “Knowledge is power” became a cliché because it was universally true, not universally false, right?

Opinions are like bowels; everybody has one, and they are usually full of crap. Real, factual knowledge IS power, the power to create a great relationship and the power to fix one that you started but has become stale and boring over the years, as well as the power to take one that is going fairly well and kick it up to notches unknown to humankind! That knowledge is contained in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” and if you don’t have your copy, get over to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download it right now, because you’re missing out on a better life. Life’s too short as it is, without wasting it in a bad relationship that could be improved or replaced, so get to work!

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

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

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

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

Hi David,

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

Joel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hey David,

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

Thanks,
Zane

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why 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

Avoid Domestic Holiday Violence in Your Relationship and Marriage

Police say that this time of year is when they get the most domestic violence calls. It doesn’t have to be that way…

I hope everyone who is celebrating Christmas is having a great one. According to the following letter from a reader and friend, it appears that some certainly don’t. Meet Dave:

Merry Christmas David!

I was talking with one of the Sheriff's who come in on a regular basis and he was telling me they have the highest rates of domestic violence this time of year. Sure, they have the usual party animals and drunks, but by far their top call and worst ones are the domestic violence ones.

It's so sad when you think how close they can be to getting the right info and changing things around like a couple of recent testimonials you’ve recently shared have said. It just makes you want to shake them silly and get them to wake up. You can lead a horse to water...

Have yourself a GREAT Christmas!
Dave

Testimonials? Those I have, in abundance. I just received this one today, from another reader. Meet Jackie:

Hi David!

Merry Christmas!

We're in full-on Christmas swing here, but I wanted to take a moment and send loads and gobs of gratitude your way for your role in what has been a stellar Christmas for Stephen and me this year. We are all about the lovey-dovey stuff today, and I also wanted to tell you that Stephen was shining star in the gift-giving department for me. A+ across the board. :-D I told him I was going to send you a good report about that, and he grinned and said, "You'd better."

I hope you are having a wonderful Christmas. The barbecue sounds wonderful. I can smell it from here...LOL!

Jackie

These two were at each other’s throats in near-constant frustration, not to mention celibacy, just a couple of months ago, and they’d spent years looking for help, with only very limited success. It wasn’t until they learned a few basic things about communication, attraction, and each other that it was possible for them to improve, but when they did learn, well, I’ll just say that this is one of the more “tame” letters I’ve received from this couple recently.

Holidays can be a terrible source of pressure and resentment, or they can be a wonderful time of celebration, love, and intimacy. Which one they turn out to be for you is entirely your choice, too.

New Year’s is a week away; what’s it going to bring you? Are you going to get drunk to try to forget about your life and your wife, and end up in a fight or in jail? Or are you going to celebrate having completed a good year and having another one ahead of you?

Or maybe just celebrate having stopped a divorce that was trying its best to happen before the end of the year? I’ve had several readers turn things around that quickly, and if you’re in such a predicament, I strongly recommend you join them! Come see me at http://www.makingherhappy.com and let’s see what I can do for you…

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

Hobbies That Work FOR Your Relationship or Marriage

It’s all too common for men and women to take up hobbies to have time away from their spouse. That’s understandable if you don’t know how to improve things, but not excusable. Besides, you should see what can happen when you invite your spouse to enjoy your hobby with you!

Any of you who have been with me for awhile know that woodworking is one of my hobbies, and I was somewhat amused when I got the following letter:

Mr. Cunningham,

My wife and I have been married for 32 years, and we are okay, I guess, as long as we do not spend too much time together. But I have a problem and I hope you can help me with it. It is with my woodworking hobby and my wife.

I have been building furniture and cabinets all my life, literally since childhood. I love wood. The smell of it when it is being cut or shaped. The way it changes as I shape it. The way the grain can be made to look like a hundred different things depending on what I put on it. The sheer fact that I can take a piece of a tree and turn it into something useful and beautiful.

And my wife apparently resents the hell out of it.

I love going to my shop and making things, as you probably guess from my description of how I love wood, and every time I go out there it puts me in a good mood, which my wife manages to spoil very quickly as soon as I come back into the house, if she can wait that long. Half the time she finds some excuse to come out and interrupt me. And it is always when I am not in a good position to stop.

Stupid stuff, you know? Like killing a spider in the hallway, or to taste something she is cooking, or hold up something she is puttering with while she does something to it. Or she will want me to come in the house to talk about the movies playing at the cinema or something like that. I never interrupt her when she is doing any of her hobby things, and the hypocrisy of this double standard is driving me nuts. Can you tell me how I might get her to leave me alone and let me enjoy my woodworking without invoking any more punishment?

Thank you,
James

My reply:

Hello, James,

No, I can’t tell you how to get her to leave you alone. But I can tell you how to get her to let you enjoy your hobby: Invite her to join you in it!

No joke, that’s what her interruptions are most likely expressing. She wants to do something with you. She wants your company.

Women hate to feel like they’re being left out of anything, because they have such a huge problem managing boredom, and if you’re going out to a space that seems “off limits” to her, and you come in the house in a better mood, that smells to her like she’s missing out on something fun, in addition to missing out on YOU.

Yeah, I know. You can’t see your wife in your woodshop. But hang with me here for a minute or two and you will.

Women absolutely love to see a man doing just about anything with competence. It’s a huge turn-on. And that especially includes making things from wood. Women “nest,” remember? Your hobby could actually BOOST your bedroom life. And when was the last time that you made something for your wife to put in the house?

You may recall from one of my newsletters about choosing the perfect gift for a woman that one of the most important things about the gift be that it is something special, just for her; mass-produced gifts only point out that you can spend money, not that you have paid attention to her. Making something for her in your shop could end up being a more-prized possession than even her wedding ring. And that’s not even the best part!

We men love to make things out of wood, but we hate finishing. There’s a really good reason for that. Building things satisfies a primal drive we have to create and provide for our family. But finishing (sanding, applying stain or protective finishes, etc., for you non-woodworkers), at least for most of us, is a lot of tedious, repetitive work that has extreme potential to take that thing we just built and make it both aggravating and ugly (if something goes wrong during finishing, again for you non-woodworkers). Now, brace yourself…

Finishing is a “nesting” type activity! Many women actually love doing it. To them, it’s like painting a room in the house, or any other kind of decoration, something that takes the plain and utilitarian and makes it both beautiful and personal. It’s intimate to them. And most of them are, quite frankly, a lot better at it than we are. For most of them, their brains are wired more to the creative side than ours are, so they are more likely to have artistic talent that we don’t have, and that may well be undiscovered and therefore untapped!

So instead of trying to keep your wife out of your shop, invite her to join you. Don’t expect her to want to be ripping sheets of plywood for cabinets or running rough wood over your jointer, at least not until she indicates that she’d like to learn how, but she may well be very good at and enjoy helping you keep things organized, stacking pieces and marking them off your cut lists as you mill them, sanding and checking for defects while you’re milling the next piece, and ultimately doing most if not all of the finish work that so many of us really don’t like to do.

This will put you in a position of authority, which is exciting to her, put your woodworking competence on display, which will also be exciting to her, give you a chance to be a leader in her presence, which will be greatly exciting to her, will give her access to that “man sanctum” in a way she never expected, also exciting, and will replace the interruptions and aggravation of which you complain with help and support. And when she sees all the wonderful things that can be made with all those tools, she won’t mind hearing how much you REALLY paid for them, either. LOL!

Take care, and keep in touch,
David

What about the rest of you? Do you have some sort of hobby that your wife interrupts that she could be joining in? Frankly, I’m shocked at how many women I’ve met that actually enjoy watching baseball, football, hockey, etc., with their men or even by themselves once invited to do so. I’m also amazed at how many literally are enthralled by the shooting sports, many of whom talk about “getting wet” while doing it. Can you imagine? You should see the women I’ve seen at gun shows, and you’d know they weren’t kidding. Indeed, seeing a very attractive woman fondling a pistol as if it were some sort of adult toy was what called this to my attention. My wife is great at handing me tools when I’m working on a car, too, and I’ve seen some take to tune-ups, brakes jobs, etc., as if they were born to it, and then clean up and look like a professional model.

So no, it doesn’t have to be woodworking, although it’s probably the best of all of them, because it’s the one that creates a special one-of-a-kind gift for her or your home or solves some problem (like storage problems or displaying some cool new vase she just found at a yard sale or boutique), which enhances her nesting ability, and entails a lot of things that she’s naturally good at. Just take what I’ve taught you, or will teach you if you read my book and newsletters, and look at what you do for fun.

You’ll find that there’s probably more than one thing you’ve excluded your wife or girlfriend from that she’ll not only enjoy doing with you, but can bring you closer together in other areas of your relationship or marriage, including the bedroom.
All you have to do is learn a few things about women and keep your eyes and ears open for opportunity. Once you spot the behavior that says she thinks she’s being left out of something fun, BOOM! Invite her in, and see what happens.

You can pick up a few things out of my newsletters, but if you really want to make life great, literally returning to honeymoon status even if you’re currently contemplating (or defending against) divorce, you need "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and you need it now. So go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy and get started. Or keep putting up with the nagging and all the parts of your hobby that takes all the fun out of it. It’s your choice. Make it a good one.

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

Preparation, Key to Easy Success in Relationships and Marriage

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

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

Hey David,

How's it going!

Well I'm doing pretty good indeed!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Being a Good Listener: Yet Another Key to a Great Relationship and Marriage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love ya,
Angie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Fool, the Smart, and the Wise -- Which One Wins in Relationships and Marriage?

There are three kinds of people, the foolish, the smart, and the wise. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to become wise, learning from the mistakes and successes of others and thereby avoid the mistakes that others have made, especially in regards to your relationship and marriage. Here’s how…

This week is almost gone! Time to buckle down and learn something useful to put to work this coming week, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’ve got plenty of time for beer and sports, so give me a few minutes here to teach you something productive, albeit in one of the longer pieces I’ve given you (just a few extra paragraphs, so don’t panic), and then you can go out and play with your friends.

I had a pretty tough childhood because I was precocious and insisted on knowing everything. That in itself isn’t too tough, but I was also independent, and wanted to know everything by learning it the hard way. I learned a lot, too.

On the day my military career started, I was labeled a “mustang” or “maverick,” a guy who has a hard time getting with the program because he has a knack for finding a better way to do things and doesn’t toe the line when he should. I got through basic training, and then got into some sticky situations.

Nobody got hurt or killed because of my choices or actions, but hellfire did rain down on my head a few times, because for every few “atta-boy’s” I’d get for going above and beyond the call, there would be an “oh sh*t” to negate them in one fell stroke. My commanding officer was constantly running interference for me with the big brass, and finally everything came to a head and I was ordered to report to my CO’s CO, a two-star general who shall remain nameless for a variety of reasons, for an “operational competency review.”

After introductions and the traditional reading of my file (I still don’t know why they go through that little ritual, and I’m not sure they do), the general said to me, “Cunningham, you’re smart, too damned smart for your own good. I need you to wise up before you compromise an op and get yourself or one of my other men killed. Do you know the difference?”

Everybody in my unit, including myself, was young, full of piss and vinegar, drawing hazardous duty pay, and got off on all the gung ho ritual language; in true gung-ho form I replied, “Sir, I do not know. If the general would explain the difference I will deploy that knowledge in a swift, proficient, and distinctly military manner.” I had no idea what he meant by, “The difference,” let alone what “the difference was, so it seemed like a good time to let him to all the talking.

He got a glint in his eye and said, “Very well. There are three kinds of people in the world, the foolish, the smart, and the wise. The foolish are those grab-asstic pieces of crap who waste time and life by never learning from their mistakes. The smart do learn from their mistakes, even if they are like you and make a lot of them because they want to be smarter. The wise move through life with patience and purpose, paying attention to what’s going on around them and learning from the mistakes and successes of others so that they don’t waste time and life making the same mistakes that others have made before them.

“I need you and every man under my command to be a wise man. We have a system here that is based on the mistakes and successes of those who came before you. It is not perfect, but it does work. You may be able to improve upon it, but you will do so by following the system during operations and providing any feedback you have during the post-operation debriefing. We want anything you can offer that will help to achieve objectives and save the lives of well-trained fighting men, but the time to deviate from the program is not when you are taking fire. That is your CO’s job, and my job, not yours. Do you get me?”

I never forgot that bit about the foolish, the smart and the wise. My mission changed that minute, from trying to do it all on my own to trying to learn everything I could the most efficient way that I could, which for the most part has been to watch and learn from the behavior of others. To that end, we’re going to have an exercise right now to show you just how much you can learn from somebody else, even someone you don’t expect to have anything to teach you.

The following letter is one of the many success stories I’ve received. I chose it for this exercise because it explodes a myth and because on the surface it doesn’t even appear to be relevant to saving a stale or failing marriage or other committed relationship, yet it holds some of the best lessons you’ll ever learn. Meet Tom:

David,

I wanted to take a moment to give you some feedback. My wife and I were recently divorced after 15 years of marriage. We are both in our early 50's. I worked really hard to save my marriage using logic.

I lost her to a bad boy. He is a real bum, without a job and still lives with his mother even though he is in his 50's. What a real mooch.

For the longest time I tried to apply logic to what was happening to my marriage and I failed to understand just what was going wrong. I guess I was too ingrained into my habitual patterns. It was only after the divorce that I started to get your material and receive your newsletters. WOW. Boy, was I ever wrong in my approach to women. I did all the nice guy stuff and provided a good home, clothes, jewelry, cars etc. I worked my ass off to provide for her.

As I started to read your material I came to realize what a bad relationship I had been in and what really went wrong.

I came to realize that I had failed to create attraction in her although I had her affection. That was my fault. The dishonesty (for many years), the deceit, the cheating, the character defects, etc., are all her fault. In many ways our divorce is a blessing in disguise.

I have followed your advice and that of David DeAngelo's program of Sexual Communication. Man what a difference it has made in my life and my approach to dating. I am now not trying to be the nice guy and "win" her favors. I am more confident in myself and out to have fun. I have played with and am learning the real way to create attraction and it is working. My successes with the new me are just outstanding and I am enjoying my life and playing a lot more. I don't have to call for dates...they are calling me. Really attractive and quality women.

So I wanted to thank you for putting out the information that you do, in such a professional manner that us nice guys can see where we went wrong and how to fix it. Keep up the good work.

Sincerely
Tom

PS: Oh and by the way. The ex has noticed and wants back into my life. NO way in hell will I ever get back into her games again. She has lost the house, cars, clothes, her reputation, is in debt up to her eyebrows, etc. I could go on and on with what she has done to herself. Life is funny sometimes, but I have the ultimate revenge and it does taste good. Thanks.

So what can you learn from this story that will make you a wise man?

For starters, Tom didn’t just automatically blame everything on somebody else and assume no responsibility for what happened that led to his divorce. He buckled down and found information that gave him answers as to what happened and what he could change to make sure it didn’t happen again.

Lesson: Take personal responsibility when things don’t go as planned, figure out what happened, and learn how to make it go the right way.

Also note I didn’t write one word of advice targeted at those who are dating in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," yet Tom found all kinds of advice in it that helped him to be more successful in his dating life, BECAUSE HE WAS LOOKING FOR IT. Good information isn’t always where you EXPECT to find it, but it is always WHERE YOU FIND IT, if you know what I mean.

Lesson: be ever-vigilant in looking for things that can make your life better; you may not find a pearl in every oyster, but finding a gold nugget lying in a pile of animal manure or a trash can doesn’t make it any less valuable than if it was found in a creek or a mine.

Tom also didn’t limit his options in solving his problems, and took advice to broaden his search. In "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," I teach readers how to evaluate their relationship or marriage to determine if they should try to salvage it, because if you are grossly mismatched in areas like your personal value system or personal tastes, it’s never going to work, and your time and effort is far better applied to make a dignified and peaceful exit instead of beating a dead horse only to fail in the end and exit under fire after war is declared.

Included in the advice for those making such an exit are people to contact to help protect your assets in the event that a property settlement war does break out, and advice to seek out advice specific to succeeding in the dating game by Shelley McMurtry, F.J. Shark, John Alanis, Tiffany Taylor, David D’Angelo, etc., because jumping back into the dating game blind is one of the scariest things a person can do, and I’ve found their material to be very logical and rooted in real-world cause-and-effect relationships.

Instead of saying, “I’m tired of reading. I’ve done this before, I’m just going to jump in and it will be better this time,” Tom recognized that a recommendation from one good source of information about another source of information was likely a good call because no information seller will risk trashing his reputation by steering a customer in the wrong direction for an affiliate sale and blow any possibility of future direct sales.

Lesson: Know your limitations, and do everything you reasonably can to obtain help in overcoming them by seeking the advice of those who have succeeded before you.

