Why Bother Fixing a Troubled or Failing Relationship or Marriage?

Why should you want and expect to make an effort to fix a strained or distant relationship? The answer is obvious to some, but many really don’t know, and actually think that it’s easier to put up with pain, frustration, boredom, etc., or the stress of extramarital affairs. Wrong! Here for you are the facts and the truth…

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

Dear David,

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

Bob

My reply:

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

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

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

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

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

5. Don’t talk much? Don’t go anywhere? And you call that fine? And you think that she thinks that’s fine? At this point, I’m wondering if you’ve beaten her to the point that she sees “no beatings” as being the same as “happy marriage.” If you don’t interact with your wife and children, why do you have them???

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

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

I’m also curious as to what value you are getting for all the money it takes to feed, house, clothe, medicate, educate, and entertain those other people in your house. Do you have even an inkling that interaction with them could be far more interesting and rewarding than anything you find on television, and far less destructive than anything you’d find in a bar? Or are you too depressed and comfortably unhappy to notice?

And how about “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”? If your letter paints an accurate picture of your home life, you’ve completely turned your back on your family except for giving them whatever part of your paycheck they receive. Contrary to what many think, the average woman is interested in a lot more than her husband’s paycheck.

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

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

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

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

Take care, and keep in touch,
David

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

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

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

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

Be Careful What You Wish for in Your Relationship and Mariage, Part 3: Romance

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

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

RE: Awwww

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

He said, “No.”

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

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

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

“You're not pretty, you're beautiful.

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

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

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

“Awww…that’s sweet.”

“I wish I had a guy like that.”

“That’s so romantic.”

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

“’Awwww’ my ass! I’d say ‘EWWWWW!!!'”

“Yuck! What a wuss!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Think not? Think about it for a minute. You hopped a plane, went there, had lunch, and flew back. What memories will she have? Being rushed to café, eating, and being rushed back to the airport. And what happens when she tries to share it with her girlfriends? She will be barraged by “Did you see such-and-such? Did you go to such-and-such? Did you try such-and-such?” To which she can only answer, “No,” and then will hear, “Well, when WE went, we did all that, and it was great!” or “Then why did you go?” Instead of an adventure to remember, you gave her a disappointment and embarrassment in front of her friends. That’s not romance, is it?

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

And you need to know the difference! You need to know how to look at the situation through her eyes to know if it will be something wonderful that labels you a wonderful man who gets it or a desperate, approval-seeking jackass.

Do you?

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

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

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

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

Holiday Parties: How They Can Make or Break a Relationship or Marriage

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

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

Hi David,

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

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

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

Johnson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David,

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

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

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

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

Thanks,
Mark

My reply:

Hi Mark!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Take care, and keep in touch!
David

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Attraction Feels Like to a Woman: Know This to Have a Great Relationship and Marriage

A woman writes to describe how overwhelming her feelings of attraction are. It’s a real eye-opener!

I don’t know how things are in your neck of the woods, but where I am, you couldn’t ask for more beautiful weather, at least when the occasional momentary thunderstorm isn’t dumping a quick deluge on my cars and garden, saving me the trouble of washing and watering, respectively! It’s time to throw a few racks of ribs in the smoker and have friends over!

I got a letter from a new subscriber last night, and I’d like to share it with you, because he asks a very important question, and about as succinctly as possible. Meet Brad:

Hi David,

What does this “attraction” you talk about feel like to a woman?

Thanks,
Brad

I got another wonderful letter in December from a female reader that goes a long way toward answering the question, the kind that really makes this job a pleasure, and we’ll start with that, because there’s nothing like going to the source when you need to know something. Meet Bethany:

Dear David,

I hope this letter finds you and your family doing well this holiday season. As the seasons change and the temperature becomes colder that is when you really get to know a person when most of the time you are in close quarters during the cold weather. I guess for some this may seem like a death sentence, but for a few of us lucky ones it is the best time of the year.

What I wanted to share with you today is something that happened to me just a couple of days ago and when I finally understood just how strong attraction can be and knew it was worth all the work we had to do to make it happen. My husband and I have been working really hard on making our marriage as close to perfect as one can hope for, and with your book it finally seems that we have it all. I have never in my life loved being with anyone the way I do this man and yes I know he feels the same for me.

We both work hard, and we have six wonderful children to keep us busy at home, so we try our best throughout the long days we put in we make time for each other. For instance this past Friday my husband and I meet at a local restaurant near his office to have lunch. We ate and talked and I loved just sitting there with him and looking into his eyes as he smiled at me when the conversation made reference to what we wanted to do later on that night at home. I could talk with him for hours and never be bored. I have never been so happy in my life, but then the check came and it was time to leave and go our separate ways for the rest of the afternoon. I was really upset because I did not want to leave just yet, but I knew we had to. I never said anything to him as he walked me to my car and kissed me and told me he would see me later.

In the car however driving back I became so upset I started to cry. At first I was not sure why I was upset, but then I knew why. I did not want to go back to work, I wanted Allen my husband to take me home and to spend the rest of the afternoon in bed with me. I was just so attracted to him I wanted to drop everything for that day and be with him. It did not matter to me that we both have jobs that if we are not on top of things we will miss major orders that leads to paydays for us. I should have just called him. I wouldn’t have had to say much for him to know something was wrong and he probably would have figured out what pretty fast because he’s gotten so good at reading me. But we both need to work because keeping six kids fed on what we make doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for play time.

What I am saying is that I am so attracted to this man (I know how you hate it when people say “in love”) I was willing to give up half of a day of work and maybe even my job just to be with him and spend time alone. I think about it every day that we are not together and I know we have to work, but the attraction for him is so strong all I want is for him to have sex with me all the time, to feel his body next to mine and his lips kissing me. I never thought that I could truly say I would kill for attraction, but I know now that I could and would if anyone came between me and this man I love so much.

Thank you so much for making my marriage the one thing in this world that I want to keep for the rest of my life and giving me a real man one that is all I have ever dreamed of.

Bethany

You’re most welcome Bethany, and thank you very much for taking the time to write and tell me about it. People are always very eager to write or call someone to complain, but so seldom take the time to say “Thank you” or to tell someone that things went well for them. If we all took an extra minute or two out of our day to let those around us know that we appreciate the time they give us, the world would indeed be a happier place. Think about this…

Life is the most precious of all resources, and your own life is the most precious of the precious, at least if you are mentally and emotionally healthy, because not one second of it that passes can ever be replenished, and when someone thinks enough of you to give you some portion of their life, you owe them the appreciation due such a gift, a trade of your life for theirs. Indeed, respect the time of others as being a measure of their life, and make an effort to show up on time and conduct yourself in a way that does not waste the time and life of others.

Okay, I’m getting down off my stump now. So how would you describe the feelings Bethany is speaking of here? Rather honeymoonish? Somewhat unusual for two people who have been married long enough to have six kids? You’re quite right! It is unusual, but nowhere near impossible, nor abnormal. Being happy together in a good relationship is a natural state for two well-matched people to enjoy, especially when they can communicate well with each other and enjoy doing so. If you’re not there too, you’re missing out, but you can fix it. How?

Do what Allen and Bethany did! Jump over to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” because it will get you there if you just take advantage of the experience of the 118 couples who tested everything that went into the book. Life’s too short to spend it any way but happy, so get moving!

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

What Do Kids Know About Building a Great Relationship and Marriage That YOU Have Forgotten?

Did you ever notice a couple of teens getting hot and heavy in a public -- or not so public -- place? Ever wish you could go back to those days? You can, if you’ll just let yourself…

Those of you who have read “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” understand how and why a small boy knows more about attracting a female than most adult males seem to. Have you ever wondered what else you might learn from children about how to be an adult, or at least how to enjoy being one? Ask Dawn:

Dear David,

I am not sure how to word this so it does not sound like I have been spying on my daughter. The truth is at 16 I do watch her closely, probably a lot more then most parents.

There is one major thing that I have noticed about her and her new boyfriend is how they look and talk to each other. At such a young age they seem to understand many of the things you talk about better then most men who have many more years on them. It just seems so open and honest and that the attraction between the two of them is not only red hot but that it is what as an adult I want in a man.

How can it be they know at their tender age so much about attraction and all the older men I know seem to know nothing?

Dawn

My reply:

Well Dawn, it’s not what they know, it’s what they don’t know. In fact, it’s what they’ve not yet learned: inhibition! Their hormones are raging and their youth and inexperience is making the exploration of themselves and each other exciting, so once they get past the awkwardness of the invitation to the first date and get into each other, they could care less about whether they’ve gained a couple of pounds, they have a little razor stubble, whether the kids might walk through the bedroom door and catch them, what might be going on at work next week, what that noise downstairs might have been, whether the dry cleaning has been picked up, what their friends or family might be doing, or any of the other things that men and women allow to interfere with their “quality time.”

They just let go, and do what comes naturally. Granted, their hormones are pushing them hard, but that’s merely sauce for the goose. When was the last time that you tried it? You say you want that kind of heat and passion, but who’s keeping you from having it, other than yourself? Don’t worry about two pounds you gained during the holidays; when the lights are out or his eyes are closed, he’ll never be able to tell the difference, except you might feel just a little better pulled up close to him; ribs and hipbones jabbing us is a bit distracting. ;-)

I’d just as quickly chastise the men for letting things interfere with passion in this manner. “Lock the damned bedroom door, for crying out loud! Get yourself up to Alpha Male standards, fire that woman up, and get into her and let her get into you like you did when you were teenagers. Worry about what’s going on at work next week when next week gets here, or while you’re at work tomorrow morning. Unless that noise downstairs is followed by a scream, a barking animal, an alarm bell, a crash or explosion, or the sound of an adult voice cursing, it can wait until after you and your partner have enjoyed each other.”

There is no aphrodisiac in the world that will guarantee good sex tonight or tomorrow night (or in the morning!) like good sex last night! Don’t let the world put a damper on your sex life. If you need a little help turning the clock back, go to a drive-in instead of renting a DVD, or get a room in a cheap hotel, not the kind you would rent today, but the kind you rented when you were a teenager and weren’t supposed to be renting a room! Add that seedy, naughty flavor to the mix, and play up the mischief, nostalgia, and “getting away with something” angles. A covert quickie in a public place might be more enjoyable --on occasion -- than the girly dream date with candles and flower petals in the bed or on the mattress. Have fun with it – and each other!

Take care, and keep in touch,
David

Gentlemen, everywhere you look is something that can help you to revive and enhance your relationship if you know what to look for. Knowing what to look for comes from having that romantic, can-do hero’s attitude and knowing what women want. You don’t have to be young, rich, powerful, or drive a fancy car to get your wife’s attention or any other woman’s attention; you just have to be a man, a REAL man who enjoys living and leading as a man, the man she went crazy over and married.

