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 2009 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 over-sized 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 action 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 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.

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

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. Don’t let this happen to you! Would you recognize it if you saw it? Read and find out!

Let’s start the year off right. 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, 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. In either case, 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 worst of all, sex, without checking to see if the rest of the package is something they can live with. 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, literally your life. 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

Creating Attraction in Relationships and Marriage: Not an Act, but an Attitude!

What works? And why do men, when they know what they are doing isn’t working, continue to do the wrong thing? What’s the right thing to do? Big hint: being attractive isn’t about an act, or a series of acts; it’s about attitude!

Let’s talk about why we do things, both right and wrong, when it comes to our interactions with other people, especially those of the opposite sex. It is said that there are only two reasons people don’t perform, ignorance (not knowing how) and apathy (not caring). Ignorance is treatable, simply by teaching, but apathy is much more difficult to treat, because it involves changing someone’s value system, which in turn is defined by their guiding philosophy. For most people, this is a place where fools rush in and angels fear to tread. Why?

It’s not very difficult to change someone’s perception of value of a particular thing if it already meets the requirements of their value system, because all you have to do is show them how it meets their needs. But when their value system says something is unimportant, you’re literally dealing with what makes them tick, their guiding philosophy even, the mechanism behind every decision that they make in their life. People resist changing their value system because if they do, then there’s going to be a whole lot of bad decisions in their past that they now have to acknowledge, and possibly feel guilty or atone for.

Not a pretty thought is it? And the older we get, the more choices we’ve made, and the more we might have to admit to as a mistake. (Objectivists are the only people I know who seem to be immune to this en masse, but that is because we treat mistakes as a resource for learning – an value the rest of the world could benefit from indeed.)

What about when a value system contradicts reality? That’s a pretty disturbing question, isn’t it? Reality always prevails, and people make bad decisions, and then try to blame them on something or someone else – “You just don’t understand,” “It’s the system,” “You just don’t care enough to see it my way,” etc. Spare me.

When I hear, “But you just don’t understand,” after giving someone a dose of reality, I know that whatever follows will be a direct contradiction with reality, and any further conversation with this person is a waste of my time and energy, because their purpose is now to drag me into their fantasy for validation. The same goes for when they keep asking the same question over and over, because they aren’t hearing what they want to hear, as if the answer would change to suit them if they ask it enough times. They’re seeking validation of the past, not improvement for the future.

What does this have to do with attraction and dealing with the opposite sex?

For how many years, decades, even centuries, have we been saying ridiculous things like, “I want to be liked for who I am,” when “who I am” is pretty disgusting? (I’ll address approval-seeking behavior in several other newsletters.) Guys, we’re visually stimulated more than anything when it comes to attraction. Like it or not, that’s just the way it is. Sorry Ladies, we may eventually evolve out of it, but for the time being our first impressions of attraction come from visual stimuli. Yours do too, but to a lesser degree.

Men are biologically wired to be excited about seeing a woman who looks healthy and able to bear healthy children, hence the triggers of ample breasts, wider, rounder hips, which are necessary for birthing and feeding, and good skin, hair, and teeth, which speak to one’s health and ability to nurture and raise children. Again, it’s not logical, it’s biological, primal – INSTINCT! Once that initial attraction is there, it is enhanced or diminished by personality factors, and ultimately can be replaced entirely by personality factors, but that first impression is often physical, and if not made by curves, is made by pretty eyes or a striking smile.

Women are wired to appreciate the alpha male, the guy who can take a club and bring down a buffalo or lead other men to do it for him or with him, but for most women, that is only the beginning of attraction, more on a level of curiosity or intrigue than attraction. It makes a man a candidate, not a target. A woman sees an obvious alpha male and wants to know more, where a man sees a sexy woman and subconsciously wants to mate, now, because curves equate to sex, which in turn equates to procreation – our biological purpose. To seal the deal with the man as far as attraction goes, especially in the early stages of a relationship, you don’t have to do much more than walk up to him, or smile when he walks up to you. Pretty boring, huh Ladies?

Ask them, Guys. Most of them are sick of men being such easy prey. Women like a good challenge as much as we do, especially in terms of building self-esteem. A man who is not a challenge is boring, and often perceived as desperate and weak. Remember that…

Once you have aroused the woman’s curiosity by exhibiting alpha male behavior, you still have a way to go. She’s already made up her mind whether you are a candidate for attraction, and at this point is testing to see if you blow it. You’ve still got to show that you have enough guts to approach her, which is intriguing, and then seal the deal by showing you can entertain her with a good sense of humor, at a bare minimum; charm, polish, savoir faire, etc., don’t even come into the picture until at least these three criteria are met. No if’s, and’s, or but’s, this is it, stark reality, no arguing about it.