And as big as they are, those are the small lessons. Look in Tom’s post script (the paragraph that follows the “P.S.,” which stands for “post script,” for those of you who skipped that class in high school). His ex has noticed the changes in him and wants back into his life! The dating gurus will often say that this can’t happen, but you must remember that in the dating world, that’s most often correct. When you meet a stranger, your window of opportunity for creating attraction can be measured in minutes, maybe even a few seconds. But…

When you’ve been together for awhile and your interest is fully vested, that window could be measured in YEARS in some cases, and months in almost all cases. Women like the protective feeling of stability, and will give you ample opportunity to make things right IF they see that you’re trying to do so.

Lesson: Even if the divorce is final, as long as she hasn’t filed for restraining orders (which indicate that all hope is indeed lost in nearly all cases in the long term, and in ALL cases in the short term), or some other man hasn’t created intense attraction within her (which usually results in a restraining order anyway) ,it’s NEVER too late to fix it as long as the compatibility is there to support it.

Also note he held her accountable for her mistakes, and that ultimately being held accountable and having to live the life that she chose was the worst punishment that could be heaped upon her.

Lesson: Justice is sweet, while revenge is a dish that simply should never be served, unless it’s “self-served.” War isn’t just “the most spectacular of all human endeavors” (General George S. Patton), it’s the most costly and utterly destructive, on any scale.

Here endeth the lessons. Right now, some of you are saying, “Geesh, that guy is long-winded. That’s annoying!” while others are thinking, “Wow! That guy must really care about this stuff, because it must have taken him a long time to put that together to share it with me.” I do, and it did, several hours in fact. Several hours that I could have spent with family and friends, building something in my beloved workshop or enjoying another hobby, cooking an elaborate gourmet dinner, or numerous other things for myself instead of for you. If you don’t need this much help from me, I’m happy for you, really, but I’m doing this to help people in crisis make their lives better just as much as I’m doing it to help other people keep their relationships from falling into crisis.

Lesson: Never look a gift horse in the mouth.

Sorry, I couldn’t resist that last one. Seriously, I have a lot to teach you and everybody else who needs it so that you can be wise and keep from making the mistakes that others have made before you. We hit the high spots here in this newsletter and in my blog posts, but dig deep into the tangled and dark nitty-gritty in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and no matter what shape your relationship is in, there are many valuable lessons in there for you, lessons that will help you make your relationship better than it has ever been if you should be in it or help you get out of it with your dignity and a few dollars in your pocket and move on to find happiness elsewhere if you’re in the wrong relationship.

Your next move is to http://www.makingherhappy.com to download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and get started, because life is too short to wait. Never put off until tomorrow the success and happiness you can have today!

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

Don't Let Hot Buttons Make You Lose Perspective, or Your Relationship or Marriage

Watch out for somebody pressing one of your “hot buttons,” and for you pressing somebody else’s as well. Whether inadvertent or intentional, the fallout can wreck a relationship quickly, and even permanently, and when it hits, it will likely come out of nowhere, so know what to do before it happens…

I started my day today with a big cup of coffee and my e-mail, and found the following letter, which would have been funny if it hadn’t been so profoundly wrong and out of character, but there’s a very good lesson in it for you, so hang with me, because you’ll definitely find that it’s worth it. Meet Carol:
David,

You and people like you make me sick! All you can talk about is how to pick up and sed’uce a woman, or how to manipulate her to get what you want out of her, like we’re all stupid and can be led around by the nose like cattle. It’s no wonder women can’t get any respect these days. Thanks for being yet another a**hole helping men to screw up my life. I really feel sorry for your wife.

Carol

In every one of my newsletters is a link to the archive of everything I’ve published since switching to Aweber Communications as my newsletter broadcaster several years ago (my previous vendor didn’t provide an online archival service), and anyone can plainly see that:

1. I don’t ever write about picking up anybody. I leave that to the dating gurus.

2. I only write for people in committed relationships or who are trying to prepare for the time when they are in a committed relationship (including marriage, the most committed relationship).

3. The only context in which I ever mention “seduct’ion” is in explaining to men that women enjoy doing it if properly motivated by having a man create attraction for her, and it works out far better for everybody than for him to try to sed’uce her.

4. If I had a nickel for every time that I’ve publicly said that most women are smarter than we give them credit for because we don’t recognize that they simply do things differently, I could buy a country and retire there.

5. As for respect, see what one of you who has read "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" had to say about how my work relates to respecting women:

“It's funny how these things work, but all the studying I've been doing about understanding women and how they think HAS LEFT ME WITH MUCH MORE RESPECT FOR THEM THAN BEFORE, where I was often just frustrated or disgusted with their behavior. I seriously doubt anyone could read AND UNDERSTAND your book and not have the same experience. Another reason [my wife] should read it.” -- Larry

And this one:

Hi David,

In these uncertain and confusing days, you are a jewel of unlimited value. Because you leave no confusion in the minds of your readers. And you provide a wonderful service. You are not out to simply make lots of money on phony theories with sensational story titles. YOU ARE THE REAL DEAL WHO IS NOT OUT TO EXPLOIT WOMEN, BUT RATHER TO TEACH US MEN HOW TO VALUE THEM FOR THE FANTASTIC CREATURES THAT THEY ARE. You want to preserve relationships and marriages, not bust them up. I commend and thank you. I place you on the same list as the greatest of the greats. You deserve a thundering round of applause. And I personally thank you for the wisdom you share in your writings.

I remain your devoted fan,

Cordially,
Ron

Now, add to that the fact that Carol has been subscribing for a little over two months, and has sent me a couple of e-mails complimenting my understanding of women and hoping that I’m successful in teaching other men how to do the same. She also impressed me as being fairly bright and reasonable. So this outburst appears totally out of character and illogical, right? So what happened?

The only thing that ever causes such an instantaneous and explosive departure from expected, normal behavior is what many refer to as “pressing a hot button,” “touching a nerve,” etc., accidentally triggering a memory of a bad event that alters one’s perception of what is happening now and changes the way they would normally respond to it. I would be surprised if you’ve not seen it, because unfortunately, it’s all too common, but what do you do when it happens?

As tough as it sounds, just let it go, at least until the person who explodes at you has a few minutes to calm down and realize that they just exploded at you for something that somebody else did sometime in the past. Don’t apologize, don’t argue, don’t try to explain anything. Just calmly say, “We’ll discuss this later when you’ve calmed down,” disengage, and don’t take it personally. It’s not you that they are upset with; it’s that demon from the past that they’ve never managed to vanquish.

Later, when the discussion resumes (and you should be the one to reinitiate it for the sake of taking a leadership position, so pay attention to her mood), let the aggressor speak freely for a few minutes, and if they aren’t apologizing for jumping on you for something that you didn’t do, point out to them that they have taken whatever was said or done out of context, and that they are upset about something else. If that’s not good enough, just let it go.

If it becomes a pattern of abuse, it’s time to start looking at options like professional counseling, and if they refuse to acknowledge it’s a problem, it’s time to move on, because you can’t help somebody fix a problem they won’t acknowledge having and life is too short to spend it with an abuser that makes a habit of punishing you for someone else’s sins.

If somebody pushes one of your hot buttons, and you’ll know they have because you’ll feel a sudden escalation in your emotional energy level along with an unusually strong urge to either defend or attack, try to stop the eruption by telling yourself, aloud if you must, that something isn’t right and you need to think about what you’re doing before you say or do something that can’t be undone. The discipline to step back from an emotional surge and make sure that it is rooted in reality is one of the most useful tools you can ever develop.

If you can’t recognize it and stop it before it happens, don’t be shy about apologizing to whomever catches the brunt of your upset. I am not a big fan of apologies because a lot of people tend to use them as license to behave badly, thereby nullifying their credibility and the credibility of others who offer apologies, but in these circumstances, it is necessary and appropriate that you volunteer it as a lead-in to discussion. No matter who has their hot button pushed, make it a top priority to determine what the unresolved issue is that triggered the eruption; get it resolved so you or they can heal from it and not be bothered by it again.

Life has enough troubles waiting for you each day without continuing to harbor trouble from times long past, and while those who care about you may forgive you for your outbreaks, you may not, and they may not after awhile. Failure to address a problem that you know about is the result of choice, not fate, and sooner or later you will be held accountable and as I was saying above, apologies will no longer be accepted. There are few feelings any worse than those that come with the knowledge that you ruined a great relationship that didn’t have to be ruined.

Speaking of which, there are just as many ways of unnecessarily ruining a great relationship as there are of building one, and the bad news is that building a great relationship by accident is highly unlikely while accidentally destroying one is next to inevitable if you don’t know what you need to know to build and protect one.

Building and protecting a great relationship is not at all difficult, it’s simply that the path to success is not obvious to the vast majority of us. For every person who knows what it takes and is willing to share it, there are thousands who don’t know what it takes but are all too willing to poison your relationship with their pet theories and opinions as if they were giving you knowledge and expertise. My refusal to engage in opinion and theory is legendary – and much appreciated -- among those who know me, and has been the secret to my success as a counselor, coach, consultant and troubleshooter all my life. Among my favorite phrases of all is, “I don’t know, but now that you’ve given me a good reason to find out, and I’ll be back with you shortly with facts in hand.”

There are no theories here, no opinions, and plenty of proof to back up every word I put in front of you, in this newsletter, any reports I offer you, and my e-book, "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," which you can download at http://www.makingherhappy.com/, that is, if you’re a man who’s tired of not knowing what women want from a man and guessing wrong more often than not. I have facts in hand for you, derived from extensive research with 118 couples before the initial release and the comments and successes of thousands that have followed since.

Life is too short for you to be stumbling along blindly stepping in crap and more crap when information like this is so easily and quickly available to you. Regrets aren’t born of the things we try, but of the things we fail to try, are they not? Think about it, and then exercise the only reasonable option open to you: ACT!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When NOT to Apologize to Keep a Relationship and Marriage Going

Have you ever wondered why you can say something that to you seems entirely benign or even complimentary to a woman and she blows up in your face? Have you ever wished you could see it coming and head off the fight that you know is going to follow? Here are the answers you seek…

Women are going to take things you say the wrong way from time to time; it’s a foregone conclusion. They’re also going to verbally test you to see if you’ll buckle under pressure by spitting a little venom to see if you’ll get emotional (and wuss out or start a fight) or whether you’ll keep your head and act like a man. In any case, it doesn’t have to become a fight if you know what to do, and apologizing isn’t it…

It usually starts with something benign, or even complimentary. Most of us have had the following conversation:

Him: “Gee honey, that diet you’re on is really working! You look great!”

Her: “Oh! So I was a fat, disgusting cow before? Thanks, you asshole!”

Then the fight starts…

Him (somewhat apologetically): “Wait, no, I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant. I was complimenting you because I know that dieting takes a lot of will power and it’s hard, and I’m proud of you for going through all that.”

Her: “Oh, so I’m a fat, disgusting cow because I have no willpower now, huh? I make a little effort to try to look better for you, and you have to put me down! You’re an insensitive creep! I don’t know why I even try to put up with you!”

…And it pretty much goes to Hell in a hand basket from there, right? So what happened, anyway? And what can you do to fix it? Or more importantly, PREVENT it?

Many women are generally insecure about a lot of things. They’ve been hammered for so long to be insecure about their youth and appearance that most today probably don’t even remember why it’s an issue, and most men never knew...

It goes back to the days when women weren’t accepted in the work place and generally only ended up owning businesses if they inherited them, couldn’t get a decent job, and hence, marrying well was their only real means of survival. They had to compete with each other not just for a man, but for a livelihood, and were kept on the defensive. And that’s not been that long ago.

As women began to be more liberated and make their own way in the world, the fashion and beauty industries continued to keep the pressure on them, inundating them with advertising to foster insecurity and feed their competitiveness to the point that even the most successful and fiercely independent women still have attacks of challenged self-esteem far more frequently that what you would expect, or they want to tolerate.

This constant pressure keeps many women, as tough as they are, teetering on the brink of feeling really crappy about themselves, and from time to time, when fatigue, illness, stress, etc., build up and weaken them enough, they fall into a mode where no matter what you say, they are going to take it in the worst way possible. Emotional energy builds up, testosterone falls and inhibition with it, and a blow-off needs to happen, and any thing that triggers an emotional response, like touching a hot button around one of her insecurities, is going to trigger the eruption.

This is another one of those things you’re just going to have to understand and accept about women if you are going to live with one. It doesn’t make them stupid, or inferior, or weak-willed, or anything like that. We as men go through the same thing, except for most of us, it’s less frequent because we normally don’t live in an environment of people trying to make us feel insecure about ourselves.

I say most of the time because sometimes parents, partners, children, or acquaintances can become depressed and try to make themselves feel better by putting us down, and we have a few advertisements for things like E-D drugs and hair restoration digging at our self-esteem, but for the most part, we usually don’t get in this state until we have a string of catastrophes get to us, like losing a loved one, a job, and a home all in a very short period of time. Believe it or not, it takes that kind of pressure to make the average woman do this, it’s just that she’s awash, all day ever day, in things trying to bring her down so the events that end up being the proverbial “last straw” don’t have to be as traumatic for them as what they end up having to be for us.

And as you’ve noticed in some of my other newsletters, this can also be brought on by a need for drama to vent pent-up emotional energy, as well as just be a test to see if you will wuss out and play into the drama or stand up like a man and reel her in. (Multiple causes, same predicament, and luckily for you, the same response is required to get through the predicament in good standing, so pay attention!)

Now that this is hopefully in perspective, how do you handle it? First, early detection is a must. You may have noticed right before one of these explosions that she suddenly becomes quiet or gets a puzzled or stressed look on her face that turns into pain and anger. It may only take seconds for her to explode, or she may put it off for as long as a couple of days before it finally gets the best of her. You cannot wait for the explosion to fix this.

Nor can you invite her to explode in your face with a question like, “What’s wrong?” When she’s in this state, “What’s wrong?” comes across as “What’s wrong with you?” and that’s not a question you want an insecure person responding to, because whoever you are, everything will suddenly become your fault because you have just volunteered to be the outlet for her overload.

So what DO you do? What is the “magic move” that calms the storm before it breaks over your head?

When you see a seemingly inexplicable change for the worse in expression, tone, or demeanor, don’t wait for her say anything about it. Take the initiative – leadership is attractive, remember? – and say something about it right then and there. What do you say?

No, you don’t apologize. Nor do you start a fight to try to back her down because she most likely won’t. Besides, leaders don’t fight. They lead. Take the lead:

“Okay, I see from your [expression/voice/demeanor] that you didn’t take something the way I was intending for you to take it. I was [trying to pay you a compliment/simply making a joke/simply making an observation] that was in no way intended to be disrespectful or hurtful to you. If you have taken what I said to mean anything but that, then you need to back up and ask whatever questions I can answer to clarify it for both of us instead of remaining upset and then getting angry and we end up fighting.”

If you can spot the sign that something came across the wrong way quickly enough and say this with the confidence of a man insisting on being understood instead of fighting or sounding like a wuss trying backtrack and wiggle his way out of a confrontation, she will gladly comply and get things straightened out.

Women like to see a man take the lead in a touchy situation like that and work it out for the best. What they don’t like are men who wuss out and start apologizing without knowing what they are apologizing for or that get really weasely and look apologetic while trying to convince them that they were “just kidding.” They also don’t like men who see things starting to go the wrong way and instead of trying to fix the problem, bristle and growl and try to bully the problem away, using control instead of leadership to get them out of the situation instead of fixing the situation.

All you have to do is speak as if you expect to be heard and understood and you will interrupt the chemical rush that would normally move things in the direction of a fight, and probably help her to feel better about herself as well, because you were indeed sensitive enough to see that she had taken something the wrong way and strong enough to lead her away from an embarrassing and destructive blow-up over something that didn’t happen.

The one thing that will help you the most to pull this off is to be truly attentive when speaking with your partner. Most women don’t multitask the way we do, and they really resent it when we don’t maintain constant (or at least near-constant) eye contact with them when we’re speaking with or listening to them. (Women multitask, but they suspend multitasking when it conflicts with anything that is a social exchange of any kind, prioritizing eye contact and being polite above getting something accomplished, where we will speak to someone while holding our focus on our work or something else we’re doing and think nothing of it.)

The simple act of giving her your undivided attention as you converse will go a long way toward boosting her self-esteem, and will help elevate her mood a bit and keep her from being so quick to think that you are being insensitive, but it also has the added advantage of making sure that you notice as quickly as possible any change in her demeanor, expression, tone, body language, or anything else that can be a clue that she’s having a problem with what she heard.

Not only will she notice and appreciate it when you give her your undivided attention and make the extra effort to maintain eye contact, she’ll also notice that you don’t usually do this with others, and it will make her feel that much more special. Incidentally, the same thing goes for daughters – they’re women in training, right?

Men who truly know how to effectively communicate with their partner can literally go decades without a fight. One couple in our test group has been married since 1944 and claim to have not had a fight since their 20th anniversary in 1964, an argument that came up at their anniversary party over the appearance of an uninvited (and unwanted) guest that got out of hand. That’s 63 years of marriage and 43 years since their last fight. How did they do it? And how do they keep doing it?