If you want to keep her attention, you keep her guessing, not at whether you’ll be around tomorrow, or have a job next week, but at what kind of laughter and excitement you’re going to create for her today. Will it be walking into a room like you own it, telling a grand tale, or whisking her off to some fun place or activity? The choice is yours, and she expects you to make it. Indeed, quite often her mental and emotional survival DEPEND on you making it.

Women have affairs because they are bored, not because they don’t love their husbands anymore; lost love comes well after lost attraction, if it comes at all. (And for you ladies reading, the same thing is true of men!) Have you ever heard that bit, “I love you, but I’m not in love with you anymore,”? That “in love” bit is attraction, not love.

All you need to become a master of attraction and supreme boredom-fighter, the confident ultimate male who knows what women, especially his partner, want is contained in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” and you procrastinate at reading and using it at your own peril. Get ahead of the curve and stay there by going to http://www.makingherhappy.com and downloading your copy right now, and bring back that passion, intimacy, and honeymoon, because life’s too short to spend it playing catch-up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Don't Find Time, MAKE Time to Have a Great Relationship and Marriage

A reader asks how to find some time in a busy schedule to spend with her husband. In her case, and maybe in yours as well, finding time isn’t possible because it just isn’t there to find. When When there’s none to be found, you have to make some!

I love hearing from the women who subscribe to this newsletter as much as the men. Their questions are just as relevant and they prove that women really do want time with their men to be intimate and nurturing and to have some fun. Meet K.:

Hello David,

I have a question for you. My husband and I work together as we own our own construction company. We are together 24 hours a day, and need to find a way that we can spend time together but not as work. It seems like when we get home we are too tired to have any intimate time together and when we are at work we are AT WORK. I want to know how I can separate work from pleasure with him. We don't have much family that we can rely on to take our son, and the one's that we do have that take him are sick right now. So when we need our alone time we want it.

How can we get this?

K

My reply:

Good morning, K!

Under the constraints you’ve listed, you can’t, so you’re going to have to make some changes, at least small ones. You’re going to have to change your priorities to make that time together actually important enough to take it, and then manage your schedule so that you can, no matter what that takes. Maybe until your babysitters get well, you might have to schedule one day a week where the two of you disappear at lunchtime for an hour or longer, to an intimate lunch or a hotel or whatever, or schedule a late opening one morning so that you can have a little while at home after your child has gone to school before going to work, or something like that. How you do it isn’t important as long as it doesn’t destroy your business, but you have to schedule the time and then take the time instead of just waiting for a window to open.

I’m all about achievement and getting the job done, and this was a very hard lesson for me to learn as well; very early in my own marriage, my wife and I were both over-achievers and found ourselves in serious trouble before we realized that while we love each other dearly, we had inadvertently let our work schedules take over our lives, and had evolved from husband and wife into roommates and business partners. That was one of the problems that led to me doing the research to write "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and one of the first problems that I put to the test group to solve.

It turned out they all had it to some degree, either with spending all their time with their jobs or their kids, and for most, just scheduling one date and one lunch per week was enough to keep them close and engaged while continuing to get things more under control, and all of them found that once the schedule was made and acknowledged, it was very easy to keep to their commitments as long as they were smart about scheduling the time, avoiding times that were common for meetings, times that were in the middle of project start-ups, times that were during peak customer flow or when they knew they would have problems getting a sitter, etc., and they always secured a sitter before planning the date – “We need a couple hours some evening this week; when would be good for you?” was the question. And when the sitter gave them a date, it was set in stone, and only an event that produced fever or lots of blood was a good excuse for breaking the babysitting engagement and spoiling the date.

This isn’t as hard as what it may sound. An hour or two per week isn’t going to make that big a difference in your business, if any, and it will make a world of difference in your life together. Just realize that you’re together for the long haul, and you should therefore try to give each other the best part of your day instead of what’s left over after everybody and everything else has worn you out all day.

Speaking of which, when you do schedule an evening date, try to keep your day-time schedule a little lighter than other days to make sure you aren’t too tired to enjoy the time together, and never let yourself think that you are too tired to enjoy some time together without at least trying it. You’d be surprised how rejuvenating a little intimate, playful time together can be, because it gets your adrenaline pumping. Sometimes a long day doesn’t create so much fatigue as it does simple frustration and depression, and some time together in celebration of a job well done and a rough work day brought to a close can be the best pick-me-up of all.

And if you’re really all that tired and need some low-energy together time, pile up together on the couch with a drink and a bowl of popcorn or anything that can be shared, sit close, clink the bottles or glasses in a toast, and just be still and relax together. No, it’s not steamy sex on a yacht or hiking in the Andes or some deep emotional discussion, but when you’re that tired at the end of a long day of over-achieving, even that quiet, mindless time spent in the intimate ritual of sharing food and entertainment is better than just crashing and forgetting about it. Do whatever you are able to do to indulge in what husbands and wives enjoy doing together.

Give this a try, and let me know if I can be of further help. You can do this.

Take care, and keep in touch!
David

A lot of couples make this mistake. They try to find time instead of making time, not realizing that when your life is in overdrive, even small amounts of time scattered through the week can make a huge difference in keeping your relationship on track, and if a couple hours a week is going to make the difference between your business folding or succeeding or the difference in you being able or unable to pay your household bills, you’ve got bigger problems than you realize and need to be finding some professional help. It’s like arguing over a nickel at the cash register; if that nickel is going to break either you or the vendor, you’re already broke.

Make the time for what’s important, and get your priorities straight. You will most likely outlive your career, your parents, and your friends by a very long time, and while you may not outlive your children, they will be moving out of your house somewhere around age 20 and you won’t be seeing that much of them after they are gone. Your partner, on the other hand, is supposed to be with you for life, right? Common sense should tell you that your partner should therefore be your first priority, and if they are not, then you need to stop and figure out whether your priorities are wrong or you’re with the wrong partner.

Finding a new job, making new friends, or even making new babies is relatively easy compared to finding a true life partner and soul mate, and if you’ve found one and lose them, that lengthens the odds of finding another somewhat, does it not? Look at your life, and get your priorities in order, and then do whatever it takes to support those priorities. Yes, it’s really that simple.

When it comes to your partner, Gentlemen, doing what it takes to keep her happy and striving to nurture and excite you is a simple matter of communications and manliness, something you aren’t taught in school, and have no hope of learning from watching television unless you’re able to home in on that tiny percentage of programming that shows men and women being men and women, and not this homogenized New Age mess of political correctness and utter wussification and victim mentality that seems to be swallowing the world.

For a tested and proven, tutorial and definitive reference on “keeping mama happy so she keeps everybody happy,” go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage." Life’s too short to let it pass under-lived and unenjoyed, and as anybody who has ever used it will tell you, this book is “the hook-up” you’ve been looking for.

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

Shopping Together As Foreplay? If Done Properly, It Can Really Boost Your Relationship and Marriage

Attraction is about flipping primal, biological switches that ignite the urge to procreate, or at least go through the motions of mating. Leadership and authority will flip them because it invokes feelings of power and protection; will shopping awaken these primal urges as well? My research and others’ says, “Oh yeah!” but it’s not retail therapy that does the trick…

Strap yourself in, because we’re going for a ride. I’ve written many times about how attraction and flirting are dying arts that are slowly being revived as desperate singles and bored couples seek out people like myself, Shelley McMurtry, John Alanis, and others and learn what it’s all about. I’ve also advised quite a few people to look back to the actions of their parents and especially grandparents, old movies, etc., for visual examples of things that they did then that most people don’t do now but are crucial for relationships. Why?

A lot of that old school, gender-stereotypical behavior that made for manly men and girly girls was obliterated in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s by idiotic ideas like “men should be sensitive instead of manly” when all women wanted was for manly men to continue to be manly men, but be a little more sensitive to things like a woman’s emotional state and her sheer dread of boredom. Incidentally, note that divorce rates began climbing exponentially through those years as well.

I was talking to my dad a few days ago and he mentioned how different things were now from when I was a child, and I asked him about what couples did for fun in the 50’s and 60’s that he no longer saw them doing. The first thing out of his mouth was a revelation: “Well, when you’re mother and I got married and until you kids were pretty much either gone or old enough to be gone, we nearly always did the grocery shopping together. Your mother would get all frisky and cuddly in the grocery store every time we’d go, even if she was ticked about something when we got there. Didn’t you notice that you kids were often put to bed a little early when we went to the store?”

No, I didn’t notice, but it sure makes sense now!

The act of hunting down and procuring food, and returning home with it is very primal, making the evening meal somewhat celebratory in a primal sort of way. He also talked about having other couples over for card games, and being accused of cheating because he and my mother were playing footsy under the table during the game and stuff like that, which was also primally attractive because of the competition and celebration involved, but I couldn’t get the grocery store thing out of my head. This had to be checked out, because my parents stayed married for 33 years and had five kids on little more than attraction; their divorce happened after deep compatibility problems finally wore them down and out. (And to this day, I don’t know if they even understand that, because they won’t talk about it, but it was there for anyone with eyes to see.)

I’ve spent several hours each day for the last few days wandering around grocery stores and lurking in the parking lot watching for couples to show up (I was accosted by one store manager who thought I was acting suspicious until I explained what I was doing, at which time he took me to the security booth and we both watched the security cameras and tapes, which was a lot of fun for both of us!), and the results were more than impressive. They were downright awe-inspiring!

Couples would come in chatting, arguing, not speaking, even obviously pissed off at each other, and none of them seemed to make it more than about three aisles before they were walking closer together, him pushing the cart and her hand in the crook of his arm, or holding hands, or her stroking and caressing his back and shoulders, and the smiles and other body language was very clear. I also recall similar experiences with the women I’ve been involved with in my adult life, and it went right over my head at the time, as it may be going right over everybody else’s heads today. I wish my grandparents were still alive today so that I could pick their brains about a lot of things; they were married for 66 years, and I’m quite sure they could have told me about a lot more of these kinds of things if they were still around.

So guys, how do you put stuff like this to work? Start by understanding the underlying elements of creating attraction: leadership, protection, mimicking primal survival behavior, decision-making, competition, etc. Now, let’s build an evening out of it.

I’d suggest starting by planning at least an evening meal, and take your partner with you to get the groceries. Take your time and have fun perusing the aisles in the grocery store instead of just rushing straight to the things you want and grabbing them. Turn on a little of that naughty charm and steal a kiss or two, a playful pinch or grope, conducted covertly and intimately, as if you’re a couple of naughty kids getting away with something.

