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

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

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

Dear David,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Daphne

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

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

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

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

I would also caution you that being with a woman is NOT what it’s all about. Being happy in your own skin, feeling good about who you are and the life you live, being independent and able to handle what comes at you competently and rationally, and having enough adventure to be challenging are what it’s all about. Do THOSE things, have THOSE feelings, and you will not only attract the right woman, you will be attractive to all women, in addition to being happy in your own right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The answer has several parts:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear David,

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

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

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

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

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

The tail swings both ways.

Sincerely,
Thanks, but no thanks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whom Did You Marry, a Wife or a Mother? Roles and Perceptions in Relationships and Marriage

A reader asks how I can expect him to act naughty around women when they are so “pure and virtuous and never have naughty thoughts.” No, he’s not from another planet; he’s been programmed to think that way, as a great many men have. Let’s fix this…

I sometimes get letters from men who just can’t believe that getting naughty with a woman will be well-received. They have a misconception that women are somehow “too pure and virtuous” to do things like tell dirty jokes, pass gas, or most ridiculous of all, think about or enjoy sex! Meet Juan:

Hello David.

Thank you for your e-mails. I like to read them every day. I am having a hard time with your idea that I should be “naughty” with my wife. She is a good and pure woman, just like my mother. She never swears, takes good care of our children, and goes to mass every week. How could such a woman be naughty?

Juan.

Juan, Buddy, it’s time to wake up. Going to church, raising children, and keeping her language “G-rated” has nothing whatsoever to do with how she wants to act or be treated in the bedroom, nor did it have anything to do with your mother. You’ve made the same two mistakes that almost every man alive makes:

1. You put your mother on a pedestal, not allowing her to be human,

2. You put your wife on the same pedestal when you allowed your skewed perception of your mother to define your perception of all women, especially your wife.

Think with me here for a minute, all of you. There was very little that you could get away with as teenagers, right? I mean, even if you managed to sneak out of the house without getting caught sometimes, or went somewhere other than where you told your parents, or dated somebody for awhile that you weren’t supposed to, you got questioned about all those things at some point if not all the time. Why do you think that is?

For the same reason that you do it to your own kids! You’ve “been there and done that,” and it’s high time that you realize that your parents have been there and done that too! For many people it’s difficult to accept that your parents enjoy having sex, because you don’t want to envision them having sex, but you know that you enjoy it, so why would you think that they – BOTH OF THEM – didn’t? Or don’t???

Now, take that concept a step further and a bit sideways. Unless they have been traumatically abused or have a serious hormonal problem or physical damage to their genital area, women like sex as much as men, possibly more so, because they don’t need to “recharge” between orgasms, and many don't even need the orgasm to enjoy sex. Indeed, for most women, while they enjoy orgasms, it is the intimacy of sex they really need, so while the orgasm is the point of sex for the man, it is merely the end of sex for most women.

They also have the same naughty streak that we have, the one that makes us like dirty jokes, talk about sex with friends, fantasize about it, masturbate, etc. If you’re treating your wife as if sex is some kind of chore or duty for her instead of something she enjoys, it’s going to be just that, a chore, or even worse, an embarrassment that she feels because she doesn’t feel that you can accept her sexuality. That’s just wrong on so many levels…

You think not? Think again. In my own life, the dirtiest jokes I’ve ever heard have been told by women; not just trashy, rough women in some dive of a bar, but classy women that you’d think were Fortune 100 executives after spending a few minutes with them. When working as a business consultant, I often overheard conversations between women that rivaled anything you’d ever see in an adult sex film, not to mention tales of gas-passing that peeled the paint from the walls and other bodily functions, and about any other “coarse” behavior you would typically think to be distinctly male until you’d seen otherwise.

Women don’t just “let it all hang out” around men for reasons that make for too long a discussion to get into here (anticipated criticism, low self-esteem, survival instinct, to name a few); most women have to be lead into naughtiness by a man to feel comfortable being naughty around him, the way many men wait to hear a woman swearing before swearing in front of her or waits for her to make the first move in sex, which are obviously bad ideas since women prefer to being lead over leading in nearly all cases.

There are differences between men and women, such as our communications methods and sophistication, that are readily recognized and overcome, but sexuality and naughtiness are not among them. We all enjoy both; the exceptions are very, VERY rare, and usually the result of some form of trauma or abuse, or some kind of sick religious or sexually bigoted oppression. Accept it, celebrate it, and you’ll both be a whole lot happier. It’s always easier to be yourself than what you think someone else wants you to be.

There’s a lot that you may not know about your partner, or women in general for that matter, that they want you to know and have probably been trying to tell you, but you’ve been either unable or unwilling to hear them. In either case, the result of such an error are fear, frustration, boredom, growing apart, fighting, wanting affairs, having affairs, getting caught in affairs, nasty divorces resulting from getting caught in affairs, celibacy, etc. Why put yourself through any of that? If you’re going through it now, there is a great way to stop it, and if you haven’t arrived there yet but realize that there is a reasonable chance that it could happen somewhere down the road, you’re far better off learning how to prevent it now than having to fix it later, right?

So what do you want to do? Are you one who prays, hopes and waits? Or one who takes action and makes things happen? If you’re one who takes action, here’s the action to take: learn how to assess yourself, your partner, and you relationship to know what needs to be done (even if exiting the relationship is the only thing you can do), how to communicate across the gender gap, and how to do that incredibly fun and sexy alpha male stuff that makes women, especially your partner, want to eat you alive. All you have to do is learn and then do what comes natural as a result of knowing; no acting, no stressing, no worrying about getting caught trying to pull something.

Life’s too short to spend it feeling and doing all those nasty things listed above that happen when a relationship starts cooling off, so don’t go through that. Go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" right now and start getting your relationship back on track – back in honeymoon mode – right now!

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

Are You a Man, or a "Wannabe"? Be Recognized As a Real Man in Your Relationship and Marriage

Whether you know or not, your choices, tastes, words, and actions tell a lot about you (and also influence you!), so you need to know what you’re saying to the world, including women, because being a wannabe is a major league wussy turn-off.

Let’s start 2010 with manly resolution. Never again will we say, “I want to be,” or colloquially, “I wanna be.” We WILL be; whatever it is that we desire to be, we will put forth the effort to make it happen instead of blowing a bunch of money (and major attraction points) trying to look like we’ve done it, because it’s pathetic. Take a good look at this with me, because you may not realize you’re doing this…

When I drove to my late best friend’s home for a memorial service, it was a long, rather boring interstate highway drive, so I was dictating text and ideas for upcoming newsletters and book content into a micro recorder when an aggressive driver went flying by me, cut too close between me and the car ahead of him, and almost flipped his vehicle trying to keep control. There were several things about the event that jumped out at me immediately.

First were the vehicle characteristics. He was in a late-model Ford Excursion, one of those mammoth oversized SUV’s that pretty much amount to a well-appointed utility van. The differential housing (the big round thing between the rear wheels for those of you who aren’t automotive-mechanically inclined) sat a scant six inches off the ground, giving it no more ground clearance than most passenger cars, and it rocked and swayed like a boat on choppy seas, yet despite the pathetically low ground-clearance, soft suspension, and a custom paint job that must have cost a couple thousand dollars, this idiot had put bright chrome off-road brush guards across the front grill and tail lights.

The immediate impression he created was that of a downtown attorney, banker, realtor, or some other kind of high-paid urban desk jockey, who wanted to be a rugged, off-road exploring kind of alpha male, but what he had achieved was the look of a person who had suddenly came into a lot of money, didn’t know what to do with it, and created something that looked like a pimpmobile and a Land Rover had created a child.

The other thing that jumped out was that his rear windshield was covered in NASCAR racing stickers. I don’t have anything against competent sports driving in a well-maintained sports car – I do it myself frequently – but an oversized SUV driven at over 100MPH and trying to execute tight, race-track style maneuvers in such a vehicle on a somewhat crowded interstate highway in a rural area that only provided for two lanes in each direction doesn’t say that this guy is a competent sport driver, or even a racing enthusiast. It says that he’s a racing “wannabe” who doesn’t have the sense, taste, or motivation to buy a vehicle designed for that kind of driving, nor the self-respect to conduct that kind of driving in a vehicle designed for it. We’ll not even get into his total disregard for the safety of the other drivers around him.

The funniest thing was that my wife, who is normally pretty non-judgmental and doesn’t usually comment on such events, even though they scare the mortal crap out of her, said, “Damn! You need to send that idiot a copy of your book.” When I asked why, she said, “Because no real man would ever be driving like that or driving anything that looked like that.” I simply laughed and said, ‘You’re quite right.”

So you see, Gentlemen, it’s like this. Women are a whole lot more attentive than we usually give them credit for, and they notice everything about all of us. Single women are comparing all of us against each other, and those partnered with us are constantly comparing us to both their ideal image of a man and to all the other men around, not to mention against how we were when we met them.

What are you giving the women in your life, especially your partner, to compare against that ideal image, or the other guys, or the “old you”? Do you do the things you want to do, achieve the things you want to achieve, etc., or are you terrorizing other drivers in a veritable death trap because you want to be a racer, wearing long hair and motorcycle T-shirts but don’t own a motorcycle, talking about football plays that should have been made in the Sunday game instead of coaching or volunteering at a local school or junior league, reading woodworking magazines when you don’t even own a handsaw, etc.?

Don’t just try to put up the image of doing something you want to do, DO IT! BE a man, a man of adventure, action, fun and competence, and enjoy those things you want to do, and you will be seen as an achiever, a real man’s man, a guy who lives IN the game instead of as a spectator. You won’t believe what a simple change like that will make in your self-esteem and the way the people around you perceive you; there will be a transition from “that annoying big-mouthed know-it-all wannabe” to “that adventurous man’s man who walks to his own beat, has fun and gets things done.”

Just take action! It’s really that simple. And if you think I’m full of crap and don’t want to accept the wisdom and experience of all the couples that help me develop and present all this advice, ask the woman you love and the other women you know how they perceive wannabe’s and men of action and how they respond to each, and they’ll tell you the same thing. Whatever you do, just stop being an armchair quarterback, a second-guesser, a full-time spectator, etc., and get out and DO something, and enjoy it. ANY hobby will do, as long as you enjoy it and challenge yourself with it.

The first thing you’ll notice when you do is that whatever it is you decide to do, if your partner sees you having fun doing something extraordinary, she’ll be there cheering you on, maybe even doing it with you, and getting hotter than nine kinds of hell seeing her man being a manly man who does manly things instead of sitting around flapping his jaws or making an ass of himself trying to look the part of a role that he can’t play. The simple act of turning over a new leaf like this can breathe new life into a stale relationship quickly, and is a great place to start in rolling back the clock to the honeymoon days and a great way to start the year regardless. And there’s no time like now to turn over a new leaf, is there?

The new year is a great time to start any self-improvement effort; indeed, any day is a good day as long as it’s today, but there’s always that bit of extra momentum caused by years of programming that the new year is a time for a fresh start as books are balanced and closed, annual reports are done, etc. Or you could just do what you’ve been doing, and keep feeling the way you’ve been feeling – bored, frustrated, tense, walking on eggshells, suspicious of an affair, seeking or having an affair, celibate – you know what you’re feeling, so do something about it. It’s your move, so make it a good one.