They were well-matched and share very similar values (as well as valuing each other more highly than anyone else in their life, including their children) and compatible tastes. They learned over the course of many years how to communicate with each other so they could work things out instead of fighting about them. And Mason, the husband, is a master at creating attraction for his wife, and at 85 years old (and her at 81) they are still having sex at least every other day. Wouldn’t you love to live a life like that with your wife?

You can! Anybody can. Well, maybe not with YOUR wife, but with their own. ;-) Seriously, the secrets of their success and thousands of other couples, not to mention what women really want and what makes them tick, is all contained in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage." You don’t have to spend twenty years figuring out whether you’re married to the right woman and learning how to communicate with her, nor a lifetime wondering how to flip her switches and turn her back into that wild woman she was before you married her. A few hours to read and understand this book and start practicing what it teaches you are all it takes, and no, it’s not a lot of work. It’s a lot of FUN!

Got a few hours to spend making the rest of your life a honeymoon? Sure you do! So jump over to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" now, and get started. Or would you rather keep fighting for no apparent reason? Nah, life’s too short for that, right?

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

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

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

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

(You can find a listing of a lot of her articles here on Google if you want to follow up).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Key to Conflict Resolution in Relationships and Marriage

Many people get so hung up on WHO’s right that they can’t see WHAT’s right, making them push a bad position to “win” instead of focusing on getting the right answer in everybody’s head and moving forward. Alienating everyone around them is all they achieve, and they’re usually the only one who doesn’t see it. That’s bad enough when at a social gathering, even worse at work, but what if it’s happening in your relationship or marriage? Just how long do you think such a relationship can last? Luckily, the condition is treatable with a little self-injection of self-esteem and an attitude adjustment.

Good grief! This has been the week for phone calls from very disturbed people. I just got off the phone with a consulting client who bought “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” and he was frantic. His relationship with his wife was on the rocks, she had filed for divorce, and it didn’t take but a very few minutes to see why she was divorcing him.

First, a little background: The poor guy has such an extreme self-esteem deficit that no woman would ever have him for long (I questioned whether his wife married him for his money because he described her as coming from a rather “low-rent” background, he’s loaded with “old money,” and there’s just no way this guy was ever able to spark attraction in anyone through any means other than dressing well and exhibiting the trappings of money and power), and every part of our conversation was about “who was right” instead of “what will work for him.”

You’ve probably met people like him, and if you haven’t, ignore them when you meet them. Don’t bother trying to get to know them, because they will try to get to know you by telling you that they know more about your life than you do before you’ve said much more than, “Hello.”

His wife had apparently had enough of it and was bailing out after only two months, and he maintained that she knew nothing about herself, what she wanted from herself or him, didn’t have a clue what relationships were about, and he couldn’t get her to understand that he was smart because he was wealthy. Attention all disciples of the Church of Cause and Effect…all together now…1…2…3…CRINGE!!!

I’ve heard a lot over the years of being a business consultant and executive coach, but this guy beat anything I’ve ever seen in terms of being in denial, having a sub-zero self-esteem level, and having absolutely no concept of cause-and-effect relationships. He actually believed that inheriting a large estate made him intelligent! Being intelligent gives one the ability to build a fortune, but receiving an unearned fortune obviously does not include a brain infusion or transplant.

Now that you have the background, picture the fun part. He calls up, introduces himself, describes in great detail all of the above, and after agreeing to a $250 consulting fee for a 2-hour block of my time, proceeds to spend the first hour trying to first justify everything he did and then trying to tell me why nothing in the book he purchased could possibly help him, and that since he was wealthy, he could afford to spend time with me to suggest changes that had occurred to him as he was reading the Table of Contents – he had NOT yet read the book!

Now, in case this is your first edition of this newsletter and you’ve not heard it before, a team of 118 couples helped me conduct and test all the research that went into this book, and anything that was less than 90% effective was not included; things that were between 50% and 90% effective were noted for discussion in this newsletter (you’ll occasionally see me mentioning test results and asking you to write with your own experience) to see if there might be a way to fine tune them for acceptable performance to be added to the book, and anything less than 50% effective was consigned to individual circumstances or personal tastes and omitted entirely. Now, think about that for just a second…

…a 118-page book full of advice and concepts, each of which at least 90% of 118 women agreed on being effective with them, and at least 90% of men agreed were easy and enjoyable to do. There have been only three refunds in over five years, and all were the result of some misunderstanding about the purpose or content of the book (two of which had inadvertently purchased the same book twice and wanted one of them refunded!). I also have unsolicited testimonials from almost everyone who has ever bought it stating that it works wonders. That kind of thing is unheard of with information products. Most authors brag if they can keep their refund rate down to 10%, and mine is currently under 0.00004%.

That doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for error, does it? It has worked to improve everyone’s lives, but this guy, who’s bought this book to try to head off a divorce and starts the conversation with the words, “My name is XXXXXX XXXXXXXXX and my wife is divorcing me and I don’t know what to do,” is going to be charitable and spend an hour of paid consulting time telling me that everything in my book, which he has not yet read, is wrong and then asking me for help. Sound familiar?

Are you like this guy, more interested in being heard or being “right” than in being happy? Is your partner? Can you see what a strain it’s putting on your relationship? If either of you are like this man, you can bet that at some point it will end your relationship if it’s not fixed; good relationships, of any kind, have compatibility and cooperation at their core, not conflict and competition. The first steps in fixing any problem is admitting there is a problem, defining it, and taking responsibility for fixing whatever part of it you can impact. Only after those three things are accomplished can an effective solution be developed.

And, by the way, taking responsibility does not mean taking the blame; it means committing to act in solving and eliminating the problem. Indeed, people who won’t take responsibility are very prone to focus on blame and point the finger everywhere but at themselves, making it impossible to show them how they may have contributed to the problem and determine how they might modify their perspective or behavior to ensure it doesn’t happen in the future. As you might expect, this was the hardest part of this phone call – getting this man to see that his self-esteem deficit was the vast majority of the problem so that he could begin building self-esteem through genuine achievements and eliminate the problem.

It took two hours of him yelling and screaming and arguing with me, and me countering every argument with the very irrefutable facts he had given me, but finally a light came on (“No bad idea, no matter how popular, can withstand the onslaught of logic.” – Aldus Huxley) and he was able to see that he had spent the entire call rejecting the help he had paid to obtain because he wanted to be right.

There was no way to shorten the process. I kept asking, “Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?” and he kept answering “I want both!” It was when he finally realized that if he could be both he would have never needed to call me in the first place that he finally had a revelation that made me think he’d had a heart-attack. He didn’t speak for about five minutes and there were all manner of stressful sounds on his end where he was trying to either hold back or silence his crying so I wouldn’t hear it. I mercifully let him get it out of his system without asking if he was alright, and he finally said, “Okay, I’m a clean slate. Tell me what I need to know.”

I said, ‘What you need to know first is that everything in that book you bought has worked for everyone who has used it; within the last week a young man in your predicament pulled his literally out of divorce court, his wife is back home, and they’re making long-term career and family plans now. Go back and read the book, thoroughly, this time looking for answers instead of validation and expecting to be happy in the future instead of expecting to be right throughout your history, and then call me if we need to talk further. Now that you have come this far, I have every confidence you can go the distance.” Tear ‘em down and build ‘em back up the right way…facing reality and embracing it with a fury.

(Update: He did as I instructed, and he eventually turned out to be one of my star students. It turned out that he was quite intelligent, not because he was wealthy, but because he had an analytical mind and the ruthlessness to learn anything, once we got his ego out of the way; emotion and rational thinking don’t mix. Congratulations, J.G. – you still hold the title as my biggest challenge of this project, even bigger than finding a whole book full of facts about women that over a hundred women agreed upon!)

As I said, this situation can destroy your relationship – ANY relationship of any kind -- if it goes on continuously, but I didn’t mention that you can do extreme damage to your relationship in a single argument with this mistake. As tempers rise, things are said that can be apologized for, but not taken back; you cannot “unring” a bell. When there is a disagreement, focus on WHAT is right, not WHO is right, and instruct your partner to do the same. You’re partners, and supposed to be a team, so the important thing is not to win an argument (competitive), but to score a win for the team in the situation (cooperative), is it not?

So why do we do this to ourselves and our partners, the people whom we should love and seek cooperative and mutually beneficial existence with the most??? As with many people problems, low self-esteem puts us in a competitive mode, thinking that we’ll feel better if we beat somebody at something – anybody at anything! How much self-esteem will you be garnering by making an ass of yourself and putting your relationship on the rocks? Think before you open your mouth, because you can certainly get your foot in it much easier than you can put back into it any words that came out of it. Keep things in perspective, and you can keep things moving in the right direction always.

So, are you going to concern yourself with what’s right, or with who? Have you ever heard that old ditty, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got…”? There’s a little more to it, but that’s the gist of it.

I’m telling you, straight up, achiever-to-achiever, I have what you need, right here. Solid, factual information, tested by over a hundred regular couples in long-term committed relationships, most of them married, all of them long-term enough to have developed significant problems that threatened their relationships, before this book was every published, and thousands more since.

It’s in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” and it’s just a few mouse-clicks away. Download your copy today at http://www.makingherhappy.com, because with information like this and a little study and desire, you can start putting an end to silly little traps like this one once and for all within minutes of downloading it. And I have a whole bunch readers who will tell you that you can’t get results like you’ll get with this information, anywhere or at any price.

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

Girls and Their Toys! Those Toys Are NOT a Threat to Your Relationship or Marriage

Some men get terribly insecure about women’s “toys,” responding with such nonsense as “How am I supposed to compete with THAT?” You’re not, and you should be glad that it’s a toy and not another man. Why not “grow a pair” and join in the fun?

Sometimes I get letters from readers that are truly upsetting. I’ll spare you the details of those emotions, but eventually I have to look past the gross insecurity and ignorance expressed in the letter and remember that my job is to help people learn to be smarter and better, and that they think the way they do (or FAIL to think at all) because that’s what they have been taught, and my beef is with the teacher, not the student. Meet Brent:

Hey David,

Man, I’ve got a problem. My wife has discovered “toys,” (the adult kind) and I can’t get her to leave them alone. Every time I come home when she’s been here alone, they are laying out and it drives me nuts. I mean, how am I supposed to compete with that? I’ve got to get her to stop, but I don’t know how. I’ve tried everything I can think of, and she just gets madder and madder at me when I try to tell her that she doesn’t need them. What can I do?

Thanks,
Brent

My response:

Yes, Brent, you have a problem, and it’s not your wife’s toys. It’s your attitude. What makes you think you are “competing” with her toys? And what makes you think that she needs to stop using them? If there’s something lacking in the bedroom, would you not prefer that it was her toys taking up the slack instead of another man, or had that occurred to you?

I obviously don’t know your wife, but every woman that knows me, including your fellow readers, will tell you that I know women well enough to say this: Whether she’s using toys because there is something lacking in your performance or because she just likes toys is irrelevant, and you’re showing a sickening level of insecurity by feeling you have to compete with them and an equally sickening level of arrogance or stupidity to think that you can decide for her what she needs and doesn’t need. So what’s up?

She’s leaving them out as an invitation for you to join her in using them! She’s mad because you’re being insecure and trying to shut her down instead of listening to her, taking the hint, and letting her share with you something that she enjoys! Get a clue!

Like it or not, that’s reality, and if you think you’re choking on that dose, this one isn’t going to go down very well, either: If you don’t get a grip, grow a pair of testicles worthy of a man, and stop acting threatened by some masses of inanimate plastic, there will be another man involved, either before or after the divorce, and he will likely be chosen partially on the basis of his willingness to share her toy pleasures with her.

It’s like this: your manhood is not a function of how big your “organ” is or how many orgasms you can give her through “traditional” intercourse, or any other kind for that matter. That’s machismo, ego, and chauvinism at its worst. Your manhood is a function of how well you handle the job of being a man! How much you act like the alpha male – smart, confident, witty, able to treat adversity as opportunity and adventure, comfortable being in the lead and making decisions (NOT forcing them on others, as you want to do with her toys), and letting that naughty inner child out from time to time to show her a good time.

How do you think you come off asking her how you’re supposed to compete with a few ounces of plastic or latex?

Like a freaking wuss!

The only way that toy can be used as a lethal weapon is to choke you with it, yet you’re acting scared to death of it. How manly is that? NOT!!!

Now straighten up, think like a man instead of an insecure, grab-asstic adolescent, and next time you come home and find your wife’s toys laying out, put on your best naughty boy grin and tell her that if she’s going to leave her toys lying around where you have to look at them, she’s going to have to let you play with them too, so it’s time to get naked and show you how they work, else she’s going to get a spanking. Yes, I’m serious!

She will be stunned at first because you’ve acted like such a wuss, and then she’ll get a little cocky to test you to see if you mean it. Pick up one of her toys and give her a good-natured swat on the behind with it, and crack wise with something like, “That seems to work, but I’m sure there’s a better use for this than that,” and dial up the naughty level a few notches.

Let her show you, and you pay very close attention to things like speed, pressure, direction, etc., then you take over and allow her to continue to coach you, which she may do with her hands or other body parts instead of spoken words, i.e., raising her hips to press toward you means more pressure, etc. – use your head and keep your cool, and everything will be fine. It’s a learning experience, a damned pleasurable one too, not a contest, so put that competition nonsense away and leave it there before it gets you hurt. This is about cooperation, not competition.

All joking and rib-poking aside, if you have a problem with this because of some kind of childhood sexual trauma, stop hiding from it and get help, because you’re cheating both of you out of a lot of things, including fun, trust, intimacy, etc. – things that no committed relationship can ever get too much of, right?

Take care, and keep in touch,
David

This mess could have been avoided if Brent just knew a little more about communicating with women and was comfortable with himself, two things that a whole lot of men have a huge problem with. If you are one of them, it’s time to give yourself – AND YOUR PARTNER – the gift of a break from all the stress.

Inside every man is an alpha male, and if he’s not in the lead in your life, he’s been suppressed, oppressed, or somehow pressured into the background, but he’s there, waiting to come out. Yes, he is! He’s been there ever since you were given that “Y” chromosome at conception! But…

Unfortunately, there’s not likely to be a hyper-skilled communicator that can rival any woman hiding in there with him unless you are an effeminate gay male that is so girly that every woman wants to go shopping with you, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t learn how to do much better than you are doing – so much better in fact, that she thinks you’re reading her mind at times.

Neither are hard to do, if you just apply a little time and effort to clearing out some bad programming and engaging in a little self-improvement, which is a whole lot easier than trying to put on an act for a creature that has about 100 times the capacity for sensing and interpreting non-verbal communication than you have. You can’t just ACT like a man, you have to BE a man; otherwise the stress of trying to act in contradiction to yourself will backfire on you. But the good news is that you just need to know what works and how to make the parts of what work that appeal to you a real part of your life, which is one of the most enjoyable processes a man can go through at any point in his life. Being a man is a LOT easier than trying to act like one, and a lot easier than not being one, too!

It’s all laid out for you, step by step, in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” and it’s waiting for you at http://www.makingherhappy.com. Download it and give it a shot, because life is too short to miss out on the good parts, and unless you and your partner are truly enjoying your manhood (literally and figuratively) you are missing out on a LOT of good parts.

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

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

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

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

Hey David,

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

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

Randy

My reply:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Loves you? Maybe, even probably.

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

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

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

Take care, and keep in touch,
David

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Most Important Skills in Building, Maintaining, or Saving a Relationship or Marriage, Part 2

A reader writes more about his success and discoveries in reviving his marriage in the post-affair situation that many of you have written me about. He’s already identified playful behavior and a positive attitude as necessary, and we get to the really big issues today, the ones that must come before all others. Do yourself a big favor and learn from him…

We started yesterday with Mark’s first letter to me and my response, in which he demonstrated how a playful attitude went a long way toward reestablishing trust and intimacy in his marriage as he and his wife work to recover from a crisis, one resulting from the slow decay of a good marriage inducing the wife to have an affair.

(If you missed yesterday’s edition, you can see it in the archive at your convenience.)

Today we continue with a partial transcript of several e-mails that have passed back and forth between Mark and me. Today he gets into the real meat of his discoveries, or rather confirmations of my own discoveries with his own experience. Let’s continue…

David,

Thank you so much for your thoughtful response.

Yes, I did catch that email about the guy who pulled his wife's pants down; in fact that's part of what convinced me to try the pillow fight. And I did try the pulling the pants down thing, too. It worked as well, I think my wife is starting to realize that she has no idea what I'm going to do next - and it’s exciting to her.

I also wanted to tell you about a great conversation I had with my wife.

