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

Trick Question: How Do You Ask for Intimacy in Your Relationship and Marriage?

A reader asks about the proper way to ask for physical intimacy. The short answer is, you don’t!

I hope this day is going as well for you as it is for me. As I write this, it’s a typical Saturday at my house. The air is thick with the smell of testosterone as project after project, the kind that require a quick mind, strong back, and power tools, has been completed and celebrated with a satisfied grunt and a wipe of the brow before changing tools to start the next project.

Being a guy is easy for me, because I’ve learned that it’s something to aspire to, not something to apologize for, just like being human. There is very little that annoys me any more than to hear someone try to cover a mistake by saying, “But I’m ONLY human.”

We are the most highly-evolved species on the planet, the only one capable of sophisticated engineering, fabrication, and decision-making, not to mention art, cooking, music and dance, etc. We have the power of volitional choice, and hence can develop and raise our standard of living well beyond what is required for mere survival, unlike any other species on Earth.

In spite of this status, some of us just don’t get it. We shy away from doing what comes natural, as if there’s something wrong with being human, or with being a man or a woman. Meet Marcus:

Hi David,

I’ve been following your newsletters for several months now, and haven’t yet seen you speak of the proper way to ask a woman for intimacy (sex). Is this something that you cover in your book and just don’t want to discuss in your newsletter or what?

Regards,
Marcus

Marcus, Buddy, if the truth were a snake it would have bitten you. You’ve not seen me speak of it because YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO DO IT! If you were to ask any woman – WOMAN, mind you, not some high school girl who still has a head full of poetic mush from reading too many fairy tales – how she liked to be asked for sex, she’d most likely laugh at you and walk off without an answer. The question is truly that pathetic to women, as it marks you as an “un-man,” a loser.

You should have noticed that what I DO talk about, frequently, is how to flip a woman’s attraction switches on by acting like a man, being a leader, the alpha male who, instead of being wussy and boring and hiding from the world in his easy chair channel surfing with a beer all evening and then asking for sex at bed time, projects an image of confidence because he’s good at the things he does and enjoys being a man leading an active life, who has a fun, playful, flirtatious sense of humor, and can put a smile on a woman’s face by jumping in and out of “leadership” mode to crack a naughty grin and playfully tease and create enjoyable sexual tension for her.

This is what women want (Pay attention here, Sigmund Freud -- he's famous for saying, "The Great Question, which I have not answered, is ‘What does a woman want?'"): They want to be excited. They want to be surprised from time to time. They want to feel safe in investing their emotions. They want to have fun. They want to dance that “two steps forward, one step back” dance with you as the naughty fun and flirting ramps up tension, eases a bit momentarily, and then shoots to new highs, until such a high is reached that they pounce on you, wanting to be “taken.” THAT’S why you’ve never heard me describing the proper way to ASK for sex. It doesn’t exist.

And before somebody jumps to a really stupid conclusion and sends me a nasty-gram saying I’m promoting rape, no, I absolutely am not. “No” means “no” and your desire or need is not a rightful demand on another’s life or person. What I’m telling you is that if you do what you should do in flipping the biological switches to create attraction and excitement, you’ll never hear “no” because she will be coming after YOU, or waiting with bated breath and quickened pulse to be taken by you and making it plain that she wants you. “No” is only an issue when you’re either not creating attraction for her or being insensitive and pushing her for sex when she has other problems.

Whether or not she wants to have sex with you is her right to choose, but if you do what you should be doing as a man, which is creating attraction for her by simply being a man and knowing how to communicate with her, she will be consistently choosing to unless she’s in pretty bad shape, because she’ll be biologically driven to it and you will in fact be holding her off a bit to heighten the tension and excitement!

Attraction is biological, not logical, and there is no request or argument that you can make that will excite her enough to do anything more than tolerate you. Flip those switches off, and you will hear “No” every time. Flip them on, and you’ll not only hear “yes;” you’ll see it and feel it as she pounces on you.

And how do you go about learning and evolving into a man who does this naturally, without the stress of trying to “fake it until you make it?” Come to http://www.makingherhappy.com/ and find out, like many before you have!

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

Getting the Mix Right for a Great Relationship and Marriage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You don’t need to know every little thing there is to know about women, but there are some things that you do need to know if you ever want to be happy with one or more of them. And there again, it’s not just one thing you’ll need to know about, but a mix of things: compatibility, communications, emotions, mentality, needs, wants, and reactions, just to name the big ones. And then you need to throw into that mix everything that makes the women in your life (wife, daughters, sisters, friends, wives of friends, coworkers, wives of coworkers – there are probably a lot more women in your life than you realize) individuals, their idiosyncrasies that will endear you to them if you notice and appreciate.

With all these “mixes” going on, it sounds like you need a HUGE cookbook, doesn’t it?

Well, no, you don’t, and no, I’m not going to drop that “recipe for a happy marriage” cliché on you. However, you do need to learn a few things because there are several aspects of your relationship that you need to master and manage.

But! That’s not to say that you need a dozen books on psychology, several on communication, a few on seduction, a bunch on female physiology and sexual technique, one on women’s history, etc. Yeah, that’s a mixture, too, but it’s a whole lot of overkill, and quite frankly, since a lot of women think they want things that they really respond to quite negatively, it’s also going to be pretty confusing.

There is an answer for you, though. It’s not a freebie, but you can easily afford it, no matter what you’re situation. It’s not a magic pill, but it’s a regimen you can easily swallow. It’s not likely to turn your life upside down overnight, but some of my readers have stopped their divorces cold within less than a week of receiving it, and over the course of several weeks after that put things back on track and then went on to make them better than they’ve ever been.

Some are going more slowly, taking a few months, because sudden change just isn’t in them (you know, the detail-oriented sort who take the time to check and double-check and study everything before taking action), but even if you are one of those people, what’s two or three months compared to extending your marriage as much as thirty or forty years, and making it a great marriage instead of a trap that sucks the life out of you?

Or worse, what are two or three months compared to the years you might continue to be unhappy and/or alone, or stuck with the wrong person, if things continue the way they’re going? Not much, not much at all. Let’s see, three months study and self-improvement for 30 years of happiness. That’s a 12,000% return, and unlike the stock market, you’re in total control of whether that investment pays off, because it’s based on choices you make and actions you take, not the choices and actions of others. And I don’t even want to try to compute the percentage gain if you only have to spend the two to four hours required to read the book and hit the ground running!

Your answer is at http://www.makingherhappy.com/. It’s called "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and from what my readers and I have seen, it has that which will cure what ails your relationship, if you do nothing more than read and apply it. Don’t tell anybody I told you so, but just between us, it’s a whole lot of fun, so get to it now, before you do another thing!

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

A Late Winner, Success Story, and GREAT Lessons for Your Relationship and Marriage

I found a late entry that was so well-analyzed, well-prepared, and well-presented that I had to reward its author. He has a GREAT story to tell about his own life and the best analysis and teaching presentation of the King Arthur and the Witch story that I have seen to date, and I’m calling this one a “MUST READ.”

We interrupt the regularly scheduled newsletter edition today to bring you one that I really never thought I would present, and am SO proud to do so. One of you has moved straight to the head of the class with a great success story and the best analysis of the King Arthur and the Witch story I have seen or heard to date, bar none. Indeed, he covered every significant point that I found and even small one that I didn’t spot myself. Meet Stan:

David,

I am one of those guys who lost their wife of twenty-three years because of not knowing the signs that you teach of. I worshiped the ground that "SHE" walked on and it killed all of her attraction for me. She filed for divorce and I went into a depression after she left and became a sniveling flubber. A wimp who begged her to come home and love me. You were right, this only repulsed her and she would tell me that she was going to find a "Real Man" and told me that I made her sick.

Well, her "Real Man" turned out to be a homeless drunk without even a driver's license whom didn't compare to me in any way. Looks, money, character or morals. She bought him things and helped get him a place to live, drove him around and had sex with him while suing me for divorce and trying to take everything that I worked for, which brought me down even further. When he was done with her, he, of course, dumped her. All within a matter of a few months.

I have two children (One a teenage boy the other a nine year old girl) of whom the courts gave me custody from the beginning but with supporting them and loosing work because of my depression I still haven't been able to afford your book yet. However, using your advice (received via your E-Mail letters) I have met a quality "LADY", whom is even more beautiful than my ex and way more of a lady to me and my children than "SHE" ever was.

I have learned a lot from your letters and I thank you for everything, for until I found your site I had given up and had all but crawled under a rock to die. From you I learned how "I" had a major roll in her actions and infidelities and as such, I also have to accept some of the blame. Now "SHE" is begging "ME" for love and to let her come back but I have learned from you what to look for in a quality woman and she has none of the qualities of a good wife or partner or sad to say, even a mother.

I am an adamant reader of your E-Mail articles now and so appreciate your help getting me through my "Wuss Syndrome". I thank you for teaching me to be (and helping me to realize that I am) an "Alpha Male" and as such, I am a better man, father, and inspiration to my friends and family and especially my son.

That being said, here is what I learned from the story: "What does a woman really want?"

The first lesson in this story is that Arthur should not have sought out the wisdom of the wise or priests, because this particular question had nothing to do with spiritual wisdom, but pertained more so to a woman's nature. The princess wasn't truly qualified to answer the question because she would have probably had everything handed to her since her birth and wouldn't comprehend the true meaning of the word "want."

Arthur probably didn't go to the witch at first, not based solely on the fact of cost (He didn't even ask the cost yet) but because he, neglecting the fact that she IS a woman, didn't think that a woman of her stature would have the answer to a question so pertinent, for she lacked the looks and finer qualities associated with regular women for whom society sometimes associate looks or appearance with quality. How would a woman of her stature know what "REGULAR" women want?

The witch, however, did have the knowledge of what she or "Women" wanted, because she in fact WAS in charge of her own life. She had the choice of being whatever or whomever she wanted. The witch was perceived as ugly by others but they all respected her and knew that she would have the answer for a reason; she was a powerful woman who was strong within herself. She did not have to prove to anyone who she was because she already knew who she was. She was “it,” so to speak. Thus the exorbitant costs she required.

She wanted Lancelot, who stood out from the crowd, as her booty because she new that she deserved him and would not settle for less than the best. As the "Most noble of the knights" He had already proven himself an "Alpha Male" which had already triggered her attraction switch knowing within that she was also a quality female.

Retaining her looks through the wedding ceremony was probably a test to see how much of a man he was and he passed with flying colors. It didn't matter to him how anyone else felt or what they thought, Lancelot lived for and answered only to himself. He was willing to do what was right for his people, again showing leadership qualities and selflessness by taking the initiative and being a leader for his king, continuing to trigger attraction in her.

On their wedding night the witch offered Lancelot part of what she "COULD BE" not so much as a reward only, but possibly as a continuing test. She rewarded him and partially submitted to his authority by giving him part of what she knew he, as a man, would want while posing yet another test of when he would want it; is this about pride (the way other people see you) or is it about you (what you want)?

By accepting her gift and graciously granting her the authority back, to make the decision as to when he would receive it, he gave her the security of letting her know that he believed that she was capable of making her own decisions and that he was going to stand by her either way continuing to trip her attraction triggers thereby causing her to want to please him, turning her into what he wanted her to be, naturally.

Thanks for letting me thank you.

Stan

Well done, Stan. Well done indeed. Enjoy your copy of "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and keep in touch. If you can learn that much and do that much with my newsletters, I can’t wait to see what you can do with my book.

And what about the rest of you? Maybe you’re getting a lot out of my newsletters, and I’m pleased as punch that you are, but has it occurred to you that as good as what you’re getting out of these newsletters is, you’re not getting anything close to what’s in my book? If you’re getting more smiles than you used to, you’re really talking again, and things are starting to heat up in the bedroom again, great, but you’re catching crumbs, so to speak. How about a nice big steak? Can you imagine what you could do with that? And don’t you deserve to treat yourself and your relationship better?

I love this work, I love helping you folks, and I love every one of you for making the effort to try to make your life better, but I’ll be the first to admit that I do this for a living and I’ll never put more than 10% of what I’ve researched and proven into these newsletters. It was a lot of hard work for a lot of people, especially me. And you’ve seen that I put a whole lot more useful information in these newsletters than most authors put in their premium reports and books, so can you imagine what’s in my book? And what you could do with it?

So are you a crumb-catcher or a beef-eater? Have a steak, hot off the grill. Go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and see what I mean, see what you can do, and see how great YOUR life becomes because of it.