Start this year with a renewed commitment to a better life, starting with a better life with your partner. Go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” and get with the program that any man can follow and every man can love.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Heather

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But…

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

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

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

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

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

How Are Your Friends Affecting Your Relationship or Marriage?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Women and Affairs in the Real World, and How to Protect Your Relationship and Marriage

A reader shares some shockingly revealing ads from real women looking for real men, as well a man who targets them, and Gentlemen, you really need to understand this…

There are several of you who have moved out of incompatible, irreconcilable marriages who are now dating who send me examples that are useful to those of us who are still married, especially ads by married women looking for thrills and the men who target them. Rick, a very astute reader and now friend, has contributed in the past, and every time he does, it’s an eye-opener, just like today. Check him out:

Hey David,

As usual, the above newsletter [“12/05/09 - Why Do Women Have Affairs? Knowledge is Powerful Preventive Medicine In Protecting Your Relationship and Marriage”] is true to its hard-hitting form. Please allow me to provide (yet more) proof that what you say is the truth. I was on my online site earlier this evening when I saw this married woman had looked at my profile. Check out how she describes herself:

"I am a recently separated, and soon to be divorced, fun lady. I do not have any children and am ready to sew my wild oats (since I never had the chance before). I want to find someone who is only interested in having a good time. I'm not ready for a relationship so if that is what you want, do not reply. Am interested in some physical love. Husband could not satisfy my needs and I need someone who can.”

Now look at what she wants:

“I just need someone who is willing to go out with me and have a good time. I want you to show me what I have been missing all of these years - out on the town and in the bedroom. If this sounds like something for you, please respond.”

Another textbook example of how boredom, left unchecked, can doom a marriage. Gentlemen, please buy David's book so that you don't become another statistic! Do it for YOU.

David, Let me say for the record, that I have not, nor will I ever get involved with a married woman. However, there are plenty of men who will! Take a look at this Personal Trainer's confession:

I'm a lonely wife's dream, and hubby's worst nightmare.

In 30 years in the training business, I've probably had affairs with more than 40 married women. Most of them were in their 30s, married eight to 10 years, with kids, and their husbands weren't paying attention to them. They felt neglected. They didn't feel attractive. Their husbands had become preoccupied with work.

In the beginning, I was scared about having sex with my clients. I was a shy, overweight kid and didn't go to the prom, so I didn't have much confidence at first. Then I got this physique and I discovered that I had this ability to charm women, and I made up for lost time. When I was 17, I put my first ad in a small paper, saying I was looking for clients to train. I had just won Mr. Bodybuilding Teenage New York State, and in my ad I was looking lean and ripped.

The first day a woman called me and said, "Do you really look like this?" She asked what my girlfriend thought of my being a trainer, which I thought was strange. (I now know that when a client starts asking what my girlfriend thinks of my training, she wants to know if I'm available.) She told me she was married, that her husband traveled a lot for work and was never home. She said she found that being so sedentary had made her put on some weight.

The next day I went to her house. I'd spent a lot of my savings and gotten some help from my mom to buy a really nice dark blue warm-up suit and brand-new white Adidas sneakers so I would look like a professional trainer. When the woman opened the door, she was wearing a black negligee. I went home and told my mother and father, and they forbade me to go back. My parents canceled my ad and said, "This will probably be a problem the rest of your life."

It happens all the time now. The wives today feel they have just as much right, and drive, to have a playmate as their husbands do. It's natural to want to have sex with your trainer. Remember that training is very hands-on. I'm touching them, motivating them, encouraging them, listening to them, relieving their stress and channeling their energy in a more positive way. Just as their husbands used to do at the beginning of their marriage. I'm trained to get inside their heads and push the buttons that will motivate them. But I'm also in their heads in other ways. They connect with me emotionally. It's very important for a trainer to be a good listener.

I once had an interior-designer client who was very beautiful. Like every client, she started opening up about her life; women do the same thing with their hairdressers and trainers. "My husband isn't attentive to me, he used to be so passionate," she explained. It was her birthday and her husband had forgotten. I suggested we have lunch, and she said, "How about dinner?" And that's where I went wrong. For a couple of months after that, we would work out, go back to my place and have sex. I would whisper sexy thoughts to her when I was spotting her at the gym. And then it ended. We got caught by the husband. He wound up calling me up and crying like a baby, asking me to stay away from her.

I don't feel bad about having had affairs with married women, because they were feeling neglected and they just wanted to be loved. One woman said to me her husband had never looked into her eyes when they made love. He couldn't have been that smart, because women love the eye contact. I come from a very passionate, Italian family. When I make love to a woman, I like to have spontaneous sex. I like to do it in the elevator, on the beach, underneath the table in the restaurant. I like to make them feel young, mischievous, alive. If they can have a taste of it again, they can realize they haven't lost it.

I'm 47 now, and over the years I've learned to watch out. I realized I couldn't be sleeping with everyone's wife in town. Number one, you start sleeping with them and they want to stop paying, and I make $150 an hour. I was never paid for sex. I would never do it for that. Because for me it would ruin it. I like to make love to please someone. When they say, "I feel like a real woman again," it's the same thing as when I train them and they tell me how terrific they feel because they fit in clothes they haven't worn for 10 years. The high of training is the same high as making love. I've written a screenplay about it all, called "The Trainer." It's "Shampoo" for the 21st century.

That was pretty self-explanatory.

Take care,
Rick

Rick’s right. That is indeed painfully self-explanatory. If you’re not being a good husband, there are others standing in line, or waiting in the wings, or crouched in the bushes waiting to pounce, to have all the benefits of being married to your wife but none of the responsibility or drama. And once a woman hits a certain level of boredom, she will come unglued with the same lack of inhibition that you feel when you get too aroused to say, “No,” to sex or to stop when she says, “No,” to you.

Make no mistake. This reaction is primal, biological, and has nothing whatsoever to do with love or the lack thereof, and if you’re not giving your wife a reason to enjoy being with you, somebody else is or soon will be giving her a reason to enjoy being with him. Period.

There is no emotion, logic, or “morality” that will interrupt this process once it has started, and if you knowingly allow it to start, you have nobody to blame for it but yourself when it is complete and at best, your wife is confessing and asking you to work things out with her and get your marriage back on track, or at worst, she’s announcing that she’s leaving you for him, and taking everything you own with her as punishment for putting her through the trouble.

So what do you do to prevent it? Be a man! And be a husband. A real husband, one who makes her feel alive, engaged, challenged, understood, and appreciated, as she tries to make you feel, not some guy who goes to work and sits with a remote control and a beer in front of the television all evening while she tends the kids and spends the rest of the evening in some Internet chat room – being hit on by these other guys! Get a clue!

And believe it or not, you’re a lot more likely to need much more than a clue to know what being a man and a husband are really all about. Even if you’re lucky enough to grow up with a good role model, which most of us weren’t because our fathers didn’t grow up with a good role model either, the examples we are barraged with daily – bungling, wussy beta pseudomales who somehow trip over themselves and fall into the arms of success by complete accident if at all – are there in your face constantly to confound and corrupt any legitimate concept you may have. But you still have a chance…

There are a few of us around who have not succumbed to all this wussy crap that’s been shoveled at us since the 1970’s, or have succumbed but learned from our mistakes and awakened from that wussy slumber, who can be that role model for you. A very few of us even have the writing, teaching, and training skills to help. One of us that I know of has even researched what seemed to be the right formula, tested it on hundreds of women and couples, and has made it available for you with little more than a few mouse clicks. Ummm, that would be me. ;-)

It’s called "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” and it’s all that, and more. Go to http://www.makingherhappy.com/ and download your copy and see for yourself. Rick did, as did many others, and now they own their lives; join them.

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

Why Do Men Have Affairs, and How Do You Stop? More On Protecting Your Relationship and Marriage

An obviously troubled man writes to ask how he can STOP having affairs and get his life together. Let’s see what we can do for him – and YOU!

Guys and gals, lightning has struck! I have for you today proof that men can recognize and admit that they do not like having affairs, and do indeed want a stable, monogamous relationship, possibly even enough to do what is necessary to make it happen. Only time will tell whether this man has the courage of his convictions, but I’m sensing a very genuine desire and sense of priority in his words, and his language indicates that he’s going to step up and take charge of his life. Meet James:

Good morning,

My name is James and would like to share with you problems in my relationship.
It’s been ten years now with ma girlfriend. The problem is I love her but I’m having affairs.

I’m so insecure, jealous coz I think she’s doing the same thing, I don’t trust her at all.

I would like to overcome my problem and stick to one partner, get married, give ma seven year daughter all the support she can ever get.

I don’t think I’ll cope if she have an affair.

I’m OUTGOING, spend most weekends out with friends, on drinking spree,
Come weekdays, I’m a darling.

The problem has affected our sex intimate life, we get intimate once in a while.
She has feeling and will end up having an affair.

Please help.
James

This is obviously a man who is bottoming out, realizing that he’s at a crossroads, and is deciding that he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life the way he’s spent the last ten years. I call that a damned good choice, based on what he’s written about the last ten years. My response:

Hi James,

I cannot help you while you’re pursuing affairs, but if you’re truly ready to stop and straighten up, listen to reason, and get your life on track I can definitely help. Before you can do anything, you’re going to have to identify the reason you are having affairs and eliminate it.

If you’re doing it because you have no self-esteem and are trying to substitute the acceptance and approval of other women for the genuine self-esteem created by achievement, then you’re going to have to start creating real reasons to feel good about yourself and stop thinking that chasing other women is going to make you feel any better about anything. Approval and acceptance must come from within, not from somebody else.

If it’s because you are bored, or because your wife is bored and the two of you aren’t intimate, then you just need to get back in tune, learn about how to create attraction and communicate effectively, and nature will quickly take its course and get you to where you need to be. That’s not hard to do, but you need to know how and you need to want it to make it happen.

Unfortunately, your weekend “drinking sprees” point toward low self-esteem, because a man who feels good about himself doesn’t spend every weekend poisoning himself and looking for cheap thrills with other self-destructive people; a drink or two is no big deal, but you’re describing a binge, and you know as well as I do that repeated bingeing is self-destructive behavior. A man who feels good about himself spends that time enriching himself with his hobbies and enjoying time with the ones he loves, not abusing himself and, potentially, those around him.

Low self-esteem makes you very unattractive to any woman who spends any time around you, and causes you to seek approval, acceptance, social confirmation, etc., from women, who may find you charming and witty when both of you are drinking or drunk, which is a huge red flag in itself, but after they sober up and see that you’re swimming in your problems instead of solving them, they quickly move on and the affair ends.

You have some pretty serious work ahead of you, and my book, "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," can help you if you read and apply it. Its primary purpose is to deprogram you from all the wussy crap that the media and other idiots have heaped on us over the last forty years or more and let the real man within you come out and take over, a man who is competent, confident, attracts and understands women, and is the kind of man that every woman wants to live with, a man-caught in a self-amplifying cycle of self-improvement instead of a death-spiral.

I’d suggest you give it a try before you become an alcohol-related death statistic, because all that is really in front of you is a series of choices to live a better life. The decision is the hard part; following through is easy once you’ve committed to change, because you get to see results and feel good about them, which in turn motivates you to achieve better and better results. Self-esteem-building becomes a self-perpetuating cycle that replaces the cycle of approval-seeking and self-destruction you’re caught in now.