Go home and cook dinner for her, or for her and a guest couple. If you can’t cook, stay in the kitchen with her while she cooks and lead conversation about anything, even how to do what she’s doing. Women adore it when men ask open-ended questions about anything that interests the woman or that she does competently just as much as they like asking men the same things. And I’m not talking about “chit-chat.” I’m talking about real conversation. There’s no emotion or engagement in chit-chat; it’s just a time-filler.

Continue to ramp up the fun and tension after dinner through a movie (yes, a funny one, or one that if filled with action, authority, and some mystery!) or some other activity, like a sunset walk, or if you have the other couple over, engage in something fun and competitive like parlor games or card games, and occasionally when she gets up from the table to get something for herself or the guests, get up to help or suddenly think of something you need to remind her of (don’t worry about being rude, as they may be getting caught up in the energy and wanting to steal a kiss or a grope themselves!), and push the naughty envelope a bit while you’re out of sight of the guests. That “ramp it up and draw back a bit” play builds a delightful tension that women will savor for hours, and when the guests finally leave, she’ll lock the door and probably be tearing at your clothes if you did a good job at ramping up and pulling back.

By the way, DO NOT confuse procurement of needed items with “retail therapy.” Retail therapy, the act of buying things for the thrill of the purchase with no real need or desire for some benefit of ownership, is something that people do when they are bored or suffering from some kind of self-esteem crisis, and make no mistake, it is damaging to a relationship or marriage. It creates financial strain, storage problems, and a lot of stress. Keep your shopping dates to things you know you need or have discussed and decided that you want to own and benefit from ownership, and avoid just grabbing stuff for the thrill of hearing the cash register bells; those bells are for the shopkeeper to celebrate, not you.

I’ve told you guys too many times to count that the object is not to seduce your wife, but to actively induce your wife to seduce you by leading her to her sexy side. This is how you get that done, and I shudder to think of how many such secrets our parents and grandparents took to their graves. If yours are still alive and you’re comfortable doing so, you might ask them about their dating days and the early years of their marriage. You might be surprised at how eager they are to share with you.

However, not everybody’s parents and grandparents will have been good at playing the attraction game. More men and women understood it 50 years ago, but that’s a far cry from being able to say that ALL men and women understood it fifty years ago.

Before you start pumping the older folks for the advanced techniques of their day, you really need a good command of the basics so you can distinguish between something great that can add spice to your life and a mistake that an ancestor made that will haunt generations to come if they don’t know any better than to repeat the mistake. Oops! Where do you go for that?

Glad you asked! Download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," where you’ll find all the basics and then some, on attraction, effective communications, evaluating and renewing relationships, and even how to gracefully end bad ones with cooperation and dignity. Yes, really! Here are a few choice excerpts from a reader letter I received today:

“...I think she is missing me more than she will admit and it’s because of the ATTRACTION that YOUR BOOK has helped me instill back in her...”

“...things are progressing back to getting the woman I love back completely...”

“...the thing I like the MOST is SHE is CALLING ME .... NOT Me calling HER...so I must be doing something RIGHT LOL...”

“...have a great day and thanks if for no other reason for making me a better man...”

This guy described himself as “the wuss from Hell” in his first letter to me, and was afraid he was too late to do anything about it; he mentioned in one of his letters that they’d been separated for a couple of years and she had told him that under no circumstances would they ever be together again, yet they’re dating, she’s chasing him, they’re getting totally intimate, and she’s fighting tooth and nail the whole way, testing him to make sure it’s not just some phony act he’s putting on and that this new man before her is here to stay.

He is, he’s getting results, and if a self-proclaimed “wuss from Hell” can have an ex of two years pulling him back into the bedroom after she declared that donkeys would fly through a frozen Hell before she’d ever sleep with him again, you have no choice but to accept that this information works, and you need to get with the program, NOW! (Right, “Michael” K.?)

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 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

Why People Grow Apart and End Relationships and Marriage, and What YOU Can Do to Stop It!

Why do people who are in long-term relationships, whether married or not, grow apart? In a nutshell, it is because they have lost interest in each other. That, my friends, is a preventable and curable condition! The medicine, you ask? ATTRACTION, of course!

I had a call last night from a friend, Bill, with whom I’ve not spoken in a nearly a year. He and I used to work consulting projects together frequently, and we were pretty close. He found this gal that he really meshed well with, and they got married and were happy for a long time, but a major problem had come up that he needed to talk about.

Her father died a few years ago and they moved away to be near her mother, and Bill and I kept in touch for awhile, but our interests started growing in different directions because he changed careers and we lost a lot of common ground that used to give us a lot to talk about. We fell to calling each other at birthdays and major holidays, and as we started finding we had less and less to talk about, quit calling because there just wasn’t enough to talk about to make it interesting.

It’s bad when friends grow apart like that, but I wasn’t the only one from whom he’d grown apart. He and his wife had a great foundation for a good marriage, being extremely compatible in all regards, especially the important ones like personal values and tastes, and having plenty to talk about when romance wasn’t in the air, but over the course of the last year, he and his wife had grown apart to the point of not enjoying each other’s company anymore and frequently getting on each other’s nerves.

Bill called because we were old friends, I had known him and his wife for a long time, and he knew from working with me that I had conducted seminars on getting along with people and was hoping I could help him and his wife figure out what had happened and fix it. He had no idea that I had published “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” and he was in for a shock!

Bill’s wife had started spending more and more time with her mother, eventually giving up her job to care for her full time, while Bill had sought to enhance his career and make up for the lost household income by taking on extra duty at work and starting a small, part-time home-based business. They had previously averaged about five to six waking hours together per day, and this had fallen to about an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening, much of which wasn’t even “quality time” together.

Their interaction with others increased as their interaction with each other decreased, and they got out of the rythm of spending time together. As this happened, their interests were influenced by people outside their household, pulling them even further in opposite directions. Bill’s wife had taken up volunteer duty at a local retirement home where his mother volunteered, and Bill’s home-based business was the result of something one of his co-workers was into. By the time they realized what had happened, lack of mutual interests had insidiously reduced them from a happy married couple to a pair of disgruntled and celibate roommates.

In case it’s not obvious, and it probably wouldn’t be to anyone who hasn’t either read "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" or been subscribing to this newsletter for quite awhile, it wasn’t so much that their personal interests had changed as the fact that their interest in each other had failed because they had stopped doing the things that made them interesting to each other, trustful of each other and intimate. When they lived near me, they were constantly challenging each other, playing with each other, picking on each other in a very good-natured and often thinly veiled and obviously sexy way. They were not only spouses; they were playmates, adventure partners, workmates, confidants, etc. They enjoyed each other for long periods every day.

Stress, fatigue and time constraints limited their time and attention, and finally attraction was lost. When attraction goes, boredom sets in, then frustration, anger, resentment, blame, etc., and then the all-too-well-known steps down to the dungeon of affairs and divorce are taken one by one, often rapidly. Bill and his wife had both been married before, and knew what was coming, and wanted to fix it rather than go through giving up what they had once had and breaking up a household while in their early fifties.

I sent Bill a copy of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” and he and his wife are going through it. I’ll probably be keeping you posted on their progress. Most of you subscribing to this newsletter are doing so because you’re already where they are or can see yourself getting there at some point. Don’t let this happen to you. It’s far easier to prevent the loss of attraction than it is to get it back, but you can get it back if you want it.

(Update: this lesson was originally published on September 4, 2005. In the few months that followed, Bill and his wife did indeed figure out where they had gone wrong, made corrections, and are now happier than they have ever been. They always had fun together in the years before their problems, but communications had been lacking, and now that they really understand each other because they know how to listen to the opposite gender, they’ve made a connection that would have never been possible otherwise. She tells her girlfriends that “he always just knows what she’s thinking.” He’s not psychic; he just listens to her as a woman instead of as a man! And this second honeymoon has been lasting for a little over three and a half years now.)

The dating gurus say it’s impossible to regain lost attraction, but in their world, you’re dealing with a window of seconds to a few hours at most; in that context, that is quite correct. But in a mature, committed relationship, you have months, maybe even a year or two, because you both have so much invested in the relationship, and anyone can recapture and then go beyond the attraction felt during your first hours and days together if they have the information to (re)develop the skills needed. Indeed, if you started out with enough compatibility to make for a good marriage, success is almost a foregone conclusion. Everything you need to know to start doing that this very minute is contained in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” so set yourself up for success in your relationship by downloading your copy right now at http://www.makingherhappy.com.

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

Why Bother Fixing a Troubled or Failing Relationship or Marriage?

Why should you want and expect to make an effort to fix a strained or distant relationship? The answer is obvious to some, but many really don’t know, and actually think that it’s easier to put up with pain, frustration, boredom, etc., or the stress of extramarital affairs. Wrong! Here for you are the facts and the truth…

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

Dear David,

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

Bob

My reply:

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

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

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

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

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

Don’t talk much? Don’t go anywhere? And you call that fine? And you think that she thinks that’s fine? At this point, I’m wondering if you’ve beaten her to the point that she sees “no beatings” as being the same as “happy marriage.” If you don’t interact with your wife and children, why do you have them???

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

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

I’m also curious as to what value you are getting for all the money it takes to feed, house, clothe, medicate, educate, and entertain those other people in your house. Do you have even an inkling that interaction with them could be far more interesting and rewarding than anything you find on television, and far less destructive than anything you’d find in a bar? Or are you too depressed and comfortably unhappy to notice?

And how about “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”? If your letter paints an accurate picture of your home life, you’ve completely turned your back on your family except for giving them whatever part of your paycheck they receive. Contrary to what many think, the average woman is interested in a lot more than her husband’s paycheck.

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

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

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

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

Take care, and keep in touch,
David

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

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

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

Be Her Man, Not Her Girlfriend, for a Great Relationship and Marriage

A guy writes with a common complaint, that his girlfriend has begun treating him like a girlfriend, and as usual, it’s happened so insidiously that he doesn’t even realize what has happened. There is a way to fix it, and a way to keep it from happening as well.

Today’s newsletter is longer than usual, because it’s a common and often catastrophic subject, so please read carefully at a time when you are able to concentrate, because there’s information here that you will not want to miss. I’d like to introduce you to a man who needs no introduction, because we’ve all seen him, and many of us have even been him at least once in our life. Today, his name is Ted:

Dear David,

I wanted to get another guy’s opinion on something that is going on with me and my girlfriend lately. I only get to see her a couple of times a week because of our class and work schedules and when we are together all she wants to do is go shopping. I do not feel like her boyfriend anymore. I feel like the gay best friend or girlfriend and I am not liking this, to say the least.