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

How Honey-Do Lists Affect Your Relationship and Marriage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

7. It promotes a feeling of cooperation and teamwork

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

9. It makes good use of otherwise idle time

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…your wife is unable to do?

…your wife is unable to help you with?

…you do well and/or enjoy doing?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HOWEVER…

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

THEY COMPETE OVER WHOSE WAY IS THE RIGHT WAY…

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

Notice that I said that BOTH are incorrect!

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

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

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

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

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

Would you have been one of them?

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

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

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

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

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 on finding the truth instead of securing an empty victory. People who feel good about themselves also avoid putting themselves at risk unless the possible benefit justifies that risk.

Assuming for the sake of discussion that a man has a six-figure or even seven-figure salary and will lose it if he goes to jail for stalking, is that in any way justified in the recovery of fifty bucks for a meal check? Or is the risk of a divorce and having your family torn apart, life turned upside down, and losing half or more of everything you have justified by getting your partner to admit that to doing something that they haven’t really done, or say that they agree with you when they really don’t, just to placate you and shut you up?

It’s intriguing to see how many of the laws of physics apply to relationships; for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Granted, in the case of a relationship the reaction may indeed be disproportionate, and it’s likely to be an over-reaction if you make somebody fairly angry or hurt them. Monitor your emotions carefully, and next time you catch yourself feeling like you want to “uncork on your partner,” stop and think, “What am I going to gain by going through this, and what am I going to risk losing?” Then answer!

The easiest rule of thumb to follow is if you’re going to gain or maintain your self-respect, then you should continue (although you should try to keep your anger in check and ask questions and discuss rather than just jumping down your partner’s throat), and if you are going to risk losing your self-respect (through embarrassment over assumptions, etc.), it’s very likely going to be a bad idea and you definitely have some more thinking and fact-finding to do.

Another of my favorite laws of physics is the Law of Inertia. It states that an object in motion tends to remain in motion and an object at rest tends to remain at rest, until acted upon by an equal or superior force. This can be universally applied by merely simplifying the language:

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

The limerick format just makes it easier to remember. So now think about this. If you’ve always had problems and do nothing to change the underlying cause, is there any reason to expect them to just fix themselves? Of course not, and you there, in the back, nodding your head “yes” with a dumbfounded expression on your face, will stay after class for remedial training and possible scheduling for a brain transplant. Where problems are concerned, a continuation of the problem without escalation is your best-case scenario if you don’t do something to fix it, and continuance with escalation and disaster is the most likely course if it’s causing any kind of ill feelings.

No ill feelings? Are you sure? Are you hearing things like, “You never listen to me?” Or are you hearing nothing at all? Have things slowed down at the dinner table discussions, or in the bedroom? Are you getting short or even monosyllable answers to questions that you’d think would invite a more verbose answer? Are you going separate directions when you go places that you used to explore together? An answer of “yes” to any of these questions is a highly-reliable indicator that there are indeed problems, either unresolved issues or boredom at least.

Didn’t know boredom was a major problem? You don’t know much about women, do you? Ask one how she feels when she gets bored. You and I aren’t that uncomfortable with it, indeed, it’s often a good excuse for a nap, but in women you’ll find that they are so stricken by it that they start exhibiting some of the same symptoms we do when we feel anger or fear: trembling, inability to focus, sensation of desperation, willingness to do anything, even if it’s wrong, just to cause some change in the situation, just to name a few. The greatest gift you can give any woman is to love her enough to remain vigilant and protect her from boredom.

That sounds like a pretty tall order, but if you talk to people who have been married fifty years and are still happy together (especially those who still have “the heat” for each other, and yes, there are plenty of them), you’ll find that the secret to their success is that they have learned, usually the hard way, how to cope with these problems or they are so well-matched that they never experience them enough to notice.

Whether subconsciously or consciously, they keep an eye on the status of their relationship, and they fix things when they break. They recognize that men and women have different needs and ways of doing things, especially communicating and dealing with problems and emotions, and they consider and accommodate these differences to reduce stress and build trust. They know what each other likes and values, and they share common values. They also know what turns each other on and off, and reserve their bedroom for sleep, sex and intimacy instead of taking their problems in there.

I’ve worked with hundreds of such couples, and imparted the knowledge that worked for some to the rest of the group to see what was universally true and what was more appropriate for only some participants. Everything that worked for 90% or more of the couples is in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and you should download it at http://www.makingherhappy.com right now, and have the benefit of all those who succeeded before you to do wonderful things in your own relationship…

…or, you can keep doing what you’ve always done, and keep getting what you’ve always been getting, like frustration, confusion, fear, celibacy, affairs, fights, questions with no answers, dirty looks, spousal abuse and sabotage – I really don’t need to give you the whole list, because you’re living with it. By the way, I’m not living with it anymore, and from the testimonials I’m receiving from readers, they’re not either. So how about joining us?

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

Cute or Cruel? The Fine Line Between Play and Abuse in Relationships and Marriage

One of the easiest ways to learn how to do something right, including creating attraction, is to model the behavior of someone who is already skilled. However, you still have to know enough about the process to know whether the behavior you are thinking about modeling is the right behavior to model.

I hope you are enjoying this day as much as I am. In the July 4, 2009 edition of this newsletter, I wrote to you about playing with women, and how many of the things we do with each other as men to bond and help each other develop “a thicker skin” are perceived differently by women, cruel in fact, because they use the same behavior to attack each other and therefore misconstrue some of our joking as an attack as well.

This is obviously not well-received by a woman from a man who tells her that he loves her. That lesson inspired the following letter from Nina, who notes the difference between ignorance and abuse (and yes, there are valuable lessons here for those of you whose relationships don’t involve abuse, so please stick with me here and you’ll see what I mean):

Hi David,

My husband and I have been reading your newsletters since my we started having trouble last summer, and your book has made a world of difference in our life. We were in a bit of a death spiral, bored and frustrated with each other and had begun picking and sniping at each other in retaliation against what we both thought were deliberate attacks and disrespect, and I need to thank you for helping us get that all sorted out.

He’s back to being the man I married, and I feel better about our marriage and my life now than I’ve ever felt, because Karl never bores me anymore. He’s fun and playful one minute and strong and decisive the next, and in spite of his growing “spare tire” around his middle and his receding hairline, he keeps me in the clouds, if you know what I mean. And by the way, thanks so much for teaching him about the value of anticipation and taking it slow. We’re both enjoying that part of our life more than we did during our dating and honeymoon periods combined.

I wanted to tell you about something I saw today, and have been seeing since our new neighbors moved in. I didn’t realize what I was really seeing until your newsletter about how men and women play differently. I thought that this was what our neighbor Gene was doing to his wife Carrie, but I think I was wrong. Every time we’re over there, no matter who is around or how Carrie really looks (she’s usually very slender and fit but sometimes she puts on a couple of extra pounds when she has to work late a lot at the hospital here), he’ll walk up and say to her, “You’re looking pretty chunky in those shorts (or pants or whatever). We’re going to have to get that weight off of you!” And then he’ll swat her on her bottom or pinch her or grab her and pull her skin to make love handles. It embarrasses her so badly that she’ll start crying and walk away, and he just laughs.

I thought for a long time that he was really that stupid and insensitive, but I’ve noticed other things lately. She never leaves the house without him, and very often when we’re all together and she’s asked a question, she’ll look at him before answering, and won’t answer until he makes eye contact with her and twitches some part of his face. I’ve never seen him hit her, and haven’t seen any bruises, but I think he’s controlling and abusing her, because she never looks happy and often the only way I can describe the way she looks is “trapped.” Is there anything that I can say to her or do for her to help her through this?

Thank you so much for your help, and for listening,
Nina

My reply:

Hi Nina,

I’m so happy to hear that you and your husband have had such success, and I’m equally sorry to hear that your neighbor is having such trouble. There is nothing to help her through, except exiting the relationship, unless she wants to risk going to jail by cracking him in the head with an iron skillet next time he abuses her.

Seriously, this is probably out of your league and hers. She needs some professional help to help her understand that she doesn’t have to tolerate his abuse and should in fact give him an ultimatum to either stop or leave, and that’s obviously not something that can be successfully handled by e-mail or phone, so she needs to find a local counselor.

What you can do for her is to point out to her that her accepting his behavior is self-destructive and unnecessary, that his behavior is controlling and abusive and not the “norm” for male behavior, and that if she is uncomfortable facing him down herself that she should get counseling from someone who specializes in abuse cases and start getting the problem handled. But be warned, she may try to suck you into her problems, or begrudge you sticking your nose into her marriage, and getting involved in your neighbor’s domestic disputes and relationship problems can land you in all sorts of trouble, including emotionally draining you to the point of damaging your relationship with your husband or causing a feud with your neighbor, so don’t let that happen.

Take care, and keep in touch,
David

Now, what can the rest of us learn from this situation? First, some women are just as capable and skilled at this kind of controlling, demoralizing behavior as men; indeed, some of them are even better at it than we are. They may not even make a pretense of playing with you; they may just attack you outright in public, airing your dirty laundry, discussing your mistakes and failures, describing in detail your embarrassing moments, complaining about things you do, etc.

But not every attack is abuse. Now, pay close attention here so you can learn to distinguish between a desperate plea for negotiation and abuse…

When a woman does this infrequently and it’s limited to a single issue, like some on-going disagreement that you’re having, it’s a sign that the two of you are having a communication problem on that issue, she’s frustrated, and thinking that she may get you to work harder to listen to her if she gives you a dose of embarrassment and frustration as punishment. Not the best solution in the world for sure, but malice, control, and abuse are not the motivation behind the problem. She’s merely getting desperate for communication and trying to bully you a bit to get it and punishing you for making it rough for her. HOWEVER…

If the attacks are frequent, and not related to problems, but to things that destroy self-esteem, like overtly trying to embarrass you over your receding hairline or recent weight gain, being passed over for promotion at work, etc., hitting hot buttons that have nothing to do with anything in dispute and especially target your manhood and independence, you have a spouse abuser on your hands, seeking to control you and keep you close to home by destroying your self-esteem and making you seek their approval.

On the issue of abuse, we have it just a little easier than most women. Most of us don’t generally have to worry about our wife beating us to a pulp and putting us in the hospital. But that’s about the only advantage. They can still hurt us financially in any number of ways, including burying us in debt and keeping us there, relentlessly putting us down in front of people to the point that we withdraw from the outside world to keep from being embarrassed in front of anybody we know, acting seductive toward other men in our presence or even bringing them home, and in extreme cases, even mixing things like mild poisons, things we’re allergic to (peanuts, shell fish, etc.) in our food in just high enough a concentration to make us miserable without endangering us. Abusers, male and female alike, don’t want their victim dead, they want them utterly submissive, alive and healthy enough to fully experience the abuse.

If you are with such a person, you can leave or throw them out. There may not be any criminal charges to file, and life may be a bit rough for a little while as you get used to being on your own again, but the truth is that no matter how insecure your abuser makes you feel, you don’t have to take it, and there are others in the world who will treat you with love and respect. It may take you awhile to heal and regain both your self-respect and your ability to trust women again, but you can do it, and I and thousands of others are capable of helping you through it, so you don’t have to do it alone, either.

Being well-matched is one of the cornerstones of a great relationship, and something I devote a lot of time and energy to explaining and helping you to understand in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and being strapped to an abuser for the rest of your life is definitely NOT what anyone would call “being well-matched,” unless of course you are a masochist.

Getting away from an abuser (and that includes predators who use attacks on your self-esteem to keep you submissive and in the habit of spending your entire life for their benefit at the expense of your own) first requires ascertaining that you are indeed with one, then either quashing their abusive behavior or separating yourself from them (almost everyone ends up doing the latter, because the underlying problems that make one an abuser of any kind rarely can be corrected, even with professional help, which is why we have nice, big prisons with lots of tiny cells), and then going through a process of healing and regaining your manhood and self-respect.

It also requires that you recognize that the odds of being struck by lightning are better than the odds of finding some way to reform an abuser, and accepting that they’re not going to change for you or anybody else, nor are they likely to change for their own sake. They live to find targets, and punish or exploit them. Nothing more, nothing less.

This must all be followed by overcoming any lingering fear you may have of future abuse, and then gaining a complete and working understanding of what a high-quality woman looks and acts like, how she thinks, and what she wants, and then evaluating yourself to see if some part of you needs to grow in order to satisfy such a woman.