Take care, and keep in touch,
David

I saw a purchase notification from James within 24 hours, and I fully expected it. Why? Because he’s not in denial about his situation; he’s accepted it and admitted that he is the cause of his own problems. When people finally face the fact that what they are doing isn’t working and start asking for help, they usually go through with fixing it.

There are two exceptions. The first is that group of people who define “help” as having someone do everything for them instead of providing the information and support they need and then getting out of the way and letting them do what needs to be done so they can own their own achievement and feel good about it.

The second is that group who are looking for validation of their mistakes instead of solutions to their problems, and they will engage you in conversation on the premise of wanting help, but they don’t want to talk about a solution; instead, they want to talk about what they did and why they did it and how you must understand such-and-such. If you hear the words, “But you don’t understand…” the next thing out of their mouth will be some kind of plea to ignore the reality of their bad choices and tell them that they were justified for screwing up, they’re still a “good person,” etc. Don’t waste your time with them.

So if you’re ready to admit that things aren’t the way they should be and that you are ready to take an active part in the solution, that, Gentlemen, is where I come in. I’ve done the research with hundreds of couples to find out what makes for good and bad relationship and how you can evaluate your own, what women want and what truly makes them tick, and how to easily return to that natural male behavior that flips their attraction switches and turns up the heat, saving them from their primary enemy, boredom. Do you realize what this means to you?

Do you remember the story about the man who found the bottle, rubbed it, and out came a genie, who granted him one wish, and he said he wanted a bridge from Los Angeles to Hawaii so he could drive his wife, who was afraid of flying, there for a vacation? When the genii said it was too big a request, the man said, “Then I guess I just want to know what makes women tick,” and the genii said, “Hmmm…tell me more about this bridge.”

We were all taught through such jokes and stories growing up that this is something that we would never know, yet here before you is the opportunity to know, once and for all, that most mysterious and seemingly forbidden of all things. Indeed, Sigmund Freud, the renowned psychologist, is famous for saying, “The great question... which I have not been able to answer... is, ‘What does a woman want?’” That conundrum being solved, the question now is “Do you have the sense and the guts to reach out and grab this knowledge that evaded even the likes of Sigmund Freud and put it to work in your life?”

Like James, you now have a choice before you. Are you going to continue to sit there in the dark picking up a few crumbs from this newsletter every day, or even worse, in denial about the cause of your problems and looking for someone else to blame? Or are you going to secure for yourself and your family the next best thing to the keys to the universe, the knowledge that will put you on the road to being all that you can be, in your eyes and hers?

That should be the easiest decision you ever made in your life, so jump over to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" right now, before you do another thing, because as they say in The South, “Time’s a wastin!” and life is definitely too short to waste it.

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

How Many "I Love You's" Are Enough for a Great Relationship or Marriage?

MUST READ: Some women keep writing about wanting to hear the words “I love you” more often. Others write complaining they hear it too much! Just how much is enough?

There are times when women’s emotionally-driven drama and antics really get on our nerves as men. There are also some things that appear to be dramatic because they are so irrational, but are in fact not dramatic at all, and things that you need to be aware of and address when necessary. This is some of the most important information ever presented in this newsletter, contains advice for both men and women, and if you miss part of it you can absolutely wreck your relationship with what you skipped over, so read this carefully and in its entirety and make sure you understand it. First, meet Tasha:

Hi David,

Can you tell me how to get my husband to stop being a needy little twerp? Every time his mouth opens, he says, “I love you.” It’s like a compulsion. He can’t end a discussion, enter or leave a room, or hang up the phone without saying it. It’s more like a greeting than a declaration of any kind of feeling. He’s coming across to me as saying it just to get me to say it back to him. It’s been happening for a month now, constantly since we went to my high school reunion (20 years) and I saw my high school boyfriend there (and his wife and pictures of their five children) and we talked for about 20 minutes and had a dance. He’s making me nuts!

Please help,
Tasha

Tasha’s problem was handled privately by a counseling session with her husband, in which I helped him realize that a 20-minute conversation to catch up on 20 years of absence and a dance, which didn’t even turn out to be a slow, intimate dance, was nothing to worry about, but do you see her primary complaint? Too many “I love you’s” equated to habit and insecurity, not an expression of love. Now for the other side of the coin, meet Carol:

Dear David,

I have read every newsletter you have ever written, and I have read your book as well and loved it. I had to learn to do many of the things in your book since I was taught a totally different way to handle relationships. I am sorry to say that I was one of these women that would let a man into her life and then totally turn it over to him to run because I wanted to be led. I learned that I was not letting them lead me, but was letting them run over me.
Now I see just how wrong and how dangerous it was to me and to my future to let men run my life.

The reason I am writing this letter is because I want to know something and I felt like you would be the one to help me answer this one.

I know that my boyfriend loves and wants to be with me and that I am the only one in his life, but I still like to hear it from time to time. I know that sounds like I may be needy or insecure, but I’m sure you know all women like to know that both parties in the relationship they are in have the same feelings. I am sorry if that is wrong but that is how I feel.

Thank you for you time,
Carol

My reply:

Hi Carol, and thanks for writing. I’m going to point out something to you here, something that I know you’ve read in past editions but may have missed the significance of, and then I’m going to clue you and everyone else in on why this is the way that it is and how men should handle it.

First, I want to caution you and all women, for reasons you will fully understand in a moment, that while the words “I love you” are good for an emotional rush, they should never be trusted in and of themselves, period. Your knowledge of whether a man or any other person loves you should come from their actions; a man, especially a predator, could put a bullet or a cudgel right between your eyes or open your throat from ear to ear while saying “I love you,” but no man can keep up the act that creates the illusion of love for very long at all if it is indeed just an act. It doesn’t take a lot of testing and there’s no need for suspicion; simply check that his normal actions say that he loves you before accepting the words. For instance…

Does he beat the hell out of you and then say, “I’m sorry, Sweetheart! I really love you!” If he does, he’s a lying sack of crap.

Does he drink up his paycheck, and when he tells you there’s no money for groceries that week, say, “but I love you and everything will be okay”? No, he doesn’t. He loves his bottle, not himself or you.

Does he work at his job, come home, and spend quality time with you (and the kids if you have them)? Does he make decisions that consider how they will affect you as a couple? Does he treat you with respect, as if he values your company and your input, instead of putting you down or even worse, whining about how he can’t live without you? If so, listen when this guy says he loves you, because he does. His actions prove it.

Take care, and keep in touch,
David

Now to the hard part: Why is it that even the most secure women, those who live in a relationship in which it is blatantly self-evident from a man’s actions that he loves her deeply, constantly complain that they don’t hear “I love you” enough?

Guys, I have to admit that this evaded me for a long time, and it wasn’t until I learned how women communicate and about their socially-oriented nature that it made sense to me, and most of them are unaware of it as well. You should have seen their faces when I asked them about it; it was like a light coming on when it struck home for them. Ready?

Women need to hear this because they are biologically-driven to need to hear it, just like they need to hear a verbal commitment to a relationship after a couple of months of dating or they walk out on a perfectly good thing. It’s part of the emotionally-driving biological mechanism that distinguishes their behavior, especially their socially-oriented nature and their communications methods and infrastructure, from ours.

They need to hear the words when they already know we love them because they are born communicators and also because they need that little romantic/dramatic lift that it creates when it “seals the deal.” They also need to see that we can say it frequently enough without blurting it out every few minutes like some needy wuss who spouts it like a litany to hypnotize her into staying around. It's like their need to share and emotionally milk their problems with their girlfriends; irrational, involuntary, and potentially self-destructive, but nonetheless a fact of life and a need that must be fulfilled, one way or another, by somebody.

Now, how much is enough? Or too much?

That depends on the woman, but generally speaking, no woman I’ve interviewed, when asked how she felt about the frequency with which her man said he loved her, who was satisfied said any more than once or twice a day (once every day or two was average), and for those who were dissatisfied, their men were at the extremes, either pestering or boring them to death with it nearly every time they spoke or going many days or even weeks without saying it at all.

Take heed here: You can say it too often, as well as not enough. Women bore easily, and with most things, less is more, but there has to be some, because none is unacceptable. If you have a healthy love relationship, there should be some intimate moment come along every day or two, or even twice a day sometimes, that makes you realize how much you love this woman. When that happens, that’s when it’s good to tell her, because during those intimate moments is when she’d really like to hear it. It helps feed the emotions that she’s feeling, and if it’s honest, it’s right. No act, no routine, no pressure – simply letting it come out when it’s genuinely on your mind is likely to be just right.

Do NOT, under any circumstances, let “I love you” become a habit. We all hear so many people closing telephone conversations with it, as if it is some ritual greeting, and that’s bad because it makes the experience so mundane and boring. If you’re with somebody who has to hear it every time your mouth is open, that’s a HUGE red flag, because it’s not the emotion of love that she (or he) is feeling; it’s that really ugly one: NEED, the kind that breeds and feeds dependence and insecurity, the leper’s bell of a scarcity mentality at work and a high-maintenance dependent looking for someone to depend on. And then you get to see the scarcity mentality’s really evil twin, entitlement mentality, up close and person as this person becomes more and more demanding. If that’s where you are, you’re in big trouble, and you need to do a serious evaluation of your relationship. And if you’re the one saying “I love you” too much as I’ve described, you need to be doing something to develop some self-esteem, fast, or you are never going to find happiness, even briefly.

Relationships are only complicated when you don’t know enough about how they work, and/or about each other. Learning about them and each other doesn’t have to be a matter of reading an encyclopedia of dry, technical, academically-oriented psychological theories and then trying to apply it without knowing whether the theories even hold water. I’ve seen those books, and if you’ve been looking for answers for your relationship, you’ve likely seen them as well.

They didn’t work for me, and indeed made things so much worse that I had to research and quite literally find enough answers to write a book to have the improvement I needed. If those books worked for you, you wouldn’t be looking here, either, would you?

There’s a better answer, written in plain conversational English, that contains solid, tested explanations of how relationships really work, how women really think and speak, and what they really want, with examples and advice, and the best part is two-fold: you can afford it, and you can do what you find within it. Interested?

It’s called “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” and you can download it at http://www.makingherhappy.com and be reading it in the next few minutes. Go head, do it now, because while all the achievers are reading this book, getting answers and putting them to work to better their life, the losers are sitting around questioning whether it will work for them and going further and further down that unhappiest of all roads, relationship boredom and crisis.

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

How to Choose the Perfect Gift for the Woman In YOUR Relationship or Marriage

“The Holidays” are now upon us, and it’s time to revisit the topic of buying the perfect gift for a woman so you can have time to get it right this year. Selecting the perfect gift for a woman 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…

“The Holidays” are here, as we say here in The States (indeed, Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate it!), and unless you want to be standing in those mile-long lines in mid-December you’d better start thinking about and making arrangements for that perfect gift that you’re going to give your wife or girlfriend this year. 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. The same rules apply, 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 (including a month ago, but I got a question today about how to do this, so some of you have missed it and some are too new to have seen it) and always received lots 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 last-minute 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 August 7, 2009 if you’ve not seen it). 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

Where Have All the Real Men Gone? Fighting the Extinction of Great Relationships and Marriage

Real men, alpha males, are nearly an extinct species, in spite of all the information available to help men avoid drowning in a sea of wussitude. Why? What can you do to protect yourself and reverse the damage that has been done? Will the woman in your life appreciate it? (You BET she will!)