And again (yes, I’m preaching, because this is that important!), this is BIOLOGICAL, not logical – primal and instinctive, and contrary to some really ridiculous crap that some of you readers have recently shown me in some other newsletters, not the result of “social conditioning.” Women don’t “lubricate” or men become erect at the sight of their attraction triggers because of “social conditioning;” biological responses come from biological causes. (Damn! There’s that pesky law of cause and effect again!)

So what do you do to make yourself attractive to this woman you love?

Exactly what I just described! Show her that adventurous, heroic, fun-loving guy she was first attracted to when you met, or even better that REALLY adventurous, heroic, totally independent fun-loving guy that you were born to be, before you were poisoned with all of the wussy programming you’ve been exposed to over the last forty years or more, by everyone from your mother to the media. If she has ever been attracted to you to any degree, it has been to the degree that you did what I was just describing. If you don’t think so, ask her. If you ask, be prepared for the truth, and accept it; it doesn’t do any good for her to try to soften the truth or for you to try to ignore it. Here’s where the problem starts.

Many men, including at least some of you, are at this point saying, “I don’t want to have to act differently just to make my partner interested in me again! She should like me and respect me enough for who I am to be attracted to me. Why else would she still be with me?” Good grief! I’m about to barf after typing that load of crap. LOL! Let me help you with that.

Imagine the most grotesque woman you can imagine. Seriously. Somebody you wouldn’t have sexual relations with using even an enemy’s genitalia. Let’s say about 500 pounds, dirty, stringy hair, rotten teeth and breath, warts all over her, a nice thick beard growing, and to top it all off, she has an affinity for cheap cigars and Polish Kielbasa and suffers from chronic flatulence, the kind that peels paint, in the house next door. Doesn’t bathe or brush her teeth, or shave anything and has more body hair and nose hair than you. Gross enough to guarantee that there’s no way you’d ever sleep with her? Good. Now imagine her saying, “I don’t want to change my looks and hygiene habits. I think men should get hot for me just the way I am.” Whaddaya think? Up for some of that? No? Hell no? I didn’t think so. Why not?

Because she didn’t trip your attraction triggers. Indeed, she negatively impacted most if not all of them. Now imagine that she was a hottie when you married her and this is what you have 20 years later. Any questions? So if you don’t want to straighten up and act a bit different to be attractive to the woman you love, why in the world should she be expected to respond positively to you when you’ve become lazy, or a wimpy girly man who bores her to tears, smothers her, seeks her approval at every turn, can’t make a decision about anything and defers them all to her, shaves his body but not his face (just like she does), and either uses more hair and facial products than she does and out-dresses her or doesn’t bathe and groom regularly and dresses like a homeless guy or “gangsta”?

In a nutshell, just like the 500-pound woman, the guy I’m describing demonstrates a total lack of self-respect and self-love, and that’s poison to a woman’s sense of attraction, turning every switch off and sending her running. You can’t expect her to go against her natural programming or wiring any more than you could be expected to do the same thing. If you want her to respond differently, you have to behave differently. End of story. Here’s a cool little rhyme to keep the idea fresh in your mind at all times:

If you always do
What you’ve always done
You’ll always get
What you’ve always got.

No, it’s not today’s latest rap, but it gets the point across. Dare to be different. Now, you can go about this one of two ways, one of which will fail miserably, while the other succeeds every time. You can fail by trying to put on a cool act for her. An act might get you a date, and might even get you in the sack once or twice in a dating situation, but with a woman you’ve lived with for awhile and who knows you? Guess again. Ain’t happening. You’re going to get caught being a wuss and the attraction is going to die right then and there, and in the meantime, you’re going to live in fear of being discovered. Now, what if I told you that the way to succeed was far easier than the act that would surely fail? Want to give it a try?

The thing you can do is to simply BE a better man! Learn what it is to be an alpha male. Recognize that this is really who you were born to be and get the alpha male attitude. Be SOMEBODY! Be a leader when you are qualified to do so, even if it’s just in a conversation about something you like. Have fun, and don’t be afraid to be seen having fun. Tell anybody who would interfere with you truly enjoying your status as a man, your job and your ability to be competent, or try to diminish your self-image by telling you that it’s not politically correct to enjoy being a guy to take a bloody hike! Any wussy behavior will fall away and be replaced by the confidence in knowing that as an alpha male, people will seek your company and your counsel, especially the woman you love and live with, because you are what she wants! You don’t have to put up an act. All you have to do is be a guy.