The growing part is actually easy, because nearly all of us are born with a hero within, a part of us that wants to do better, have better, and be better, and the only thing that suppresses that part of us is bad programming that we pick up from the world around us. Remove the bad programming by accepting your true nature, and self-improvement comes very naturally and aggressively, because you suddenly realize that you both want and deserve it, and nothing can get in the way of you having it.

Great relationships don’t happen every day, but it’s not because they’re not available. It’s because even with all the school we attend and everything else we go through in growing up, very, VERY few of us are ever taught – by example or otherwise – what we need to know to find, build, and maintain a great relationship or marriage. We do what we’ve been programmed to do, or worse, what our insecurities, caused by our lack of understanding of the opposite sex, force us to do, and screw things up royally, and it doesn’t have to be that way at all.

As I said, I and thousands of other can help you, to varying degrees depending on our expertise and specialty, with any problems you have, but you have to first admit there is a problem and then choose to do something about it before any of us can do anything for you. I’ve been helping people with all sorts of problems my whole adult life, and I’m not a bit shy about saying that I’m one of the best you’ll find to help you, because I have thousands of business and individual clients to back me up on it, and nobody will ever tell you that I couldn’t help, at least to the extent of referring them to other competent help if their needs were outside my area of expertise. You can argue with opinions, but you can’t argue with history.

So what are you going to do about your problems? Are you going to just continue to wallow in them and hope somebody gives you a magic wand or powder or pill that makes them go away, or are you going to take the bull by the horns and get some help to get things going your way quickly so you can get back to (or get around to, if you never have) enjoying your life?

If you’re tired of things being touchy, rocky, scary, boring, tense, lonely or celibate in your relationship, stop tolerating it and let me help you fix it, a lot quicker and more easily than you would ever imagine, because I have the one thing above all others that you are lacking: good information that has been tested and worked for EVERYBODY who has used it, and it will work for you, too. Just jump over to http://www.makingherhappy.com and get your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and you’ll see what I mean.

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

It's Never Too Late to Fix the Problems in YOUR Relationship or Marriage

A reader who has been married for forty years demonstrates that it’s never too late to fix common relationship problems, even forty-year old problems, if you know what to do and just do it.

There have been a lot of new readers sign on lately (welcome aboard!), so for the benefit of you newbies, I want to start by saying that while I get a lot of e-mails with success stories, I don’t share them with the rest of you unless there is some specific lesson that you can learn from it. I never liked receiving such e-mails (or reading blog posts) that said nothing more than, “So-and-so did good and you can too if you buy now,” and I’m not going to bore you with them either. Yes, I have a book to sell if you need it, but I have a lot to teach you outside of that book, too.

I also want to urge you to grab my free browser toolbar to have instant access to blog posts, flash messages, a reader chat room, great stuff like pop-up blocking and Internet radio, games and gadgets, and other goodies. Some of us are having a lot of fun with it, and you should join us.

This story started in April 2006 when “Roger” (name has been changed to protect his privacy) subscribed to this newsletter and in early June 2006 bought a copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," a few days after that. He had a little trouble downloading the e-book because of Windows security features (128-bit SSL for you computer geeks) that had not been installed on his computer, and in the course of getting it straightened out he dropped a few details of his situation. I’ll quote some of them here to give you a feeling for where he started at the time of his purchase:

Hi David

Many thanks for your help in this. What little I saw indicates it is going to be a very useful reference book and answer some questions concerning things that happened years ago. We have been married for 40 years this year, but it has been a rocky road and still is occasionally.

Regards,
Roger

Hi David,
Your recent letter concerning your friend Matt has made me realize just how common such a situation can be. I have been married for almost 40 years with two daughters and three grandsons and for as long as I can remember, I have never been able to please her; always there is something else that she wants me to do. I realized this many years ago and now always make a joke of it. So as fast as I complete one project, she will have the next ready for me, sometimes before the first was finished! I just add them to my list of tasks these days, some will get done, some will never be done. My problem is that she has a real knack of making me feel guilty.

This is not just about projects, it could be a social event or something she simply does not approve of, but always I have a guilt feeling when I refuse. The feelings haunt me and I end up doing what she wants sooner or later in most cases. If I argue or try to discuss, I am accused of always wanting to control her. I am driven to succeed because I want the quiet life and the brownie points that come from approval. I am told she sings my praises to others, but never to me.

To give you some idea how it works, she wants me to tidy the garage so it can have a workbench, all the machines and space for me to work. She tells everyone how it will improve things for me, but she also wants me to move all the items stored in the garden shed to the garage so that I can demolish the shed. Then I am expected to build her a summerhouse in the space, not a prefabricated one, a purpose-built brick and tile fantasy!

In my spare time I am expected to remodel and transform the gardens, paint the house, build a new two-level deck across the back, turn the second bathroom into a "wet" room and keep the maintenance of our other two houses up to scratch! I must finish the kitchen sometime too! In all this she has ignored the plans we had to convert the garage into a dining room whilst we built a new garage with attached workshop. Maybe this is because her new greenhouse currently occupies the site?

David, I am tired! I work a 9-hour shift, six days per week and generally get just one day off. I cannot afford to pay someone else to do the work as I am still clearing debts from a failed business venture and I am earning just a tad above the minimum wage. I am reading the book you kindly emailed to me after it got lost in transit when I downloaded, but have yet to put it into practice.

Recently she took a vacation with my daughter and grandsons at one of our cottages. It was tiring, but different and the boys were easy, spending their time surfing. What was I doing? I spent my evenings and a rare weekend off work, repairing and painting the beach hut! Trying to please her again! My own vacations are limited and restricted to the extent we cannot have time together and if I take time off without her, I am expected to work on one of the projects!

I am considering building her a dungeon! :-))

There is a lot more to this than meets the eye, but I will not bore you with all the details of the problems in our marriage. I do not give up easily, but there are times when I seriously consider cutting my losses. Divorce is out of the question as we both feel it might make the other happy!

Any advice you can offer would be appreciated. I simply want time to complete a few things on the list without her adding items faster than I can delete them! I can live without the approval for completed projects, but it would be nice if the feelings of guilt could be stopped too.

Thanks for listening
Kind regards,
Roger

Do you see what’s been going on here? Roger’s been married to this woman 40 years, and has been tested and tested and tested to see if he’ll stand up to his bratty wife’s whims. Think about this: If they’ve been married 40 years, he’s around 60 years old, still working a 54-hour work week, and she’s dominating every free minute he has. When he tries to stand up to her, she guilt-trips him into complying anyway.

I sent Roger a brief bit of encouragement, pointing out that she could only make him feel guilty if he allowed her to do so, and that from his description of his situation, he could easily take charge and turn things around after he had finished reading "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and knew how to position himself and interpret his wife’s words and actions to separate the whims and tests from the legitimate issues that she really expected his full attention and cooperation on.

Three weeks passed, and then I receive this in response to the lesson on attitude (the reader who chastised me and ended his subscription because I was boring him by providing TOO MUCH valuable information free of charge):

Hi David,

The guy who wrote complaining you were too verbose, is never going to listen to women! He has missed the point completely and seems ill-educated concerning a number of matters, which makes you wonder why he signed up in the first place. As you say, the winners listen, read and learn.

I am putting some of the advice contained in your book into practice, with some spectacular results and a lot of amusement. There is a long way to go, especially after 40 years, but I can feel the difference.

I thought you might also be amused by a couple of little anecdotes. The first concerning the first time I listened as she went around the house, to tell me about her day. Instead of requesting that she comes to the point, I allowed her to ramble on as she wanted, I asked occasional questions, nodded now and then, made comments and all the time I was making eye contact. Not once did I try to fix anything and after about 30 minutes of this, she suddenly stopped speaking and stared at me. I asked what was wrong, only to be told that I was behaving strangely and had not walked off when I got bored because she did not come to the point!

I simply grinned at her and said I was simply listening to her experiences of the day!

Since then, I have repeated this procedure and it has resulted in her being much more relaxed and a lot more helpful to me.

I also spotted a recent test of my resolve following which she behaved like a spoiled brat. I forget now what it was about, but I know I explained my reasoning and asked if she had any other thoughts, but warned if she continued to behave like a spoilt child I would put her across my knee and give her a good spanking! I then grinned and made a grab for her, but she was too quick and ran off laughing! Not long ago this would have degenerated into a full blown row.

As I said a long way to go and a lot more to introduce, but results are coming faster than anticipated. Thank you.

Enjoy your day
Regards
Roger

I don’t know about you, but in my experience, heading off even one spoiled brat tantrum and turning it into an attraction-building exercise like that would be worth the time and effort to read a whole encyclopedia of e-books, and he only read one! That’s two to four hours, depending on how fast you read. And what’s really cool is that Roger will now be able to do that every single time the situation arises, and will be able to take charge when real issues arise and get through them with respect and cooperation instead of a “full blown row” as well! Knowledge is indeed power, Gentlemen, the power to shape your environment, your day and your destiny.

Now, get this into perspective. Forty years of bad behavior creates a lot of inertia – the strong tendency of things to keep doing what they are doing until acted upon by an opposing force of equal or greater magnitude. In behavior, we call it habit. Roger’s wife has a forty-year old habit of being a brat and pitching a fit. Roger HAD a forty-year old habit of putting up with it to keep the peace. In under three weeks, he learned and improved enough to break a forty-year old pattern of bad behavior and turn it into a positive event (that had SERIOUS positive repercussions in the bedroom that night – and there’s another thing for you to ponder: a healthy and fun “intimate” life at age 60 after being together 40 years! Can you imagine?).

The lesson? It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been a wuss, or thought that giving in to all your wife’s whims was what you needed to do to get along, or how long you’ve been going about communicating with her the wrong way, it’s all correctable, if you know what to do.

You don’t have to live out the rest of your life having someone you love drive you nuts with control issues, bratty behavior, dramatic fits, talking for hours and seemingly saying nothing, treating you like a child instead of a husband, being bored with your bedroom life (or having none at all), or any of those common problems (other than incompatibility, which unfortunately can only be fixed by divorce) that established couples complain of so commonly that they’re all as cliché as the image of a knight in shining armor on a white horse.

Just learn what to do, then do it. Roger’s no dunce by a long shot, but you have to agree that if Roger can overcome 40 years of bad behavior in a few weeks, while working that 54-hour work week and doing everything else he has to do, the odds are pretty good that anybody, including you, can do it in your own relationship or marriage, no matter how long you’ve been together.

So give it a shot! Jump over 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 fix what needs fixing, and just do it! (Nike really struck gold with that slogan, didn’t they? It’s a powerful statement, and an even more powerful attitude, one every real man has and every man and woman alive should have.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Women REALLY Want in Relationships and Marriage, Part 4, What About YOUR Wants and Needs?

We’re going to take a sudden detour from what women want to address another question that the other question begs: What about YOU? What do YOU want? Do you remember the old saying, “Be careful what you wish for, because you might just get it”? We’ve talked about that subject before, but never in THIS context. Tune in, because it will jerk you upright!

This subject of what women want has opened up either a cornucopia or a hornet’s nest; I’m not sure which. I’m getting flooded with comments and questions, and loving every minute of it. It appears that my readers are some of the smartest people around if they use their heads. Some catch on immediately, while others don’t get it at first because they are so emotionally charged and married to a bad position, but once they see the contradiction in their thinking, they immediately get on the right track and impress the hell out of me with the clarity of their vision and swiftness of their response. I’m proud of every one of you who has responded!

The biggest mistake that anyone can make during relationship crisis is to let insecurity and need take over, driving you to try to save something that is already bad for you, and unfortunately, this is one of the most common mistakes as well. Both men and women can be in a relationship that is so bad that they are considering breaking it off, and if the other person moves to initiate the discussion, they suddenly switch from “I wonder how I can start this conversation to break it off without making an enemy?” to “How can I win them back so I can regain their acceptance and approval???”

Sad, isn’t it?

I’m going to share with you a most stunning response from a reader who has been through "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and we’ve been corresponding about his current situation. We have been discussing why and under what conditions he should allow his estranged wife to come home and resume her post as his wife and mother of his son after having an affair with a financial parasite who has made her do some rather crazy things to try to keep her options open with her husband, who is successful and very capable of supporting the whole family alone (she’s not worked and contributed as a homemaker in return for a pretty lavish existence).