There is something I have to talk about from time to time because it bugs the hell out of not only me, but out of every woman alive. Women and the dating gurus are also mentioning it, so it’s not just me. Men are rapidly deteriorating into miserable wusses at an accelerating rate, and it’s getting scary.

During conversations with men, the most ridiculous things keep coming up. Fights over things that wives have found out from non-family members that they should have found out from their husbands, leaving decisions about outings, dates, etc., to the women, total indecision about career and asking their wife not for input, but for decisions about what they should do! Men being afraid to be men!!! It’s a disgusting and unfortunate by-product of a lot of miscommunication in the 80’s and 90’s.

I still keep tabs on the gurus in the dating world, and Shelley McMurtry has reported that she went into a bunch of bars in a major Texas city where men and women used to “hook up” with regularity, and it was the same story, singles style – the bars full of women, dressed to the nines and obviously looking for action while the men are playing pool, talking to each other in hushed tones with slumped shoulders and drinking, sneaking a peek at the women and mentally undressing them but rarely if ever walking up to them and introducing themselves, let alone initiating a conversation. Again, disgusting!

Being married, I’m seldom in a bar, but on the rare occasions I’m in a bar, coffee house, or anywhere else that single men and women are, I see the men eyeing the women, looking sheepish, and not approaching; the only ones who appear to be taking any action are the nerdy-looking pick-up artists, sporting their peacock gear a la Neil Strauss, in “The Game,” and as Strauss describes finding out at the end of his book, that’s all just a show to get women’s attention, and has nothing behind it worthy of a relationship or that could ever sustain a relationship, and women are so aware of this that they refer to the pick-up artists’ approach as “running game” on them.

("The Game" is a great book, by the way, and while you won’t learn much about long-term relationships other than what to avoid doing if you want one, it’s still fascinating to see how far wusses will go to try to make up for not having alpha male characteristics they could easily develop in themselves.)

When I’m out and watching couples interact, I rarely see a man walking with his head up, smiling and looking confident; he’s usually looking either angry or lost as his wife or girlfriend seems to be leading him around and making all the decisions, and when she stops to talk to another woman, you can see the looks of “yeah, I’m out with stupid wuss-boy here again, and I’ll call ya later and give you a good laugh about his latest stupidity” from across a shopping mall. Double disgusting!

Gentlemen, it is our station in life to make decisions – not to force our decisions on everyone else, mind you – but to be decisive when we have information; strong, and confident to the point of being benevolently aggressive and even a slight bit arrogant, and having the gonads and intestinal fortitude to talk to women about whatever we want or need to discuss with them, looking into their eyes, not at our feet. We are born and bred to lead. There is no excuse for failing in this regard. Nor is there an excuse for being towed around a place we don’t want to be like a little red wagon, or more appropriately, a child being led by the nose or ear to a place to be punished for his bad behavior.

Yes, we’ve been programmed by our mothers, our teachers, ex-girlfriends, Hollywood, etc., to be “nice,” to “share our feelings,” to be “sensitive,” and do a whole bunch of ridiculous crap that literally annoys women to death, whether they realize it as they are doing it or not, but we are not born or built that way. We are born male, with the capacity to be “alpha male,” and it is our natural state. No matter how long and how severely you have been programmed, you can deprogram yourself with a little knowledge and very little effort.

By the way, how are women responding to all these candy-asses? They’re getting more and more bored and frustrated with them, and pushing them harder and harder towards an emotional explosion in hopes of just getting a glimpse of their maleness. They want us to be real men, to the extent of risking a huge fight to see us do it, and when they don’t get what they want, they continue to escalate until your worst nightmare begins: they decide you may be unsalvageable, and then either affairs or divorce proceedings start, because such things will either get your attention and finally call you to action or at least provide them some relief in the form of drama and a change of scenery. (The one partial exception I’ve noted is in marriages where there is a high level of religious involvement, in which cases the woman “wears the pants in the family,” and both parties to the marriage are obviously unhappy, usually stuck in that “comfortably unhappy” state I warn you about.)

At that point, they have nothing to lose either way. It takes time, and they don’t like going through it, and if they see you suddenly start trying to improve, they will cautiously encourage you while skeptically testing you to see if you have the courage of your convictions and will see it through, or just shrug it off and consign yourself forever to terminal wussitude.

You can fix this, starting right now, if you have the desire and guts and of course, know how to read. That’s all it takes. You’re reading this, so you’re one third of the way home already. Go for broke. Go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” right now. Fix this before it gets out of hand, and be one of the few and the proud instead of one of the many and lame.

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

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

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

Hello David,

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

Thanks,
Jeff

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now, for your examples…

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

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

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

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

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

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

What do you need to proceed?

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

David,

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

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

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

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

Sincerely,
Steve

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

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

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

Firing a Bad Partner from Your Relationship or Marriage

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

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

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

Hello again, David,

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

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

Loser

I sent him the following direct response:

Dear Loser,

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

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

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

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

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

Sincerely,
David Cunningham

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hot Buttons and Low Self-Esteem, a Combination Deadly to Life, Relationships, and Marriage

One of your fellow readers feels so bad about himself that he can’t see the simple truth in front of him, a truth that would allow him to be a happy and popular man. Read as he turns around and gets it right…

I’ve been recycling a lot of newsletters lately because many of you are new, those who have been around could use the review, and quite frankly, there hasn’t been anything new to write about, as the array of problems and solutions for relationships and marriages is really much smaller than you might think, and it’s a gross waste of time for me and boring and unproductive for you for me to reinvent the wheel every day. But today, we have a winner.

I’ve written several times about comments received when readers end their subscription to this daily newsletter. The vast majority are either changing their e-mail address (which you don’t really have to do, since if you click the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom and follow the “change information” link on the unsubscribe page you can just change the address without having to unsubscribe and resubscribe with the new address) or they’ve achieved such success that they don’t need the daily support any more; many of those say they check my blog on the weekends looking for unfamiliar articles and new products. But once in awhile, BAM! A comment that makes for a great newsletter.

Such is the case today. A young man happened to sign up just in time to catch a series of newsletters about female boredom and recognized it as his problem, but his frustration level was so high and self-esteem so low that instead of seeing the lights turn on to illuminate his path to improvement, he heard the gavel rapping against the judge’s bench as he was convicted of being boring and sentenced to life without the company of a woman. Read his comment and you can really feel his anger and pain:

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

Name: Matthew (Name changed to protect his privacy)
Email: xxxxxxxxxxxxxx@gmail.com
Signup Date: 02/12/08 05:00 AM Eastern

Comments:
Well, because I was very frustrated from reading the mails and reading that women are so bored of people like me.

Never had any success with women, except when I was drunk. I am 28 years old, and last 8 years have been full of delusions, insuccess and the utter ruin of myself, all because I focused on women.

I have enough problems happening in my life now than to be bashed continuously by your mails David, saying that basically I am an inadequate man because I cannot attract women.

If I have to destroy what I am to get a woman, to hell with them.

I’ve never stood in this man’s shoes, but I’ve stood next to him often enough, especially in helping all of you, that I could tell that he wasn’t just spouting punitively, but reaching out for help. The clue was that he took the time to state his problem and his history instead of just making some simple statement that I had angered him. You REALLY have to keep a level temperament and an open, rational mind to do this job, because as you may already realize, people with relationship problems can be highly emotional and not be able to clearly communicate their needs.

Luckily for all of us, the state required to do this job well is my natural state, so I wrote back to him:

Greetings, Matthew,

I have never bashed you, I have in fact encouraged you and given you what you need to feel better about yourself. And if you will continue reading for a moment, I'm going to help you.

What you seem to be reading is that you need to change for women. That is absolutely the opposite of what you need to do, and I have stated that incessantly and consistently. You need to change how you see yourself and what you DO, not who you ARE. And you need to change for YOU, not them. You need to focus on YOURSELF, not women. That is the reason you have failed, and the reason you only have success when you are drunk. Bear with me...

The primary side effect of alcohol consumption, aside from inebriation, is to interfere with nerve activity in the part of the brain that provides inhibition and discipline. Hence, when you drink, you return to that "I don't give a crap what others think about me, I'm going to have fun just being me and being a man" mode that you were born in. Then when you sober up, you return to "programmed" behavior that causes you to focus on women and try to please them, which they find boring because every man does it and it makes a man look like he's seeking their approval instead of just having fun and inviting them along for the ride.

It's not YOU that you need to change; it's your idea of what it takes to get along with women. You don't have to cater to them, defer to them, chase them, or follow them around. You focus on your own good time, and they will see that, see that you don't pursue them and simply enjoy them and enjoy having fun with them, and they will pursue you simply because you are above the other guys, above trying to get their attention.

That is what I have been explaining in my newsletters, what a large portion of my book is about, and what I have been encouraging you to do. Your low self-esteem because of your lack of success with women has made anything that you do wrong a hot button, and upsets you before you get a chance to realize that being popular with women is a lot easier and a lot more fun than trying to chase them while considering yourself unpopular with them.

I write about a lot more than boredom. I do spend several days at a time exploring various aspects of topics, and the last several days have been about boredom. I also talk about communication, leadership, naughty play, attraction building, selecting good women and avoiding bad ones, and a whole lot more, and you would be doing yourself, not me, a favor by resubscribing and hanging with the program for awhile. I'm not here to make you feel bad about yourself; I'm here to help you shed the programming and misconceptions that make you feel bad about yourself so you can feel good about yourself and have women feeling good about you as well. It's your move. Make it a good one.

David Cunningham

Apparently that was what he needed to wake up and see that his problem was fixable, or at least that someone was willing and able to help him. He replied to that e-mail quickly:

Hi David,

First of all let me thank you for the mail you have sent me.
I appreciate very much the fact you have spent time to write a mail for me, and this had me reflect upon your points.

I am facing a difficult period, where I am basically paying for all my careless behaviour of the last five years. In the sense that I have stopped focusing on myself, my career, and I have let everything slip away. All because my frustration with women did not let me reach that tranquility that is the prerequisite for happiness.

I totally agree with what you say, and I have bought THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage. I believe it can help me on my way to regain my lost confidence and my wrong idea about women.

Thanks Dave, I will let you know how it progresses.
Matthew

He gets two demerits for calling me “Dave” (I really don’t like that and never did, but in his defense, he didn’t knowt, otherwise it would be ten), but he gets major points for stepping up to deal with the problem instead of being the typical wuss who is looking for someone to blame for his problem or validation for his mistakes instead of a solution. I’ve not heard from him in the last few days since I received this, but in this business, silence consistently indicates that somebody is succeeding, because they seldom write to the problem-solver when they’re handling their problems satisfactorily and don’t have questions. They either write with questions or to say that they have fixed the problem and offer thanks for my help.

So does any of this sound familiar? Do you remember having a much easier time with women when you were younger and more free-spirited, or inebriated? If so, loosen up and enjoy your life instead of trying to cater to hers. It will relieve stress for both of you, especially if you know what she enjoys and you happen to choose things that both of you enjoy.

Have you found yourself getting mad at your wife when she tries to tell you that something is bothering her? Prepare to receive one of the keys to the universe:

Stop taking it that she’s telling you that you’ve failed, and recognize that she’s telling you how to succeed instead of hooking up with another man who already knows how.