Then, you can take a look at yourself and engage in a little self-improvement exercise by taking a look at the things women respond to, like charm, charisma, leadership, public speaking ability and comfort in a crowd, sense of humor, etc., and if any of these things aren’t a natural part of you and you like the idea of having them be part of you, you can develop them in yourself, and enjoy doing so. You study for other things you enjoy, don’t you? Athletic statistics, woodworking methods, fishing, camping, starting a fire in a charcoal grill, are all things you pick up to enjoy other parts of your life, so why not learn a few things about women so you can enjoy them more???

Public speaking is a biggie when it comes to tickling a woman’s fancy, and one of the most fun experiences in my life was joining the Toastmasters’ Club. There were a lot of wonderfully interesting people there who told funny stories and jokes, taught tips and skills, and even recited some pretty decent poetry, all just to get used to being and speaking in front of a group of people, and since everyone was there for the same purpose, the entire group was very supportive, and I made friends that I wouldn’t trade for the world. I could have cared less if I ever made a public speech; I just wanted to be able to confidently and calmly address a group, like telling a good story at a party or explaining to a group of peers something I’d learned, and it was great to finally be able to do that. The point?

Self-improvement should always be enjoyable; both achieving it and having it should be a true pleasure. And, once you have achieved it, it’s there, naturally, not just some act to be seen through, but genuine and enjoyable for those around you as well. Hence, if you target self-improvement efforts at things you enjoy and your partner finds attractive, improving your relationship, and consequently, your sex life, while a most serious pursuit, can be as enjoyable as any hobby, and the effects are forever useful, unlike a lot of self-improvement fads that change with the seasons (anybody remember “Total Quality Management” from the 1980’s, followed by “Continuous Quality Management,” and then “Continuous Quality Improvement,” all of which were replacements for the “Zero-Defect Standard” preached through the 1970s?)

The behavior women are attracted to might spawn different deeds as trends come and go, rather like raising a car door in the future (gull-wing doors) instead of swinging them outward as we do today, but the attractive attitude that determines the behavior hasn’t changed in centuries, and due to the extremely slow pace at which we biologically evolve and given that attraction is based on biological responses, you can be sure that it won’t be changing in your lifetime, either. So invest a little time and effort in your future…

I’ve given you the general lay of the land, but for the detailed map, how to travel it (including creating anticipation), and how to talk and listen along the way, go to http://www.makingherhappy.com right now, and download your copy of my book “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage”. It’s so named not because it sounded cool or catchy, but because IT WORKS. Period. Get your copy today and get back to being that real man you were born to be because life is too short to spend it acting like a wuss, not to mention being treated like one, which among other things, means being mostly celibate, frustrated, and lonely – not a good way to spend the holidays!

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 damned 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 love. 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 blog, 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. (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.)

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 rejects reality with impunity, 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 is a very quick study, and we’ve been talking a lot 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 it was that 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 very instant that I wrote that to him, understand why I had had trouble with break-ups in the past, and those who know me closely would describe me to you as the most ruthlessly logical person they have ever met. I never stopped to ask myself while I was going through it why it was so hard. I was too busy asking myself another ridiculous question: “Why does this have to happen?” when I already knew the answer.

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

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

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

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

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

Not being able to live together happily is by no means an indication that you can’t have an enjoyable conversation or dinner from time to time, help each other with a project or hobby on occasion, or do any of the other things that friends do. It takes a lot more 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 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 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 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.

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, not each other.

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

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

Lying in Relationships and Marriage, Part 1, Faking It Until You Make It

Is lying to your partner ever a good attraction tactic? Is it ever good for anything in your relationship? Only if you’re a predator…

This is the first part of a three-part series on the various aspects of deceit in a relationship, which will include, among other things, lie detection, so don't miss any part of it! Reader comments indicate it is one of the most popular topics we discuss and the second most popular newsletter series I issue, and truth be told, I should probably turn it into a stand-alone report, so even if you’ve seen it before, read carefully and treat it as a “refresher course” if necessary.