I want to take her out for a nice dinner and come back to my place and spend some quality time alone. We used to go out and then come back to my place, have some wine and spend the rest of the night talking and having the greatest sex. Now something has changed and I am not sure if it’s me or she has found someone else. I do not want to risk losing her if I can in any way fix this problem. Do you have any ideas as to what might save my relationship at this point? If something does not change soon I will be calling off the wedding for the coming summer.

I need advice,

Ted

Greetings, Ted; thanks for writing, welcome to the club, and my condolences for your loss. If your description is accurate, your relationship is dead. However, you can resurrect a dead relationship if you understand what has happened and are willing to fix what is broken. As things are right now, I’m quite surprised that your girlfriend hasn’t called off the wedding and found someone else to excite her. This problem is covered in depth in my book, but I’ll explain because I’m feeling generous today…

There are basically two main components of the kind of relationship we’re talking about here if it’s healthy: love and attraction. Love is the value you place on the partner, and is the category under which friendship, respect, trust, loyalty, etc., all fall. The other part, attraction, is what people have mistakenly referred to with such poetic but erroneous phrases as “in love” over the centuries. It has nothing whatsoever to do with love, and can in fact be experienced toward someone you absolutely hate (such as spouse abusers, which we’ll talk about a little more later); it’s a biologically-triggered state of intense excitement and desire for intimacy of many kinds, including and especially sexual, with another person.

For men, attraction is triggered mostly by visual characteristics of women’s appearance, and actions to a lesser extent; for women, it’s the reverse. A man’s appearance doesn’t count for much except to the extent that it projects self-respect, confidence, authority and personal strength, as must his personality, and he must project intelligence and a good sense of humor as well. Consequently, attraction can be built in seconds to minutes for men, while it usually takes hours, days, or even weeks to start seeing attraction build up in a woman to the point of sexual engagement being an option.

(There are two other states, “need” and “lust,” that have nothing to do with a healthy relationship; indeed, “need” and “love” are mutually exclusive, and “need” kills relationships with the dependency, fear and resentment it creates. Lust has no specific person as its object, and can also be very detrimental to an otherwise healthy relationship if the participants aren’t mentally prepared to accept lustful behavior as a condition of the relationship’s continuance. See my book or my free “Break-Up Busting 101” report for full explanations.)

What has happened in your relationship is the love is apparently still there, because there is still friendship, but the attraction is gone because the intimate behavior, everything from intimate discussions to exciting playfulness and sex, have fallen by the wayside. You feel like a girlfriend because that is how you allow yourself to be treated. You’re not doing guy things – alpha male things – that awaken her inner drives and trigger attraction. You’re doing exactly what she would be doing with a girlfriend for fun because you are allowing her to make the decisions on how the two of you spend your time together – a huge mistake in any male-female relationship if it is to last.

Women enjoy being led – NOT DOMINATED, BULLIED, AND ABUSED – by strong, confident men. It’s not because they are weak, can’t make decisions, or any such reasons that chauvinists (chau·vin·ism n. 1. Militant devotion to and glorification of one's country; fanatical patriotism. 2. Prejudiced belief in the superiority of one's own gender, group, or kind.) have used to demean and oppress women for centuries. It’s simply what they are biologically wired to appreciate it and respond to it, just as men are biologically wired to enjoy the sight of a woman’s natural “feminine curves.” Dumping all the decisions in her lap, about where to go, what to do, where to eat, what movie to see, how to spend your time, etc., isn’t just failing to give her something attractive to experience, it’s annoying for her to some degree (and you will have to read my book to find out why and how to properly handle decision-making, because while she wants you to lead, she still wants, needs, and in many cases demands input, and that’s too long an explanation for this newsletter), and you are killing attraction instead of building it for her.

There are some people who try to deny human existence and claim that attraction isn’t required for a relationship to last (they try to replace attraction with “faith,” or some kind of “Zen,” instead of accepting attraction as the reality it is). But if you gain a thorough understanding of attraction, and then look at every relationship you’ve ever seen enough of to know the facts concerning how it formed and what broke it up, it becomes overwhelmingly obvious that committed male-female relationships rarely, if ever, form without attraction and rarely, if ever, end as long as it is present. Some relationships do survive without it, but nearly all of those to which I have been personally exposed and those which readers have discussed with me have been between people who were self-evidently bored, resentful, and often codependent, their relationship being based upon “need” instead of a combination of love and attraction.

In a nutshell, love and everything that comes with it makes a relationship friendly, safe and pleasant (attraction in the absence of love, often coupled with need, is what you find in abusive relationships where a man violently abuses a woman and she keeps coming back for more because she craves the feeling of attraction and he creates it for her), while attraction is that “spice of life” that keeps the relationship, fresh, fun, exciting, romantic, etc.

So there you go, Ted. That’s what happened. As for fixing it, it takes little more than being a real man, which after the girly-man nonsense of the 1980’s and 1990’s could be reasonably deemed “nearly a lost art.” However, “nearly lost” is not the same as “lost.” There are still a few of us around who understand what being a real man is about, and of the few of us who are left, a very few of us are able to identify it for you, and tell you how to do it.

Fewer still can also explain to you how to evaluate a relationship to see if you should be in it at all, and teach you the great secrets of communicating with women, the most highly-evolved communicators on this planet, which is tough for a man in any case. We have spent our evolutionary energy on things like engineering skills and spatial awareness while they have learned to speak in ways that only they understand and become so adept at and dependent upon sending and receiving non-verbal communication that they can smile at us while demeaning us to a group of girlfriends and we think we’re being complimented.

Even worse, they can tell us precisely what they want from us and the entire message be lost in the translation. (Warning: Beware a woman with a mathematical mind, because she will kick your ass all the way to the poor-house playing poker! She’ll be reading your cards from your body language while all you’ll see of her are her pretty eyes, inviting smile, and cleavage!)

Even fewer are those who know and can tell you all this and train you to do it naturally, as a part of your own personality, by putting it in a highly-readable and fun book. I’m one of those guys, and if you were in the dating world instead of a committed relationship and wanting to know how to meet and impress women, I could give you the names of about four more, because that’s where most of this attention is being focused. It’s a big and desperate market and those men are single and dating themselves, and they have to stick with their area of expertise.

The rules for creating and maintaining attraction are somewhat different in committed relationships than they are for getting phone numbers or “macking” (trying to score a one-night stand) at a local bar, especially the timeframe. You have seconds to create interest, minutes to create intrigue, and a couple of hours at most in the bar situation, and if you blow it with a single gesture or wrong word, you’re done because she can walk away to scope out a hundred other options.

Not so in the committed relationship. She has a vested interest in continuation of the relationship, and so do you, and it’s to everyone’s advantage to bring it back to life. The point?

This information is rare, some of it unique (I’ve not found anything like it, and I looked hard because I didn’t want to waste time trying to reinvent the wheel when I had problems, before all this began), at least to a large degree, specifically developed for and presented to people in a committed relationship, and most importantly, it works.

It was tested by 118 couples during the writing of the book and many more since then, and in four years I’ve now given three refunds under a full year unconditional guarantee. The first was to a “library reader,” someone who buys and then immediately asks for a refund to steal a product. The second one was to a gentleman who missed an announcement that I was changing the title of my book to more accurately reflect its true scope and purpose and bought a second copy. The third thought he might find dating advice in it, which I don’t claim or advertise; although all of what’s in it is useful if you’re dating to find a long-term relationship, I don’t include anything on how to get dates or pick up women. Most information marketers say they’re doing good with a 10% refund rate and average 16%; and mine is less than 0.000002%. That’s because it works for those who use it. No other conclusion is possible.

And YOU should join those who use it and succeed like they do! Do so by jumping over to http://www.makingherhappy.com and getting your copy of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” right now, because you can make your relationship better, a lot better, and the time to start is now, while it’s easier to regain lost ground, not after the affairs or divorce proceedings have started or a break-up has occurred and you have to do it the long, hard way. Be the achiever, not the guy who sat on the fence wondering if it could be done, because looking back with regret kills the part of you that loves to live the most.

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

More About Getting the Right Mix in Relationships and Marriage: Get Your "Guy" On, and Let's Have Some Fun!

Let’s talk some more about “getting the right mix,” with a great example from a TV advertisement…

Today’s lesson was going to be about the proper use of the telephone in “getting the right mix” to build attraction in a woman instead of destroying it, but, I have to tell you about a television commercial that should have a newsletter dedicated to it, and I’m doing that instead for today.

The Stanley Tool Company has a commercial about it’s “Fat Max” retractable tape measures, and it is not only hilarious, it’s a perfect example of guys just being guys and having fun doing it, one of those very necessary components of creating attraction for a woman.

In the commercial, the scene is on the ground at a high-rise building construction site, everybody in hard hats and tool belts, testosterone so thick you could probably drown in it. Two guys face off, extending their tapes out about ten feet in front of them, and one is leaned back on an appliance cart while the other is scooped up in a wheelbarrow, and their coworkers wheel them toward each other at high speed in a joust! You can view it here if the embedded frame below is not playing for you.


Joust Tournament - Stanley FatMax Xtreme Tape

Stanley’s point is that their wider tape will stand out under more gravity and stress than the other guy’s, but what struck me the most about that commercial was what the guys were doing. They were having fun, just being guys! Being creative, having a friendly competition, taking full advantage of their environment, tools, etc.

Some women might see a thing like that and “get it” and join in the fun, either actively or as cheerleaders, while others think “Oh, how stupid!” BUT, very few of them could resist the urge to want to somehow join in the fun, because they hate being left out of anything, especially something that is obviously creating an emotional rush. Why? Remember that “boredom” thing we’ve been talking about, their worst enemy of all and definitely the archenemy of your relationship? Living vicariously through our emotions is just as good to them as their own, because it ignites their emotions quickly.

So what exactly can we extract from this hilarious TV commercial that will help you in your quest to light a fire under your wife and get her deeply and aggressively involved in having a great relationship with you? I’ll bet it’s more than you think at first glance…

First, take a lesson from the guys about having fun. Don’t apologize for being a man, CELEBRATE IT! And make sure you don’t fall prey to that ancient maneuver where a woman induces you to give up your guy friends, your favorite hobby items (“boy toys”) like hot rods or motorcycles, etc., because she feels as if she’s competing with them.