You see one of the most beneficial aspects of what you teach is showing us men how women communicate. Throughout our marriage I was always frustrated and upset because my wife never would just come out and ask me a question about a topic. It always seemed she would just make a statement and expect me to realize that it was a question. Or she would ask a question and stupid me thought it was really a question. This led to all kinds of fights because I wanted her to communicate the "right" way - namely my way or a man's way.

Anyway, the other night my wife is telling me that she really needs to just express herself more directly to me. Smart me realizes that this statement is a question or at least a request to open a dialog. So I didn't just agree, I started a conversation with her. I told her that sure there were times that I wish she were more direct, but the one thing I realized through this learning process (yes I told her that I bought your book) was that I had learned a lot about her communication style in the past few months. I told her I no longer felt the need to change her behavior to suit me because I had been taught (by you) about her communication style. I tell you it was a beautiful sight to see the sparkle in her eye when she realized that I got it - finally.

I think the best thing that's happened in our marriage recently is that we've both opened up because we realize that we are free to be ourselves instead of what someone else or society thinks we should be. I am free to be the fun-loving, strong, confident and naughty boy husband I was meant to be and she's free to be the drama queen (I mean that not in any negative way) she was meant to be.

Boy is life fun, when you really start to get these things figured out.

Thank you so much for all your help.

Mark

Powerful stuff, huh? We’ll discuss this in detail in a minute, but when I told Mark that I wanted to share this with all of you and why, he came back with more very insightful commentary that we also need to talk about. So here’s the brief reply that opened him up further:

Hi again!

This is great, and it would make a great newsletter, too. I have a hard time getting "non-believers" to accept that communications is more important than anything else in such crises because it's the tool for solving problems and creates trust and intimacy, which in turn buys you the time to work on attraction. Do you mind if I use this anonymously? I'll call you "Mark" or something like that in the newsletter.

Thanks, and take care,
David

To which he replied:

I just thought that I would add a little in case you wanted more to use.

I remember many instances in our past where I would absolutely know that she was trying to hint around at something. I always called it circling around the issue. I mean I knew exactly what she wanted to talk about from the first statement or question. But because I wanted her to communicate "my way" I would ignore it or answer in short one word responses in a vain attempt to infuriate her enough to finally get to the point. I mean it was incredible. Here I was hearing the message and understanding it but because it wasn't delivered in the manner I wanted to hear it I would play a game of ignoring it until my wife finally was mad enough to just say it - or usually scream it!

So in a way I won the battle, but lost the war. I finally got her to communicate "my way" but I did it in a way that destroyed any intimacy or attraction. You know she had to be thinking that I was the biggest jerk in the world for doing this - and in reality she was exactly right - I was being a complete jerk.

And the really weird part is she knew it too! She wanted me to communicate "her way" and wouldn't try to hear me either. So we had in effect painted ourselves into a corner where we were convinced that everything would be fine if the other person would just change.

Mark

So how much of this soaked in?

Let’s start with something that Mark touched on and I elaborated only slightly on. Of all the things that you can do to improve a relationship or marriage, communication is second only to being in a highly compatible relationship in terms of reasons that relationships and marriages last or disintegrate. Compatibility gives us common ground upon which to act, discuss, and have fun, and communication is the tool with which trust and intimacy are built. All of these things are components or constituents of the primary relationship emotion, love.

When love is elevated through heightened trust and intimacy, the protective walls come down and women will then not try to fight off the attraction they feel for a playful, confident man. Feeling safe, especially in terms of her emotional well-being, is such a huge issue to most women that I don’t know if the average guy even has sufficient frame of reference to understand it, let alone empathize. Suffice it to say that if she has trust issues, everything else will be moot, because women know just how easy it is for them to go overboard and get lost in an emotional storm.

Then we get to another HUGE issue: Competition. Doing it “his way” or “her way.” Focusing on WHO is right instead of WHAT is right. The tendency to compete or cooperate is what determines whether she and you are truly “partners” or merely cohabitants of the same residence.

Partners cooperate. They seek out the best solutions to problems for the couple. It’s true that individuals must maintain some level of independence to preserve their identity, but if you find yourself frequently competing with your wife or girlfriend instead of cooperating to act in your mutual best interest, you can take it as a sign of severe compatibility problems, self-esteem issues, or some mixture of the two, and you can be assured that you are in a relationship with the wrong person if love and partnership are you reasons for being in it.

This isn’t rocket science, Guys. You don’t even have to know how to pronounce the phrase “governing dynamics” to understand that there are real-world constraints, tendencies, and issues that are common to men and women, know what they are and understand how to make the best of them instead of constantly fighting against them.

Do you remember yesterday’s remark about the genie who thought it would be easier to build a bridge from California to Hawaii than to tell a man what makes women tick or what women really want? That story is hilarious when you first hear the punch line, but then comes the “double-take,” that sudden realization that it’s funny because it seems so true, and then that sense of futility sets in as you acknowledge that the genie is probably right. But he’s wrong!

And what’s more, if you think about it, right now you ARE the genie. With what you know right now you’d have a better chance of being able to build that bridge than to solve the many riddles and mysteries of womanhood. They’re simply unsolvable; the answers must be revealed, and the good news for you is that they have been!

I tried to solve them just like every other man, and with an IQ in the top 1% of the whole world’s population, I failed, miserably, so don’t feel bad. There are ways in which we are deceptively different and deceptively alike, and we’re just not equipped to see them. So I did the unthinkable:

I gathered a large group of women and asked them!

That’s right! And they told me everything, because they want us to know! But, being an engineer and scientist at heart, I didn’t just take their word for everything, I collected it, identified everything that was common to virtually all women, and then tested it by turning it all over to their husbands and boyfriends and listening intently to the feedback from both genders.

Sure enough, we found some rather common misconceptions among the women, instances of thinking that they wanted something they had never had, and being grossly dissatisfied when they got it. There were also common instances of instinctively responding negatively to behavior they had previously said they wanted to see in their men.

When all was said and done and we were all on the same page, so to speak, the final draft was formalized and THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” was born, and real men and women have been saving, reviving, and improving marriage and other committed relationships with it ever since. It’s now your turn, so go to http://www.makingherhappy.com/ and download your copy, right now, and be the guy who knows all about women instead of the genie looking to build a bridge half-way across the Pacific.

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

Buying Her Off With a Gift, a Great Way to Ruin a Great Relationship and Marriage

For all you who have made that most dire of mistakes with women, trying to buy their affection, attention, approval, silence, forgiveness, or flesh, heed the words of one of my best friends and students…

The holiday letters are coming in, mostly from readers who have been following me for awhile and did a good job, and a few from those who didn’t get expected results from their previous offerings to their wives. The latter group needs to catch up.

Gentlemen, I’ve revealed how to handle this both in "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and in several newsletters that reveal that section of my book. I usually publish a newsletter a week or two ahead of traditional gift-giving holidays, and this year it snuck up on me because I was busier than usual and wasn’t looking at the calendar, but it did get published in October and will probably be published again around Thanksgiving just to make sure the newbies see it.

For those of you who got it wrong in the past, see this article for the aforementioned instructions on choosing a gift for a woman, but there are few of you who are needing special attention, not because of how you chose a gift, but why; giving a gift to buy your way into a woman’s good graces (or her sexual favor) or buy your way out of the doghouse is a REALLY bad idea, in case you had not noticed. And I have just the thing for you, a highly-effective wake-up call from the real world. Dig in…

For those of you who’ve caught the “King Arthur and the Witch” contest I have every year, you’ll remember David C., who was one of the contest winners. He’s become a very close friend and one of my greatest students, and his job, managing a convenience store, puts him in an ideal place to study women. Hence, he occasionally sends me a pearl of great value to share with you all. Without further ado:

Dear David,

As a convenience store manager, I meet, talk to and get to know a lot of different women, from young girls to professional business women. I easily see and talk to at least 40 or 50 a day and on seeing your newsletter about gifts for women, I asked a few for their comments and heard from quite a few others without saying anything. It seems no matter what the season, Valentine's Day, a birthday, an anniversary, or Christmas, they keep hoping for something unique and special. Flowers, rings, necklaces are expected and not very special because of that. What I wanted to mention though was how often I saw and heard the frustration from them about feeling like he's trying to buy them off.

Instead of talking to her, learning what's making her so angry and snippy, they buy her something to try and appease her. They take it usually because they don't want to hurt his feelings. They try and give him credit for at least putting forth some effort but are frustrated at the same time. "Why can't he understand it's not the gifts I want, it's him?"

It's also sad but funny to hear the men talk about how nothing seems to make her happy. No matter what they get her, it's okay for awhile but it's back to the carping at him again. When I try to explain, “Maybe she just wants you to spend some fun time with her,” they shake their head. Why?

Most commonly because they see watching TV, eating out or catching a movie as their fun time. Then when they get home it's back to business, a hobby or on the computer. Why can't she see he's busy? He's trying to relax and unwind after a stressful day and she's hounding him to do all this stuff. There's a show on TV he wants to watch, a game or work to get ready for tomorrow.

They are stumped why the kids can give her a page from their crayon book and tell her I did it for you Mommy and you can see the word Mommy scrawled across the top and she cries or gets all worked up and they're baffled why. I've heard more than a few ladies getting ready to go out who refuse to allow a guy to buy their way in because they think it automatically entitles them to go home with them.

I can tell you from first-hand experience, ALL the women I've talked to resent feeling "bought off." Flowers to say they're sorry, a necklace or perfume because he missed an anniversary or something. "Here honey. Take this and get off my back, would ya?" holds no water with a real woman. And yes, many have broken off relationships because they got sick of all the presents and feeling like a tramp because of them. They got tired of feeling "obligated" to be nice because he got her "things" instead of him.

Tell the men out there, trying to make a woman obligated to you will only send her out the door that much sooner. It won't save your relationship, get your butt out of hot water or make her forgive you. It will only turn her resentment, frustration and anger deeper. She will give you a little credit at first, but if it turns into a habit, get ready to sign some papers. I mention this because it's not getting better, according to the women I talk to, even the young ones, it's getting much worse.

Thanks for the great stuff!

David C.

That pretty much says it all, doesn’t it? There is nothing that a woman would freely give you that you can buy (prostitutes notwithstanding, of course), and any attempt to buy that which they deeply want to give someone in like-kind exchange will insult them and/or hurt them. Don’t do it, because whatever is wrong, trying to buy your way out of it will just make it worse.

So what do you do if you want the love, attention, forgiveness, etc., of a good woman? I’ve published over a thousand newsletters on the subject, but rather than read all 5,600 pages of those newsletters, there are exactly two things you should do:

First, download my free – and very substantial – report, “What Women REALLY Want,” and get the whole real scoop. Then, when you’ve seen the error of your ways and your ready to step up to the real deal, the dream relationship and marriage of a lifetime, go to http://makingherhappy.com/ and download my book, "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and get on the path to happiness while you still have some life left to live. Or just keep screwing up and being miserable. It’s your call. Make it a good one. ;-)

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

What to Do When She's "Mean" to You: Horseplay and "Picking" in Relationships and Marriage

Men frequently write to me complaining that their wives pick at them, needle them, push them to do things they don’t want to do, etc. How are you supposed to handle this? The answer might surprise you…

I get a lot of letters like the following, and I’ve addressed the issue in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," but the frequency of these letters is scary. There are too many men who don’t recognize what this issue really is and how to deal with it, and families are literally coming apart at the seams because of this simple misunderstanding. Meet Jeff:

Hello David,

I need help. I haven’t yet read your book but I’ve been reading your newsletters for awhile and I think you can tell me this. My wife has picked up a bad habit of picking on me, making fun of me, being a smart-ass in front of our friends, etc. It’s really abrasive and embarrassing, and getting worse by the day. The more I ask her to stop, the more she does it, like she’s trying to push me into a fight. How can I stop it?

Thanks,
Jeff

Well Jeff, you slacking cheapskate, if you’d read my book you’d know! ;-) Just kidding, of course. LOL! Seriously, she’s not trying to start a fight at all. She’s trying to get you to play with her! You’re boring her to tears, and she’s trying to bring you out of your shell.

Women like challenge, and they like a man to act like he “has a pair.” She’s challenging you to a verbal “joust” to have some fun. What she’s expecting from you is that you pick back at her, not in a mean, nasty, insulting way, but in that fun, naughty, pranksterish way as you probably cut up with your friends, at least at first, escalating it to get into chasing, tickling, playful pinching or spanking – you know, that kid stuff that you used to do when you drove her wild!

What’s happening now is that she’s trying harder and harder to provoke you into showing that you have reproductive glands and a sense of humor, which is, in effect, punishment for not doing so all along. If you don’t do it, you’ll find her losing interest in you pretty soon, so you’d better be finding your sense of humor, fast.

And we are talking about humor here, no matter how pissy you might think she’s being. If she makes a smart crack about your big feet, make a smart crack about something that obviously IS NOT a problem; i.e., only make a remark about her big butt if she DOES NOT have a big butt and doesn’t obsess about having one. Find something to exaggerate to crack wise about so that it’s obvious that you’re playing, else you may strike a nerve and end up starting a fight while trying to play.

I cannot overstress how you need to exercise a little sensitivity here. If she stubs her toe and is limping around but not seriously injured or embarrassed about the accident, then calling her “gimpy” is fair game, but if she is crippled, or if there was something embarrassing about the injury, like she was in a public place, stubbed her toe and ended up dumping a cup of coffee on a white blouse in front of her boss because of it, “gimpy” is off limits, at least until you see that she’s over the embarrassment, which will usually be if and when you see her smile or laugh a bit when talking about it with a girlfriend. The idea is to be obviously fun with your picking to give her a giggle and demonstrate that you are a playful guy, not some wuss who can’t take a joke and is afraid to dish one out for her or a jerk who is retaliating and being a mean bully instead of going along with the joke.

Women don’t really want that much from us, Gents. It’s just that what they want is stuff that almost nobody is teaching these days; they’re politically incorrect for wanting it, and we’re politically incorrect for giving it to them. However, I am teaching it, after learning it from some gurus before me and adapting and expanding that by working with several hundred married women and their husbands, and I’ll teach you if you want to learn. Screw political correctness. It wasn’t in my wedding vows; was it in yours?

So how about it? Are you ready to learn what may turn out to be the most valuable lessons of your life? Remember all those jokes you cracked about nobody ever being able to understand women, or know what they want, or what they’re saying, or how to pass all those damnable tests and traps they’re always laying for us? I could give you the old “be the first kid on your block to own it” spiel, but it doesn’t really matter if you’re first. What matters is that you’re successful, as quickly as you can get there.

The quickest path to lasting success in your relationship is to go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and then just reading it and putting it to work. You’ll not find too many opportunities where you can have so much fun being so successful, if you find any at all like this one, so get busy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sometimes women just get angry to bleed off the emotional energy of being bored and frustrated. I’ve written frequently and at length about this problem how to avoid it, and you can find a lot of articles in my archive and blog in every month from August, 2006 through the present, but the two most relevant are the August 13, 2009 article, “Women’s Biggest and Loudest Complaint About Men, and What You Can Do About It BEFORE It Kills Your Relationship” and the September 30, 2009 article “Differing Emotional Scales: A Key to Understanding Women and Improving Your Relationship.” If you’ve not read them, please do so, because understanding boredom and a woman’s emotional scale are critical to properly handling and avoiding fights.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You Can't Kill Time without Injuring Eternity: Problems in Relationships and Marriage Don't Just Go Away

What could it be costing you to put off dealing with your relationship problems until tomorrow? I’ll wager that it’s a lot more than you might think…

I was out running some errands one afternoon and noticed a sign in front of a church that read, “You can’t kill time without injuring eternity.” I don’t know how they may be looking at that statement, or if they fully realize its meaning, but the instant I read it I was reminded of many letters I’ve received from people who were having problems. I’m not going to disclose their names or anything personally identifiable because being in such a predicament is stressful and embarrassing for them, but I want you to see the kinds of things that can happen when you let little problems go unresolved (each paragraph is from a different reader comment or letter):

I filed for divorce after he physically abused me, so poor choice in mate, he wouldn't take your site seriously, so wish you all the best of success. You have some great advice and wonderful readers.

Question: we split up and now she is seeing someone else ... any advice on how to win her heart back?

My wife has sex when she wants & not when I want this has gone on so long that I don't even bother trying to be sexy with her, once again we have spoken but this ends up in a shouting match

My wife and I have been married for 18 years. We haven’t had sex more than once every few months since our second anniversary, and I’m sick of it. Can you help us?

For years my wife won’t kiss me I tell her it hurts but she says there’s no need. My wife thinks I am odd because I want a kiss & cuddle from her but she won’t when I tell her how I feel she ends up shouting at me then crying then sayings things will change & they do for a day or two then she is the same cold person with me, can I go on for the rest of my live feeling so unloved by her, I am 42 after 17 years marriage.