I’ve been asked frequently about the tactic of “fake it ‘til you make it” when trying to revive stale relationship or rescue a failing one. We’ve not talked about it in several months, and since many of you have commented (all comments are welcome and read; see the text below my signature for instructions if you need them) that you like it much better when we focus on a subject for a few days and thoroughly explore it, we’re going to focus on lying and deceit in general for a few days, such as detecting it, damage it can do that you may not expect, etc. Let’s dig in!

I recently read (for the fourth time) the scariest book I’ve ever found. It’s entitled “The Rules: Time-tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right,” by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider, in an effort to find out why women do so many things that are bad for them and their relationships with men, and I don’t know if this book is “the root of all evil” in relationships and marriage, but while some of the advice it gives is sound, practical advice, especially on personal security for women, parts of it are pure poison, and there’s much for both genders to learn from it if you can filter the good advice from the bad.

Frankly, I’d recommend that every man read it to see what kind of tricks and ploys are used to pull a man into a bad relationship to help him know that either his partner is a great woman who didn’t prey upon his insecurities or that he got sucked in and is being manipulated so he can take appropriate action to safely exit with confidence. Make no mistake, there are good relationships with problems, and there are bad relationships that need to be dissolved, and no matter which you’re in, you need to know EXACTLY what you’re in to fix it. Your first responsibility is to yourself and your own happiness, and until you’ve met that responsibility, you might contribute to someone else’s needs or cause, but not their happiness.

“The Rules,” according to its authors, is based on advice that a woman gave her daughter a hundred years ago or more on how to catch and marry a man. At that time, marrying well was a survival skill because many women could not make it on their own due to social prejudices, etc. Being “in love” was a luxury; “finding support” was a prime motivator in finding a husband; being “cared about” took a back seat to being “provided for.” Hence, much of the advice given under “The Rules” is how to prey upon a man’s insecurities to make him jealous and over-react to her scarcity, marrying her in order to control her availability.

This will get the job done, if simply getting married and being kept is a woman’s goal, but at what cost? In short, turning him into an insecure, jealous wuss that no woman could possibly be attracted to because a woman won’t respect and can’t feel attraction (that “swept off her feet” feeling that is an integral part of female sexual arousal) for a man she can control. This is a sure-fire recipe for disaster (especially if you have a healthy libido!), as it is what creates that marriage in which the woman spends everything the man makes but has sex with the proverbial gardener or pool boy instead of her husband.

I’ll get into more of this in a future newsletter, but what I want to talk about today, and the reason I bring this up, is that much of the advice given in this book entails lying to men to attract them. I’m going to address that issue for the women in my upcoming book written for them, but it begs the more general question: “Is lying ever a good way to handle anything in a relationship, especially the building of attraction?”

The short answer, for both genders, is “Not just no, but HELL NO!” unless you are indeed some kind of predator or a total loser. Among other things, it leaves you feeling that you had to lie to attract the partner and therefore aren’t good enough to have him or her, even if you are! It also labels you as needy and weak, and is a tactic for losers and predators who cannot be attractive in their own right. That alone is devastating to self-esteem, if you have any, and when you look at the bigger picture, how can you feel or express love or respect for a person you lied to in order to have them involved in your life? Or for yourself? Can you love and respect yourself after lying to trick somebody into a relationship with you? Even without getting into what happens when you get caught, it’s a losing proposition for both sides.

What should you do? Work your attraction magic with things that are really part of you, incorporating new things that fit well into yourself if necessary. Start by emphasizing – NOT exaggerating -- your best behavior and avoiding and ultimately reforming – NOT disguising -- your worst. Then, take on a bit of self-improvement in areas that are appealing to you. If you’re not naturally funny, learn to be. Don’t just try to fake it, and stress over it; study it, understand how it can brighten your life and your outlook on life, as well as make you more attractive to your partner, and treat it as a self-improvement exercise because it is. Don’t try to act funny, BECOME funny. Join Toastmaster’s or something and learn how to tell a good story and see the humor in things. Take dancing lessons if you’ve always thought about it but never got around to it. Learn how to have real fun and adventure yourself and you will be fun and interesting to a woman.

Another example? Don’t try to act romantic, BE romantic. Develop a genuine appreciation for the great, the beautiful, the larger than life, and be able to spot it and point it out to others as you do in a way which helps them to get excited over it and appreciate it, as you see in the movie “Don Juan DeMarco.” Take a music appreciation or art appreciation class to get you started, or take up some kind of hobby where appreciation for greatness will be an inherent part of it as you delve deeper into the hobby, and gain self-esteem from your achievements as you progress. This isn’t changing yourself for her, it’s changing yourself for YOU, to have what YOU want, which is a strong, positive, attractive personality that you enjoy living with, people enjoy being around and which will attract viable candidates for a great relationship.