You know all too well that she has that option, and you should respect both her and yourself when she chooses to talk with you about problems instead of exercising that option. She does have others, you know.

Oops, maybe you don’t know how to interpret what she’s telling you about problems, or even how to recognize that she is. Did you know that if she asks you if you think everything is going okay in your marriage that she’s actually telling you that she thinks things are going badly and wants to talk about it? What else have you been missing?

Have you noticed that there is a lot of competition over who’s right, or whose idea is best, or whose way something is going to be done? If so, do you recognize that this competition could indicate simple frustration and punishment on her part, which is entirely fixable, or deep compatibility problems, which are not? Would you know how to tell the difference?

I do, Matthew is about to, and thousands of others have learned how. I have their unsolicited testimonials to prove it. Here’s one I got today, literally when I sat down to write this edition:

Hi David,

First, I want to thank my ex-wife, for turning me on to your program. And while you may not advertise it as such, it IS a program. The book is only the first part of it. After reading the book, continued reading of the newsletters provides both a refresher of subjects, and support to help kick the old habit of being a wuss-bag. I continue to hone my relationship skills by reading the newsletters. It is like AA for wusses (WA?) – “Hi I’m Andrew and I’m a wuss”. But I’m NOT anymore. And that is thanks to you, your research, your “program”, and your continued devotion to helping men and women bridge the gap between their different views on life and relationships.

You’ll be happy to know that after 14 months of separation, and being divorced for 10 months, I am moving back in to my house with my ex-wife and children. So, there is another success story for you. I’m not sure I would have gotten here so quickly, if ever, without you. Thanks again.

Andrew

His wife divorced him, then turned him on to this newsletter and my book. Think about that! Sometimes women will take extreme measures like divorce to communicate that there is a problem when the basic method (“Are you happy with our marriage?”) doesn’t work, because at that point, if something isn’t done to correct the problem, divorce is coming anyway.

Would you know how to tell if she was really done with you or if she wanted to work with you to save your marriage, even after a divorce? The clues are subtle, but easily identifiable and 100% reliable, if you know what to look for, and I can teach you that, too.

I don’t know if Andrew is saying he was separated for 14 months before the divorce and 10 months since then or if the whole thing happened in 14 months, but good grief, Gentlemen, either way, he’s going back home! This stuff isn’t rocket science, and the testimonials like this one (not to mention the utter absence of refund requests) prove beyond any doubt that it works for those who simply use it.

So what about you? Are you going to wait until you’ve been kicked out of your home for a year and divorced before you take some personal initiative and make things right? Andrew is living proof that it can be done, but why go through all that hassle – and attorney fees – of a divorce when you can fix it now, while it’s so much easier. Help will cost you enough to buy a meal; a divorce will cost you enough to buy a new car ($27,000 average in the U.S., according to the last survey I read) just to cover the legal expenses, not to mention moving, rent and utility deposits, etc.

Talk about not being rocket science! Do the math: risking a meal to get out of the cost of a new car or more. That’s the same ratio as if you handed me $1 and I handed you back $675. How many times a day would you repeat that transaction??? I strongly suggest you get with the program before you find out that “Hell hath no fury like a woman ignored” and pay heavily for the education.

How? Easy. Go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and spend a couple hours reading (four if you’re a really slow reader). The lights will come on, you’ll see your mistakes and how to fix them, and life will very quickly become good. Very good. So as I told Matthew, do yourself a favor. It’s your choice, so make it a good one, and make it NOW.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Guilt!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A no-brainer, right?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See what I mean?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why put yourself through that?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hi David,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hugs,
Daphne

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

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

Could this happen to you?

Has it already?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Shortest Path to Being the Man Women Can't Resist and Having a Great Relationship and Marriage

An odd chain of events and the resulting train of thought have provided something that many of you will find useful: EXAMPLES of the man women find most irresistible, and how to make sure she sees him!

Today has been an unusual day to say the least. I post this newsletter for broadcast at 8:00AM Eastern time every morning because that’s when statistics say it is most likely to be read by the most people, but as many of you know, it is composed at least one day prior to broadcast. (Those of you who want an early jump can always check my blog at http://blog.makingherhappy.com because it gets posted there as soon as it’s finished, often 12 hours or more ahead of the e-mail broadcast!)

I mention that so that the following comment makes sense: I’ve been at my computer for eleven hours straight answering reader e-mails! That’s not necessarily odd, but their polarization certainly has been. The gross majority of them have been questions about attraction, especially what a woman needs to see for it to be triggered, especially if it has been lost and the man is trying to recreate it.

There are a few of my newsletter lesson editions that always receive abnormally high reader response. I retransmit them every few months because most people just don’t have the time to browse the newsletter archive and it’s easier for them to see the best-received lessons if I send them out quarterly or semi-annually, but I don’t use or even have boilerplate responses to reader e-mails or questions. While many of them have common elements, each situation is different and requires a personal response, so can you imagine what focusing on the same subject that intensely for eleven hours might produce?

This came after I was asked today by a blind man how he might project a more attractive image to his wife, who had grown a bit frustrated with his borrowing of her eyes, and he confessed that he had been asking her to do things that he did himself when he was alone. I reminded him that instead of feeling and acting dependent, he should feel and act heroic, relating to him a flood of stories that came to mind about athletes who had lost legs and ran races on their prostheses, and Def Leppard’s drummer who lost an arm and instead of retiring, re-engineered his setup and retrained himself to play as well as he had before with only one arm and his feet.

Then came the first revelation: men with this heroic, leader’s attitude that women find so irresistibly attractive don’t do things to prove that they can, they do them simply BECAUSE they can and want to. They live to IMPROVE, not to PROVE. They literally define authority at the most basic level; they don’t care what anybody thinks of them or their achievements. They achieve because it suits them to do so, because it MAKES them a better man, not because it makes them APPEAR as a better man. There is no form of authority, role model, or leadership higher than that.

I tripped over another great example in that same letter. In trying to explain the hero’s attitude and how he could continue to “borrow his wife’s sight,” but in a way she found attractive instead of a way that made her feel like his keeper, I said (paraphrased), “Assuming that you lost your sight and have a sufficient frame of reference to remember a sunset, there is a big difference between saying to your wife, ‘I wish I could see a sunset’ and saying, “I want to see the sunset. Describe it to me so that I may enjoy it with you.’”

That differentiation has universal application, Gentlemen. You can feel sorry for your shortcomings and complain, or you can work around them and live your life. That’s what being a man, and for that matter being human, is about, and that, more than anything else, is what women find attractive in a man, because it is that attitude that makes everything else work.

A secondary theme that kept reappearing was regaining trust after a bad period in a relationship. Yes, attraction is dead at this point, but there is also a wall up, and while attraction is an automatic thing, it can be not resisted, but confounded, when there are trust issues. A woman needs to feel “safe” in letting you into a position where you can significantly influence her emotions, and while you are making these improvements that will reignite attraction, you also need to radically improving your communication skills. Why?

Because that’s where women gain trust, through the intimacy of talking and being heard. It’s how they commune. We men commune primarily by sharing acts of achievement or crisis and getting through them, while women commune by talking about their experiences, especially the emotions of their experiences. We DO, they TALK and then do if something needs done.

When a woman feels you aren’t listening or understanding her, or especially that you don’t care about her feelings, that connection cannot be made, let alone made strong enough to let her tear down that wall and let you back in. Luckily for you, as complex as it seems, the whole communications issue boils down to three simple rules that you can learn in minutes and master over a period of days, not decades. And those rules are in my book, of course! ;-)

So there it is, Gents: the product of eleven hours of answering the questions of troubled men wanting to put their relationship back in working order. Use it in good health. And if you’re ready to rise to the challenge of putting your house back in order, go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," right now, while it’s still there to be had and correcting your problems is easier than it will be months down the road when you have much more to correct and much more pain to heal.

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

What Are Outside Influences Doing to YOUR Relationship and Marriage?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sex for Pity's Sake, a Great Way to Quickly Destroy a Relationship and Marriage

Do women find tactics like guilt and pity attractive? Not just no, but hell no! Tune in, and see just how needy, pathetic, and downright disgusting this comes across…

Prepare yourself for one of the most disgusting tales of male wussitude I’ve ever heard. Friends, meet Darlene:

Dear David,

I thought I had experienced every form of male wussiness on the planet until last night, when my husband reached a new, utterly disgusting low. I’ve been trying to get him to read your book for over a month now, and he gets mad and refuses every time I bring it up, but he has no clue!

My mother-in-law has been in the hospital in critical condition for a few days, and he’s been either stumbling around the house like a zombie or yelling and screaming and throwing things at me and the kids ever since she went in. Last night, after several days of walking on eggshells and wondering if in the next moment he was going to kill himself or me and the kids, he crawls into bed with me (we haven’t shared a bed in over a year), grabs me, and informs me that any good wife would show him sympathy and caring by having sex with him. I nearly puked.

There is nothing in this world that a man can do that is any more disgusting in a woman’s eyes, especially mine, than to beg for sex, and to do so by trying to invoke pity and guilt for what’s going on in his life, especially something like his mother being in the hospital (how many sexy thoughts can that possibly cause???), is literally sickening. I jumped out of bed, and told him that if he were a real man, he wouldn’t be trying to make me feel sorry for him, he’d be making me so excited that I had to have him.

Men, wake up. We will seduce you to make you feel better if we see you feeling bad and are already feeling attraction, and we may even do so in the rare instance that we find ourselves feeling sorry for you, such as if we find out you’re a virgin at thirty years old, but there is nothing that you can deliberately do to make us feel sorry for you or guilty about not wanting you that will excite us and make us feel the attraction that makes us want sex with you. It’s just that simple. Be a man, or be somewhere else.

David, I loved your book, and if I don’t get this man to read it soon, I’m outta here. Cross your fingers.

Darlene

Well guys, what can I say? Darlene has pretty well nailed the whole issue down in a few short paragraphs. Women don’t find any kind of coercion, be it bullying on the strong side or guilt-tripping and pity-mongering on the wussy side, attractive, or really anything short of repulsive. All of the above are strong signs of weakness (yes, bullying, while dominant and abusive, is a sign of weakness, not strength), and chicks don’t dig that – really!

(Indeed, in the months since this letter was written, Darlene has in fact left this pathetic loser and moved on to a really great guy. DO NOT EVER THINK that a woman won’t or can’t leave a bad relationship. Even if they seem to think they can’t, or if you threaten their life, there comes a point where they feel that either they have to leave or somebody has to die, and they will act on those feelings, so take this seriously!)

Chicks dig real men, alpha males, who know what they want, and walk through the world earning it, knowing that they deserve it, and holding their head high as they do so, eyes fixed on either their next achievement or their partner’s sexy self. Good things come their way because they’re worthy of good things, not because they can coerce or con people into providing them.

Gentlemen, we’ve been trying for centuries to figure out what makes women tick, and except for a few of us, we’ve failed miserably. That’s it, that’s reality, accept it, and get over it. Fortunately, they’ve now begun telling us not only what makes them tick, but what they want, from life, and from us, and much of it is in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage.” No book will ever contain everything there is to know about each woman alive, but this one does contain everything that a large group of them has said that we need to know about them, and it’s in “guy language,” not “girly-speak,” so you can understand it – no signals, no hints, just facts, laid out for any man to own and use to become the real man that his partner has dreamed of all her life.