I described several diverse options for him to analyze and see what made sense to him so that I could gauge his mental state and how much he had learned from "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and our discussions, and wrapped up by saying,

"I'm not particularly thrilled about the idea of her coming home without a complete repentance and new commitment; I'm just offering you options. The one you choose depends on your own sense of self-worth."

His response was awe-inspiring, the hallmark of a man who has realized that both halves of a partnership must earn their place in it, and that love and trust can only be traded for love and trust. Read and learn from a student who has indeed become a master:

Touché - That's the entire question at this point, isn't it? I really see no value in her coming home as a relief to HER - it has to be for the right reasons. In the past, she's come around to wisdom after some thought, but this is big. If she told me tonight that she and [the boyfriend] were over and she wanted to be home, I'd question her motives. Wanting to be home is not the same as wanting to be my wife, or wanting to repair our problems, or wanting to move past the crap she dwells on for years. I'm uninterested in returning to our former life, and I know she is as well.

Truth is, she may miss our house and comfortable life much more than she misses me, and her anger/blame is directed at me for that loss as much as the loss of our relationship. I've been watching for evidence of that, and finding LESS, but still finding some. If she announced her desire to start over and repair the whole thing, I'd be openly skeptical of her ability or willingness to really do that. In the past she's handled our issues by deciding that I was the problem, but she'd tolerate me because the good outweighed the bad. She'd deny that, but I see it often enough that I stick to my story!

Noah (Yes, name changed to protect his privacy!)

Can you imagine that? A man who has pushed beyond that initial knee-jerk reaction of “I’ve got to have my wife back no matter what!” to see that she may have in fact been a bad influence on the whole family with her philandering and deceit and taken the firm stand that if she comes home, it will be as a loving, loyal wife and mother and a genuine life partner, not simply as another dependent who pisses away the love to get to the security he can provide.

Make no mistake; this is the attitude that should prevail in every marriage and committed relationship, for both parties. If your life together is a fair trade, you should nurture and protect it vigorously, but if you indeed have a dependent instead of a partner, someone who takes and wastes your life and other resources and gives you nothing but meaningless and scant approval – just enough to keep you giving in to their every whim – you really need to be somewhere else, or need for them to be somewhere else.

Contrary to what the altruists would have you believe, your purpose on this planet is not simply to have the life sucked out of you by someone who refuses to take responsibility for making a life for themselves, which is a recipe for resentment, fear, and a tortured existence. Your life is the most precious resource in all the universe, and it is not only in limited supply, as it must come to an end at some point, you don’t know how much of it you have left and every second that passes is gone forever.

You should live to achieve and enjoy the fruit of your achievement, not live in servitude. The altruists say that sacrifice, the trading of life for nothing, is noble. The truth is that sacrifice, working for the benefit of others at the cost of your own life, is simply slavery, and there is nothing noble or moral about slavery. And being enslaved to a spouse rather than sharing and celebrating a life with them, fairly trading part of your life, time, effort, and emotions for part of theirs, is an ignoble, immoral waste of life.

If you disagree, you are free to piss your life away as you please, but don’t bother writing to me to tell me how I need to do the same. You will merely confirm yourself as a waste of my time and be dropped from my newsletter subscription list. I’m happy, and you’re not or you wouldn’t be reading this, so you should be listening to me and learning how to become happy instead of trying to convince me to mimic your miserable existence so I’ll be as unhappy as you are. ‘Nuff said.

I need to be very clear here about parasites and predators. You can’t say that all women are gold-diggers any more than you can say that all men are wife-beaters, and that’s certainly not what I’m trying to say here. Most women are good people, especially when led by a man who is caring, attractive, and responsible and brings out her nurturing nature. What I want you to understand concerning parasites and predators is that committed relationships are either synergistic partnerships or they are something that will destroy you; there is no middle ground.

If your relationship isn’t fulfilling you and giving you cause for celebration, it’s killing you, either through the slow poison of the erosion of your self-worth and self-respect, or the explosive shockwave of excessive demands and manipulation that continue until you are wiped out, when the fatal blow is delivered, the break-up, accompanied by the news that everything you did just wasn’t quite good enough, and if you’re married, you’re going to have to make up for your shortcoming by giving up half or more of everything you’ve worked for.

What kind of relationship are you in? Are you celebrating being together? Are you bored with being together? Are you looking forward to being together tomorrow? Are you living in fear that you might find tomorrow that you are no longer together? Can your relationship be fixed? Or should you get out while you still have some life left to invest in a better way of life, one which may involve a more appreciative and mutually nurturing partner who compliments your existence rather than competing with it?

These are tough questions, some that many people can’t answer, even after being together for 20, 30, and even 40 years! It’s not that they’re stupid at all; they either don’t know the right questions to ask or they’re terrified of the answers. It doesn’t have to be that way…

There are answers waiting for you at http://makingherhappy.com in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," along with the mental and emotional means to use those answers to make your life better instead of allowing them to torment you. Get those answers now, and get a near-instantaneous boost in your own self-worth, so that you can face the tough questions with the courage of your convictions and make your life, especially your marriage or other committed relationship, the best that it can be.

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

What Women REALLY Want in Relationships and Marriage, Part 3A, A Reader Tale From The Dark Side

We interrupt this series to bring you a reader’s own “Tale from the Dark Side,” a forty-year marriage in which the reward for good work was more work and the reward for wanting rational discussion was false accusations of control – BY THE CONTROLLER! Learn from this man’s mistakes, as he is now doing…

Yesterday’s edition got a lot of responses, a lot more than I expected. Many of you have had a run-in with “ignorance of a woman’s true desires,” and most of you who did gave strong evidence of having learned something from the experience, even if it was only that you needed to learn more about women to get along with them well in the long term; you’d be surprised at how many men never even learn that.

There was one letter that stood above the rest as having lessons to teach that all could learn from. Meet Roger (as always, the name has been changed to protect the reader’s privacy):

Hi David,

Your recent letter concerning your friend Matt has made me realise just how common such a situation can be. I have been married for almost 40 years with two daughters and three grandsons and for as long as I can remember, I have never been able to please her; always there is something else that she wants me to do. I realised this many years ago and now always make a joke of it. So as fast as I complete one project, she will have the next ready for me, sometimes before the first was finished! I just add them to my list of tasks these days, some will get done, some will never be done. My problem is that she has a real knack of making me feel guilty.

This is not just about projects, it could be a social event or something she simply does not approve of, but always I have a guilt feeling when I refuse. The feelings haunt me and I end up doing what she wants sooner or later in most cases. If I argue or try to discuss, I am accused of always wanting to control her. I am driven to succeed because I want the quiet life and the brownie points that come from approval. I am told she sings my praises to others, but never to me.

To give you some idea how it works, she wants me to tidy the garage so it can have a workbench, all the machines and space for me to work. She tells everyone how it will improve things for me, but she also wants me to move all the items stored in the garden shed to the garage so that I can demolish the shed. Then I am expected to build her a summerhouse in the space, not a prefabricated one, a purpose built brick and tile fantasy!

In my spare time I am expected to remodel and transform the gardens, paint the house, build a new two-level deck across the back, turn the second bathroom into a "wet" room and keep the maintenance of our other two houses up to scratch! I must finish the kitchen sometime too! In all this she has ignored the plans we had to convert the garage into a dining room whilst we built a new garage with attached workshop. Maybe this is because her new greenhouse currently occupies the site?

David, I am tired! I work a 9 hour shift, six days per week and generally get just one day off. I cannot afford to pay someone else to do the work as I am still clearing debts from a failed business venture and I am earning just a tad above the minimum wage. I am reading the book you kindly emailed to me after it got lost in transit when I downloaded, but have yet to put it into practice.

Recently she took a vacation with my daughter and grandsons at one of our cottages. It was tiring, but different and the boys were easy, spending their time surfing. What was I doing? I spent my evenings and a rare weekend off work, repairing and painting the beach hut! Trying to please her again! My own vacations are limited and restricted to the extent we cannot have time together and if I take time off without her, I am expected to work on one of the projects!

I am considering building her a dungeon!:-))

There is a lot more to this than meets the eye, but I will not bore you with all the details of the problems in our marriage. I do not give up easily, but there are times when I seriously consider cutting my losses. Divorce is out of the question as we both feel it might make the other happy!

Any advice you can offer would be appreciated. I simply want time to complete a few things on the list without her adding items faster than I can delete them! I can live without the approval for completed projects, but it would be nice if the feelings of guilt could be stopped too.

Thanks for listening
Kind regards,
Roger

What can you learn from Roger’s predicament? Do you recognize the trade he has been engaging in for many years? He’s trading unappreciated effort for the promise of approval. A man shouldn’t seek the approval of a woman any more than a woman should seek the approval of a man. It tips the balance in the relationship too far to one side and throws everything out of whack.

Do you also recognize that she’s using guilt as a tool to usurp the authority that he should be both defining and exercising in their relationship to keep excitement and attraction alive? And the bit about when he wants to discuss something she truncates the discussion by accusing him of wanting to control her, when in fact her manipulations are for the purpose of controlling him? “Methinks she doth protest too much,” as the saying goes…

Roger and I have had other correspondence since this letter, and he’s going to do well in cleaning this mess up. He’s reading and learning, and getting his ducks in a row. The task before him is to refuse to allow his wife to use guilt and manipulation to control his actions, stop seeking her approval, and to take back the authority she has usurped from him, the authority over his own life, effort, schedule, the money he earns and how it is spent, etc.

His wife is in for a rude awakening, but history indicates that unless she is sociopathic and entirely devoid of character, a genuine predator, she will actually love him and respect him, not to mention become wildly attracted to the new authority and strength in him, when he makes the changes he is currently preparing for. If she is indeed a predator, he’ll recognize it and get out. “But he’s been in it for forty years!” Yes, and that’s forty years too long to live with a manipulative predator, right?

As an aside, guilt is something you CHOOSE to feel, not something that someone can force you to feel. If someone tries to make you feel guilty, you can simply choose to feel righteous (if you are) instead of letting them motivate you to ignore reality and accept the guilt they want to heap upon you for their own gain. If you do indeed owe a debt, you should make good on it out of good character, not guilt or fear of reprisal. That’s just what real men do. Anything else is too complicated and dramatic.

It’s not often that you see two people remain in such a one-sided relationship for so long, but even when things have gone so wrong for so long, they can still be fixed, and a lot faster than you’d ever think until you’ve experienced it. It requires only that you know what the woman in your life really wants as a woman and as your partner, and that’s just not that hard to find out if you have the tools for the job.

The tools? Knowledge and desire. Knowing what women want in general, how to clearly communicate with them, and how to turn their attraction on and off will take you to a level of intimacy you never imagined possible, and from there you can learn what she as an individual secretly yearns for and responds to with complete certainty.

If you didn’t have the desire, you wouldn’t be reading this newsletter day after day looking for the knowledge. I’ve had a couple of complaints that my newsletter and blog posts sound like a sales letter, and maybe they do at that. I give away a lot of really good information to prove that the information I’m selling is both valid and valuable.

All that I ask in exchange for all the free information I give you is that you take a good hard look at your life and try to find a way to apply what I give you. I’d also appreciate it if you occasionally at least consider taking the plunge and committing to a few hours of reading to go ahead and learn everything you need to know now, and making the effort to make your relationship all that it can be.

Some of you do, and write me letters describing fantastic results, and some of you don’t, apparently thinking that you’ll learn all you need to know from my newsletters or that you really don’t need to do anything. You will eventually find that position to be in error, and you’ll be downloading this book somewhere down the road when your relationship is in much worse shape and harder and more painful to endure and try to fix. Or even worse, maintaining the comfortably unhappy status quo as Roger did, wasting years or even decades of life, or heading for divorce court.

It is at that time that you will realize that you could have read my book many times over in the time that you have spent only reading my newsletters (which, by design, are infinitely more meaningful to those who have read the book), and that the cost of a good meal could have saved you a lot of time and a lot of pain, frustration, anger, money, celibacy, and no telling what else -- it’s hard to say what you’ll have left after her divorce lawyer gets done with you if the two of you can’t work out something better.

So I would urge you to make things easy on yourself. Go on now to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," as well as a couple of free reports I’ve bundled with it on how to quickly understand the true causes of a break-up and stop it quickly when things finally blow up and the full version of the series you’re now reading. Life’s too short to waste it, so don’t waste any more of it being anything less than happy.