BOOM! That was the sound of you or a man somewhere close to you reading that paragraph and stepping on a land mine. I did NOT just say that you have license to be financially irresponsible and go out and buy a bunch of “boy toys” you can’t afford, nor did I say that the only reason a woman might ask you to give up something is because she doesn’t like the competition. We have to keep things in balance, remember?

If you still have your “toys,” and they pose no imminent threat to your family, then by all means you should keep them, but if you’re into drag racing, crash your car once a year, and your wife announces she’s pregnant with your first child and it’s time to limit the dangers in your life for the sake of your child’s future, then you need to talk about finding a new outlet for your drag racing passion.

If you already gave up your “toys,” you should bring them back into your life if and as you are able to afford them. Creating a financial strain is bad enough when it’s for survival items, and you may induce her to leave by adding a strain just for toys.

And what about her? Using the pregnancy scenario again, if she suggests selling a hot rod to finance the building of a nursery because money will be too tight if you don’t, then you have to look at that idea with due respect and run some honest and accurate numbers, but if she wants you to sell your hot rod to finance her upgrade from a perfectly good, late model Toyota Camry to a Lexus instead of her getting a job or kicking in something of her own, that’s a trap, and a test, and giving in establishes you as a wuss at best and a jugular vein to hang on and suck dry at worst.

As far as your guy friends, I’m talking about real friends, not just people who hang around because they don’t have anything better to do. If somebody you’re calling a friend has a bad attitude, doesn’t respect himself or you, has substance abuse issues, etc., and your wife suggests to you that you fire him and find a better friend to hang out with, you should take the advice, but if he’s really a friend and a positive influence on your life and she’s just jealous of the time you spend with him and the “guy fun” the two of you have together that in no way has a bona fide negative impact on your family, then you should not give in to pressures to cut him out of your life…

…BUT! Don’t let the time you spend with him leave your wife so terminally bored that she starts creating drama to get your attention or resorts to an affair, either! That’s cutting your nose off to spite your face. Invite her to join in the fun, and tell her about all the cool stuff she’ll be missing out on if she doesn’t join in. Women can’t stand to feel left out of anything if they have even a remote chance of facing boredom. Again, they can live vicariously through us and get juiced up on our emotional energy because they have incredible capacity for exploring emotions and using that exploration to invoke their own emotions. But beware…

If you’re going to promise her fun, you have to make good. If you’re promising fun at some gathering where the lot of you is going to sit around stony-faced watching a TV tube, that’s not going to cut it. “Fun” for her is going to have to be something with visible excitement, laughter, and emotional energy, such as yelling and cheering. It also helps if it’s something you can coax her into trying after you get her there. The more involved she is, the less likely she can be bored and the more likely she’ll be glad she’s with you.

You can draw all that, and more that I can’t get into today, from a simple 15-second TV commercial. Good lessons and examples are where you find them. However, as you can see, tuning the mixture and getting everything “dialed in” (I’m not a NASCAR fan, but the National Hot Rod Association and I go WAY back!), can be a little complicated, unless…

…you’re tuned in! You need to know how to listen to and read a woman to find your way through this jungle and make these decisions. You need to know which issues are legitimate in your specific circumstances and which ones are tests to check your manhood or ploys to rob you of it.

That’s where a lot of my fellow gurus fall short. They give you great information about the creation of attraction, which when you’re dating and trying to get into a relationship is indeed your primary concern, but they don’t give you what you need with regard to evaluating the relationship or communicating with a woman accurately to make sure you can maintain and escalate the relationship in a pattern of sustainable growth that will make it work for a lifetime.

(A notable exception is Shelley McMurtry, who does get into more than attraction, and while she currently is not married or in a long-term relationship, she does try to keep men focused on more than just getting to their next date or sexual encounter. She is linked elsewhere on this page and I strongly recommend that you at least sign up for her newsletter because she is very emotionally aware and good at describing female issues and emotions to men without getting lost in the drama as some do.)

A man can walk through a mine field with a smile on his face if he knows where the mines are; otherwise, you pick your way through, step on one, and pay the price for a long time, if not for the rest of your life. If you’re in a relationship, you are in the mine field. It’s just that simple. What you need is the map!

Your map to a great relationship is in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," which you can download at http://www.makingherhappy.com/ with just a few mouse clicks. Get yours right now, and put it to work. Make your life fun again, and put an end to your daily routine of walking around on eggshells because you know the mines are there but don’t know where they are.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Without further ado, meet Alyson:

Dear David:

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

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

Can you help me?

Alyson

My response:

Hi Alyson!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Take care,
David

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kicking Up Your Relationship or Marriage With a Post-Holiday Surprise!

Girls love surprises, right? Of course they do! And right now is a great time to give them one because it’s the last thing they might be expecting.

Is everybody ready for New Year’s Eve? Right now you probably think you are, but you won’t really be until you finish reading this. It’s a brilliant idea that one of my students inspired.

He said that he’d had a lot of success presenting a gift to his wife a few days after Christmas, because by that time the expectation of a gift was completely obliterated, and she was like a little kid as she received the unexpected. A great call on his part!

However, not all of you use the Julian calendar, and not all of you celebrate Christmas. So let me broaden the scope here so that everybody can use the idea and then let’s kick it up a notch as well! Ready?

No matter who you are or where you live, this can be used a few days after any holiday upon which a gift is traditionally given – birthdays, anniversaries, the beginning of a new year, etc. It doesn’t matter what the occasion as long as it follows a traditional gift-giving day by no more than a week or two. For those who celebrate Christmas, or this year, Chanukah as well, New Year’s Eve on the Julian calendar would be a perfect time, because it’s festive, adult, and potentially exciting.

Caution: DO NOT do this after every holiday, because it makes it predictable. Don’t even do it so often that she expects a gift at all; but it’s fine to do it often enough that she wonders if she will and there’s a little anticipation. Also make sure that you vary the day; don’t always do it on the third day after, or exactly a week after, or in the case of Christmas and Julian New Year’s, always on New Year’s Eve. Keep a little mystery going so that the surprise is heightened instead of spoiled.

Now, let’s kick it up a notch. Make it an extremely personal gift, something that screams out that you wouldn’t give that gift to any other woman, and if any other woman is getting it from another man, it’s an accident that happened because he’s as imaginative and playful as you are. I’m talking cooking or having catered a somewhat exotic meal, and maybe dining naked by candlelight. Or a se’x toy if she’s into them, along with an invitation to a date in a hotel room where the kids can’t hear the noises she makes as you use it on her. Tickets to the amusement park you went to on one of your first dates, stuck inside a pair of edible undies with a hotel reservation confirmation number.

Some outrageous combination of sexy, loving and fun that shows you put some thought into it is what we’re looking for here, and it doesn’t have to be expensive at all. Instead of a hotel room, the phone number for a baby-sitter or a forged note from a trusted friend or relative saying that your children are invited to their house for the evening or the night can work just as well. If her tastes are too conservative for toys or edible undies, maybe a deck of erotic coupons or something. Enlist the help of a female friend if necessary, but again, I will caution you to not use one of her friends because they may be secretly competitive.

The parameters for both the gift and activities surrounding it are limited only by your personalities and tastes, and don’t be afraid to push the envelope just a little. If you’re new to this newsletter and haven’t seen my prior advice on choosing gifts for women, see my free “What Women REALLY Want” report; it’s the last chapter. You can download it at your convenience, and don’t forget to share my free reports with your friends and help them to get their own relationships and lives on track!

So that’s the plan, Gentlemen! Capitalize on some time of the year that she won’t be expecting anything because she just received something, and make it something personal, intimate, loving, sexy, and fun, something that could only come from you and only go to her. (That’s why you combine the exotic place or activity with a mass-produced gift like a sex toy, to personalize the mass-produced gift and make her feel special in receiving it, especially if you’ve wrapped or packaged it in some manner that a department store would never think of doing.)

It doesn’t take striking looks, lots of money and power, fancy cars or boats, or genitalia that look like they were grafted onto you from a horse to sweep a woman off her feet, and as readers of my book, "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," will tell you, a little of the right things goes a LONG way. If you’d like to join us, come visit me at http://www.makingherhappy.com and I’ll start you down the road to happiness in the fastest and most effective manner possible!

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

Party Advice for Men in Relationships and Marriage

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

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

Hi David,

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

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

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

Johnson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Retail Therapy, a Sure Sign of a Much Bigger Problem in Your Relationship or Marriage, One That You Can Fix!

If you’ve noticed your wife (or yourself!) buying things not for the benefit of ownership, but for the thrill of making the purchase, you have a problem on your hands. Yes, you are responsible, but it’s something you can easily fix…

I wish every one of you could know how much fun it is at times to be me and do what I do with and for all of you. Yes, there’s a lot of stress and frustration at times, but the success stories are exhilarating and some of the questions I get are just downright hilarious, like this one. Meet Kent:

David,

My wife and I have been married for 18 years, and we love each other deeply. However, we’ve fallen into that rut that everybody seems to fall into. We do things together and talk, but we just don’t seem to have real fun or real intimacy anymore. We’ve done nothing but sleep in our bedroom every night this year but three, and I know exactly which three they were.

If it weren’t for our hobbies, I don’t know what we’d do. I spend much of my evenings in my workshop making jewelry boxes, turning pens, and doing other small woodworking projects, and my wife watches mystery and cop shows on TV. Every few days, she’ll get particularly antsy and fidgety and announce that she’s “going out for retail therapy” and come home with a bunch of stuff that she never wears or uses and it just ends up cluttering up the house, and then she complains about it and gives it away.

I keep telling her that she’s giving away our retirement when she does this, and that she should keep receipts and return items that she’s not going to use, but she claims that’s too embarrassing for her. I’m at the end of my rope. Can you tell me how to explain to her why she needs to stop this?

Thanks,
Kent

My response:

Hi Kent!

There’s no amount of explaining that you can do that will help the situation, and that’s not because you’re wife is stupid, impetuous, or enjoys trying to put you into the poor house. It’s because she’s bored. The thrill of the purchase gives her a temporary rush of adrenaline that relieves her boredom for about long enough for her to get home, then she’s over it, and the purchases go into storage where she doesn’t have to look at them and admit that the purchase was a mistake and face her embarrassment.

I don’t see your name on my customer list and you’ve only been on this newsletter list for a little over a week, so I’m going to bet that you have no idea just what a destructive emotion boredom is for women. In a nutshell, it has much of the same impact on them that sheer terror has on us. Yes, that’s right. I’ve proven it 100% consistently with several hundred women. They have feelings and thoughts of desperation, are almost entirely incapable of logic, and in extreme cases even have physical manifestations like trembling hands and nausea. The good news is that this is something you can fix.