Or, you could just try to “fake it ‘til you make it,” and be stressed out over having your cover blown and somebody seeing the real you and not liking what they see, kicking you to the curb while yelling “Fraud!” and walking away without another thought. No? I thought not.

This process is not difficult; indeed, it’s most enjoyable. Most people who don’t engage in self-improvement avoid it because of fear of failure, not because there’s really any reason for them to fail, while most people who do engage in it (and I do mean ENGAGE, not just buy the materials and set them on the shelf or skim them instead of using them) succeed.

By the same token, if you don’t have any exciting stories to tell, don’t make them up – get off your butt and get out and do something exciting! If you’re not an expert at something, don’t fake it and make an ass of yourself, pick something interesting and useful to you (and hopefully fun for you as well) and BECOME an expert. It is far better to be silent and thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt! Besides, a man needs a hobby. ;-)

Never, ever, lie to your partner. Even without regard for moral or ethical issues; it’s just too stressful for both of you, and too damaging to your self-esteem, whether you get caught or spend years trying to maintain a lie, not to mention damaging to the relationship. It’s far easier to actually become attractive than to try to just put on the act, and once you do become attractive, BEING attractive isn’t just stress-free, it’s fun! And then, if the potential for love is there, it can develop and make for a truly great relationship that stands the test of time.

There’s a wealth of solid, tested information in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” on what women find attractive, and just as important, what will kill it in a heartbeat, not to mention how to communicate with her in a way that has her talking with you instead of spending hours every day complaining about you to all her girlfriends, or the guy she’s having an affair with! It can even help you figure out if you’re in a relationship that has a good foundation and can make it or if you’ve been pulled in by a “Rules Girl” and are truly too mismatched for there to be any hope.

This is it, your best shot at getting things back on the right track no matter how far astray they’ve gone, so download your copy today at http://www.makingherhappy.com, because the information works, the price is right, the guarantee is unconditional, and life is too short to miss living it to the fullest.

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

Are Your Friends Helping or Destroying YOUR Relationship and 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 more 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 whose 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 somebody 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

Why Men Have Affairs, and How You Can Stop Them from Destroying 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. 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. The exception 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.

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

Knowing When NOT to Apoligize in Your Relationship or Marriage

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

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

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

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

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

Then the fight starts…

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

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

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

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

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

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

This constant pressure keeps many women, as tough as they are, teetering on the brink of feeling really crappy about themselves, and from time to time, when fatigue, illness, stress, etc., build up and weaken them enough, they fall into a mode where no matter what you say, they are going to take it in the worst way possible.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When She Gains a Few Pounds: Walking Through a Minefield in Relationships and Marriage

The holidays are here, and we all tend to over-do the feasting a bit. What do you do when she gains a few pounds? Inquiring minds want to know, at least if they ever hope enjoy being married again…

The holidays are here, and that means good food and parties. It also means a lot of scrambling around trying to do holiday shopping and eating out for lack of time, not to mention family gatherings, etc. That means that unless your wife is extremely disciplined or has an extremely high metabolism, she’s going to pick up a few pounds, and like it or not, you’re going to have to deal with it.

Sounds like a no-win situation, huh? It’s tricky for sure, but not impossible. Here’s a typical letter about this most common problem, and a very sticky one to say the least. Meet Tia:

Dear David,

I need your help. The past few months I have put on a few extra pounds due to a medication that I have to take for my asthma. Everybody tells me that they don’t notice it and I look good, but to me I feel like the Goodyear blimp and have no desire to be intimate with my husband at all because I’m embarrassed over having curves in places that were flat. The more he tries to tell me I look sexy the more his advances just make me feel pressured, and I hate feeling under pressure this way. It has nothing to do with not loving him or not wanting to enjoy each other the way we always have. We have always been very in touch with each other and being together in the bed was always one of the best parts.

I was hoping you could give me some advice as to how I could bring this up with him. I want him to understand just how awful I feel I look and how it has nothing to do with him at this point.

Thank you,
Tia

Tia, I’m going to make this really easy for you, because it’s such a great question. Just print this post and let him read it, because I’m going to tell him and all the other men about this. He won’t know it’s you unless you tell him because I’ve changed the name to protect your privacy.