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

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

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

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

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

No so for my old friend Matthew…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hi David,

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

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

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

“Jack”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Women REALLY Want in Relationships and Marriage, Part 1

This is another multi-part series, the purpose of which is to help you understand some very critical issues in getting along with women instead of competing with them. It will include some revealing comments by some women about what they want from a man, as well as some examples of things that women think they want that they respond to quite negatively when they actually get them.

This lesson is part of my “What Women REALLY Want” free report, but the web stats say that many of you have not downloaded it, and I understand that, because I’ve been there. I’ve seen “free reports” that were just a sales letter; not even a thinly-veiled sales letter, but rather a blatant pitch that had no information in it and raised more questions than I already had.

It ticked me off, and I’m posting this for two reasons: first, that you see that this free report actually is a report and has something valuable enough for you to take the time to read it (yes, there is an invitation to buy a book in one sentence near the end, but wait until you see what I’ve provided for you in the 50 or so pages between here and there, because this report alone has changed more lives than you’d imagine!) and second, because I want to see your feedback and hear your stories in the form of reader letters and blog comments, so let’s get on with it.

I don’t know about yours, but my weekend was great! I don’t normally look forward to weekends because I try to live every day as if it were my last, so my weekdays are very full and rewarding, but the weather was great for outdoor chores and recreation (a short thunderstorm notwithstanding), and there was a stockpile of charcoal in my garage begging to be reduced and a beef rib roll crying out “cut me into steaks and sear me over hot coals!” You know I had no choice but to listen! (And there are still leftover ribs in the refrigerator!)

Obviously, this triggered a testosterone rush of the first order, and I never fight the urge to be a manly man who does manly things. We’re pretty simple, right guys? It just really doesn’t take a whole lot to make us happy.

But what about our women?

That’s the kicker, isn’t it? They have all that networking going on all the time, all that drama, all those nasty little rituals to go through. And trying to get a straight answer out of one of them is like pulling dragon’s teeth, isn’t it?

Are you ready for some good news? Women really aren’t as complex as they appear, and they really aren’t difficult to understand at all, IF you learn a little about them and learn their language, or maybe more to the point, their customs and protocols…

What’s that? Sounds like something a travel agent told you once? Maybe, but while women really aren’t from another planet, they have evolved to do some things differently than us. Some of these differences work to their advantage, some to their disadvantage, but the same thing can be said of us.

Most women don’t do well with spatial issues like reading maps or knowing how parts will fit together, while most men are fairly adept at it. Most men are very bad at detecting and correctly interpreting hints, while women could effectively converse all day without ever directly addressing anything. Indeed, they can tell a whole story with a glance, or as you’ve noticed, a roll of their eyes! And unfortunately, they often think we can do the same thing.

This can affect us in our relationships in one of two ways. We can identify and understand these differences, and use them to our mutual advantage, or we can fail to understand them, and get sucked into a competition over whose way is better and who is going to be in control of things.

Let’s take buying a car, for example. Most men know more about the mechanical workings of a car than most women, and are more excited by and interested in automotive performance, cost and difficulty of upkeep, etc. Most women are naturally much more sensitive to non-verbal communication, hints, innuendo, etc., than most men could ever hope to be, and they are also more likely to appreciate the aesthetics and comforts a car offers.

I’m not going to go into all the ways in which buying a vehicle can cause a couple to start a series of bitter fights; we’ve all been through the friction of the male trying to take too much control of the process, being too aggressive or controlling on the issues of selection of vehicle and dealer, etc. But think about the possibilities that a little understanding and cooperation could offer! And I'm not talking about compromise, either.

If a man understands more about the ownership issues of vehicles, what he knows can be invaluable to a woman who doesn’t necessarily care what brand the vehicle is as long as it has a certain look, or certain features that she needs or wants to enjoy. But, for that value to be realized, he must LISTEN to her to find out what is important. When she says, “I liked the pink car the best,” it’s highly unlikely that she is saying that the fact that the car was pink was THE deciding factor. She’s waiting for him to ask what it was about the pink car that she liked so she can tell him about the comfortable seats with built-in heaters, the accessibility of controls without taking her eyes off the road, or whatever it was that she won’t get into until he shows that he’s interested in hearing it by asking about it.

A woman’s natural sensitivity to unspoken communications can make her invaluable during the negotiations over the purchase. Men are much easier to lie to or lead on than women because we don’t notice the nuances that declare deceit that nearly every woman alive readily sees without even watching for them. But again, he must LISTEN to her when she spots something amiss during the sales presentation or the purchase negotiation in order for them to derive any benefit.

That’s just the beginning of the revelations you’re going to have over the next few days, so brace yourself.

To give you something to ponder, here’s what one of the test group said she wanted in a man:

“I want a man to listen to me and take me seriously when I’m trying to be serious, to laugh with me when I’m happy, and let me get problems sorted out and fixed without distracting me or trying to take over my problem when I’m not happy.”

Sound familiar? As I said, women are NOT that hard to understand, and they’re really not that different from us in a lot of ways. They just DO things differently from us that makes them appear too complex to understand, when in fact, our problem is that we simply don’t know enough about them, their “culture” (what it’s like to live as a woman) and their language. We’re going to work together to fix that.

I’m no travel agent, but no woman who knows me will tell you they wish I knew more about women; a lot of them come to me to help them understand themselves! They send me e-mail asking questions, they call me on the phone, and they even buy my book, which is written for men, and the comments from those who have concur: it’s “spot on” accurate.

It should be. It’s the result of working closely with a large group of women to learn how to listen and speak “girly-ese” (or “feminese” if you prefer!) to learn what it’s like to live and experience life as a woman, to learn what makes them do the things they do the way they do them, and to learn what they think turns them on and off and how that differs in some cases from what REALLY turns them on and off.

My job was to translate what I learned from them into “man-speak” and give it to you, straight and to the point, without cluttering it up with theory and opinions. I did that job well, according to those I’ve served, both as a counselor and in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" which you can download at http://www.makingherhappy.com if you’d like to join the ranks of rare men who really do know what women want and how to enjoy giving it to them.

We’ll take this up again tomorrow, with more from women about what women want. Don’t miss it! Sigmund Freud, the renowned psychologist wouldn’t have. One of the most significant things he ever said was, “The great question... which I have not been able to answer... is, ‘What does a woman want?’”

I know; would you like to? Then join me!

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

Being Your Own Man, Crucial to a Great Relationship and Marriage

There are two ways to react to the successes of those around you. You can let them make you insecure and jealous, or you can learn from them and use them as example and motivation to bolster and enhance your own success. You might be surprised at the self-destructive power of the first, and the achievement that can be brought on by the latter, not to mention the self-esteem and attraction created by that achievement!

I got a call from a man who thought he had a problem, but really doesn’t, unless it’s a memory problem. He’s apparently forgotten who he is!

I didn’t get to take the call, but my publisher said that he was about fifteen years older than his wife, who had recently gone through some self-improvement and suddenly had the attention of a bunch of younger men. He described himself as physically fit, pleasant-looking, etc., and my publisher described him as articulate, intelligent, and outgoing and very personable. So what’s his problem?

The sudden spike in the attention others pay his wife has left him feeling a bit insecure. He’s feeling like he’s competing with men who are young enough to be his sons, maybe even his grandsons, and it has made him question his attractiveness. In addition, he’s been wrapped up in some work issues and is concerned that his wife may succumb to the temptations these younger men put before her.

What he’s forgotten is that it’s not him that has changed, it’s her. She has straightened her act up and brought herself more to his level of attractiveness. That’s a good thing, because her improved self-confidence will make her feel sexier and more playful, and enhance their intimacy. However…

If he lets himself be challenged by these younger men and responds by feeling competitive and resentful, he will lose the attractiveness of his intellect, self-confidence, personality, wit, etc., and begin appearing to his wife as an over-the-hill wuss instead of the man she was striving to upgrade herself to please in the first place! After all, these young men are only competition if he acknowledges them as worthy to compete.

The answer? Simple! Celebrate her success with her, and laugh at all the young bucks chasing her. She’s old enough to know that what they’re after isn’t a wife and children, and if he celebrates her success with her and shows her off instead of acting insecure about her new attractiveness, that confidence will spark desire in her like little else can.

Such action says to the young suitors, “You’d better grow a little before you try to climb into THIS ring, Junior.” And as always, his wife will follow his lead. It also expresses trust, saying to her, “Yes, I see you, I’m proud of you, and I know you love me and will stay with me because we’re both worth it,” where being insecure and treating her as though she might succumb to the advances of the youngsters forces her to ask if there is some reason that she should. It also expresses that he thinks that she cannot be trusted and might be swayed.

Ask any woman what they look for and especially respond to above all else in a man, and they’ll tell you: confidence. Not looks, not money, not power, not a fancy car or home. Confidence. Followed by a genuine smile. But, when they tell you, will you hear them?

If this man’s wife is like most women, she has told him repeatedly what she wants and expects from him, but like nearly all of us, he didn’t hear a word of it, because she didn’t say it as a man would say it. She said it as a woman would say it, and with good reason: She’s a woman! (Duh! LOL!) So he doesn’t hear it, and thinks she’s saying nothing and he therefore has to either read her mind or guess, and she thinks she’s being ignored – one of the oldest and most destructive stories in the relationship book.

She may even be telling him that he needn’t be worrying about these silly boys thinking they’ve fixed their sites on a “cougar,” (a mature woman who pursues much younger men, often young enough to be their son) that she finds them amusing and their compliments entertaining, even delightful, but not truly alluring. His non-responsiveness, of which she is totally unaware because she doesn’t know how differently men and women speak either, will be construed as weakness and push her exactly where he thinks she already is if he doesn’t straighten up pretty fast. Textbook example of a self-fulfilling prophecy, right?

Fortunately, he’s already purchased his copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and will be realizing all of this shortly when he reads and learns what he needs to know about both her and himself. His worst case scenario is that he may feel some subconscious insecurity triggered by the presence of these younger men until he comes to grips with the fact that he is not only their elder, but their better, especially in his wife’s eyes, and he’ll return to his confident, attractive self, then kick it up to notches previously unknown as he learns what makes women tick, what they want, and how understand them so well that they indeed think he can read their mind; he’ll be one of those rare guys who “just knows…”

A sagely word of advice: If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got. You can do better, MUCH better, by going to http://www.makingherhappy.com and downloading your own copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," or you can continue doing what you’re doing. Unless you really like the way you’re feeling right now, you’d better get your mouse clicking!

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

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

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

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

Hi David,

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

Joel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then I said, "You can't see well enough to drive without the glasses we're going to pick up, we have 90 minutes to get there, it's a ten minute trip, and we can certainly afford the five extra minutes to check out the furniture. Explain to me why you have a problem with this." The response was, "No, I'm not explaining anything. You always want to change my plans, so I'm going by myself." (Big hint: when you "always" do something that you've never done, or "never" do something that you've frequently done, it's said to make you call her on it and you're in this same situation.) At this point she has crawled across the seat of the car and is sticking her keys in the ignition, literally begging for an authoritative intervention.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Female Perspective on Political Correctness, Wussification, and Its Destructive Impact on Relationships and Marriage

A female reader speaks out on behalf of many others against “political correctness and the castration of the American Male” (according to other readers this is going on EVERYWHERE!). There is a solution, and it’s a great idea, no matter where you live.

I got an e-mail last night from a reader who sounds like she’s about as fed up and downright pissed off as a woman can get. She’s got a beef with the world’s over-reaction to feminism and political correctness in general, and is issuing a wake-up call. Meet Gail:

Hi David,

I’m angry right now, very angry, and it might have been better if I had waited to share this until I was a little more composed, but I’ve been angry for months, and I’ve shared this repeatedly with my girlfriends and realize that doing so is not accomplishing anything because I’m SO “preaching to the choir” that it’s ridiculous. I’ve got to share it with someone who can help me do something about it, and I’m starting with you.

My husband of 28 years is a wuss. He wasn’t a wuss when I married him, or for years after I married him. He’s a production manager at a large manufacturing company, and got to that position because he was an excellent leader, strong and decisive, but always fair, and tried to be a good motivator. If he doesn’t straighten up soon, he’s going to lose his job, and he may even end up losing me, if I don’t kill him first!

You see, he went to this seminar that was supposed to help him be a better manager, and from what he told me, it amounted to a pep rally for touchy-feely people and about the only thing he came away from the seminar with was the idea that he needed to pay his employees personal compliments to make them feel like he was interested in them as people, not just employees. I think this is ridiculous, because you show people you are interested in them by asking them questions, not saying flattering things, but that’s beside the point.