Boredom is one of the things for which a woman looks to a man to for protection; it’s the price you pay for her nurturing, and it’s a biological mechanism, not a logical one. It’s the result of chemical reactions natural to the female brain, and denying it or trying to find a way around it just doesn’t work. The good news is that acting like a man and using a few well-timed surprises and other little things can give her the small but frequent doses of excitement she needs (something so small as finding a Post-It note with a few well-chosen and heart-felt words on it will more than suffice, as an example).

You’ll find all of that and more explained in my book, should you choose to pursue it. Do the math, and I’m sure you’ll quickly realize that your wife does more damage to your checkbook in each outing than my book will do to it once, and the results are not just guaranteed, their a foregone conclusion if you use it. My customers have proven that consistently, time and again.

Take care, and keep in touch,
David Cunningham

So how about it, Gents? Is something like this going on in your household? Wives aren’t the only ones that engage in retail therapy; men can be just as guilty of it as women. But where men can fix their boredom with a new hobby, women have the need to see a man, preferably their man, acting like a man, and to be entertained by him to some degree as well. They look to us for leadership (NOT control), and when we fail to provide it, boredom quickly ensues.

Boredom really makes women crazy. And it makes them incredibly vulnerable to attraction.

That’s a double-edged sword, as some of you have found out a little too late in life. If you realize your mistake and create attraction for her to relieve her boredom, she’s swept off her feet and good to go for as long as you keep it up, but if somebody else creates it for her, it is possible for her to turn her back on you completely, especially if she has tried over the years to tell you that the problem exists and your inter-gender communications skills have been lacking enough that you didn’t understand what she was saying, because when that happens, a woman takes it that you don’t care to hear her, not that you can’t do it. Why?

Because she thinks that you speak and listen the same way she does, just as you think that she speaks and listens the same way you do, and no matter how much you want it to be that way, it just isn’t so. Both of you can easily learn the other’s natural communication style and quickly come to terms (you can easily communicate accurately with a woman by following three simple rules), but you do have to learn and then use what you have learned.

That doesn’t take a staggering intellect; just a genuine desire. It’s not rocket science, Gentlemen. It’s women. They make up a little more than half the world’s population, and if it were that difficult, our species would have been extinct long ago. But the knowledge you need has been ignored and even buried for so long that you never got the opportunity to learn it.

Instead, you had a bunch of idiots telling you that to impress a woman you take her to a chick flick and cry with her, and you spend more on clothing and skin care products than she does. Oh, and let’s not forget that absurd business about buying their love with expensive jewelry and other gifts, or impressing them with big money and expensive cars. A bunch of pure, unadulterated B.S., or “bovine fecal matter” as we used to say in the service.

So what’s going on at your house? Maybe your wife’s not indulging in senseless shopping sprees, but is she happy? Fun? Engaged in your life and happiness? Or is she acting as bored, frustrated, and confused as you may be right now as you read this? Or would you even know?

Why take the chance? If you were hit with a divorce right now, what do you think it would cost you, in both financial and non-financial terms? Most of the men who write to me to say that they desperately need help because their wife just filed for divorce also say that they didn’t know that there was even a problem, so yes, that’s a fair question that you really need to answer.

Now, for a bigger question: If you could read a book that could mitigate some or all of that cost, putting you back into a happy relationship, or getting you out of one that you never should have entered with some dignity and finesse, not to mention having a friend for an ex-wife instead of someone waiting around every corner to stick a knife in your back, would you read it?

When I had to answer that question, there wasn’t even a book to read. I had to write one! But you can read it; indeed, you can start reading it in the next few minutes. Just go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage." You’ll see what I mean, and you can thank me for it when you’re done. For now, just get started! The longest journey ever completed started with a single step, and for you, this is the one.

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

Turning Back the Clock to Better Days of Relationships and Marriage

Familiarity may eventually breed contempt, but in the near term, it’s going to breed boredom as couples fall into a rut. Here’s a great way to get out of it…

Did you ever wish you could turn back the clock, back to a time when your relationship was fun and exciting? When laughing, naughty play, and earth-shaking physical encounters were not a matter of “if,” but of “WHEN”? Think about what brought you to the point of making that wish, and you’ll quickly see why I tell you that you can turn back the clock in an instant.

What did you do when you were in high school, hormones raging, not having yet learned that rejection happens more often than not, not having grown too accustomed to seeing your wife in a baggy robe or sweatsuit with hair and make-up unattended, not yet beaten down by a job you don’t like, kids screaming in the middle of the night, etc.?

Or if it wasn’t you that did what I’m about to talk about because you were already too timid and insecure to score a great date on the weekend, do you remember what the other guys did, the ones who did enjoy that success and bragged about it every Monday morning when everybody returned to class to either tell of high adventure or lament having spent another weekend playing video games?

Regardless of which side of the fence you were on, it’s time to go back to high school, and if you did it wrong before, it’s time to do it right. It’s all in the naughty play, projecting the attitude that you’re all about the fun, not about needing sex or approval. It’s about having adventures, like sneaking away to a seedy hotel, or making out in the back seat of your car. It’s about surprise picnics that lead to sneaky sex in the woods, covert caresses when the kids (or the other people in the grocery store) aren’t looking.

In short, it’s about doing all those things that you did when your relationship was fresh, new, exciting, and hotter than nine kinds of hell, or learning how to just do all those things you wanted to do then instead of being afraid of rejection. It’s not so hard as you’re thinking…

Women live in a state of needing a higher level of emotional energy going at any given time than we men need. Hence, they delight in anything that gets it going, especially having a man genuinely enjoying having fun with them – WITH THEM, mind you, not at their expense. Both positive and negative emotion will work, and you have the opportunity to make it positive before she takes matters into her own hands and starts a fight to blow off some steam.

Yes, they do that, and the reason is perfectly simple: It’s far easier and faster for her to create negative energy than positive. Something positive takes time, cooperation, and/or planning, where negative simply takes a choice to take something the wrong way, or get mad about something benign. And you get to decide which it’s going to be if you’re on your toes.

So when you see her bent over picking something up, don’t just stare at her butt and wish you could squeeze it, SQUEEZE IT! Or sneak up behind her and tickle her, or tug the waistband of her undies if it’s showing. Just get a rise out of her, preferably with something both fun and sexy, but at least something fun and playful. Get back in touch with that hor’ny teenager that you used to be, and do those things that you either did with impunity or that you wished you could do like the “popular guys” did. Why do you think they were so popular in the first place? Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t their looks! It was their fun-loving, confident attitude.

If you find yourself having covert interludes outside your house, don’t just do it and go home, celebrate it. Mark the spot as a favorite in your car’s navigation system (Garmin, TomTom, etc.), or keep a “covert mission log” together. Give her something to remind her of all the fun that you have and it will stir up more longing for fun and avoid both the doldrums and the inexplicable explosion that ultimately comes when she gets bored, not to mention the affairs and other problems that will happen if the boredom goes on too long.

You can really get creative with that covert mission log, too. To create an extra adventure, find some way to record the position in terms of latitude and longitude (a GPS device is extremely handy for this) on a slip of paper with nothing else, and have your wife store the slips in her treasure box. Sometime in the future, have her extract one of these slips of paper from her treasure box, and use the latitude and longitude to try to find the spot. If you can find it within an hour or two, have a repeat performance to celebrate. After all, it must be a good spot since it worked the first time! ;-)

This isn’t rocket science, gentlemen. It’s simply the result of knowing what women want and need, especially that part that is different from us, but yet not in conflict with us. It’s the result of knowing that women crave having us act like men instead of scared little boys or couch potatoes who were born with two hands so that we could operate a remote control and a beer can at the same time. It’s the result of knowing what a man is, and what is natural for him to feel, and that it’s usually not just okay, but highly desirable, for him to act upon those feelings in all but extreme cases.

How do you learn all that? Easy! Go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and spend a few hours reading the wisdom of the ages, that which women have proven that they want you to know most, and then the rest of your life being a man, a real man, sought after by women and loved, adored and nurtured by his wife.

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

Relationship and Marriage Success Story: What Attraction REALLY Feels Like to a Woman

A woman writes to describe how overwhelming her feelings of attraction are. It’s a real eye-opener!

I don’t know how things are in your neck of the woods, but where I am, you couldn’t ask for more beautiful weather, at least when the occasional momentary thunderstorm isn’t dumping a quick deluge on my cars and garden, saving me the trouble of washing and watering, respectively! It’s time to throw a few racks of ribs in the smoker and have friends over!

I got a letter from a new subscriber last night, and I’d like to share it with you, because he asks a very important question, and about as succinctly as possible. Meet Brad:

Hi David,

What does this “attraction” you talk about feel like to a woman?

Thanks,
Brad

I got another wonderful letter in December from a female reader that goes a long way toward answering the question, the kind that really makes this job a pleasure, and we’ll start with that, because there’s nothing like going to the source when you need to know something. Meet Bethany:

Dear David,

I hope this letter finds you and your family doing well this holiday season. As the seasons change and the temperature becomes colder that is when you really get to know a person when most of the time you are in close quarters during the cold weather. I guess for some this may seem like a death sentence, but for a few of us lucky ones it is the best time of the year.

What I wanted to share with you today is something that happened to me just a couple of days ago and when I finally understood just how strong attraction can be and knew it was worth all the work we had to do to make it happen. My husband and I have been working really hard on making our marriage as close to perfect as one can hope for, and with your book it finally seems that we have it all. I have never in my life loved being with anyone the way I do this man and yes I know he feels the same for me.

We both work hard, and we have six wonderful children to keep us busy at home, so we try our best throughout the long days we put in we make time for each other. For instance this past Friday my husband and I meet at a local restaurant near his office to have lunch. We ate and talked and I loved just sitting there with him and looking into his eyes as he smiled at me when the conversation made reference to what we wanted to do later on that night at home. I could talk with him for hours and never be bored. I have never been so happy in my life, but then the check came and it was time to leave and go our separate ways for the rest of the afternoon. I was really upset because I did not want to leave just yet, but I knew we had to. I never said anything to him as he walked me to my car and kissed me and told me he would see me later.

In the car however driving back I became so upset I started to cry. At first I was not sure why I was upset, but then I knew why. I did not want to go back to work, I wanted Allen my husband to take me home and to spend the rest of the afternoon in bed with me. I was just so attracted to him I wanted to drop everything for that day and be with him. It did not matter to me that we both have jobs that if we are not on top of things we will miss major orders that leads to paydays for us. I should have just called him. I wouldn’t have had to say much for him to know something was wrong and he probably would have figured out what pretty fast because he’s gotten so good at reading me. But we both need to work because keeping six kids fed on what we make doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for play time.