After reading the above, even though I am not sure that I could leave her as we have 2 children but is there any point if feeling so low all the time & never seeing the light should I leave whilst I am able to start a new life, this would be the hardest ting that I have ever even thought about.

You need to know that my wife of 4-1/2 yrs (dated for one, lived together for one, then married) has decided to divorce me. We have a two year old son. She says she's lost her feelings for me, she doesn't hate me, she still cares about me, she still likes me as a friend, but the love is gone. There are some side issues, but nothing that I believe is the real problem. I have been coming to realize that I have been "weak" not asserting my "alpha male" thing. I suppose I have always wanted to please her, and when we have a problem (fight) I always give in, or she always "wins". I think that I need to get stronger, before this divorce is final. How can I win her back? How can I show her that I am attractive (physically, emotionally, etc.) How can I trigger the emotions I believe are still there? We had a fantastic dating life, we had a great marriage, then after my son was born I assumed the "father role" and quit all the romanticisms, and stopped helping out around the house and didn't help out with the child-care. I have come to grips with the fact that I lacked in those areas, and am willing to change, but I need to "win her back" first. What can I do before it's too late? Oh, I hope you can give me some good advice. I hope there is something I can do before it's too late. Please, help! I love my son, and my wife, I want this family to be unified again!

Do you see what’s going on here? These people have let problems fester for months, most for years, and there are some things that should be jumping off the page at you. First, and most important, is that they steadily get worse; real problems never just “fix themselves,” so don’t be a fool and wait for them to do so. You’ll also notice that it doesn’t matter if the deterioration of their relationship is fast or slow, the result is the same; they are either terminally unhappy and holding on out of fear, or they’re divorcing, and it’s not so easy to get out of or get over a 20-year relationship and start over in your forties or fifties, and one of these readers is in his sixties, and the wife he refers to is his second wife.

They’re all reaching out for help now, and most of them have chosen or will choose to accept it (some will reject help because they find the solution unpalatable, choosing instead of seek a “magic bullet” that makes all the problems go away with no effort or responsibility on their part), but look at how many years they’ve spent being miserable that they could have spent being happy with each other if they had addressed their problems early and corrected them at that time. What’s the old saying? “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure?

Financially speaking, with divorce and the burden of legal fees, settling estates that may value as high as in the millions and more, alimony, child support (that will end up going for something other than the children), etc., an ounce of prevention would seem worth hundreds or thousands of tons of cure. Anybody want to compute the return on investment there?

Emotionally, it’s the same story; you can make a few small changes and live happily or fail to maintain your relationship properly and live miserably for years before finally either trying to undo the damage you’ve done or getting so sick of each other you go to war, pronounced “divorce court,” and then have to start over, and be miserable and alone during what should be the prime of your life.

Every minute you spend putting off a solution holds the potential for one more mean-spirited and vengeful remark that can never be taken back, one more vengeful or stupid act that can’t be undone, one more toll of a bell that can never be unrung. And the more pain you inflict and endure, the harder it is to fix the problem. Any takers on the prevention offer?

The offer is this: Go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” and read it, learn a few really important things about relationships, women, and how to get along with them, and do a few cool and fun things as a result. Then watch what happens! It will save you years of misery and a small (or maybe large!) fortune that you’ll get to spend in your retirement with your wife instead of giving it all away to her and her lawyers to go somewhere else and enjoy while you sit around heartbroken, financially ruined, and wondering what happened.

Life is short, too short to miss a chance, and second chances rarely come around. If you’re reading this, you’re looking for a second chance, and it’s here, staring you straight in the eye. Jump on it.

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

Nice Guys Finish Last, Especially in Relationships and Marriage, Part 1

We’ve all heard the old cliché, “Nice Guys Finish Last,” and it seems counter-intuitive, but let’s face it, clichés get to be clichés precisely because they are so universally true and self-evident. Let’s look closer at why this is true and how you can correct any problems it may be causing you…

A friend forwarded me an article asking if men honestly thought that being nice was a drawback when it comes to women. I had to say something…

What difference does it make whether men “think” it or not? It’s a proven fact. Just look at “nice guy” behavior! And most important, it’s something you can easily fix, too!

Before I start, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page. We’ve been through one major debacle over men failing to realize that women never speak the obvious, so let’s avoid another by speaking what some will consider obvious and most others will have been oblivious to…

Back in the 1980’s, we were told that women wanted a man who could be sensitive. They meant sensitive IN ADDITION TO being a manly man, not INSTEAD OF. And by “sensitive,” they meant “being in touch with our – WOMEN’S - feelings,” not “being overwhelmed by feelings” like they often are. Hence, instead of remaining our normal, rough, rowdy, fun, sexy selves, we started acting like wusses and crying with women at chick flicks. And we’ve all noticed where that got us over the last thirty-plus years, right?

So when women who realize what they’re saying still say they want a nice guy, they don’t mean a guy who is ONLY nice, and has no other positive attributes. They’re talking about a man who is a manly man but not an abusive man, a man who gives them an input channel when decisions need to be made but doesn’t just give in to their whims, and recognizes that when she spends two hours making herself look great to go out with him that he at least make the effort to show a little self-respect by wearing things like real shoes, a belt, clothes that fit, tucking in his shirt, which by the way, has a collar on it and maybe even a neck tie, depending on the occasion, socks that match his pants, etc., in recognition and appreciation of her effort.

And by the way, a genuine compliment like, “You look really well put-together tonight. Thank you for making the effort,” instead of complaining that it took her so long to get ready would be a good idea, too.

So in a nutshell, when a sane, undamaged woman wants a “nice guy,” what she is really wanting is a man who notices and respects her and her efforts to please and nurture him. That’s a far cry from a guy what we’ve been led to believe, isn’t it? It actually sounds like a pretty natural thing for a guy to do if he’s with the right woman and he’s an adult.

Okay, now that we have that straight, let’s look at the things that make a nice guy NOTHING MORE THAN A NICE GUY. What do you always notice about them? Or more to the point, what makes them so boring and wussy that women immediately label them as “just a nice guy”?

First and foremost, they’re a pushover. They make the biggest mistake a man can make: deferring all decisions to everyone else. Any risk of discussion or conflict is too much, and they’ve mistakenly been led to believe that leaving decisions to others to make unilaterally or letting somebody else lead the action by making the first suggestion is somehow considerate or polite. Is it?

Not just no, but hell no! Putting somebody else on the spot or dumping a choice into somebody else’s lap so that they are deciding something for you is shirking your responsibility and putting it on them. Ask someone, especially a woman, who looks uncomfortable about making a unilateral decision that concerns more than herself about what is bothering them and they’ll tell you, quite bluntly, that they don’t want to make the decision for everybody.

So how nice is that, really? Not!

And besides, it’s our job to lead, remember? That doesn’t mean that we make all the decisions in a relationship unilaterally, or even any of them. It means we initiate discussions, lead off with suggestions, invite participation, and actively sift through everything being said to come up with a satisfactory option, then announce it as a decision and prompt everyone to start acting on it. Leadership, not control. Motivating as you take action, not just barking orders and pushing people around.

And keep in mind the first rule of thumb in any relationship with a woman: if you can’t stand up TO her, and WITH her, you definitely can’t stand up FOR her. Ergo, you’re a wuss. And boring. That’s really sexy, right?

I was going to go through this whole thing in one edition, but it’s going to take several, so we’re going to stop here and call this “part one,” because this is already more than enough for you to be chewing on for the next 24 hours and trying to root it out of your life. We’ll be talking about these major mistakes that “nice guys” make (and that make “nice guys”) for the next three or more editions, so grease yourself up, strap yourself in, hide all pets, stow your bags under the seat in front of you and make sure your tray table is in its fully upright and locked position, because it may end up being a pretty wild ride.

Yes, really. You’re more than likely going learn some things that you’ve been doing for a long time with the best of intentions and getting exactly the opposite results that you wanted and expected. That means you’re going to get to stop doing some things that you probably didn’t like to do anyway and start getting better results, not just with your partner, and not just with all women, but with everybody around you.

And yes again, that sounds like a tall order, so don’t miss it. I can’t tell you everything I know in the next three newsletters (it took a whole book just to hit the major points!), but I am going to give you a lot more than enough to see two things: that you do indeed have a lot of room for improvement, and that you can make those improvements easily, especially with my help.

You think not? Take me to task! Put me to the test! Go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and see what you find. My guarantee is simple: read it and use it for a whole year, and if you don’t think you got your money’s worth, you keep your money and my book.

Do you think you’ll get the same offer at a brick-and-mortar bookstore for some tome full of theory and opinion? Good luck with that. Meanwhile, you remember Kevin, who, by the way, has been married over twenty years and just learned how to play with his wife, from some past articles? I’ll let him tell you about what works. I got this from him today, and I had to “soften” some of it to get it past the spam filters who would otherwise block it for being “for grown-ups only”:

Hey there David!! Man I hope other guys reading what you shared with them from what has been positive to say the least with me are giving it all their effort. It can work for sure. Further proof my friend....

Guys should give this using "panties" (referring to a remark I made about telling a woman who was being a brat to “put her big girl panties on and get real”) a try in whatever way...panties seems to be something that has rather strong influence in having fun with the wife and maybe any woman. Now, I like panties play myself so it influences me a great deal for fun sex play!! The visual of seeing a woman playfully and sensually pulling down her panties certainly gets my rise going!!

Also, it’s sensually fun for me to pull down the panties! So verbally talking panties play gets us going for sure. Now to where I was going with this.....We went to a Halloween party last night and I attached a picture of us which includes a fun girlfriend....Anyway, my wife I guess decided she was going to take the upper hand this time instead of me doing any playful teasing to start.

Well, while we were dancing, she says to me..."You aren't going to get to pull down my panties tonight because I am not wearing any under my mini skirt"!!! And she takes my hands and puts them on her behind and pulls me into her and grinds her [groin] right into me out on the dance floor and teasingly laughs!!! This, of course gets me amped up even more!!

When we leave the hotel party David, she is pretty much quiet on the ride home. When we pull into the garage she asks me..."did you have a good time?" And I said, “Sure I did.” Get this David....She then says, “You got pretty excited knowing my panties were off in there”.....and she gets over in my lap facing me lifting her skirt above her waist and says...”Now start spanking your bad girl for taking off her panties!!!!”

David we [had sex] right there in the car in the garage and I gave her a good spanking too!!! Literally David she wants to have her panties pulled down and get spanked since I started that with the "scolding panties remarks"!!!! Man, I hope it works for other guys!!! There is something about "panties" and women!!!!

Kevin

Kevin’s complaint when we first met was celibacy. From celibate to getting it on at a party on the dance floor and in the garage with a woman who is now, twenty years after they got married, CHASING HIM! This guy has given me more testimonials than some authors get from their entire customer base, and he only one of many getting these results! You don't see me displaying little disclaimers about results being "atypical" in fine print to cover my butt like everybody else does either, because these results are in fact quite typical amongst those who use what I teach, and they can be YOUR results, too, if you'll just step up and get with the program.

‘Nuff said…and again, it’s waiting for you at http://www.makingherhappy.com, so get moving, and gals, if you’re feeling a little jealous of Kevin’s wife right now, you can get in on this, too!

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

The Tough, Playful Alpha Male: Just How Far Can You Go to Keep the Spice in Your Relationship or Marriage, Part 2

Another reader sounds off with a great display of imagination and new-found skill in heading off testing, drama-seeking and brattiness, and you’re going to love this!

I hope every one of you is having a better day than I’m having so far. Really. It’s not that it’s that bad; it’s just one of those days in which lots of little things keep popping up and getting in the way of doing the things I have planned for the day. Like finding a leaky pipe under the kitchen sink…

There’s a quick but very powerful lesson in that, so I’ll go ahead and point it out while I’m thinking about it – at least this distraction from what I had planned has a productive purpose! LOL! Seriously, after discovering the leak I started shutting off the valves under the sink to stop the expansion of a pool that was forming in my kitchen and living room, and one of the valves broke and water started spewing out from where the valve stem entered the valve. So I cut the water off at the meter and started cleaning up all the water that had escaped before I found it.

That took quite awhile, and as I went to the garage to get the tools to fix the leak and replace the valve, I thought, “Nope, I’ve already lost half my morning fooling around with this. I’ll do my job and pay the plumber to do this because he can do it faster and cheaper than I can.”

Wait! He can do it cheaper than I can? Sure he can! He’ll be in and out of here in half an hour or less, and charge me fifty bucks or so. I can do the work, but it will take me 2-3 times as long as it will take a professional plumber simply because I don’t do it every day and I’m not used to having to work around all the other pipes under the sink to get the job done. Plus, the risk of turning the water back on and finding something still leaking is higher for me than for the guy who does this all day every day; I’m a “do-it-yourselfing” amateur who can do it in a pinch if there’s nothing pressing, nowhere near as skilled as a professional.

So I can give up a couple of hours of income to do something that I really don’t like doing, or I can give up about a half-hour of income to pay the plumber and do something I love doing, which is helping all of you. To me, that’s a no-brainer.

The lesson? Being an alpha male doesn’t mean that you always have to do everything yourself. You should always try to strike the correct balance between the alpha male qualities of independence and assertiveness and the other alpha male qualities of leadership, delegation and making sound decisions for the benefit of your household. Do it yourself only when it makes sense to do it yourself, and be respected for it, because if you go overboard, you’ll just end up being a control freak who can’t get anything important done.

Now on to what I had planned to give you today, a stunning display of male attitude and ingenuity in dealing with feminine testing and pissitude. Meet “Logan,” whose name has been changed to protect his privacy, who writes in response to a lesson on “The Great Female Contradiction” of wussitude being boring but being non-wussy makes you “mean.” Check him out:

David,

Your timing is ironic. It is that time of month for my wife, which usually means some big blow-ups. On Sunday, as my wife was starting to go down that path towards a bad day, instead of tip-toeing around her, I started joking with her. At one point in the middle of her ranting over something silly, I walked up and pulled her pants down, then casually walked away. Within a minute or two the ranting had stopped. She did tell me that I was being mean to her, but she had a bit of a grin on her face, almost shock. Then as we were trying to get on our way to church -- always a challenge to get the three little guys ready and loaded in the van and my wife ready on time, the boys and I waited for her.

Now, during this time of the month, she usually takes even longer to get ready, because nothing fits right, and she is just generally unhappy with the way she looks and feels. So the usual custom is for her to arrive late to the car and be even more upset over the fact we are now going to be late for church. So just to be different, I found a Rolling Stones CD and started blasting the song “Let's Spend the Night Together,” as she finally arrived in the car. By the way, the Stones have a ton of songs that you can use for this type of move (Satisfaction, Wild Horses, You Can't Always Get What You Want, She's So Cold, Crazy Mama). Anyway it seemed to do the trick, as she, in a very frustrated voice, said while stifling a smile, “Stop trying to make me laugh, I'm crabby and I have my period.”

Then, later that night, she takes me and grabs me in the pantry and starts to attack me while my Dad happened to be over and in the next room. I told her that I would continue to be “mean to her.” This time she laughed.

Thanks for the timely articles,
Logan

Priceless! Absolutely, utterly priceless! And how many of you “newbies” would have thought you could go that far and get away with it? The truth is that almost all of you could have; the few who couldn’t would be those whose wife had some sort of trauma in her past (like rape or having her clothes torn off of her in public) and would hence have very bad memories triggered by such an act.

The key to pulling it off is two-fold. First is the attitude. The naughty kid who just threw the huge “spitball” at the blackboard over the teacher’s shoulder and when they turn around, furious, there he sits, looking anywhere but at the teacher, with a big cheesy grin and a “who, me?” look on his face. The guy who will do anything for fun, no matter how irreverent, as long as nobody gets hurt, because mean people “suck.”

The second is knowing when to play naughty boy and when to be serious. You can’t deal with all of a woman’s negative emotion by being a clown. That works for the testing, the drama-seeking, and when she’s just being a pissy little brat who wants to feel bad for awhile and wants you to feel bad with her, but when she has a real problem or a real issue with you, trying to play it off with something like that will get you in the doghouse for awhile, if it doesn’t get you killed. ;-)

In those cases it’s strong character, strong leadership, and a fair hand that she needs to see. If you’ve done something wrong, you need to admit it and show that you have learned from the mistake and won’t be making it again. If she’s having some other kind of trouble, she needs for you to hear her out instead of trying to jump in and “save her” from her problem. If she needs help, she’ll let you know…

But…

You’ll have to listen to hear her when she lets you know. You probably won’t hear a direct request like, “Can you help me?” It will probably start out sounding a lot more like, “This would be a lot easier if somebody would…” Yeah, you’re “somebody.” Remember that…

There is so much about living happily with a woman that we all spend our lives thinking – because we’re being taught! – that it’s all some huge and terrible mystery that women don’t want us to solve, and Gentlemen, that is one big, nasty load of unmitigated crap. I had almost 200 of them volunteer to teach me about the mysteries of womanhood within one hour of posting a request for research subjects in a relatively obscure place on the Internet, and all I had to do was ask and be willing to listen to the answer.