Download your copy at http://www.makingherhappy.com today, unless of course you like living that “frustrated celibate dude living with the grouchy frumpy wife” thing. It’s your choice; choose well, and choose now!

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

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

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

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

David...I read your lesson about “Comfortably Unhappy” [See this article in the archive to catch up]

and...

Do you realise that was me for a long time before I contacted you, comfortably unhappy? You could use me as a perfect example of how not to do what I did and waste years of your life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Heather

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today’s edition is something I touch on from time to time because it goes almost entirely unnoticed but wastes more lives than the words, “Let’s wait and see,” the deplorable condition of being “comfortably unhappy.” Yes, it sounds like an oxymoron, but as you may have seen around you, even in yourself, it is entirely too easy to get comfortable with being unhappy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hey David,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rick.

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

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

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

Cheating in Relationships and Marriage, a Symptom, Not a Problem

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Her primary reason for being in the chat rooms for inordinately long periods is to combat that terrible boredom that grips women when their man isn’t creating enough attraction for them, which is good news for him, because it means he certainly can fix it, UNLESS SOMEBODY IN A CHAT ROOM HAS CREATED ATTRACTION ALREADY, in which case he will have to compete with the new guy and while not impossible, it is VERY difficult to catch up.

Women will focus on sources of attraction and protect them, even from family and friends. I cannot overstress this. But as I’ve told you before if you’ve been with me for a while, because the chat rooms, excessive phone use, and affairs, both emotional and purely sexual, are all symptoms of the same problem, BOREDOM, solving that problem eliminates ALL of the symptoms that are or may become present.

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

Let me be perfectly clear on something here, spending a few minutes a few times a week to check in on friends by phone, e-mail, instant messaging or in chat rooms is not cause for alarm; even a little while each day is not excessive. Women are social creatures and if they become cut off from the rest of the world, as is common in new relationships and with young children, she will find a way to maintain a social circle, no matter what.

HOWEVER, if the majority of the day that she has available to spend with you is spent avoiding you and seeking the company of others, it’s a problem, and no different than if she’s disappearing every evening to socialize or even have sex with someone else. Luckily, it’s a problem you can fix, and if you haven’t let it run on to the point that she’s done with you (which WILL happen if some other man creates attraction for her – it’s a double-edged sword, and a powerful one!), she’ll be more than willing to let you -- or even help you – to fix it.

There are exceptions, as always, starting with the chronic/serial cheater who has so little self-esteem that they are constantly seeking approval from any and all available sources and will commit any feat of self-destruction and take any risk to get it. There are also psychopaths and sociopaths, parasites and predators who seek opportunity at any cost, and it doesn’t matter how much you give them, nothing is enough. But don’t be alarmed…

There are some very important things about these people that you can recognize and some more that you must know. First, there is a common thread running through all of them that you can easily spot: an entitlement mentality. They feel it is their right to cheat, and they will get very angry with anyone who would even suggest otherwise. And that sense of entitlement permeates everything they do; you’ll see a lot of situations where they are expecting you to do something for their benefit when there is nothing in it for you, and will often use guilt to make it happen.

What you must know about these people, all of them, is that they are almost always unsalvageable. The mental and emotional defects or damage that make them like this is beyond anything you can help. They don’t WANT to change. They want the rest of the world to suit them. Even those with abysmal self-esteem will often prefer to keep seeking self-esteem through the approval of others rather than its one authentic source, personal achievement, because it is far easier to flirt and drum up anything from a smile to an affair than it is to work and achieve something – they feel entitled to the easy way out.

So should you identify your spouse as one of these people, you may make an effort to wake them up and get them to step up and be a worthy spouse and deserving part of your family, but if they do not do it, DO NOT get it in your head that this is because there is something WRONG WITH YOU. You have made a mistake, but they, their attitude, and their choices are the problem, not YOU, because they have gone somewhere besides you for resolution.

If you get your own self-esteem up to a comfortable level, start enjoying your life, having fun and being fun to be around and she still insists that affairs are necessary, point out that self-esteem repair did wonders for you and could do wonders for them. And if they reject that most self-evident of truths, cut them loose, else they will suck you dry and leave you in a heap while they continue to bounce from jugular to jugular, feeding on the lives and resources of others looking for something that will make them feel good about themselves but requires no effort, no commitment, or anything else on their part. Luckily for the human race, such women – and such men – are a minority, and easily spotted once you know what to look for.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear David,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Darla

My response:

Hi Darla,

That’s quite a confession Darla; thank you for sharing it with us. I’ve studied people a lot over the years, and I’ve seen a few things that I’d like to point out here. Chemicals notwithstanding (a lot of medications can alter your personality, adherence to your value system, inhibitions, etc.), you would be hard-pressed to prove to me how anyone who truly loves and respects another could lie to them, especially to cover their own ass. That’s an act of cowardice and need, not of love and respect. If your partner is claiming to love you but lying to you frequently (or vice versa), you and they need to take a look at the meaning of love, need, attraction, etc. (see the article in my free “Break-Up Busting 101” report, which you can download at http://www.makingherhappy.com/Break-Up%20Busting%20101%20Free%20Report.PDF), and get a fix on reality, because you’re not in it.

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

Take care,
David

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

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

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

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

"Let Justice Be Done, Though the Heavens Fall," THE REAL Alpha Male Attitude, NOT This "Bad Boy" Crap

Every great man I’ve ever known lived by the ancient code, “Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.” Women flocked to them, and their own wives worshipped them. Why?

Today has been a day filled with interesting e-mails from readers. One of these e-mails described a conversation that a man was having misgivings about having had with his wife.

They’ve been having compatibility problems – he’s extremely mature and she’s extremely immature, even though they are both within a year or two of 40 – and her immaturity has caused her to have no achievement in her life and hence, no self-esteem, and had become dependent on her marriage and her child for her feelings of achievement and independence, which cannot work because it makes the source of one’s self-esteem something other than one’s self.

This man is quite brilliant and a strong leader, recognized the problem, and loved her enough that when she left to go “find herself,” he didn’t beg her to come home or try to force her to come home, he told her that she needed to grow up and have a life before she was going to be able to share one with him, and that reconciliation wasn’t an option until she had grown enough to feel good about herself and be able to enjoy his company instead of being dependent on it.

Months have gone by, during which she has descended to an embarrassing level of immaturity and arguing with pure fabrication and fantasy to back her up, but suddenly, over the last few weeks, it’s like she’s emerging from the fog, realizing that he was right, that all her machinations and fantasies have brought her nothing but trouble and hard feelings, and has become rational and responsible to a degree that neither of us would have expected for a long time. This is not uncommon when somebody bottoms out hard and realizes that the people who were thought to be their enemies and oppressors were actually the only people left who cared.

She has now set reasonable goals and laid very rational plans to achieve these goals, and has been dropping hints of repentance and testing the waters to see how much damage she’s done and if it can be repaired sufficiently to ultimately allow her to return home. Hence the conversation…

He wants her to tell him in full detail of her desires, goals, plans and whether she currently wants to come back home, and when that might be, but is concerned about whether he could live with the answer. My advice: have the conversation. Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.

That was first said by Julius Caesar’s father-in-law, a Roman statesman by name of Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus. Let’s take a quick look at its true meaning, and you’ll see why great men live by it and women find it irresistible.

“Justice” isn’t about law, or necessarily even about punishment. It’s about getting what one deserves – what he or she has earned by virtue of their choices and actions, good, bad or indifferent. What Caesoninus was saying was that they should do what was just, even if it upset and destroyed the natural order of things, in his case, the unseating of some powerful people, in our reader’s case, hearing something that was other than what he wanted to hear. Why is this so important? And attractive?

A real man knows that no matter what happens, if it is realistic and just, he can build upon it and make improvement and progress, even if he has to rebuild from ruins. He doesn’t like or try to create mayhem, but if that’s the only way that he and those around them can get what they deserve, good, bad, or indifferent, he’s prepared to go that route, because his word, his character, and his self-respect are important to him. This is how he sleeps well at night, and why he wakes up each morning looking forward to the day, no matter what the previous day held or this day holds. It is the guardian of his self-esteem, and the polish on the tools of his achievement: reason, character, and confidence.

Having read those last few words, is there any question as to why women would find this wildly attractive? A man with a strong sense of justice who consistently applies it defines and exerts authority in a way that inferior men can never hope to do. This is one of those places where the rules for dating differ from those for committed relationships; a woman looking for a night of fun and excitement may seldom look deep enough into a man to see this kind and strength of character, but a woman who is looking for or is in a committed relationship will home in on it from miles away. Such a man walks into a room and everybody knows without question that he owns it, and to a degree, owns them, because he will be the strongest man in the room in terms of reason, character, and confidence.

It may sound like this is a difficult way to live at first glance, but think about it, and you’ll find that it’s actually easier. There is no deceit to try to cover up, any messes you make are made up of facts that can be sorted through and worked with instead of having to struggle against everything to solve a problem, and women adore you, including your partner, for who and what you are instead of secretly wishing you were something else – and something better.

Strong character and a sense of justice, contrary to popular belief, is a choice, one of the most important choices a man can make, because it in turn is the foundation for most, if not all, of the rest of the choices he makes in his life. It is also one of the very few things about a man that can create both love (a sense of value) and attraction (a sense of excited desire) in a woman.

Add justice, in its true sense, to your personal code of values and watch what happens to the rest of your life, and the reactions you get from women. Those of bad character will run from you, while those of good character – and who will make good wives and mothers, or at least low-maintenance girlfriends, for those of you not looking for a committed relationship at the moment but like keeping good candidates around for when that time comes – will flock to you, and if you’re already with a good woman you’ll find that she’ll whip a running saw mill to protect her relationship with you.

You’ll also find that other people – friends, employers, employees, vendors, customers, etc. – will flock to you. The old bromide “opposites attract” is only true all of the time when speaking of magnetism; otherwise it’s infrequent, fickle, and counter-productive most of the time. Good relationships require compatibility; hence, “birds of a feather flock together” is something you can depend upon.

So you didn’t see that coming, huh? You would have if you knew as much about women as you should to be trying to live happily with one. Do you know what she’s really saying when she says, “Fine!” and nothing else? Do you know what she’s TELLING you when she’s ASKING you a question? Do you know what question she’s asking you any time she’s telling you something? If you’ve been reading these newsletters for several months, I’m sure you can be right at least part of the time, but you’ll find that only part of the time isn’t good enough…

A partial fix to your relationship problems doesn’t fix your relationship. It merely slows down the inevitable break-up. No, that’s not a good thing; it gives you more time to make more mistakes, become more heavily invested in the relationship, and harbor more ill feelings when it does finally blow up in your face. Think that can’t happen? It is a common thing for me to be working with couples who are on the brink of divorce or who have already decided to divorce when the wife ends up pregnant – with the husband’s child. When you’re in trouble and emotions are high, just about anything can happen, especially if it’s bad, because emotionally-driven decisions are only good ones by coincidence.

The only time that delaying the inevitable break-up is a good thing is if you have all the information you need to fix all your shortcomings in your hands and are working on learning it. So let me help you with that…

Everything you need to know to become the real man that you were truly born to be, will thoroughly enjoy living as, and can very easily become is in my book, "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," along with everything you need to know to fix your shortcomings in your relationship, such as your ability to evaluate your relationship and the people in it, and to communicate with a woman to such a degree that she tells her friends that you’re one of those extra rare guys who “just knows” what she wants, and understands her without being one of those crying wusses they tried to turn us all into in the 1980’s. Download your copy at http://www.makingherhappy.com right now, and get started; never put off until tomorrow the success and happiness you can have today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HOWEVER…

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

THEY COMPETE OVER WHOSE WAY IS THE RIGHT WAY…

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

Notice that I said that BOTH are incorrect!