What I am saying is that I am so attracted to this man (I know how you hate it when people say “in love”) I was willing to give up half of a day of work and maybe even my job just to be with him and spend time alone. I think about it every day that we are not together and I know we have to work, but the attraction for him is so strong all I want is for him to have sex with me all the time, to feel his body next to mine and his lips kissing me. I never thought that I could truly say I would kill for attraction, but I know now that I could and would if anyone came between me and this man I love so much.

Thank you so much for making my marriage the one thing in this world that I want to keep for the rest of my life and giving me a real man one that is all I have ever dreamed of.

Bethany

You’re most welcome Bethany, and thank you very much for taking the time to write and tell me about it. People are always very eager to write or call someone to complain, but so seldom take the time to say “Thank you” or to tell someone that things went well for them. If we all took an extra minute or two out of our day to let those around us know that we appreciate the time they give us, the world would indeed be a happier place. Think about this…

Life is the most precious of all resources, and your own life is the most precious of the precious, at least if you are mentally and emotionally healthy, because not one second of it that passes can ever be replenished, and when someone thinks enough of you to give you some portion of their life, you owe them the appreciation due such a gift. Indeed, respect the time of others as being a measure of their life, and make an effort to show up on time and conduct yourself in a way that does not waste the time and life of others.

Okay, I’m getting down off my stump now. So how would you describe the feelings Bethany is speaking of here? Rather honeymoonish? Somewhat unusual for two people who have been married long enough to have six kids? You’re quite right! It is unusual, but nowhere near impossible, nor abnormal. Being happy together in a good relationship is a natural state for two well-matched people to enjoy, especially when they can communicate well with each other and enjoy doing so. If you’re not there too, you’re missing out, but you can fix it. How?

Do what Allen and Bethany did! Jump over to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” because it will get you there if you just take advantage of the experience of the 118 couples who tested everything that went into the book. Life’s too short to spend it any way but happy, so get moving!

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

Distant Early Warnings Can Help Save Your Relationship and Marriage

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

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

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

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

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

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

First, women like to talk, a lot, right? They like to discuss feelings and events, and many of them have a powerful drive to give an accounting of the events of their day and the people they interact with, even when the parties don’t know each other and really don’t care. (For example, I once had a secretary who would tell me about her cat’s activities and what her aging father had for dinner the night before, knowing full well that I was allergic to cat dander and didn’t like the way her father brow-beat her, and didn’t want to hear about either of them.)

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

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

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

The same goes for headaches, unless there is some kind of migraine or brain tumor issue, or possibly a neck injury. The really bad ones just don’t come that often, and if they do, whomever is suffering them is looking for medical help, not just sitting around complaining, right? It’s just not that hard to pop a couple of aspirin or something, and there really aren’t that many people around who prefer the attention they get from the martyrdom of drug-free endurance of a headache so much that they’d actually do it. There’s no logic to it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Don't FIND Time, MAKE TIME, If Your Relationship and Marriage Are to Last!

A reader asks how to find some time in a busy schedule to spend with her husband. In her case, and maybe in yours as well, finding time isn’t possible because it just isn’t there to find. When there’s none to be found, you have to make some!

I love hearing from the women who subscribe to this newsletter as much as the men. Their questions are just as relevant and they prove that women really do want time with their men to be intimate and nurturing and to have some fun. Meet K.:

Hello David,

I have a question for you. My husband and I work together as we own our own construction company. We are together 24 hours a day, and need to find a way that we can spend time together but as work. It seems like when we get home we are to tired to have any intimate time together and when we are at work we are at work. I want to know how I can separate work from pleasure with him. We don't have much family that we can rely on to take our son, and the one's that we do have that take him are sick right now. So when we need our alone time we want it.

How can we get this?

K

My reply:

Good morning, K!

Under the constraints you’ve listed, you can’t, so you’re going to have to make some changes, at least small ones. You’re going to have to change your priorities to make that time together actually important enough to take it, and then manage your schedule so that you can, no matter what that takes. Maybe until your babysitters get well, you might have to schedule one day a week where the two of you disappear at lunchtime for an hour or longer, to an intimate lunch or a hotel or whatever, or schedule a late opening one morning so that you can have a little while at home after your child has gone to school before going to work, or something like that. How you do it isn’t important as long as it doesn’t destroy your business, but you have to schedule the time and then take the time instead of just waiting for a window to open.

I’m all about achievement and getting the job done, and this was a very hard lesson for me to learn as well; very early in my own marriage, my wife and I were both over-achievers and found ourselves in serious trouble before we realized that while we love each other dearly, we had inadvertently let our work schedules take over our lives, and had evolved from husband and wife into roommates and business partners. That was one of the problems that led to me doing the research to write "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and one of the first problems that I put to the test group to solve.

It turned out they all had it to some degree, either with spending all their time with their jobs or their kids, and for most, just scheduling one date and one lunch per week was enough to keep them close and engaged while continuing to get things more under control, and all of them found that once the schedule was made and acknowledged, it was very easy to keep to their commitments as long as they were smart about scheduling the time, avoiding times that were common for meetings, times that were in the middle of project start-ups, times that were during peak customer flow or when they knew they would have problems getting a sitter, etc., and they always secured a sitter before planning the date – “We need a couple hours some evening this week; when would be good for you?” was the question. And when the sitter gave them a date, it was set in stone, and only an event that produced fever or lots of blood was a good excuse for breaking the babysitting engagement and spoiling the date.

This isn’t as hard as what it may sound. An hour or two per week isn’t going to make that big a difference in your business, if any, and it will make a world of difference in your life together. Just realize that you’re together for the long haul, and you should therefore try to give each other the best part of your day instead of what’s left over after everybody and everything else has worn you out all day.

Speaking of which, when you do schedule an evening date, try to keep your day-time schedule a little lighter than other days to make sure you aren’t too tired to enjoy the time together, and never let yourself think that you are too tired to enjoy some time together without at least trying it. You’d be surprised how rejuvenating a little intimate, playful time together can be, because it gets your adrenaline pumping. Sometimes a long day doesn’t create so much fatigue as it does simple frustration and depression, and some time together in celebration of a job well done and a rough work day brought to a close can be the best pick-me-up of all.

Give this a try, and let me know if I can be of further help. You can do this.

Take care, and keep in touch!
David

A lot of couples make this mistake. They try to find time instead of making time, not realizing that when your life is in overdrive, even small amounts of time scattered through the week can make a huge difference in keeping your relationship on track, and if a couple hours a week is going to make the difference between your business folding or succeeding or the difference in you being able or unable to pay your household bills, you’ve got bigger problems than you realize and need to be finding some professional help. It’s like arguing over a nickel at the cash register; if that nickel is going to break either you or the vendor, you’re already broke.

Make the time for what’s important, and get your priorities straight. You will most likely outlive your career, your parents, and your friends by a very long time, and while you may not outlive your children, they will be moving out of your house somewhere around age 20 and you won’t be seeing that much of them after they are gone. Your partner, on the other hand, is supposed to be with you for life, right? Common sense should tell you that your partner should therefore be your first priority, and if they are not, then you need to stop and figure out whether your priorities are wrong or you’re with the wrong partner.

Finding a new job, making new friends, or even making new babies is relatively easy compared to finding a true life partner and soul mate, and if you’ve found one and lose them, that lengthens the odds of finding another somewhat, does it not? Look at your life, and get your priorities in order, and then do whatever it takes to support those priorities. Yes, it’s really that simple.

When it comes to your partner, Gentlemen, doing what it takes to keep her happy and striving to nurture and excite you is a simple matter of communications and manliness, something you aren’t taught in school, and have no hope of learning from watching television unless you’re able to home in on that tiny percentage of programming that shows men and women being men and women, and no this homogenized New Age mess of political correctness and utter wussification and victim mentality that seems to be swallowing the world.

For a tested and proven, tutorial and definitive reference on “keeping mama happy so she keeps everybody happy,” go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage." Life’s too short to let it pass under-lived and unenjoyed, and as anybody who has ever used it will tell you, this book is “the hook-up” you’ve been looking for.

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 October 14, 2007 edition (about 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. 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 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. Whining about being over-worked is entirely different from saying that you've assessed risk and it will be in everybody's best interest to bring more resources to bear on the project, so don't think that you're telegraphing weakness by saying that you need something if you really need 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 or the warden at the jail.

Balance may not be the key to all things in the universe, 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 problems 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 especially the children (which many women are unfortunately VERY prone to do) 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 this subject 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 fo the communications lessons in my free “Break-Up Busting 101” report.) 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…

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

What Women REALLY Want In Relationships and Marriage, and What Happens When They Don't Get It

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

You might remember in the June 20, 2008 edition of this newsletter, my buddy “Rick” sent us something that one of the ladies on his dating site had sent him, which demonstrated perfectly how women want a real man. Well, he’s sent me another, and this one is equally revealing, as you will see:

Hey David,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks again, and keep spreading the truth.

Sincerely,

Rick

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

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

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

And then what will happen?

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

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

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

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

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

So the information supply is small, the majority unreliable, and most people, especially men, don’t even know they need it. And yet our species continues to multiply. It’s just that the divorce rate continues to increase faster than the population size.

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

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

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

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

The Most Accurate Barometer of Your Relationship and Marriage Status

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

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

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

Hey David,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mother's Day: A Great Time to Know How to Buy the Perfect Gift for the Woman in YOUR Relationship or Marriage

It’s “Mother’s Day” in the U.S. as I write this, which reminded me that it’s past time to revisit the topic of buying the perfect gift for a woman. This is a difficult proposition at best, unless you have paid attention to her and come to know a few intimate details about her. Why? An excerpt from “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” explains it…

One of the most common topics in the questions I get, indeed, probably next after “How do I save my marriage?” is “How do I buy the perfect gift for my wife?” so for all those who missed it last time, here’s great advice for buying a gift for any woman on your list. (And yes, I know this might have been handier a week or two ago, but if you don’t learn to take a little initiative and be prepared to handle the most basic issues in married life, there is not much I’m going to be able to do for you anyway, so look at the calendar and plan ahead, and if you don’t see an obvious answer to your question, e-mail me at support@makingherhappy.com in a timely manner and I’ll help you.)

And, by the way, the same rules apply for any other woman in your life, whether it’s your mother, sister, daughter, special coworker, vendor, customer, neighbor or whomever. Why? Because they’re all either women or women-in-training (like your daughter! LOL!)
I’ve published this excerpt from “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” several times and always received a lot of positive feedback on it, so if you’ve not yet read it or tried it, do yourself and the women in your life a favor and do so now. Indeed, even if you have read it before, call it “a necessary review” and read it again to make sure you have it down pat before embarking on this most difficult, crucial and rewarding of male quests.