The first thing we found out was something I’d suspected for a long time. We speak with the same words, but we don’t speak the same language! We have different meanings for the same words, and we use entirely different protocols for conveying and gathering information. Once those differences were understood and we all got over the shock of it, learning the rest was fun and easy.

Indeed, we finally found that communicating effectively with a woman and knowing everything she wants you to know at any given time requires doing nothing more than adhering to three simple rules. When this became apparent, I immediately thought of Sigmund Freud, the renowned psychologist, who said, “The Great Question, which I have not answered, is ‘What does a woman want?’” He didn’t know at the end of a distinguished lifetime of studying people. And yet it turned out to be easy.

The next step was to test everything they had told me, and I got 118 of their husbands and boyfriends to take what they had taught me and test it on them. We found a few contradictions along the way, too, things that women only thought they wanted until they got it (and the reason I frequently recirculate that “Be Careful What You Wish For, You Might Just Get It” newsletter series). We ultimately found out what women really want, need, and expect from men, and what they really respond to, favorably and unfavorably.

The end result is "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and you can download your copy at http://www.makingherhappy.com/ with a few mouse clicks and be reading and learning the truth behind the great mysteries of womanhood yourself in just a few minutes. So you can be a guy who’s in the dark or a guy who’s “in-the-know.” It’s your choice, so choose well…

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

Handling Tough Times and Avoiding Marital Boredom, a Relationship and Marriage Survival Skill

One easy time for a woman to become bored and frustrated is when you have to be away a lot. Let’s touch on that before leaving this subject for awhile.

I got a very humorous and insightful comment on the recent edition concerning how far women will go to escape boredom from one of the newest readers which spawned a great lesson for you. It’s great because it’s an issue that is tough for the untrained man to deal with but the solution is easier and safer to implement than you might otherwise imagine. Here’s the note that started it all (the name has been changed to protect the brilliant):