There was a woman who worked under him – I call her a woman, but she was a gold-digging hussy just watching for a chance to sue somebody – and when my husband complimented her on a nice hairstyle one day, she went to the HR department and filed a sexual harassment complaint! He spent the next six months being raked over the coals by corporate attorneys, HR consultants, attending “sensitivity training seminars,” etc., to finally get the bitch satisfied and still be able to keep his job. He’s now been so mentally and emotionally battered that he’s afraid to talk to women, including me!

He used to be so very strong and confident. He walked into a room like he owned it because he did. Now he walks into a room looking as if he expects to be attacked if there’s a woman there. We’ve talked about it, and he says the problem is that the legal threats and the threat of losing his job after 31 years with the same company made him realize what would happen if he were to suddenly lose his job this late in life, and how little it might take, and it “spooked him” as he says.

I’ve just bought your book for him, and if it has everything in it you say it does, I’m pretty sure he’ll be okay. He or I may have questions; will it be okay if we contact you? If so, how?

Thank you in advance for your help,

Gail F.

My reply:

Well, Gail, to say I’m feeling your pain would be an understatement. What you describe comprises one of my main motivations in writing “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage.” I’m not an antagonist or provocateur, but I am as disgusted with all this politically correct nonsense and the wussification of both men specifically and people everywhere in general that I could about puke. There was a time when I would have offered an apology if the word “puke” offended anybody’s fragile sensibilities, but today, I just really don’t care. I say it to get the message across, not to try to offend people. (Indeed, Gentlemen, if it offends you, grow some skin or find another newsletter to occupy your time, because becoming an alpha male is definitely not in your future.)

Getting back to the subject at hand, congratulations! I see all kinds of corrective action being taken here. Discussion with your husband and nailing down the problem is a huge and wonderful step in the right direction, one that, unfortunately, many couples couldn’t pull off. Identifying a path back to your husband’s old alpha male (and therefore highly desirable and effective leader) self and taking the first steps down that path are also commendable.

To answer your questions, I read all e-mail, answer as much of it as I can and still remain productive, and any questions and answers that can benefit all readers, as you know, appear here in this newsletter with the senders’ consent. If your husband needs a session or two with a personal coach to speed up the process he can e-mail me at support@makingherhappy.com, but it shouldn’t be necessary. You’ve made an excellent start with my book, and I’m going to suggest to you that in your case, you skip the beginning material on evaluating your relationship for now and have him start with the communication section. He is one of the few whom I would say should complete the evaluation after he has cured this crisis of confidence; your relationship is obviously on a solid foundation if you are taking this route to try to help him.

In your case, the communication section will help him regain his confidence in speaking to women because he will be better prepared to pick up hints and signals, which will in turn help remove that “vulnerable and lost” feeling, one of the main reasons I put it before the attraction section. Then have him continue through the attraction section, and work with him as he goes through it. If you want to be really supportive, read a bit ahead of him and try to round up copies of books, movies, etc., that are mentioned as good examples so they will be convenient for him. It will speed his progress, which you’ll both appreciate, and the two of you will thoroughly enjoy watching movies like “The Fountainhead” and “Don Juan DeMarco” together.

Speaking of examples, there is one that is not yet in the book that I need to add, and while it is about U.S. Americans (I personally hold all people in this hemisphere as Americans, since we live in “North,” “Central,” and “South America”), it is an interesting read and full of good examples for all men to follow, regardless of where you live. The book is called “The Greatest Generation,” by Tom Brokaw. I never cared for Brokaw’s politics or the political slant in a lot of his reporting because there’s a big difference in reporting the news and trying to influence the public’s perception of it, but the details in this book about the men very often describe heroic alpha males, and regardless of your feelings for Brokaw or U.S. heroes of World War II, the role models found there are effective, and it makes for interesting and productive supplementary reading.

One other thing that I need to bring out and that you need to point out to your husband is that “sexual harassment” is only a workplace issue as far as legalities go. It is a workplace issue because you are compelled to co-exist there for the sake of your employment. That doesn’t give you license to be chauvinistic, rude and obnoxious everywhere else, but that does mean it is the only place where you may have to actively avoid any kind of sexuality, so if you are concerned, contain your concern to the workplace and be yourself – your respectful but assertive and naughty, and therefore FUN self – everywhere else. He just needs to see examples of it being okay to be the way he used to be so he can get back in touch with it, just like most men.

Take care, and keep in touch,
David

There you have it, folks. If you (Gentlemen) or the man in your life (Ladies – it’s just wrong that I even have to say that, but I know I’ll get a ton of smart-ass comments from you jokers if I don’t! LOL!) are feeling castrated, there is a fix, guaranteed effective, in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage.” Download your copy today at http://www.makingherhappy.com and get back to being the man you were born to be.

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. They, their attitude, and their choices are the problem, not YOU.

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 them 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

Be Careful What You Wish for in Relationships and Marriage, Part 2: Fantasies

MUST READ! (And you know I use those words VERY sparingly!) When women say they have a “rape fantasy,” they are not being literal. They’re talking about a show of power and decisiveness, not brutality and cruelty. Find out exactly what they really mean by reading on…

Today is a great day. I stopped a reader from ruining his marriage and his life, and I may be about to stop somebody else by sharing his letter and my response. Meet Geoff:

Hi David,

I got your book, and things are really coming together fast. I had apparently become pretty boring without realizing it, and now that I’m back to being me, my wife is back to being her old self too, and it’s like you say, the honeymoon is back on. We’ve gone from once every time the seasons change to almost every night and sometimes during the day.

I’ve even overheard her telling her girlfriends about what’s happening and she’s trying to play it off to me like it’s not that big of a deal and teasing me to keep the pressure on, but when she talks to them and tells them about stuff I’m doing and stuff we’re doing, she giggles like a school girl. I walked in on her yesterday while she was talking to one of them and she was talking about what happened in the bedroom the night before and blushed and hung up in a hurry and ran out of the room laughing!

Overhearing her phone conversations is the reason I’m writing to you. I overheard her say something a few days ago about things are getting so hot she’s having “rape fantasies.” That makes me uncomfortable to think about, but if she really wants to try it I guess I’m willing. What do you think? I mean, is this something I should do for her, or is this some sign that she has a problem?

Thanks, and have a good one,
Geoff

Congratulations, Geoff! I just love hearing success stories like this. As for your wife’s fantasy, we need to talk, and fast!

Repeat after me and commit this to memory: NO MENTALLY HEALTHY WOMAN EVER HAS A TRUE RAPE FANTASY! Rape is violent, traumatic, and often damages women for life. It is not about sex, but about subjugation, terror, control, and abuse. It causes women to do things like never want sex, never allow their husbands to see them undressed, fall into suicidal depression, become so paranoid they can’t leave the house or sleep in the dark, etc. She’s talking about something else, and you and every other man needs to know what that is, so here goes, straight from the mouths of women:

Women want to be desired, led, and ultimately taken by a strong, confident man who doesn’t ask permission to initiate sex, but loves and respects them enough to honor the word “no” when they hear it and recognize it as being spoken in earnest. A great example is the scene in “The Fountainhead” where Gary Cooper goes to visit Patricia Neal in her apartment. She wants him terribly, and has gone to great lengths to make him know that she wants him, but she still resists because she wants him to “take” her, to hold her tightly, kiss her passionately, and take her where she’s craving to go, emotional heights of sexual bliss previously unreached! Understand above all that she fights him off to see how much he wants her, and feel the rush of him winning, and she wants him desperately.

This is what a woman refers to when she speaks of a rape fantasy, the feeling of a man being in charge and taking her where she wants to go, confidently, expertly, without asking permission. It’s a “sweep her off her feet” maneuver, not a “violate her and leave her emotionally ruined for all time” maneuver. They refer to it as a rape fantasy because once in a great while, in sharp contrast to their normal desire to be ramped up through a lot of talk, caressing, foreplay, advancing and withdrawing, it’s exhilarating for them to be taken to an aroused state through naughty play and seeing their man doing manly things to the extent that they’re wanting him, and then to just have him do something like walk in the house, pick her up, and carry her to the bed and ravish her without ever slowing down, shockingly and decisively, or to swiftly, hungrily, but playfully wrestle her to the couch, floor, kitchen counter, etc., and just go for it, hell-bent for glory and orgasm.

Things like firm-but-not-cruelly-painful pulling of her hair, spanking her behind firmly but not abusively (it’s much more about the sound of a spanking than the stinging for most women), wrestling and struggling a bit as you maneuver for position, etc., can be exhilarating for her and add to the sexual tension greatly if she’s into it, but the true essence of rape, the sadistic beating and threatening designed to humiliate, terrorize and subjugate, are not healthy, and not what she’s looking for if she’s healthy.

This is something you do only occasionally, and only when you can tell that she’s already amped up and you’ve been keeping her mind on naughty thoughts through the day. It’s done for the shocking thrill of pure, raw, carnal abandon, not when she’s had a bad day fighting with the kids, people at school or work, sitting with a loved one in a hospital, etc. If you encounter genuine resistance of any kind, this isn’t the time to be doing this; indeed, if she’s sufficiently aroused for this to be a good time for something like this, she may even be tearing at your clothes and clawing at your skin at the same time she’s saying, “stop.” The distinguishing factor is the heat; there will be very little if any foreplay, because she’s already amped up, is aching to have you inside her, and will aggressively be trying to make you erect and get you inside her as soon as possible. By all means, in this scenario, OBLIGE HER!

It’s about a show of power, not a show of force, or brutality. It’s about the man showing that he doesn’t fear his or her feelings or desires, or her rejection, and knowing, while seeing and feeling this powerful behavior, that if something weren’t right and she were to say, “No,” or tell him to stop in earnest, that he would do so, not because he’s weak, but because he’s in charge, not desperate; respectful and loving, not demeaning and abusive. This kind of action is a celebration of primal, carnal sexuality for both of you, not some “putting her in her place” maneuver.

If you really want to go to extremes, then at least establish some sort of safety signal that she can invoke so that you know that her resistance isn’t just part of the fantasy, such as the words “red light” or “too far,” which will allow her to say things like “stop” and “don’t” as part of her fantasy but still provide you a way of knowing that you’re going too far, being too rough, etc. One thing that you never, ever want to do is find yourself in a position of wanting to apologize for something after sex. But, as with most things concerning women, a little genuine communication goes a long, long way to keeping things on the right path.

As you can see, women often speak their desires, but even when they do choose to speak directly to us about them, which may be more often than you think, they don’t do it in language that we readily understand. They never state the obvious. When they say they want a “sensitive” man, they don’t mean sensitive instead of manly, they mean in addition to manly. When they say they have a “rape” fantasy, they mean they want to be taken swiftly and hungrily, not beaten to a pulp, verbally abused, scared to death, and then disrespectfully desecrated. But how are you supposed to know this?

You won’t, unless you learn to speak “girly-ese” as I and the many readers of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” have done successfully. Effective communications or the lack thereof can make or break a relationship just as surely as being well- or poorly-matched, or sexually attracted or sexually bored. Luckily for you, all of the above are discussed at length in this truly amazing book, and by the end of it you too will be a master of happy relationships. Download your copy now at http://www.makingherhappy.com, before you cross some invisible line that lands you in crisis counseling or divorce court, or if you already have, because it will get you out of trouble and keep you out if you just read it and use it.

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

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

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

I’ve written several issues about interaction with your mother-in-law, and if you’ve not read them, now would be a good time to do so before advancing into this fairly delicate issue. See February 16, 2009, “Proper Care and Feeding of Your Mother-In-Law” and February 17, 2009, “Your Wife’s Mother-in-Law and Your Marriage” to catch up.

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

Hi David,

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

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

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

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

Thanks so much,
Hillary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Be an Alpha Male, not an Alpha Buffoon, for a Great Relationship or 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, lest your partner opens up a really big can of whup-ass!

Before we get into today's lesson, I had a very telling e-mail from a new reader today that I must share with you, one that all you Gentlemen need to let soak in and grasp the full impact. It was regarding yesterday’s post about the difference between men's 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 yesterday. 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 kept having 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 Supremo 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, 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. 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, go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and 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

What Is Your Partner's Reason for Having You In Your Relationship or Marriage?