Get ready guys! Pay close attention, take notes, and make sure you fully understand what you’re about to read. This is some of the most critical information to ever appear in this newsletter and you need to get this down pat and cold, right now, because sooner or later, virtually EVERY woman will experience a bit of weight gain that makes her uncomfortable with her appearance, and consequently, with YOU.

If you’ve read "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," you know about the difference in the male and female brain structure. Aside from making our communications styles and methods grossly different, it also makes women visualize, emotionalize and even dramatize to the extreme compared to males.

You also must remember that nearly all of the advertising in the fashion and beauty industries is designed to prey upon a woman’s sense of competitiveness to make her feel insecure about her appearance. Women are literally bombarded with this crap everywhere they look, and while you or I probably wouldn’t even notice a little weight gain until we had to loosen our belt a notch or sew a button back on our trousers that had popped off, to them a pound or two can be nearly or wholly traumatic, especially if they’ve taken pride in a flat stomach for a long time.

We often respond to this by telling them that they look “fine,” “sexy,” “hot,” etc., and that is precisely the wrong thing to do. Why?

She knows what she sees in the mirror, and thinks that you see what she sees in the mirror. If she thinks she looks fat and you say she looks sexy, all that says to her is that either you’re lying or your standards are really, really low. Don’t go there, even if you really think she looks better with a couple of extra pounds because you like the curves, and whatever you do, DON’T tell her you like the new curves! That can get you killed, because in her ears, that’s, “But honey, I like you better when you’re fat like this.” (Ladies, you are cordially invited to write in and tell the men just that – I’ll reprint your letters so the men will know just how serious an issue this is.)

So what are you supposed to do?

You’d already know this, too, if you had read “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” because you wouldn’t be making those kinds of advances and doing really stupid things like asking her to have sex with you. You’d be tripping her attraction triggers with alpha male behavior, naughty talk and gestures, and making her have fun and get so hot that she doesn’t concern herself with her additional weight because she’d still feel sexy and desirable, and she’d be coming after YOU! (See Jay’s letter in the archive for an example, because he’s got it down cold.)

When you know what a woman wants, what makes her tick, how to both listen and talk to her, and how to have fun with her, she doesn’t feel like a middle-aged housewife that can’t compete with the 20-somethings anymore. She feels like a real queen who rules the world at your side by day and a red hot vixen by night, keeping that naughty little secret for you and you alone because you create it for her. There's a time and place, not to mention a right way and a wrong way, for everything, and that includes delivering genuine, honest compliments.

That, Gentlemen, is how a real man makes a real woman feel, and that is what you learn when you read “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage.” So how many more times are you going to have to stick your foot in your mouth and spend the night in the doghouse before you go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy? Go now, and get it done, because there are far better things to do with your feet (and your mouth!).

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hi Brad!

I’m glad you’re finding my book useful. I’ve had quite a few readers comment that they wish they had been able to read something like that before they ever got into a relationship, and others go so far as to say that it should be required reading in high school. Do yourself a HUGE favor and don’t skip the first part of the book, the part on evaluating relationships. That part works wonders in mature relationships to make sure they have a foundation sufficient to warrant improvement, and it also really shines if you use it as you see a relationship starting to develop and do your validation as you go in and as the relationship evolves, so you can get out early if you start seeing red flags. An ounce of prevention is worth several tons of cure when it comes to relationships and marriage!

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

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

David Cunningham

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

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

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

That doesn’t mean it’s too late for any of you. Unlike in Brad’s world, where windows of opportunity are very small, perhaps only seconds long, and the window tends to get slammed on your fingers because there are so many possibilities and little or no vested interest in a relatively new relationship, couples that have been together a couple years have a vested interest (“sweat equity,” kids, real estate, time, life, etc.) in continuing the relationship and will only let it go as a last resort.

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

Being the guy every woman wants is not hard to do; indeed, much of it is quite natural, and the part that isn’t all that natural is still a lot of fun. Imagine, after all those years of telling those jokes about the genie who could build a bridge from Los Angeles to Hawaii but couldn’t grant a man’s wish to know everything he needed to know about women, you suddenly knew! How would that change your life? No matter how much you think it will, based on the history of my readers, I’ll bet it will still be more than you think, and for the better.

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

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

It’s never too soon and seldom too late to get on the right path, the path to personal authority, success, and happiness. Even if she’s gone, she may not be gone for good, and if she is gone for good, there are a whole lot more that will be lucky and happy to take her place after you’ve read "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and become one of the few of us whom women recognize at first glance as a man “who just knows what a woman wants.” Go to