*****
Note to Self:

Rule #1. Do not under any circumstances allow your woman to become bored. Rule #2. Do not under any circumstances allow your woman to become bored. Rule #3. See Rules 1 & 2, above.

~~~~~~

Hi David,

Damn. That is scary. And VERY instructive.

Thanks, - H.

*****

That made me wonder about the rules, and I wrote back:

*****
Note to H.:

Rule #1: A woman must never, EVER be allowed to be bored.
Rule #2: If you ever fail to be a man, a woman will become bored.
Rule #3: Should you break Rule #1, you will find it happened because you broke Rule #2!

Yep, it is scary, until you realize that Rule #2 makes the whole thing a matter of your choice. That's the silver lining in the "take responsibility for everything" cloud. Once it's your responsibility, it's your choice as to how it works out, and that's not at all scary when you have the information to make it work out. Indeed, it's a lot of fun! You don't even have to worry about tough times if you make the right choices, because a woman will be thrilled to be invited into a challenge. Take for instance you having to do late nights, 12-hour days, for two weeks to get a project wrapped up on schedule. First, you conscript her help:

"Honey, I have a problem at work and I'm going to need your help. I have to do 12-hour days for the next two weeks to bring this project in on time. I need you to take over the (insert list of chores here) that I usually handle so that when I get home, we can still have some time together. (That's leadership, authority, delegation, issuing a challenge, trusting her to be competent, and a whole world of other things that women yearn for, including a commitment to keep her close instead of shutting her out in favor of your work.)

"After the project is finished, we'll take off for the weekend and catch up on some rest and time together. No, don't ask, because it's a surprise!" (Anticipation, mother of all pleasures in a woman's world.)

Being a hero instead of an a**hole is just a matter of paying attention and framing things right. Get it? Sure you do. That was a silly question. LOL!

Take care, and keep in touch!
David
*****

It really is that simple, as long as it’s not an on-going problem. On-going problems like working long hours for months on end are not heroic. They are a declaration that you can’t handle things and your life is out of control, even when she wants to believe otherwise. While there are some predators and parasites around, most women do not marry a man to have somebody pay their bills for them and be gone all the time to do it. They marry a man to have someone to love, trust, respect, be loyal to, and share their life with. Women are generally emotionally-driven creatures, and a large part of why they marry a man is his ability to make them feel things they enjoy. That doesn’t happen when the only time the two of you are together is while you’re asleep.

The point? She will help you get through problems, but only so long as you can continue to give her the companionship (and leadership) she needs. Women are social in nature, and they need interaction with others; it’s a matter of biology, not of choice, so don’t make a habit of over-committing yourself and expecting her to take up the slack. Don’t get into that rut of trying to force problems to go away by just spending more time working on them. Learn to work smarter instead of longer and harder.

How? Get help when you need it! Using work as an example (since I’ve been a management consultant for a lot of years and have fallen into this same trap myself on occasion), there’s a big difference between saying to your boss, “I’ll get this done, no matter what,” and then missing the deadline, missing work because of fatigue, illness or family disputes that arose because you over-committed yourself, and saying, “I may be able to get this done in the time you need it, but the risk to both myself and the company is considerable because I’ll be spread too thin and something can fall through the cracks and hurt us. Get me some help on this to ensure that we come in on time with acceptable quality so that we all look good at review time.”

People who want to get things done will support your effort to the best of their ability because they have others leaning on them for performance. Even the owner of the company has people leaning on him: his customers! Nobody wants to finish the day with egg on their face, and when you speak up like this you establish yourself as somebody who looks ahead and acts rationally instead of an egomaniac with a hero complex or a persecution complex who would sacrifice himself to be noticed and risk his boss’s and his company’s reputation to do it.

Your life has to maintain some semblance of balance for you to be able to enjoy it. Part of that balance is your job, part is your wife and family, part is yourself, etc. If any one part starts getting too much attention, it will be at the expense of the other parts. There’s no escaping or denying it. If you don’t give your job its fair share, you’ll get fired. If you don’t give your wife her fair share, you’ll get fired, too, in the form of a divorce! If your kids don’t get their fair share, they’ll fire you, too, and replace you with whomever will give them the attention they need, even if it’s the local drug dealer, pimp, gangster, or the warden at the jail.

Balance may not be the key to all things in the universe (although it sure looks like it is from here!), but it is certainly an essential part of a healthy relationship, a happy marriage, and a happy life. Take a good look at your life and see for yourself if everything is in balance, and make a serious effort to correct any balance issues you see.

Involve your wife in the examination after you’ve looked for yourself, invite her input and compare it to your own. Impress upon her the need for balance as well. She shouldn’t be letting her job, hobbies, you, or the children consume her entire life any more than you should. She needs the variety that balance provides to keep her from getting bored with any one aspect of her life!

We’ve about beaten the subject of boredom to death, so tomorrow we’ll be moving on to something else, but I hope that over the last few days you’ve come to realize, if nothing else, just how different a woman’s needs are from your own and what you can easily do to fulfill those needs and keep your relationship and marriage enjoyable. We can’t expect them to be entirely like us because they’re not, nor are they entirely different.

Our similarities and differences are not always obvious, and at times are even deceptive; you may recall articles I’ve sent you in which we discussed how men and women can use the exact same words to express the exact opposite meaning, and have no idea that it’s happening. (If you missed it, it’s the third of the communications lessons in my free “Break-Up Busting 101” report, which you can download at http://www.makingherhappy.com/Break-Up%20Busting%20101%20Free%20Report.PDF at your convenience.) We, as men, being born to lead, must be aware of these similarities and differences and should take the initiative to make sure that everyone else in our family understands them as well. Otherwise, we fail as leaders, and we fail as men. I hate it when that happens…don’t you???

It’s time to step up and get the information and training you need to be the man you were born to be, but others have tried their best to make sure you never could be. Conspiracy? Maybe. Theory? Hardly. We’ve been told the wrong things about how to be a man for thirty years or more. We’ve tried it, it’s failed miserably, and it’s time to get back to what works.

Your guide is called “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” and you should go now to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy immediately. Thirty years is long enough to do it the wrong way and be punished for making the effort. Start being a man as you were born to be and be rewarded for it, with happiness, success, and possibly best of all, the love and adoration of the woman you love.

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

Keeping Mothers (Your or Hers) from Wrecking Your Marriage or Relationship

A mother-in-law can be a wonderful ally or a destructive juggernaut, and unfortunately is even a significant factor in choosing a mate, as those who didn’t give the issue due consideration will now attest. What can you do to ensure that your mother-in-law – or hers – doesn’t wreck your marriage?

I’ve written several issues about interaction with your mother-in-law, and if you’ve not read them, now would be a good time to do so before advancing into this fairly delicate issue. See
“Proper Care and Feeding of Your Mother-In-Law” and “Your Wife’s Mother-in-Law and Your Marriage.”

Today’s issue is a touchy one, one that many couples deal with, and much to their chagrin I’m sure: the issue of a pushy, bossy, over-protective, and/or just plain busy-body mother of the wife. Don’t get me wrong; men’s mother’s can be a pain in the neck, too, but wives’ mothers have a little more room to be obnoxious and we men often don’t have nearly enough appreciation for how much stress their influence can cause, nor that we can do something about it. To wit, meet Hillary:

Hi David,

My mother has dominated me in every part of my life since childhood, and won’t stop. I’m now forty years old, and she continues to be the same overbearing and over-protective woman she was when I was in pigtails. I can’t even discipline my own children or have a serious discussion with my husband without her trying to push her agenda to the exclusion of my own. She calls me several times each day and literally interrogates me about what’s going on with everyone in my family, what I’m doing, what I’m thinking, and anything else that might give her an opportunity to force her values, priorities, and opinions, which often differ from my own, on me and my family,.

There have been times when I could overcome the childhood fear of having her mad at me, but most of the time she upsets me to the point where I am reduced to that same emotional wreck I was as a small child, giving in to everything she says to seek her approval. I know that I need help with this, and I’m in counseling, but it is proving to be a long, slow battle, because the counselor says that the way she treated me is genuine emotional abuse, and was traumatizing. I don’t necessarily believe that my mother meant to hurt me, but I do know that she meant to control me and she knew that she hurt me frequently.

I’m sharing this with you because my husband of 22 years, Dirk, still refuses to get involved in this, in spite of me begging him repeatedly to do so. I’m not yet strong enough to get her off of me and keep her off, and apparently he’s not either, or else he just doesn’t care. Every time we try to talk about it, he ends up yelling at me for being weak and unable to control my mother. I need more from him than to just tolerate my mother’s abuse and leave me on my own to handle this. I need him to intervene because he should be able to be strong enough to protect me from her or anybody else who tries to abuse me. Is that too much to ask?

I don’t know what to think. I can’t get him to talk to me about this enough to know whether he really thinks my weakness is disgusting or whether he’s making a big show of being mad at me to hide the fact that he’s also afraid of her. I’ve asked him to come to just one counseling session with me so my counselor could help me sort this out, and he just gets angry about me asking and complains about the money and time I spend to go to counseling. How can I make him understand what I’m going through and why I need him to help me? I’m at the end of my rope, and I can’t get my husband to start relieving some of this stress instead of adding to it, I’m going to have to do something that we’re all going to regret, because I can’t take any more of this.

Thanks so much,
Hillary

Well Hillary, I’ll tell him for you. Have him read this, and hold an iron skillet in your hand aimed at his head when you suggest to him that he read it, just to make sure he understands the importance of the issue. ;-)

Dirk, and the rest of you, listen up. When there is a conflict between the women in your life that even remotely involves you and is obviously not getting resolved, it’s your job and responsibility to step in and address your wife’s adversary directly, and it is imperative that you do so swiftly and firmly, but with an even hand. Why?

For starters, you’re built to fight and protect, and better suited for it, and doing so is part of what you offer in trade for the benefits of the nurturing nature of a woman – the marital contract, so to speak. It doesn’t matter if it’s your wife’s mother, your own mother, one of your daughters, somebody’s sister, or a busy-body friend who wants to stick their nose into family business; if somebody is stressing your wife to the point that she wants to talk to you about it, you need to offer to help, and if she comes out and asks you to help, you’re not a man if you don’t.

Now let’s clarify a thing or two before some of you get riled up and start sending nasty-grams. First, I am not implying that you should give your wife license to be a total screw-up and defend her stupidity. If she’s a substance abuser and her family is trying to talk her into straightening up, by all means you should be joining them, not protecting her from hearing the truth. That’s how you fulfill your responsibility to protect her life and well-being.

But if your mother-in-law (or your mother!) is trying to force her value system on your family as Hillary describes, or if your daughter is being an insufferable brat, or some single friend of your wife’s is relentlessly hassling her to leave her family at home and go out bar-hopping with her and won’t take “no” for an answer, some sister who has no children is trying to experience motherhood vicariously by trying to instruct your wife on how to raise your kids, or something like that, “it’s time for an intervention,” as the saying goes.

Also note that not all women will need help, and if you butt in when they are handling it they will resent your actions. You don’t need to ask permission, but you do need to verify that there is a need and that your assistance isn’t going to cause your wife to resent you for trying to help. You also need to be fully informed about what’s going on and it never hurts to hear all sides of the story before drawing your sword and shield. Your objective is to be a hero protecting his wife, not a controlling bully.

Also be aware that women have been known to adhere to deceitful and abusive family members when it came down to a choice between them and their loving, supportive husband. Yes, that sounds crazy, but there is a sort of illogical logic behind it if you can follow it. An insecure woman, especially one with issues of not getting enough attention as a child or having been abandoned by one or both parents due to divorce or death, will see her family as her “fallback” position if something goes wrong with her marriage. When I have seen this in the past, it took a combination of a strong husband not giving in to the wife’s desire to seek the approval of her family and personal counseling to resolve the childhood issues that cause her insecurity.

This is all conditional, of course, on knowing that she really wants help for a real issue and it isn’t some sort of contrived drama-fest just looking for attention, which you will know by the nature of the issue in dispute; a mother trying to exert control over an adult child and your household is a far bigger deal than some girlfriend of hers having something snide to say about her choice in shoes. You’re not required to dive into “a tempest in a teapot” unless you’re just tired of listening to all the hoopla and are shutting it down for some peace and quiet. ;-)

Now for the good news, bad news element. If you do stand up and take the leadership role and tell whomever is making life hard for your wife that they will either stop or their contact with your wife will be stopped until they can behave themselves, one of two things will happen. If your wife wants your help in the matter, you will be seen as the strong, attractive knight in shining armor and you’ll quickly see her love, trust, and appreciation of you skyrocket, and her attraction switches will also be flipped on full power. You gotta love it when that happens…

However, if your wife is very emotionally damaged (provided that you have listened carefully and have appropriately stepped in to take appropriate action), she may in fact become enraged, defending those from whom you were protecting her! This is the worst of all possible scenarios, especially if she refuses to see that there is a problem, and is a sign that you in fact married the wrong woman, because she is too damaged or for some other reason just doesn’t choose to love you and be loyal to you as a wife should be to a husband, which is not one whit less than a husband should love and be loyal to his wife.

Unconditional love you say? Don’t get me started. If you think you can love someone and remain married and loyal to someone who does not love you and cannot remain loyal to you, then you deserve every ounce of pain you endure because of it. To love is to value. How can you value that which would act to steal or destroy your life? How can you remain loyal to that which would cheat you out of your life, or abuse you as you try to share your life? How can you even consider loving or remaining loyal to someone who has a reckless disregard for any life, especially theirs and yours?

There must be a condition for real love to exist: that it is offered in trade for your fair share of the same, otherwise you pour your life down the drain, offering it to those who would destroy it without regard for the fact that every second you give of your life is one that can never be recovered. Anyone who would have you believe otherwise is setting you up to steal a piece of you for himself or herself, just like those who would have you believe that money or the love of money is the root of all evil is looking to take your money from you for himself or herself. And no, that’s not my opinion, that’s the reality that surrounds us, and you ignore it at your own peril. If you want proof, all you need to do is open your eyes, but if you can’t see it, just ask.

So there it is, Gentlemen. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to be a man, protect your wife and family when necessary, and protect yourself in the process. That can be a tall order, especially if you don’t know how to communicate well with women, but if you do it right, with justice (the principle of getting exactly what one earns and therefore deserves, no more and no less) and reason as your sword and shield, your reward will be everything your wife can muster to love and nurture you. That’s a prize worth winning, for sure!

So how about it? Are you fit for duty? Do you have the communications skills, the understanding of women, and the “intestinal fortitude” to handle the job? If you do, I’m a bit curious as to why you are reading this, but if there is even the slightest question in your mind as to whether you could maneuver through this mine field successfully, including navigating through any possible aftermath, then you need to go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and go through Uncle David’s “boot camp in a book” before the situation arises.

Or, if you really want, you can wait and try to learn how to do this when you’re already under fire and too stressed out to make good decisions. Do yourself a favor and do it now while you can do it the easy way; I’ve done it the hard way and in a nutshell, the hard way really sucks, more than you can imagine before you’ve lived through it.

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

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

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

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

Hi David,

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

Joel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hey David,

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

Thanks,
Zane

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Know What She REALLY Means, or Lose Your Relationship or Marriage

Keeping attraction alive in a relationship is crucial, as is solid compatibility, but there is another crucial element that can chip away at it or explode it in a cold minute: communication. You don’t have to read her mind, but you do have to know what’s on it when she speaks. Can you?

First I want to apologize for some bad links to other products and freebies that have apparently been in this newsletter and on my blogs for an unknown length of time. I have software that checks to see if links are dead, and apparently that is not good enough. No link offered the typical “Error 404: Page not found” error that would satisfy the software’s conditions for flagging it. They instead had been taken over by “domain squatters,” and in some cases other companies offering unrelated products.

These errors have been corrected or removed as appropriate, and I will do a better job of monitoring them in the future now that I know what must be done. If you try a link and don’t get what you expect to see, I would appreciate a head’s up. Indeed, if you catch me in the right mood, you might even end up with a freebie or a favor. I respect other people’s time and try to make it worth their while when they share it with me.

The same goes for sharing a link or a product that you think other readers will appreciate, especially if you had personal success or enjoyment from it. I don’t actively look for affiliate marketing products or freebies because I prefer to stay focused on the subject of helping men and women to have a happy life, but I will post them when several of my readers report success with them.

Let’s get on to today’s lesson. As you can imagine, I get a lot of e-mail every day, including a lot of strange news, jokes, and cartoons from friends and readers who share my love of comedy and the “truth is stranger than fiction” examples found in the world. Wait until you see this one!

The following is a real classified ad in a newspaper offering a motorcycle for sale:

Post Date: Aug 7th, 2006
Expire Date: Sep 6th, 2006

$10,000
06' Suzuki GSXR 1000
Farmington, UT 84025 - Aug 7, 2006
2006 Suzuki 1000. This bike is perfect! It has 1000 miles and has had its 500 mile dealer service. (Expensive) It's been adult ridden, all wheels have always been on the ground. I use it as a cruiser/commuter. I'm selling it because it was purchased without proper consent of a loving wife. Apparently "do whatever the f*** you want" doesn't mean what I thought. Call me, Steve. (801) 555-5555

I’ve changed his phone number to protect his identity since the ad has expired. Now, would you have bought the motorcycle? Not me!

I know that anytime the word “whatever” comes out of a woman’s mouth, I need to pay close attention to the context. Why?

As you will note in my free “Break-Up Busting 101” report, while “whatever” generally means “anything you want is fine with me” to us men, to women it rarely has a positive connotation unless they have a sincere smile on their face. Observe some definitions provided by female readers and test group members:

1. Screw you!
2. Screw you and die!
3. Go screw yourself and die the Death of 1,000 Cuts!
4. Screw you, and you will be dying, slowly, painfully, and without even knowing it, just as soon as I figure out how I’m going to torture you to death.
5. I’m done, you lose.
6. Go ahead, smart ass, and whatever happens next, you have it coming.

Obviously there will be a few times when “whatever” is benign when spoken by a woman, but as I said, unless there is a genuine smile on her face, beware. Steve was apparently a world class bone-head, because even without the 90% of his wife’s communication that was non-verbal, you can still see and feel the anger in her statement, “"do whatever the f*** you want." You can almost smell the threat of punishment in that, can’t you?

If not, there are two things you need to do immediately. The first is to download that free report I just mentioned and see where else you’re setting yourself up for trouble, or worse, a break-up, and see what you need to do to reverse that trend before it gets out of hand. There’s a lot of good information in that report, and there’s more than one author in this industry angry at me for giving it away. They think it’s too much to give away. Maybe it is. I don’t know and frankly don’t care. My purpose is to get you on the road to correction fast and to prove to you that I can help. The same goes for another free report, called “What Women REALLY Want.”

The other thing you need to do is go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download my e-book, "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and get all the details on how to evaluate your relationship properly (women do this constantly, and you’d better be doing it at least periodically, or you’ll pay dearly), what women really want from us, how they think and why, and how use what you know about them to make everybody’s life fun, exciting, rewarding, and sexy, instead of boring, frustrating, scary, and celibate.

Those who are doing it are stopping divorces and making their relationships better than they’ve ever been, or realizing that they never should have come together in the first place and moving on peacefully and with dignity, some already to the best relationships of their lives. Join them, now, while you have room to maneuver and life and energy left to enjoy. Life doesn’t wait for you; you live it while you have it or you lose it forever. ‘Nuff said.

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

Why Do We Suck Up When It Destroys Our Lives, Not to Mention Our Relationship and Marriage

Why do people, both men and women, suck up, kiss butt, etc., to get what they want? Women will divorce men for sucking up as surely as if they had an affair! What does it say about you if you’re doing it, with the opposite sex and in other areas of your life? It’s bad, no matter what you think it gets you. Read on…

I got some rather colorful comments on a recent post about women being disgusted by men who allow themselves to be trod upon, so let’s talk about something that most of us do too much, often without realizing it: ass-kissing. Yes, that’s pretty much aggressively seeking to be trod upon, isn’t it? LOL!

Oh, you never did it, huh? Never once laughed at a bad joke to keep the boss happy, never once fawned over a woman hoping to get to first base and beyond, never said, “Yes, sir,” to a cop and then cursed at him under your breath as he walked away?

Okay, have it your way. Denial fixes everything, right? Get a clue. For the rest of us who embrace reality, it makes us feel like crap and it’s a particularly embarrassing and wholly unattractive spectacle to witness. More importantly, there’s little a mentally and emotionally healthy woman hates any more than to have a man sucking up to her…

So why do we do it? And more importantly, why and how should we STOP DOING IT?

At first glance, one might think that it’s caused by fear of punishment, but for some reason, it’s only punishment that entails loss of something. Admit it, if your boss punched you in the mouth you’d punch him back, but if he threatened to fire you if you didn’t do something he asked, (yes, I said “he,” because most women are security-minded and diplomatic, and therefore would not make such a threat in the workplace, not because women can’t be the supervisor in the workplace) you’d at least consider doing what he was wanting. But…

Back in your single days, if you were a little more secure and happy-go-lucky because you still had your whole life ahead of you, if a woman threw a drink in your face, you might just throw one back, or laugh it off, but today if she starts acting like you might fall out of favor, you start sucking up. It’s a fear of losing something that you think would be hard or impossible to replace. How is this relevant to being attractive to the woman you love (or any other woman for that matter)?

How do you think it makes her feel when you kiss her behind? First, it shows weakness, and women really hate that. It’s also boring, because most men do it, so it’s also commonplace and therefore even more boring, and they really hate the idea of getting stuck for the long haul with a boring, weak guy. Then it starts getting really bad…

In “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” we discuss how women are constantly testing and reevaluating everything around them, consciously and subconsciously. What kind of thoughts do you think that acting weak and boring can inspire in your partner?

How about that since you’re afraid of losing her because you couldn’t replace her, that you might be right and nobody else would have you?

That makes you the bottom of the barrel, doesn’t it? Ouch!

And now she’s settled for the bottom of the barrel, right? Double ouch!

Well, yes, because like it or not, it’s all about her, not you. Yes, really! And she’s competitive, so you don’t want to be bottom-shelf goods in what F.J. Shark calls “the social marketplace.” What he refers to as “social proof” – being desireable enough for other women to pay attention to you too – is important. So how many tests do you think you’re actually passing while acting like a wuss? How good do you think you’re making her feel about having you around? At the end of her day with you, do you think she’s feeling attraction, and even arousal, or aggravation, and the distinct feeling that she should have chosen “the other guy” because the choice she made ended up being a boring wuss?

Show me a woman who really wants a sniveling ass-kisser under her thumb and I’ll show you a woman who most likely has some severe self-esteem issues and is looking to punish men, probably after being traumatized by one or more of them. They don’t want us terrorizing, bullying, or abusing them with verbal or physical aggression, but they don’t want us acting like a whiney little wuss, either. What women want lies between those two extremes…

They want to be able to respect us, because that’s part of what creates and sustains attraction and all those wonderful feelings they have when attraction commences, and we have to act respectable for them to do that. We have to act like leaders, not suck-ups. What gets in the way of that? Go back to fear of loss for a minute…

I’ve heard this fear of loss referred to as a “scarcity mentality” (an attitude of “I must protect what I have” as opposed to an attitude of “I can earn or create whatever I want”), and it’s a dangerous trap to fall into. Indeed, it can kill relationships, careers, even lives. How and why?

When you don’t feel worthy of a job, a woman’s attention, etc., it makes you question how you would replace it, instead of whether the employer or the woman is worthy of your presence, commitment, attention, effort, etc. This kills any self-esteem you may have, because it forces you to fear the loss of whatever benefit that job, partner, situation, or whatever provides you. Fear, not hatred, is the most mentally and physically destructive of all emotions, and I hope it’s obvious to you why. If not, hit Google with a question like “how does fear affect the human body” and see what turns up.

It’s truly devastating, even when it’s only subconscious. There is a recognized medical condition, called “apoplexy,” which is defined as a physical state of having worried until one becomes physically ill. It upsets natural chemical balances so severely that it can kill you.

Why put yourself through that?