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

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

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

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

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

Meet Tanja K.:

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

Tanja

Tanja’s beef is with women who prostitute themselves, not honestly as professionals, but as surreptitious gold-diggers; those parasites who land a man to be kept, provide means to create and maintain babies and/or self-destructive habits, and use guilt, pity, and sex to keep the man engaged and thinking everything is peachy. Gentlemen, we should all protect ourselves against such a woman as well; fortunately for us, they are the minority.

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

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

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

There’s no need to keep a detailed score; it will either be equitable because the relationship is committed and tight or completely lop-sided because one partner is using the other, depending entirely on whether the partners truly love each other or one is using the other. Your status will be obvious if you merely open your eyes to what is happening around you, regardless of what is being said. “By your works shall you be known” is one of the greatest bits of wisdom to come from the Christian Bible, a tactic that has been working for well over a thousand years, right? Professing love and devotion is easy; faking it is not.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Be the Alpha Male, Not Alpha Dog, In Your Relationship and 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. 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 it. 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, 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 my 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:

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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:

1. Possessive of a few favorite women, and very jealous
2. Controlling
3. 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 so high, 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

P.S.
If you missed it, see the August 5, 2008 article on Alpha Males vs. Alpha Buffoons to make sure you know the difference – it’s important, and to many men, it’s not obvious until after it’s been pointed out.

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.

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.

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

Why Nice Guys Finish Last, Especially in Relationships, Part 4, Self-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 you 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 that 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.

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 it 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 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. 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 these kind of issues, 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).

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

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

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

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

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

Hi David,

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

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

Take care, and thanks!
Scott D.

My reply:

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

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

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

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

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

Take care,
David

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

To know all you need to know about attraction, communication, compatibility, evaluation, and many other things that are crucial to a life-long happy relationship, go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” and see how you can kick your relationship up to notches unknown to humankind!

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

King Arthur and the Witch: Lessons in Women, Relationships, and Marriage, and a CONTEST!

A very funny King Arthur story holds some very valuable lessons for the man who wants to understand and be happy with a woman.

I received a great story from one of you (thanks Ken!) that tickled my funny bone so thoroughly that by the time the laughing fit had subsided I had literally “laughed myself sick;” I was a bit nauseas, my diaphragm and abdominal muscles were sore, and my jaws and cheeks ached from that ancient and wonderful condition known affectionately as “perma-grin.”

But then I looked past the punch line and looked for the lessons it might hold for us, and sure enough, there they were. Read this story, and then see how many lessons you can pick out and we’ll compare answers at the end of the story, and I’ll give you details on how to win a free copy of my book in our annual “King Arthur and the Witch” Contest.

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King Arthur and the Witch

Young King Arthur was ambushed and imprisoned by the monarch of a neighboring kingdom. The monarch could have killed him but was moved by Arthur's youth and ideals. So, the monarch offered him his freedom, as long as he could answer a very difficult question. Arthur would have a year to figure out the answer and, if after a year, he still had no answer, he would be put to death.

The question? What do women really want?

Such a question would perplex even the most knowledgeable man, and to young Arthur, it seemed an impossible query. But, since it was better than death, he accepted the monarch's proposition to have an answer by year's end.

He returned to his kingdom and began to poll everyone: the princess, the priests, the wise men and even the court jester. He spoke with everyone, but no one could give him a satisfactory answer.

Many people advised him to consult the old witch, for only she would have the answer.

But the price would be high; as the witch was famous throughout the kingdom for the exorbitant prices she charged.

The last day of the year arrived and Arthur had no choice but to talk to the witch. She agreed to answer the question, but he would have to agree to her price first.

The old witch wanted to marry Sir Lancelot, the most noble of the Knights of the Round Table and Arthur's closest friend!

Young Arthur was horrified. She was hunchbacked and hideous, had only one tooth, smelled like sewage, made obscene noises, etc. He had never encountered such a repugnant creature in all his life.

He refused to force his friend to marry her and endure such a terrible burden; but Lancelot, learning of the proposal, spoke with Arthur.

He said nothing was too big of a sacrifice compared to Arthur's life and the preservation of the Round Table.

Hence, a wedding was proclaimed and the witch answered Arthur's question thus:

“What a woman really wants,” she answered, “is to be in charge of her own life.”

Everyone in the kingdom instantly knew that the witch had uttered a great truth and that Arthur's life would be spared.

And so it was, the neighboring monarch granted Arthur his freedom and Lancelot and the witch had a wonderful wedding.

The honeymoon hour approached and Lancelot, steeling himself for a horrific experience, entered the bedroom. But, what a sight awaited him. The most beautiful woman he had ever seen lay before him on the bed. The astounded Lancelot asked what had happened.

The beauty replied that since he had been so kind to her when she appeared as a witch, she would henceforth, be her horrible deformed self only half the time and the beautiful maiden the other half.

Which would he prefer? Beautiful during the day, or night?

Lancelot pondered the predicament. During the day, a beautiful woman to show off to his friends, but at night, in the privacy of his castle, an old witch? Or, would he prefer having a hideous witch during the day, but by night, a beautiful woman for him to enjoy wondrous intimate moments?

What would YOU do?

Noble Lancelot said that he would allow HER to make the choice herself.

Upon hearing this, she announced that she would be beautiful all the time because he had respected her enough to let her be in charge of her own life.

Now....what is the moral to this story?

If you don't let a woman have her own way, things are going to get ugly!
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Yes, the moral presented is a valid one, but only up to a point; giving in too much can make you look like a wuss, make your partner bored, and make things get about as ugly as they can get as the relationship comes apart at the scenes, but that’s not the lesson I hope you found. A woman can only be in charge of her own life up to but not including the point where she starts being in charge of yours.

Foremost, did you notice that the witch wanted to be in charge of her own life, but submitted to Lancelot’s leadership on the issue when she clearly had the power to choose independently of his say-so? Women will do this in real life as well, every time. Why?

No, it’s not because they are weak, or stupid, or anything like that. They simply enjoy being lead and testing a man to see if he’s capable of leading. It’s exciting for them to see a man act with authority and make decisions. That’s NOT to say that they like seeing a man be a bully and force decisions upon them without giving them a fair hearing and consideration in issues that involve them, so don’t go there. Some women may respond to it, but the pay-off is damaging to both of you, so just don’t.

They can handle things just fine on their own if they have to; it’s just a lot more fun and exciting for them if they tell us whatever’s on their mind and then they see us make a good decision and carry it out, kind of like it’s fun for us to ask them to go get something for us so we can watch their hips swing as they walk away. It’s that same low-key, voyeuristic sexual excitement; they get it from our behavior like we get it from their appearance.

And what about “being in charge of her own life”? Do you know what that means to a woman? Pretty much the same thing that it means to us, but much more intensely. Women have a lot more insecurities than we do, and they tend to be bothered by them a lot more than we are. No wonder after the centuries of oppression and the constant bombardment of their self-esteem by the fashion and beauty industries, predatory men, hyper-competitive women, and others.

For a woman, being in charge of her own life means being able to rise above the insecurities and the drama to feel comfortable in her own skin and confident about her choices, especially the choices she’s made about the relationships in her life. No small task when you consider the conditions they live in as listed in the preceding paragraph.

Where we tend to spend our lives managing tasks and projects, women, because of their social nature, spend their lives managing relationships. When they say they want a man who makes them feel safe, they’re not talking about a bodyguard; they’re talking about a man who earns their trust and loyalty, who gives them a feeling of commitment and continuation of the relationship, because severed relationships are as traumatic for them as failed plans and projects are to us, if not more so. We put our life into our work, and they put their lives into their relationships.

Another lesson is in her response to Lancelot. If you do the things that make a woman happy, like letting her see you being a real man and using what you learn about a woman’s needs, wants, communications style and methods, etc., she will be compelled to make your life wonderful. It’s in the wiring, and even predatory women can be turned around if the man is strong and exciting enough. It’s a matter of biological wiring, just like their more-sophisticated communications skills, responding to leadership and other alpha male characteristics with attraction, being hyper-adverse to boredom, etc. Don’t let that lesson be wasted.

As an aside, hopefully a quick one, I want to point out a common misconception in this story that has extremely destructive potential. This story speaks of Lancelot’s “sacrifice” in marrying the witch. “Sacrifice” is the trading of value for nothing, resulting in the destruction of value, which benefits nobody at all. Lancelot traded his choice of bride to see his King live and lead his country, because he did not wish to live otherwise. That is a trade of value for value, not a sacrifice.

You often hear people talk about the need for sacrifice in a relationship; if ever you are asked to make a true sacrifice in your relationship, to give up and destroy something of value to you for no appreciable benefit, you are looking at a controller, not a partner. A partner might ask you to choose between two things of value to you, (like trading a roadster for a car that will carry the whole family) or between two actions (a fishing trip with a friend or a family vacation), but only a predator would ask you give up something of value to you without something in return, like selling your roadster so they could have one or giving yours to them while you do without, or giving up your fishing trip so they could go off on a cruise with girlfriends. Good relationships do involve a lot of trades, but never sacrifices.

What other lessons can you find in this story? Let’s do a contest. E-mail me at tips@makingherhappy.com, and if you send anything I find worthy of repeating to your fellow readers that hasn’t already appeared in print during previous runs of this contest, and I’ll send you a free copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage.” Entries must be received by 11:59PM Mountain Standard Time (Las Vegas, Nevada time) on Tuesday, August 22, 2008. I held this contest last year, and it was a blast. I also met some of my best students and closest friends through this contest. And for those of you who participated last year, no cheating this year! LOL!

If you don’t have an entry, that should tell you that you need to be reading "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," because you should be able to recognize these things if you’re going to be living happily with a woman. Download your copy right now at http://www.makingherhappy.com and start becoming that guy whom legend says does not exist, the guy who knows what women really want and how to have fun giving it to them, not to mention reaping the immense and wonderful rewards they give in return.

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

How Do Honey-Do Lists Affect Your Relationship and Marriage?

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

Welcome to yet another Friday (as I write this on Friday evening!), gateway to another weekend. What are you going to do with it? For some of you, it’s your last day of rest before another frustrating and laborious weekend spent trying to shorten your “Honey-Do” list.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

7. It promotes a feeling of cooperation and teamwork

8. It creates an investment in the relationship that you will be reluctant to cash in

9. It makes good use of otherwise idle time

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

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

12. It frees up money for her to spend on other things, which will be purchased when she’s out shopping while you’re working on the list.

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

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

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

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

…your wife is unable to do?

…your wife is unable to help you with?

…you do well and/or enjoy doing?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, I DID say that. Committed relationships and marriages are partnerships, are they not? That doesn’t mean that you do all the hard stuff while she has all the fun any more than it means that you drink up your paycheck every week and beat the hell out of her to keep her in submission while you spend her paycheck to keep the bills paid. It’s a two-way street, and if you’re not doing your share of traffic control, somebody else in your house is “wearing the pants in the family,” as the saying goes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How Much Is Too Much? Rings, Gifts, Appreciation, and Predators in Relationships and Marriage

Where do you cross the line from an appropriate gift to a red flag? Where does she cross the line from a woman of taste to a gold-digging abuser? It’s not hard to tell if you know what to look for…do YOU?

I get quite a few questions about specific gifts, how to choose them, what is appropriate, etc., but most aren’t really questions that make for good copy for this newsletter (because the topic has already been covered pretty thoroughly in previous editions) and are answered privately, but there is one issue that came up that is pretty sticky, that of engagement rings.

One of my friends has been dating a woman for nearly two years, and finally decided it was time to pop the question, and she said, “No!” – immediately, emphatically, and with conviction. Why?

Because he had made two mistakes. The first was in buying and presenting the ring before she answered, a blatant wussy maneuver if ever there was one, and unfortunately a very common mistake. Guys, think for a minute: If you have to buy a woman’s acceptance of your marriage proposal with a piece of jewelry, what does that say about each of you?

First, it says that you don’t think you’re worth marrying and are trying to buy your way into her life. It also says that you think that she can be bought, which is one whale of an insult to any woman of character. However, in this case, making this mistake probably saved my buddy’s life, because she rejected him due to his second mistake, which in truth was no mistake at all…

She rejected him because the ring wasn’t expensive enough! She flatly told him that if he couldn’t present her with at least a two-carat stone he could forget it. He was heartbroken when he called, thinking he’d been a fool and had blown the best thing that could ever happen to him. I beg to differ!

It was actually the greatest thing he could have done, because she proved in that one simple statement that she could be bought, wanted to be bought, and was high-priced and high-maintenance. I asked him to describe their history to me and it was just as you would expect.