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

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

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

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

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

Would you have been one of them?

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

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

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

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

Confidence Building: Yet Another Crucial Part of Great Relationships and Marriage

One of the greatest things you can do for your relationship is to build self-confidence. Here’s why, and more important, HOW…

I just got off the phone with a man for whom I feel incredibly sorry. I’m not one generally given to pity, and usually hold people accountable for their choices, but this guy had been hammered into the ground from birth, programmed for failure and zero self-esteem to the extent that he didn’t want to accept that feeling any other way was even possible, let alone normal.

I’ll spare you the details; he basically grew up in a home with a single mom who was abandoned when she found out she was pregnant and hated men, and had the bad fortune to be pregnant with a son who looked identical to his father. She’s spent his entire life abusing him and blaming him for her bad choices, and has him convinced that he is totally worthless, and the cause of all her problems.

Needless to say, he’s never had a good relationship with a woman. He rarely even gets into a relationship because he rarely gets a date, let alone a series of dates from which a relationship can grow. After about two hours of discussion he finally started coming around to the idea that he really has a choice and asked how he might go about building self-esteem and confidence. What follows is the advice I gave him, at least parts of which should be useful to all of you.

Self-esteem is defined as regarding one’s self with respect, recognizing one’s own value. It has to be there to recognize it, and when it’s there it MUST be recognized and accepted. You must know that you deserve whatever life you have by virtue of whatever choices you have made, and that if you have made bad choices, you simply must make better ones to make your life better. Self-esteem comes from nothing more and nothing less than the use of one’s virtues to achieve and attain one’s values (the Law of Existence), and recognizing that you have done it (the Law of Identity).

To some of you that will sound terribly simplistic and self-evident, but you’d be shocked at how many people I’ve counseled or encountered at seminars who think that their value is determined by what OTHER people think of them and not what they think about themselves. To make matters worse, people who look to others for their self-esteem are often so afraid of what others think that they will either withdraw completely or go to the other extreme and become an acute approval-seeker, which is self-defeating since nobody will respect anyone who seeks their approval.

As an aside, many women suffer from a particularly nasty variation of this condition. Because of their social nature in combination with having had their self-esteem hammered into the ground almost since birth (by the beauty and fashion industries, other destructively competitive women, predatory men who know to abuse women to get them in approval-seeking mode, etc.), they anticipate all possible criticism and negative comments about everything going on in their life, and then respond as if that criticism and those comments had in fact been made.

This leaves them constantly feeling under attack by those around them when in fact they are their own attacker, and it leaves those around them wondering what they did to deserve such a tongue-lashing or thinking the woman is paranoid. Should you see this, try to talk with her about it and take whatever measures are necessary to build her self-esteem, or else she may end up going down and taking you down with her.

Now, getting back to you, once you have taken responsibility for your choices and have thereby empowered yourself to make more and better choices, assess yourself, and see what value you have. Take stock of your good and bad traits, and see that the good ones outnumber and outweigh the bad ones; if they don’t, that just means you have more choices to make and corrective actions to take than the average guy, so don’t panic. Building a man is a lot easier than building a house if the man desires the improvement.

It is crucial that you appreciate all the good things you find in yourself. If you are a talented artist, a skilled craftsman, a competent manager or decision-maker, don’t just blow that off as something that you were born with. Even if you were born with it, you still had to DO SOMETHING WITH IT to recognize your talent. If you haven’t done enough to feel good about it, take that as your cue to start doing more to leverage your existing skills and talent. Why?

Self-esteem and ultimately confidence comes from achievement, and nowhere else. And yes, even the smallest accomplishments count! The more you accomplish, the more you feel qualified and prepared to accomplish more. That feeling of readiness to face new challenges is the very essence of confidence, and recognizing that state of readiness is the essence of self-esteem. It makes you more able to face the potential for success and adversity with the idea that you can influence and survive the outcome.

And when you achieve something, take a minute to appreciate and celebrate it. Acknowledge that you have done something well. It doesn’t matter if anyone else acknowledges it; it’s your work and your achievement, and there is nobody else as qualified as you to know the quality of your achievement or how good it should make you feel. Reward every achievement by acknowledging it, and achievement will be come more pleasurable, more desirable, and easier to conceive and complete, in turn making you a much more interesting, confident and fun person to be around.

Why am I talking about confidence in a newsletter about relationships and marriage? Because women absolutely love it! And when they see it genuinely exist in their man, they will whip a running saw mill to protect him and their relationship. Why?

Because they literally dream of finding a man who feels good about himself. Such a man is low-maintenance and potentially high-excitement, and what’s a woman’s greatest enemy? All together now, 1…2…3…BOREDOM!

Yes, that’s right. Everybody who said “boredom” gets a gold star.

Did you ever hear a woman say that she wants a man who makes her feel safe? Did you make the mistake of thinking that she was talking about having a man who was just a bodyguard? Probably, so here’s the low-down:

When a woman says she wants a man who makes her feel safe, she’s talking about a man who will not play games with her feelings, or be so caught up in his own drama that he allows her to drown in hers. She’s talking about a man who won’t consign her to being bored to tears and feeling like life has no purpose because he’s too busy whining about his own problems.

She wants to feel like part of something worthwhile, and like the man she trusts as her partner is qualified to lead her without being an ass and trying to control her. In short, she’s talking about having a man with healthy self-esteem who values himself and her, and knows how to interact with her in a way that is complimentary instead of competitive, or even worse, parasitic or predatory. That’s why women flock to a confident man like ants to sugar, and why when a woman has such a man, she’s just as likely as not to kill to keep him.

So there you have it, and I’ll bet it’s nowhere near as hard as many of you thought. I hear so often that confidence is something that “other people are born with and I’ll never have” that it’s sickening, because it’s simply not true. You can have it, indeed, you can EARN it, and it’s simply a matter of making some choices to identify and accept the truth about yourself and then improve on it if necessary.

I don’t walk into a room feeling confident because there’s a 99.9997% chance that I’m the smartest guy in the room, even though it’s true according to IQ points, or because there are a lot of things I could do better than anybody else in the room, even though that’s true as well. I walk into a room feeling confident because I know that no matter what happens in that room, I’m going to meet interesting people I can speak with, laugh with, and if appropriate, learn things from and accomplish things with. No matter what happens, I can have an interaction that enriches my life and the lives of others and very likely take something with me when I leave the room that also improves my life. What does that tell you?

It tells you that confidence is not a matter of how you stack up to the other people in the room; it’s a matter of how you see yourself in being able to survive and flourish the events of the foreseeable future. And that, brothers, is precisely the measure of a man, and when you measure up, the people around you recognize it, involuntarily, and respond to it, especially your partner.

It’s literally the single best thing you can do for your life, and it’s either the best or second-best thing you can do for your relationship, depending on your communications skills; for some, improving your inter-gender communications skills will provide more improvement in your relationship because you can’t get along if you can’t communicate, and we’ll get into that in other lessons – indeed, MANY OTHER LESSONS.

Or, instead of waiting for more lessons, you can just grab the bull by the horns and get everything you need to know by downloading your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and accomplish in hours or days what might take months or years otherwise, if you could accomplish it at all without the knowledge required to navigate the rapids of relationships. Talk to some of the confident people you know about their rules for success, and one of the things you’ll hear is “Never put off until tomorrow the things you can accomplish today.” Truer words nor better advice were never spoken…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stepping down off my stump now… ;-)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hello David,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here's why.

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

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

My response was “What did I do?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You will be losing many attraction points.

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

Sincerely,
Dee

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

Lessons learned:

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

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

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

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

Thank you for the advice. I appreciate it. I will use that or something similar. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Dee

Those are some pretty powerful lessons, are they not? And what pleases me the most is that now that Dee’s eyes are open, he’s able to spot these things without having to be prompted – or punished by his wife! Thanks to Dee for sharing all of this, too!

The advice he thanked me for was something I picked up back in my corporate consulting days. Diffusing situations is a matter of leadership, which, by the way is an attraction-builder.

This “Bill” character is not in the chain of command, so there’s no apparent risk to anybody’s job by stomping on him a little bit. The advice was to take him aside next time he started this nonsense (by telling him, “Let’s talk over here for a minute,” instead of asking, “Can I talk to you a minute?” which establishes him as the “big dog”) and adopting a tone that is somewhere between friendly and fatherly and saying something like:

“Do you realize that you may be the only person in this company who doesn’t know that what you were doing over there is approval-seeking behavior and instead of making you look like an expert, makes you look like an ass? If you want these people’s respect, show them some. Just be yourself, and when you talk with them, ask about them, their families, and the things that interest them. They don’t care what you know or think you know about something until they ask you.

“The more you know about them, the more you’ll find that you enjoy talking with them, and the more they’ll like about you and the less you’ll embarrass yourself. For instance, I was a martial arts instructor for a lot of years, and I know you wouldn’t have said a whole lot of things you said to try to impress me about being a bouncer if you had known that. Now just lighten up and enjoy everybody’s company and you’ll see them start enjoying yours.”

That’s how you take a guy off at the knees and make him thank you for it. But the simple act of cutting his tirade short and pulling him aside shows your partner that you can take the lead and fix the problem in that situation just as well as any other, and makes her proud to be there with you instead of embarrassed because you let the buffoon get away with boring and insulting her. It doesn’t take “fisticuffs,” as they used to say, but it does take action, and action is all she needs to see.

So now the question of what to do when you meet up with the alpha buffoon has been answered, but there’s a bigger question here for you: do you want to continue to wait for these lessons to come trickling in through this newsletter or my blog posts, or do you want to grab the bull by the horns and bring yourself up to speed and be able to spot things like this yourself?

When you know what you need to know about women and how to communicate with them, it’s really pretty easy. In spite of what we were all taught growing up about how impossible a task that’s supposed to be, that knowledge does exist, has been compiled for you, and wonder of wonders, it’s easy to learn and use.

Indeed, we’re not talking about some grueling academic exercise requiring that you rearrange your schedule, take classes, and conduct all manner of experiments that stand a good chance of royally pissing off your partner. Just a few hours of light, entertaining reading and thinking.

Desperate for help? Intrigued? Or think I’m full of crap? Put it to the test! Download your copy of "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and see for yourself. But a word of advice: don’t bet against success. There’s a very good reason why these men and women write me these letters and all those testimonials on my web site… ;-)

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

Be an Alpha Male, not an Alpha Buffoon, for a Great Relationship and Marriage

There’s a fine line between being an alpha male and being a bully, buffoon, or a show-off. Know where it is, and don’t cross it!

Before we get into today's lesson, I had a very telling e-mail from a new reader that I must share with you, one that all you Gentlemen need to let soak in and grasp the full impact. It was regarding a recent post about the difference between men and women’s emotional scales. It read:

“David are you available for marriage??????? Surely you're taken!”