BE worthy of whatever you want in life! Do your job to the best of your ability, and get paid for it. If your employer can’t pay what you’re worth, for whatever reason, find a new employer. Pay your employees well for the work they do. If they don’t do enough to earn the check, don’t worry about how you’ll replace them, but replace them.

Closer to home, BE the best partner you can be to your wife or girlfriend (or husband or boyfriend for you ladies – the door swings both ways on this issue!); if they don’t appreciate it enough or care enough about themselves or you to be the best they can be, fire them, too! Life is too short to spend it being less than you can be or with someone less than you deserve.

When you know that you are doing your best and worthy of whatever it takes to hold your attention and loyalty, you’ll walk into a room like you own it, and consequently the women there, especially the one you love, will want you because of it, and if you treat them with respect while leading them through life, you’ll have them for life, because no woman will risk losing the feeling of attraction that such behavior is always going to create. (There are times when women will push you to exhibit that behavior if you don’t do it on your own, but that’s another newsletter!)

Face it. If you didn’t either have problems or want to avoid problems, you wouldn’t be reading this newsletter. Everything you need to know to become a functional expert on your own relationships is in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” and you’ve got two choices:

You can do what losers do and keep doing what you’re doing, or you can get on over to http://www.makingherhappy.com and do yourself and your partner (present or future) a huge favor by downloading your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," because life really is too short to live it in fear of losing what’s important to you.

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

BE a Man! Just Looking the Part Isn't Good Enough to Fix a Relationship or Marriage

As we see in this woman’s letter, just looking the part doesn’t get the job of creating attraction done, even when it’s somebody famous. You have to BE attractive, not just put on the act of being attractive.

It’s time to talk about the appearance and effects of wussitude again, and I’ve tried several times to write a new newsletter that clearly and thoroughly covers the issue better than an existing one, but the truth is that no attempt to date has really done as good a job as the original and I really don’t think it can be done, so we’re going to revisit it instead. You’ll see what I mean.

The following was first broadcast two years ago today, on October 4, 2006, shortly after the premier of “Gene Simmons, Family Jewels” and from what I’ve seen, things have not improved much (if any) in Gene’s world in the time that followed. Frankly, I’d love to do a season of me turning Gene around and making him the alpha male that he projected on stage in KISS’s heyday! But without further ado, here we go:

I am in mourning. No, not really, just severely disillusioned. Many of you may remember Daphne, a member of my support team. She has alerted me to a disaster:

Hi David,

You gotta see this! Gene Simmons – yeah, the guy from KISS – has his own TV show now, called “Gene Simmons Family Jewels” and it’s a reality TV thing about him and his family. Brace yourself! The God of Thunder of the rock and roll world is a first class wuss!

I’m not kidding! His wife runs all over him and then laughs at him! My friends and I were watching this while having drinks on our girls’ night in, and I still can’t believe it. She bought a horse for their daughter, and parked it in the front yard of their Beverly Hills mansion! There it stood, crapping all over everything, when he came home, and he spent half the show trying to get somebody else to do something about it, and finally paid this woman a thousand dollars to put the horse in a trailer and haul it off! She’s laughing at him the whole time.

Then there’s a scene in their bedroom, where he makes a kind of a cute comment about riding her, trying to segue into sex, and she’s reading “Elle” magazine and tells him not to bother her that she’s shopping, and he knows he’s not to bother her when she’s shopping. It was disgusting!

We must have talked about that show for hours, and none of us can believe how much of a wuss he is. You know we all grew up with KISS and did the whole KISS Army thing, dreamed about what he did with that tongue, and all the rest, and now I’m just going to have nightmares about him yelling for his daughter to come scoop the horse poop. I’m crushed.

Maybe you can help him. He certainly needs to read your book, because his wife is really working him over. She’s acting so disrespectful it’s literally sickening to watch. It’s like she’s trying to push him to the point that he’ll stand up and be a man and punishing him because he won’t. It’s a sad day. A rock and roll icon has fallen.

He’d better do something fast, because on the show they took him to do something with Indy cars, like a spokesman or something, and nobody’s going to respect him if this show keeps going the way it is. Even my husband said, “God, why doesn’t he say something to her instead of just taking that crap?” Well, I guess that’s not so much a surprise. He’s nothing like the wuss he was when you started working with us.

Hugs,
Daphne

Well Gents, what can we divine from this report? The most obvious and important thing is that the alpha male mystique that Gene Simmons created on stage and in the media “back in the day” and which endured for decades was obliterated in a matter of minutes, maybe even seconds, as these women saw him being walked on by his wife.

It can happen that quickly to any of us. Think about it. If it can happen to a rock star, and I mean an icon of the pinnacle of male sexuality on stage, it can damned sure happen to any of us. All it takes is a wrong move or two, or a wrong word or two, and all of a sudden somebody else is wearing the pants in the family.

Could this happen to you?

Has it already?

Do you know what could bring it on, or what could prevent it?

Do you know what to do to quickly recover if you ever do have a weak moment and screw up?

Answer these questions honestly, starting with a “YES” for the first question…and the odds are that if you’re reading this, the answer to the next three are “NO,” “YES,” and “YES,” so what are you going to do?

I can help Gene (and in fact, if anybody knows how to get in touch with him through his web site or other means and refers him to me, I’ll cut you a share of anything I make from working with him for your referral! -- Men will respond much more quickly to “Dude you gotta see this!” than “Dude, I can help!”) and I can help you, too. I’ve helped people in far worse shape, and have their e-mails and their gratitude to prove it. So how do you start?

Easy! Go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and read it, learn what you need to know, follow the few very simple instructions, and watch what happens as your understanding and awareness grow. Then enjoy being one of us very few men who really know what women want, especially our own partner, the one that matters most, and enjoy your new life!

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

Wusses Are Boring and Non-Wusses Are Mean? Untangling Dilemmas in Relationships and Marriage

The Great Female Contradiction (being a wuss is boring, but being a non-wuss is mean), and how to deal with it to have a happy relationship and marriage.

It’s always an interesting morning when the “mailbag” (my e-mail inbox) contains several concerns over accusations of sounding “mean.” This is a point that every man and woman who is going through a relationship makeover needs to understand. It’s covered in detail in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” but I’m going to give you a crash course this morning so you’ll know what it’s about and that it can be handled without bloodshed and is actually an incredibly good sign that you are doing the right things and your efforts are paying off.

Meet Scott D., who seems to do the best job of succinctly stating the problem:

Hi David,

I bought your book and signed up for your newsletters almost a month ago, and I must tell you that I am pretty impressed with both the writing and the results I’m seeing. I’m not accustomed to someone writing to me in the same style and tone as if we were just sitting and talking, and it’s made it both an enjoyable read (my wife calls you “her favorite smart-ass”) and a huge help in recognizing past mistakes and correcting them. The change in my wife is noticeable. As I get more ballsy and playful, she gets more sexy and playful. But, there’s something I have to ask you about.

Sometimes when she’s “being a brat” (I would have never thought of her pouty, whining, demanding behavior that way before reading your book) and I bust on her to let her know that she needs to grow up and lighten up she says that I’m “just mean.” She says it kind of sheepishly with a hint of both a pout and a smile, like she’s been caught off-guard (or with her hand in the cookie jar) and a bit embarrassed, but I can’t help but wonder if she’s hinting at something that I’m not picking up on and if I’m setting myself up to get punished for something if I don’t catch on soon, so I’m asking you, straight up, what’s going on? Please respond, because things are going so well that I’d hate to blow it over missing a signal.

Take care, and thanks!
Scott D.

My reply:

Well, Scott, congratulations on taking control of your life and working for the results and the life you want! You’re not missing anything. You’ve caught her in a somewhat juvenile attention-getting ploy, and she’s a little embarrassed because she’s not used to you (or any man) “getting it” – knowing that she’s being a brat and not wussing out and surrendering control to her. It makes them a bit uncomfortable until they get used to the new, “alpha male” you. It’s no big deal, and don’t dwell on it and make it one. [She sees it, is surprised, tests to see if it’s real, finds out that it is, sexes up and lives happily ever after. One of my favorite stories.]

We’re all a bit resistant to change, even when it’s for the better. She doesn’t want you to be a wuss, and she doesn’t want to be in total control (at least not if she’s not emotionally damaged from some prior trauma). Women want to know if we are real men, ready and able to lead and protect, or really are just wusses pretending to be real men until we have them hooked into some kind of complicated commitment like marriage or a mortgage. They’re not trying to take control, and not trying to make us wusses, but all the testing can eventually perpetuate the result she doesn’t want, because we can get either tired of the testing or insecure about it and wuss out if we don’t know what’s going on or aren’t pure in our desire to be a man and live happily as such.

This is really important for both sexes to understand, and I will probably die preaching this sermon. The tests make it look like they want us to wuss out, and since the testing stops when we finally do, it appears that we get rewarded with a discontinuation of the minor abuse that constitutes the test, so we somewhat logically but incorrectly deduce that we gave them what they wanted. It’s incorrect because we didn’t know some things that needed to go into the equation before logic could work, starting with “no woman wants to live with (again, unless she’s severely damaged) a wuss that gives into her every whim.”

In the end, years of testing and having you and other men wuss out on her have created a habit of feeling in control. She just needs to break the habit so she can fully enjoy the rush she gets from being attracted to you again. You will never, EVER chase a woman off by making her feel attraction, unless she’s so insecure or emotionally scarred that she equates attraction with abuse or some other trauma and runs from it.

While we are on the subject, if she hooked up with you while in this damaged state, there are several things you can be sure of: she was never attracted to you, doesn’t want to be attracted to you, was and is probably using you as a safe haven from men she would be attracted to, and most likely will run like hell if she starts feeling attraction for you. Logic leaves no alternatives. You can let her run, or try to hang with her while she fixes it; be advised that people who are damaged that badly seldom fix it, even with love and lots of therapy, so if you decide to hang with it, establish some sort of time table and performance criteria so that you don’t waste your whole life waiting for the impossible.

Take care,
David

Make no mistake, attraction is biological, not logical, so virtually all women seek it and respond to it. Indeed, a woman’s first criteria in evaluating a man is this rule: “If you can’t stand up TO me, you can’t stand up FOR me.” But don’t sweat it. If you do what men are born to do, it happens quite naturally, and once it happens, many women will literally kill to protect that feeling, so you can imagine what an effect it has on a committed relationship, and how destructive its loss can be as well.

To know all you need to know about attraction, communication, compatibility, evaluation, and many other things that are crucial to a life-long happy relationship, go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” and see how you can kick your relationship up to notches unknown to humankind!

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

Can You Take a Hint? Learn to, Now, If You Want to Have a Great Relationship and Marriage

It is a woman’s nature, due to the physical structure of her brain, to speak indirectly, often employing hints, signals, questions that are statements and vice versa, etc., that she has no idea that you can’t perceive and interpret. Do you have any idea what you’re missing? Or what she’s thinking because of it? It’s not a pretty picture, but you can easily improve it.

Gentlemen, I have a real treat for you today! A woman has written about the hints she dropped to her boyfriend to try to seduce him, and it’s an eyeful to say the least! Meet Evelyn:

Dear David,

I’ve read your book and I wish I had the money to buy your book for every man on the planet but I would have to read to them and no one has that much spare time. My god how hard can it really be to buy a book that tells you all you need to know about woman and be able to understand how woman speak??? It’s not brain surgery we are looking for them to perform, its just simple everyday things we are looking for them to understand.

For example today I went over to my boyfriend’s to pick up some tapes he had made for me. I wasn’t going over there with just sex on my mind but to be honest I was really wanting to spend some time with him and hoping for a good roll around the bed while I was there. I was not sure how good he was feeling so I was not going to ask him straight out if he wanted some. I would just feel it out and see how he was acting. As I walked in he was doing something and we talked for a little bit then I decided that before I left I was going to give it a try and see if he wanted to spend some time on the sofa or in the bed with me.

I started dropping hints talking about sexy things and even went as far as to stroke his crotch one time while I was looking into his eyes and grinned and winked at him. When that did not work I would rub against him and kind of purr at him lean in for a kiss just anything I could do to get him to touch me and look at me.

In the end I finally told him I was going out this weekend and he could not touch my breasts because I wanted them to sit up and look nice in this low cut shirt I was going to wear. I know how he hates it when I go out with the girls because yes we do drink and knowing I can not always handle my drinks like I should and that I sometimes get into trouble flirting after a few drinks. He looked at me and said “it’s time for you to get undressed.” Well you know what went on from there but my point is what else could I have done to get the same results without saying “let’s have sex” straight out? I have no problem doing that once in a while but a woman likes for a man to know what she wants by actions with her having to spell it out for him every time.

Thanks for your time,
Evelyn

My reply:

Hi Evelyn, and thanks for writing. I would have had to be there to see what happened to give you a good answer, because what you are describing can be taken more than one way, and his demeanor and body language would have provided details that you left out.

It could be that he’s really that daft, but I’d find it hard to accept that a man couldn’t take the hint of you stroking his crotch to know what you wanted. It could be that he was making you chase him to heighten your arousal, but a man in-the-know will try to make that more fun for you instead of frustrating. It could be that he was extremely busy but didn’t want to tell you that he didn’t have time for sex play at the moment because he didn’t want to hurt your feelings, and either recognized your “desperation” or got jealous when you spoke of going out with the girls. It’s hard to say without the facts.

There’s nothing wrong with just inviting him to the bedroom or starting to undress him, as long as you are sure of his mood and physical condition, and as long as you don’t do it so often that he feels no challenge; men get bored in the absence of challenge just as easily as women. I’d strongly suggest trying to talk with him about it, in an exploratory, not threatening, complaining, or accusatory tone, and find out if he was unaware of the hints, just trying to save your feelings, or whatever.

No matter what he says, as long as it’s the truth, the two of you can get things worked out if you’ll simply focus on the issues and not each other’s fault or blame. ALWAYS focus on issues, not people, when addressing problems. That’s how the problems get solved without the people getting angry.

I’d also suggest you mention having bought my book and offer to let him read it because it would be the easiest way to bridge the communications gap the two of you appear to have, not to mention point out to him that if he’s going to tease you and hold out on you, it’s a lot more effective if he makes it fun instead of frustrating. He may well have been reading some relationship help material and picked up on the need to create a challenge for you but missed the part about making it fun.

Take care, and keep in touch,
David

Gentlemen, there are several things here for you to learn. The most obvious is that women do think about sex when we’re not around, and that they don’t like to just bluntly initiate their own seduction. That takes all the fun out of it for them because for them, sex is about anticipation, adventure, and contact; about getting to the orgasm, not the orgasm itself. It sounds odd to a man, but for the majority of women the majority of the time, the orgasm is simply the end of sex, not the purpose of it. They will drop hints because they want you to take the lead in the seduction process, playing, teasing, creating sexual tension to the point that they can’t hold back any longer and tear into you like they haven’t experienced an orgasm in twenty years. For them, it is that rush of anticipation and the intimacy and attention that follow that is their purpose for sex, and without that, they get bored to death.

That’s not to say that they don’t enjoy the orgasm, or multiple orgasms. Being able to perform like that is important for too many reasons to get into in one newsletter, but at this moment we are speaking of priority, and for most women most of the time, the chase, anticipation, intimacy, etc., will be somewhat more important than orgasm, and spending more time with her in those things will benefit you in ways that you will have to see to believe.

I will go to my grave saying this: Emotionally and mentally healthy heterosexual women like men and like sex, a lot, some of them even more than men. But they are biologically wired to enjoy being led and to be aroused by alpha male behavior, and they need for you to take the lead in moving them from curiosity or mild arousal to that wild, uncontrollable state that gives them that “swept off their feet” feeling. You need to learn how to recognize the hints and signals that she is so inclined, and you need to know the behavior that causes her to direct that curiosity and attraction at you instead of letting her get bored and ultimately directing it at someone else.

What? Your wife would never do that? Don’t bet on it, because what you are wagering is literally your marriage and family life. Affairs and divorces can happen between two people who love each other deeply, and they do happen all too often. Love does not create the attraction and excitement that keeps you intimately involved, and defeats her worst enemy, literally a woman’s arch-nemesis: boredom. (And conversely, attraction without love won’t keep you together either; rather, it creates one of those relationships where you have good sex but everything else sucks and you fight all the time because the compatibility isn’t there. It takes both.)

Quick review: Women deal with boredom the same way men deal with crisis; boredom appears on a woman’s emotional scale in the same spot as crisis on a man’s emotional scale. They will take desperate action if they have to, and if desperate enough, an involuntary survival mechanism kicks in and she literally cannot be held responsible for her actions. It’s not a moral or logical issue; it’s pure anatomy, physiology, and biology.

The good news – indeed, the GREAT news! – is that doing your job in the relationship and protecting her from boredom is one of the easiest and most natural things you will ever do, not to mention great fun! The biggest requirement is that you become a “real guy,” and shed all that ridiculous New Age and politically correct programming that we’ve been inundated with since the 1970’s. How hard can that be?

Quickly picking up your communications skills to a level much closer to hers is also easy. Very few of us will ever be on par with women as communicators because we don’t have the biological infrastructure to do so, but we can get close enough that they’ll meet us in the middle. Luckily, it’s one of those things where sheer awareness goes a very long way toward ensuring success, and it really doesn’t take that much effort once you know how everything works.

The bad news is that in order to be one of the very few guys who know, beyond any doubt, what women want, how to communicate effectively with them, and how to turn their sexual attraction to you on and off, you’re going to have to take a few hours out of your busy schedule of sitting on the couch channel surfing with a beer and read a book, 118 pages to be exact. And it’s going to cost you, too, a little less than dinner for two at a decent restaurant. That’s not so bad, is it? Think about it!

How many decades have you been telling yourself that “no man will ever know what women want” or that “communicating with a woman is a lost cause”? Even Sigmund Freud, the renowned psychologist, said, “The Great Question, which I have not answered, is ‘What does a woman want?’” Well, you can know, today, with just a few hours of reading. Interested?

Yeah, I thought so. So click on over to http://www.makingherhappy.com and get your copy of the book Evelyn mentioned, "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and become that guy you always wished you could be, that manly man who does manly things and who knows what women want, and what they are saying and even THINKING when they’re with you. It doesn’t get any easier or more affordable than this, so get moving! Never, EVER put off until tomorrow the success you can enjoy today!

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

The Bottom Line on Testing and Why Being a Nice Guy is BAD for Your Relationship and Marriage

It’s not such a big secret anymore that being a “nice guy” is bad for your relationship, and men are finally waking up to the fact that much of the bratty behavior they see from women is in fact nothing more than a “wuss test.” Here’s why, and a few other things you really ought to know…

During an interesting discussion with a new student, we got on the subject of women testing men’s level of wussitude and why being a nice guy doesn’t work for either of you, and since I’ve not spoken about it for awhile, I’d like to share briefly with you the high points of that conversation. Even if you think you already know all of this, read it anyway, because you can never tell when the spark of inspiration or revelation will light you up!

To get you newbies caught up, women often push bad positions in arguments, insist on unreasonable concessions, pout, pitch fits, and engage in a lot of other seemingly absurd behavior with a very logical and targeted purpose, and it’s not to get what they want. You heard me; it’s not to get what they want. It’s to get you to say, “NO.” Why?

It’s one of the elements of that “men are hunters, women are gatherers” thing that anthropologists talk about. I’ll spare you most of the boring details, but suffice it to say that as we evolved (and I’m talking about improving and becoming more sophisticated as humans, not about the age-old debate about evolution vs. creation as an explanation as to how we got here, so save the anti-evolution hate mail for somebody who will read it), we developed different skills and physical characteristics that made each gender better suited to handle specific tasks.

Over time, men who had larger lungs, bigger skeletons and musculature, and spatial skills (navigation, being able to mentally gauge proximity to guess the arc of a spear as he threw it, developing tools, etc.) to help provide food and protect themselves and others survived better and reproduced more. Women who had wider hips (to aid in childbirth), advanced language skills (to cooperate with others in building huts, processing skins and sinew to build weapons, and other tasks that were best conducted in cooperative enterprises), sharper sense of smell (to sense danger approaching the dwelling and identify edible or poisonous plants), etc., also survived and reproduced more.

As with everything biological in every species of life, those who were the best-developed reproduced the most – survival of the fittest in its purest form. Some men were better protectors and providers than others. Some women were better at tuning in to a man’s traits and determining how much of a hunter and leader he could be. Through the generations, they became biologically “wired” through this process of natural selection (by locking in those genes that created successful traits) to possess skills that helped in finding a good mate.

While chasing down and killing a deer with bare hands or a bear with a spear is no longer required for a woman and child to eat, and indeed, in most parts of the world women routinely provide for themselves quite adequately without the help of a man, these mechanisms are still present and active in the female brain, and they automatically engage to size a man up from time to time – indeed, virtually every time they encounter a man, familiar or not. Much has changed, but one thing hasn’t: the nature of the test…

…which, in a nutshell, is to provoke you in some way to see if you will say “NO” to her when she is being unreasonable. Most of the time it is not at all deliberate, and you would laugh yourself silly as you read transcripts of conversations and e-mails in which women said, “I NEVER test a man. That’s silly!” and then confessed to it within just a few seconds as their testing actions were called to their attention, after which many of them said, “Oh my God! He must hate me!”

No, he doesn’t hate you, Ladies. Your testing is a pain in our collective ass, but it doesn’t make us hate you. It makes us think you’re nuts until we understand what it is and why you do it. Then it’s usually somewhere between mildly annoying and amusing. So on that note, guys, here it is, in a nutshell:

A woman knows, instinctively, without ever being told, as a result of biological development through the ages, that if a man can’t stand up TO her (when appropriate), he cannot stand up FOR her or WITH her. “When appropriate” is a big deal, too, because when it is inappropriate to stand against her, you must also be able to stand with her, no matter how much ego or crow you might have to swallow.

Write that down, and recite it mentally every time you start to enter a conversation with a woman until it becomes second nature, because you will eventually need it with every women you ever meet if you talk to her more than a few minutes, maybe even a few seconds. They have to know, and are biologically-driven to find out, whether it’s in a casual or formal situation, public or intimate context, and regardless of the nature or longevity of your relationship.

You WILL be tested, and if you can say “NO” to a woman she will feel safe in letting you get to know her better, safe in letting you hold sway over her emotions, safe in letting you negotiate on her behalf or as her adversary (because you’ll say “NO” directly instead of saying “YES” and then trying to trick her or cheat her in some other way). No matter what you may think, there is no possible downside to saying “NO” when it’s appropriate and the logical thing to do.

But when is that? We’ll get to that in a minute, but before we do, let me clue you in on a HUGE difference in the way we communicate: nearly all communication you ever have with a woman, and ALL communication that carries the potential for conflict, will start as a negotiation.

It is EXPECTED that you enter a discussion with either a position or a statement that you require more information. So when saying “NO,” unless you are abusive about it, in a woman’s mind and according to the protocol she will naturally follow, that “NO” is not final; it is merely your opening negotiating position, and she expects a chance to give you input that will persuade you. An inappropriate “NO” will only anger a woman if you deliver the “NO” and deny her the opportunity of negotiation. That’s why they get so ticked off when we act like we’re afraid to say “NO;” it’s just too wussy for words in their world.

But it does make things easier if you try to say “NO” only when appropriate, because it shows that you are reading her, which in turn means that you are paying attention to her, a big compliment in the women’s playbook. The easiest way to draw the line between an appropriate and inappropriate “NO” is to ask one simple question, “Has she earned a ‘yes’?”

If your wife says she wants new furniture for a room, and has contributed to the smooth and secure operation of the household, whether through a job or “domestic efforts,” been loyal and trustworthy, given you love and respect, etc., then she’s earned a “yes,” as long as what she’s asking for is within or can be worked into your budget, obviously. If she’s laid around on her lazy or drunken butt while you and the kids have done everything and complained because you didn’t do it fast enough, abused herself and you, and exhibited a general lack of respect for herself and everyone around her, no, she hasn’t. Indeed, she’s earned a trip out the door to divorce court, just as you would if you did the same thing. It’s really that plain and simple.

Or, put another way, if you think she deserves it and want to agree because of that, she’s earned a “yes,” but if you’re thinking about giving in to earn some favor from her that really isn’t a favor, but something a wife should be doing, you’re about to get busted for being a wuss, and getting the furniture without gaining whatever favor you were after is just the beginning of your punishment, so don’t go there. You can rewar