Without further ado, the perfect gift for any woman is:

A Gift That You Know She’d Like Because You’ve Paid Attention to Her!

Women want to know that we think about them from time to time when they’re not around, and notice them when they are. Is that really too much to ask? To know her well enough to know her favorite flower, perfume, color, scent, time of year, activity, etc., things that give you serious guidance when it’s time to surprise her with a gift? Can you really say that it’s that difficult? You can know something as intimate and guarded as her dress size by simply looking in her closet and checking a few tags.

How would you feel if you were allergic to wool and a woman bought you a wool bathrobe? Or allergic to peanuts and a woman bought you a box of peanut brittle? Or you were tone deaf and a woman bought you a music box or a guitar? If you had a traumatic experience as a child, like being attacked and mauled by a dog, and a woman bought you something that reminded you of it, like a puppy, especially of the breed that attacked you?

Men do truly stupid and insensitive stuff like that all the time, but we seldom hear about it except during an explosion, at which time it may have happened too long ago for us to even remember it, things like hearing a woman say she’s going on a diet or a pair of pants is a little too tight and then buying her a box of candy or insisting on taking her to an expensive restaurant that violates her diet or causes her to have to face up to having grown beyond her favorite dress for such occasions, or even worse, inviting her to a day at the beach after “being told” (being signaled) that she’s needing to go on a diet.

Have you never noticed how when they buy us a gift, it’s always well-thought out? Even if they don’t know what to get us and end up getting us socks or a necktie, the socks or tie will match what we have perfectly, and be the right size. They pay attention to us, and try to make things nice for us when they can. If a woman’s favorite flower is a daisy, she’d rather receive a bunch of daisies picked from the side of the road or even a picture of a daisy that you drew and colored with crayons for her than a dozen roses – the generic gift that every man gives every woman and is so blasted impersonal these days that if fools like us didn’t buy them for women who didn’t want them, nobody would be buying them except for funerals. Indeed, there are occasions where roses are in fact deemed an attempt to appease a man’s own guilty conscience because they have become so impersonal.

Cost doesn’t matter; the gift is both a sign that you’ve been thinking about her and a measure of how much you’ve been thinking about her – it’s your life that she wants to share most, not your wallet (unless she’s a gold-digger – see the “How Much Is Enough?” issue from January 8, 2008 -- see how handy that archive is??? -- if you’ve not seen it, and no, this won't apply to your mother, but can save your hide with the rest of them!). After all the crap they endure from us while we’re trying to learn how to get along with them and do what we’re supposed to do as men, we owe them the little extra effort that the daisies – or whatever is supremely personal for them -- require.

Daisies, even when they are her favorite flower, are by no means the perfect gift either; indeed, if it can die and need to be disposed of, it’s probably a bad choice. Women get sentimentally attached to gifts. In some part of your home (or hers, if you aren’t living together) is probably a secret cache of all the notes, cards, and gifts that you ever gave her, every little thing that ever showed that you were really thinking about her.

When she’s feeling bad, including when she’s sulking after a fight, she’ll go to this secret treasure box and commune with all the mementos that make her feel good about herself and you. You’re actually doing both of you a huge favor when you give her things that while not extravagant, are tangible and lasting proof that you took the time to make her feel special – and small enough to fit in this treasure box!

This means that flowers, chocolates or other candies, pets, perfumes, and anything else that has a short life-cycle, while fun and temporarily exciting, in the long term will have to be disposed of, and she will find these things depressing, even traumatic as she has to separate them from her life, while the “sticky note” that you left on her mirror in the bathroom that simply says, “Can’t wait to see you tonight,” or something playful like “I’ll swap you a kiss for dinner when I get home,” (for you newbies, that remark will start a playful negotiation for intimacy later in the evening if you play it right when she says a kiss isn’t going to be enough to get dinner) will stay with her forever, and may indeed get you back into her good graces after you’ve made an ass of yourself and made her really mad as she digs through her treasure chest of memories and is reminded of all the reasons she keeps you around.

Before we wrap this section up, I need to make one thing perfectly clear: I AM NOT saying that you should never buy a nice gift for a woman. I know some of you tightwads are out there saying, “Cool! I can give her crayon drawings and take the money I would have used to buy her stuff and buy beer and hot rod parts!” No, and you should be ashamed of yourself. I’m saying that you should never use a gift to win her favor or approval, or because you feel guilty, or especially not to make her feel guilty (like buying an expensive gift to pressure her for something sexual) or for any other reason except either you think she’ll enjoy it or you will enjoy giving it to her, and when you do give her one, make it obvious that it is specifically for her, well thought out, and has something of you in it for her to relish as a keepsake, especially if it shows that you spent time to make it happen. There will be times when it will need to be expensive, at least to some degree, and if you follow the above rules, you’ll know when that is.

So you see, while holiday gifts should be a little out of the ordinary and may cost more than impromptu gifts, the expense of the gift is nowhere near as impressive, nor romantic, as the appropriateness and personal nature of the gift. Many couples do ask each other if there is anything in particular they were looking forward to as a holiday gift, and if you do, then of course, respond to expressed wishes, but also make sure that there is at least one gift that she’s not expecting, and that is particularly well thought-out, even if you have to enlist the help of your children or her girlfriends (threaten to put a curse on the house of anyone who divulges your secret and DO NOT enlist the help of anyone known to be indiscreet or whom you know to be competitive with your partner or you could find yourself in a trap!), figure out something very special that is so personal that when she sees it, it is obvious that you were thinking intensely and only of her.

(You can also do this with things she asks for, by putting that special little twist that makes something common that she wants special for her, either with the gift itself, or perhaps the packaging or delivery method of the gift, like presenting it to her in your sharpest-looking suit if she has remarked that she misses seeing you in one. Pay attention and use your imagination!)

For example, take a cue from this reader’s real-world situation:

I was discussing this issue with a consulting client (and friend – Hi Joe!), who said that his wife loves coffee, huge mugs to put it in so she can dress it up with flavorings, etc., loves New York City, loves a particular brand of chocolate, and wears a charm bracelet. From this, you can fashion a perfect intimate gift by finding a huge, artistically tasteful coffee mug with a New York City cityscape or something else peculiar to the town that would spark a fond memory for her (like a Yankees logo if the two of you had a romantic experience at a baseball game there), preferably in her favorite color if it’s available, filled with pieces of her favorite chocolate or a gift certificate for a purchase from the chocolatier (if she loves everything that Godiva, Ghirardeli, etc., make, as opposed to having one particular chocolate favorite), and hiding beneath the chocolate or gift certificate, a charm for her bracelet, again something that sparks a romantic memory of an intimate moment shared somewhere. Do you see how this all fits together?

The chocolate is obvious, but it’s short-term delight. To provide longevity, you have the coffee mug and the charm, both of which are related to something special to her, and which will spark romantic memories when she sees them. Everything involved is something personally chosen according to her passions. You see, one favorite aspect is good, but it’s still something that any other woman could receive. By combining all these aspects, ALL OF WHICH YOU CAN BET SHE WILL RECOGNIZE INSTANTLY, you make the entire gift uniquely personal, in spite of the fact that everything is mass-produced. Now, to top it off…

A small, hand-written note or card that says how much you’ve enjoyed having her in your life and how much you look forward to sharing more with her – NO PREPRINTED VERSE OR PROSE OF ANY KIND – includes a permanent piece of you in the mix, and gives her something to put in the treasure box. I have personally seen women burst into tears over simple gifts like this, simply because their man knew them well enough and cared enough about them to make the small effort that it takes to do it. All it takes is knowing your partner, which you should (and will be expected to do whether you have or not!) if you’ve been with her any time at all.

If she’s like Joe’s wife except that she doesn’t like chocolate so much, and her hands get cold when she drives, a nice pair of driving gloves – in the correct size and that match a scarf she wears, her handbag, favorite coat, or something significant like that – stuffed into the coffee mug is perfect. If she doesn’t do charm bracelets and charms, maybe a small coin run through one of those machines that converts it into an imprinted souvenir coin, or a ticket stub you saved from a concert or ball game there, even a subway pass to an event – anything to remind her of a very special time – or tickets to an upcoming event – to create a new special memory – will work.

Know your partner, and choose her gifts based on what you know. Know above all else that the idea behind a gift is to celebrate partnership and make her feel special, not to buy her favor. The idea is to show that you love and notice her, not to be needy or try to buy her, which are creepy and insulting to all but a gold-digger precisely because they imply that you think she is a gold-digger who would expect and respond to such a thing, and no good woman will put up with that for an instant!

Guys, I hope you found that excerpt helpful, and again, this advice pertains to all women – mother, daughters, sisters, friends, coworkers, boss -- under all circumstances, not just your wife. I can’t say it any more plainly or with any more conviction. Over 100 women were brought together for the express purpose of teaching me what makes women tick, what they want from men, what they respond to involuntarily in men, and how to communicate effectively with them.

They did their job and did it well. “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” was constructed from that research, and those women put this book to their partners to test and refine everything we covered. Anything that worked for 90% or more of those couples is in the book, and less effective principles are being refined for updates or discussed in this newsletter as potentials to explore.

It worked for them, and it’s guaranteed to work for you. Download your copy right now at http://www.makingherhappy.com and join the many happy men and women who have brought their relationships back from boredom, affairs, and even divorce proceedings – some in under a week! -- to be exciting, fun, sexy, and richly rewarding, often better than it had ever been, because life’s too short to spend it unhappy, bored, in fear of getting caught in an affair, or celibate.

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

I Shouldn't Do This, but I Just HAD to...

For all of you who are fans of the Garfield comic strip and have not yet figured out what I'm talking about, the following is offered for your consideration... ;-)



Jim Davis obviously gets what so many don't, that being a guy is about doing "guy stuff" and allowing women to join in, not about doing "girl stuff." We must lead, not follow (and not control, either).

Just a fun thing for the middle of the day, and thanks to Jim Davis and Universal Press Syndicate for continuing to share the exploits of the only cat I happen to like, well, except for Tony the Tiger and The Pink Panther, of course. :-)

Take care,
David Cunningham

Why Bother Making a Great Relationship and Marriage, or Fixing a Bad One?

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

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

Dear David,

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

Bob

My reply:

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

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


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


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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Take care, and wake up,
David

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

Stop digging. If you don’t know what you’ve done to make your relationship a mess, go to

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

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