There was a follow-up e-mail after this one in which the woman introduced herself and made it quite clear that she was hoping we could get on. And all because I could explain the difference between male and female emotional structure. I’ve had quite a few letters like this when I’ve discussed this in the past as well, so you must take this at face value: Understanding a woman’s emotional needs, their source, and the behavior that they induce is one of the most important things that a woman wants you to know. (Right Jan?)

And I GAVE that to you in that post. Read it. Use it. And then think for a minute about how great the information in my book must be if I’m going to give you information like that. ;-)

Let’s move on to today’s lesson.

Have you ever had a “textbook moment”? One of those occasions that provide a textbook example of exactly what to do or avoid doing in a certain situation? I have a lot of them because I look for them, and I had one over the weekend that I really need to pass along to you.

There’s a wonderful Mexican restaurant a couple of miles from my home, one of those little “hole in the wall” places that you’d probably never go into if you didn’t know how to read a parking lot to find a great restaurant (look for cars of all makes, models and ages, meaning that everybody eats there, regardless of income, indicating the food is exceptional but priced affordably, and is crowded because it’s exceptional and affordable, not because it’s trendy, in which case you usually see only late-model high-end cars. An old pick-up truck parked next to a new BMW is a great clue, especially for Mexican cuisine and barbecue!).

This place is in the middle of nowhere and is packed all day and all evening, every day of the week, and it’s a great place to watch people. As you’ve noticed if you’ve ever done much of it, people-watching in a restaurant comes with its risks, such as the risk of having to endure an insufferable drunken buffoon at the table next to you while you’re trying to enjoy a good meal and your partner’s company. Such was the case Saturday night.

We walked in, and this really pretentious jackass was standing up at his table, trying to order the serving staff around in Spanish, and changing the dinner and drink orders of those at the table with him because he thought he knew what they wanted better than they did; every other sentence ended with, “Trust me, I come here all the time.”

My Spanish is poor at best, but I heard this guy order a fence for one of his friends and a bathtub for another; the waiters repeatedly had to question his selections in English and he was being abusive to them because of it. Even worse, he had had too much to drink, and was trying to justify his own inebriation (at 6:30PM) by forcing alcohol on the other guests, including one woman who was obviously about to give birth and another man whom I know to be a non-drinking alcoholic. Are you getting the picture?

What this man either didn’t know and apparently didn’t care enough to learn (he was in his late fifties) was that what he was doing was not alpha male behavior, and did not remotely resemble leadership. He was loud, obnoxious, over-bearing, bossy and controlling, and generally annoying to everyone within earshot, and I could see from the expressions on their faces that he was downright offensive to the majority of people sitting at the table with him after trying to force an alcoholic beverage on a pregnant woman and an alcoholic. Nobody was having a good time, and would you care to guess how his wife was reacting to this?

You could see the storm building, and lightning struck when he stood and yelled at a waiter across the room, got his name wrong for the fourth time, and tried to get him to bring “Maggie-ritas” to the pregnant woman and alcoholic for the second time. She grabbed the tail of his sport coat, yanked him down in his seat very hard, and said, “You have embarrassed our guests more than enough, and me for the last time,” with such venom that it was clear that she was either going to kill him or divorce him when they got home.

True leadership, that thing that excites women to no end when they see it, is about initiating action, not dominating it against others’ will. It’s about being decisive, not dictatorial. It’s about being authoritative, not autocratic. It’s about inviting and stimulating participation, not browbeating a crowd into submission while you grandstand for them.

For example, if when they arrived he had said, “I come here often, and I strongly recommend their Fajitas Supremas and Enchiladas Especial, as well as their Margaritas,” that would have been great, but trying to impress everyone by barking bogus orders in a language he couldn’t speak and changing people’s food and drink orders (not to mention ordering alcohol for a pregnant woman and a reformed alcoholic who had ordered iced tea and already refused a drink when offered) was beyond bad; his wife was mortified, and rightfully so! As you can guess, mortifying your wife with obnoxious behavior is not the way to entice her to join you in the bedroom for dessert.

You can’t command respect as long as you are seeking approval. Is it obvious to you that this is the underlying reason for this man’s behavior? He’s not a leader, not knowledgeable of a foreign language, doesn’t hold his liquor as well as he should to be drinking in public, and plainly sucks as a host. He’s a “wannabe,” not the real deal, and knows it. His efforts to try to impress everyone around him are in fact an attempt to gain their approval, and is indeed subordinating himself to their acceptance and approval, not elevating himself to the post of a leader. Bad move. “Nuff said.

Not everyone is a born leader, but anyone who steps up can lead if they know what leadership is about. People will naturally follow anyone who steps up to lead if they do nothing more than project self-respect, a noticeable level of confidence, and appear to be acting out of common sense instead of hysterical frenzy or emotionally-driven recklessness. It doesn’t have to be in a critical situation; making a decision to go to the beach and getting everybody and everything together to do it and enjoy it creates just as much excitement for a woman to watch as you ordering a work crew around, which is considerable if you do it like a leader and not a wannabe or a dictator.

For those who don’t quite grasp the concept, the bully or control freak barks out orders, like “Everybody drop what you’re doing and grab your stuff. We’re going to the beach, and don’t aggravate me by making us late, or else!” Participants are threatened with punishment if they don’t go along with the bossy person in his quest to have a good time.

The social approval-seeker is on the opposite end of the scale. He lobbies, almost apologetically, to get his way: “Wouldn’t you like to go to the beach today? I mean, it seems like everybody has fun there when we go. Can’t we all just get our stuff and head out there and try to have a good time?” Note all the negativity, telegraphing the expectation of a bad time, not a good one.

The leader’s approach is irresistible: “Hey everybody! Let’s jump in the car and head for the beach! The weather’s great, and we’ve all earned some fun. C’mon!” Not irrationally exuberant, but visibly excited about the prospect of having some quality time and expecting to do so.

Learning and doing little things like this can make you an entirely new person, in your eyes and hers. It makes you feel better about yourself, and anything that makes you feel better about yourself will get your partner’s attention. The strangest divorce-stopping story I’ve ever heard was told by one of your fellow readers (congratulations again, Dale!), who was promoted to a managerial position near the end of the divorce negotiations.

His pay increase was so marginal that it had no bearing on the situation. The promotion put a different image of him in her head, one of a man leading a group of people, where she had formerly regarded him as “a prairie dog in a cube farm” (a guy who sits in an office cubicle day after day, raising his head to watch other people come and go while he is going nowhere), and her response was, “I didn’t know you had it in you, so I’m sticking around to see what else you might surprise me with.” That was her way of expressing new-found respect. I wasn’t surprised when he told me about it, and after he finished reading “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” he wasn’t surprised either. Why?

Because he then knew about attraction, both how to create it and how to kill it. He also understood communicating with women well enough to understand that when his wife said she was sticking around to see what else he might surprise her with that she was giving him instructions and success criteria. She liked seeing him succeed, liked seeing what it had done to him, liked being surprised, and expected him to understand and continue instead of falling into another rut and leaving her bored to death. Would you have understood that from what she said?

If not, download your own copy of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” right now, before you do another thing, because you need to know what makes women tick, what they want, and how to correctly interpret and act upon what they tell you. That knowledge will stop a divorce from ever starting, and stops one cold that’s already happening in many circumstances, because most divorces are initiated by women, and most are initiated because a woman gets bored after attraction is lost and the man can’t understand her when she tries to tell him what’s happening and how to fix it.

Protect yourself and your family by becoming one of us guys who know what most men don’t, what women want and how to listen to them, because life’s too short to have to start it over in the middle if you don’t have to.

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

Don't Win the Battle Just to Lose the War: Conflict Resolution in Relationships and Marriage

E-mails and blog posts gave more coverage to Darren Sherman’s stalking behavior after a date didn’t go his way than about the problems of the world. Could it be that’s because this kind of behavior is a far bigger problem than crooked politicians and (alleged) oil shortages? Look at what you can learn from this poor idiot’s behavior concerning your marriage or committed relationship.

If you didn’t see one of the e-mails floating around about Darren Sherman’s post bad date behavior a couple of years ago, you’ve missed one of the most pathetic yet funny incidents I’ve ever heard. Here’s a hugely entertaining rendition of it at Peter Shankman’s “PR Differently” blog and there’s a lot you can learn from reading it and listening to the voice mail message that isn’t so obvious at first glance. Jump over there and check it out before continuing here…

Pathetic just doesn’t really scratch the surface, does it? But since we’re talking about committed relationships and marriages here, let’s move past the idiotic, crass, and utterly uncouth bit of demanding a refund on her half of the check (because she was out of town and didn’t get his messages, leading him to believe there would be no second date, which, from his behavior, seems to have been a reasonable expectation on his part anyway!) and look at his behavior in from a broader perspective.

First, according to the girl’s letter, he apparently assumed that she didn’t want to see him again in spite of no facts supporting such a conclusion. Since it may have been awhile since you were in the dating world and possibly out of touch with current practices, if you’re going to call somebody you’ve been out with to acknowledge a good time and chat them up for another date, you call one time, and then you go about your business, and if they haven’t called by the time you need to make another date for the weekend, you simply call somebody else. A lot of people are subject to go out of town suddenly, especially in a town of movers and shakers like NYC, and you have to give them a bit of time to “clear out the clutter” and get their schedule stabilized before calling you back.

He apparently jumped into wuss mode, assumed that since she didn’t immediately call back that she didn’t want to see him again and was just snubbing him, and his ego jumped into the driver’s seat. And then what does he do?

He starts very childishly trying to punish her for the assumed rejection, and continues to escalate it, apparently without any regard for the risk he’s taking under today’s stalking laws, or for the mathematics of the situation; the guy is the CEO of a compliance consulting firm, and that’s “big bucks” anywhere you go, and double in NYC, and there is no way in the world that $50 came close to covering the value of his time in pursuing it. Got the picture? Okay, now let’s bring this closer to home…

How many times have you made or seen these mistakes made in your own or other relationships?

1. Letting an incorrect assumption motivate an act of reprisal against someone

2. Continuing to escalate a situation after finding out that your assumption was incorrect and that there’s really nothing to be pissed off about (but possibly something to be terribly embarrassed about, such as the original absurd assumption!)

3. Getting so hung up on “who’s right” and “winning” that you lose track of “what’s right” and “the risks and cost of fighting the battle.”

Silly things like assuming that somebody didn’t pick up something you wanted at the store while they were out when in fact the store was out of stock on the item can spur an incident that follows this path of escalation and destruction to the point that it causes a break-up or a divorce, and if you haven’t seen it happen at least once in your lifetime, I’d like to hear from you just to know that you exist. I’ve watched it all my life, and frankly, well over half a lifetime ago (I was 17), I did it myself, and ended up screwing up a very good relationship that could have easily turned into a life-long partnership. Now for the big question…

What can you do to stop this from happening?

I’ve preached enough on the law of cause and effect and when trying to fix a problem you should seek to treat the cause and not the symptom, so I’ll spare you the justification for that approach and say that the cause of Darren’s problem and all occurrences of this kind of mess is low self-esteem. That’s right! If you feel good about yourself, you have no reason to be anxious and jumping to negative conclusions with nothing but fear of the unknown as the basis for that conclusion.

Nor do you have the need to get competitive and try to punish somebody for a disagreement and force yourself or your opinion on them or make them regret having disagreed with you. Right?

And most of all, when you feel good about yourself, you’re much more interested in what’s right than who’s right, so you focus