They met in a bar, he bought all the drinks, the dinner later, paid for everything every time they went out, ended up buying her a car when hers broke down, ended up making all the deposits and down payments on a new apartment when she was evicted for not paying her rent, refused to talk to him days and even weeks at a time if he showed up without a satisfactory gift, etc. He was calling me to find out how big a ring to try to buy to salvage the situation. Can you guess what I told him?

I told him to not bother, because she was a gold-digging parasite who had bled him for two years already, and that if he didn’t believe me, she would gladly prove it to him. Just don’t call her, and when she calls, tell her that he didn’t want to talk to her because he had realized that she was just asking for too much. Her response would be one of the following:

1. Indignation, to try to press his buttons and guilt-trip him into reversing himself,

2. Abuse, to try to shift him into approval-seeking mode and get him to try to buy her approval,

3. Complete capitulation without discussion, as she realized that she pushed too hard and scrambled to try to regain control of her meal ticket.

He agreed after considerable discussion, and she didn’t make him wait long. She called two days later wanting to know why he hadn’t called. He responded as instructed, and she went berserk, first yelling at him about how he didn’t appreciate all she’d done for him in the last two years, which pretty much came down to being late every time he was to pick her up and giving him something other than his retirement account to stuff money into, as there had been no sex in months and it turned out he’d asked her to marry him in hopes of reigniting their sex life. (If I had known this was happening I could have helped long ago, but guys don’t easily talk about these problems with other guys.)

He pointed out to her that the relationship had been terribly one-sided and that in fact he had done a whole lot more for her than she had for him, and she shifted gears and went into the pity ploy, talking about all her hard times and how if he really loved her like he said he did he would have tried to make it up to her with a bigger ring. (Guilt trip!) He responded that those problems had been the result of her own choices, many of those choices against his advice, and that he was tired of paying for her to have the luxury of making bad choices.

Right on cue, she burst into tears, started begging, promising that she’d change, there’d be sex every day, and it would be better than it ever was, and all that nonsense. Just too predictable for words.

Now, most bad women will not go into a melt-down like that. She was betting large holding a trash hand and he called her bluff. Most bad women would only go through one of those three little dances, not all three, but apparently she was an amateur. Some women actually hate men so badly that they want nothing but to control them and bleed them dry. Others are just losers who drift from bank account to bank account…er…I mean, man to man, draining them dry along the way.

Fortunately, these are a minority, and as you can see, or are about to see, pretty easily spotted. Good women want a good man, and want to share love, life, victories, celebrations, tender moments, sex, and even bad moments, not as a parasite or predator, but as a partner. They are driven to nurture and commune, not consume. Thankfully, they greatly outnumber the bad ones.

If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while or have your own copy of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” you’ve seen me post quite a few red flags, especially in the book. Here’s a list of the biggies:

1. A woman who makes demands about gifts, especially if she isn’t contributing to the household income, and doubly especially if she insists on choosing her own gifts, especially her own engagement ring, or makes sure that you get a message through one of her friends about anything except the size of her ring finger (not the size of the diamond, but the diameter of the ring, i.e., size 7.5, not some number of carets)

2. A woman who is frequently in trouble, and expecting you to bail her out

3. A substance abuser whose abuse is having an obviously negative impact on their life yet defends their substance abuse in any way

4. A woman who seems to always be having and complaining about problems but never doing anything about them

5. A woman who has all the trappings of wealth but no visible means of support, i.e., expensive clothes, car, etc., but expecting you to pay for everything (Women of means generally insist at least on going Dutch-treat and often prefer to pick up the check themselves to demonstrate that they are independent women of good quality.)

6. A woman who constantly acts helpless, especially if she is also overly-flirtatious with everyone at all times, obviously seeking attention and assistance.

As I said, this list is not comprehensive, it’s just the biggies; there are a lot more in my book and in past issues of this newsletter, available in the archive (see the link below) or past posts on my blog. If you’re currently in a relationship with one of these women, face it, you’ve screwed the pooch, and you need to face reality: she’s not going to get any better, and you’re going to continue to foot the bill, financially, emotionally, etc., for her indiscretions, until you make the choice to stop and move on.

There are a lot of good women in the world, luckily far more good ones than bad ones. Identifying them isn’t that hard when you know what to look for, and getting along with them is really pretty easy when you understand how to communicate with them and what they want, out of life and out of you. Luckily for you, there is a single source where you can learn everything you need to know to do exactly that, to have a great relationship with a great woman, even if you have to get a bad one out of the way first. Best of all, you can afford it!

It’s called “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” and it’s an instant download at http://www.makingherhappy.com. It costs less than dinner for two at a good restaurant, and is guaranteed to work. Download it now and start putting your life back on track, because life’s too short to live it doing anything less than enjoying it.

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

Saving Your Relationship and Marriage

One of my readers is a research hound, a very skilled one, and he’s gathered proof that what I’ve been telling you folks is true and accurate on a global scale. There’s much here to learn and use in what he’s dug up, so tune in and turn on!

I hope you’re having a great day! I sure am. I am yet again reminded of how sharp my readers are. Many of you will remember “Rick,” one of my more avid and astute readers and contributors.

Rick read my book and turned himself around well over a year ago, and has since been on a crusade to help other men discover that what I teach works, especially that being a man, and indeed human, may not be popular or politically correct, but it is nonetheless something to which one should aspire, not apologize for, and that relationships worth saving can be saved if we will but spend a little effort to be what we were born to be instead of what certain sorry elements of society would have us be. Prepare to have your mind expanded and filled (I’ll be injecting some parenthetical commentary:

Hey David,

Reading that email (The July 24 edition speaking about women and affairs in the real world) brought back some fond memories. It also inspired me to email you and show you how much things have evolved on this topic.

As you're probably aware, I'm an avid researcher, like yourself. I've found more evidence to support that what you tell your readers hits the bullseye for accuracy.

Look - over 50% of women surveyed have confessed to having submissive fantasies. Why do you think Anne Rice novels are so popular? Or why so many women wear clothing that hints at a BDSM lifestyle? Many women fantasize about these things but have never found someone to help them live the fantasy. If you become that man, you become her living dream! It is what it is.

(Women LOVE being led by a man with the confidence to lead! And the lifestyle Rick mentions is not about perversion, control, and demeaning behavior; it’s about leadership and trust. Ask some of the participants and they will tell you the same thing they’ve told me. While it may seem extreme and even “sick” to the uninitiated, there is a thrill in being led through a potentially intense and dangerous situation finding time and again that you can trust your partner to lead without being abusive. And no, I don’t participate. I’m simply reporting what the participants have said, so I’m not defending my own predilections here.)

With regards to romance novels, here's the best way I explain it to men so they understand: Romance novels are to women what adult videos are to men. Again statistics bear this out. 95% of all romance novels sold are purchased by women, and 95% of all adult videos sold are purchased by men.

(I strongly recommend to men that they read a popular romance novel or two to help understand what gives women the rush of attraction, even if they have to enlist the help of a female friend to help them understand the important parts.)

The following are examples that some women really do have these thoughts running in their heads:

"Mary", 26 year old wife and mother of 2: Mary's husband was a typical, boring man, which is a poor match for a woman with an incredible sexual imagination. Mary got online and started searching for a "Master", someone that would control her mind, body, and soul. She finally found one - and this "Master" told her when, where, and how she was allowed to have sex with her own husband! The husband eventually filed for divorce, but was humiliated for months before finally waking up.

(As I’ve told you many, MANY times, Gentlemen, stand up, take the lead in your household, and make sure that your wife has no reason to be bored, or someone else will! It’s as sure as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, biological, not logical.)

"Amy", 19 years old: Amy was a fresh young girl that was into older men. Through some local searching she found one - a 51-year old that she has wild times with! This older man is now enjoying some teenage lovin', all because he knew how to trigger and sustain her attraction to him. As a side note, when Heidi Fleiss was 19, she had a fling with a 61 year old man, so these encounters are NOT uncommon!

(I have a great many reader letters and have read excerpts from letters in other authors’ newsletters bearing this out: Attraction is seldom bound by age, looks – other than the appearance of self-respect – wealth, or anything else that men have mistakenly thought came to bear on their attractiveness, whether to new dates, their girlfriends, or wives.)

"Paula", 35 years old: Years of suppressing fantasies of submission led Paula to really go wild when she finally started acting on these thoughts - she enjoyed used by several men at once. Not what you would expect from a highly-paid executive with a husband and child at home.

(Are you listening? A highly-paid executive with a family, risking losing it all, not because she is immoral, but because she denied her own needs and desires too long and was finally overwhelmed by them after she entered circumstances at home and at work where her whole world was at risk. Don’t wait for your wife to try to tell you about her secret wishes and wants, ask her about them, and listen carefully. Try to oblige them, too, because if you don’t, somebody else may end up doing it for you!)

Now I realize these examples are on the extreme side, but I felt it was necessary to share them so that men can realize what can happen to them if they don't make the effort to maintain their relationship or marriage. In the cases of the two married women, they're the results of boredom unchecked by a inattentive husband who wasn't flipping his wife's attraction triggers.

(And based on what I’ve been told by readers, their wives, and women who have responded to surveys, these examples are not so extreme. Indeed, they’re almost common, and the circumstances that give rise to them are entirely common. Make sure that you protect your relationship, marriage, and family from these conditions at all costs!)

The solution is what you said in that email:

“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. Get a clue!”

(A direct quote from that same newsletter. According to letters from women, the advice of “making her feel alive, engaged, challenged, understood, and appreciated” were the most commonly occurring women’s needs that went unmet. The reference to the channel surfing couch potato whose wife spends her time with kids and Internet interlopers in chat rooms was taken directly from those same letters from women as a huge mistake men make.)

Otherwise the future is grim. A study in the 1980's revealed that 90% of the relationships were ended by women. Currently, almost three quarters of all divorces in the US are filed by women.

(Yikes! Do we – the women and I -- have your attention now?)

Gentlemen the choice is yours, make the right one.

Hope you're well,

Rick.

Thank you Rick, as always. Seeing guys like you take this stuff and run with it like this is what keeps me going sometimes.

Gents, I don’t know what else to say here. Some of you are in or just out of relationships and marriages that you never should have entered, and entered because you thought need, attraction, or lust was love. You need to get out, and learn what a good woman and good relationship looks like before you try again.

The rest of you are in good relationships and marriages, but while your compatibility has remained intact, attraction is waning, she’s getting bored, and your communications skills are too poor to be able to figure out what’s going on and fix it. What’s interesting, and indeed, ironic, is that you need the exact same things that the other group of guys need.

All of you need to shrug off all of the crap you’ve been fed for the last 20-40 years and get back to being a real man. A man who leads, who creates and knows his own value, who understands and communicates well with women, who entertains himself and others with competence and authority, not as a court jester, but a man, a mentor, and a respected figure in his social circle, no matter where on the ladder that happens to be.

For that, you need to know what it really means to be a man. You need to know the one and only way to build genuine self-esteem so that you have the confidence to be a man and a leader, especially in the presence of women. You need to know how women communicate, and try to match their methods and protocols while you help them to understand the much more basic and direct male methods. And you need to know how to evaluate the relationships in your life, all of them, but especially those with the people close to you, so that you can encourage the good ones and terminate the bad ones that suck the life out of you instead of enriching your life.

And all of that, and more, is contained in the pages of "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," which you can download at http://www.makingherhappy.com with little more than a few mouse-clicks. You now have the choice to continue screwing up or to know that which not even Sigmund Freud, the renowned psychologist, knew when he said, “The great question, which I have not been able to answer, is ‘What does a woman want?’”

As Rick said, make the right choice. And make it now, while you still have time to fix your problems the easy way; it gets much harder as time goes on.

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

Cute or Cruel? The Fine Line Between Play and Abuse in Relationships and Marriage

One of the easiest ways to learn how to do something right, including creating attraction, is to model the behavior of someone who is already skilled. However, you still have to know enough about the process to know whether the behavior you are thinking about modeling is the right behavior to model.

I hope you are enjoying your weekend as much as I am. In the July 4, 2008 edition of this newsletter I wrote to you about playing with women, and how many of the things we do with each other as men to bond and help each other develop “a thicker skin” are perceived differently by women, cruel in fact, because they use the same behavior to attack each other and therefore misconstrue some of our joking as an attack as well. This is obviously not well-received from a person who tells her that he loves her. That lesson inspired the following letter from Nina, who notes the difference between ignorance and abuse (and yes, there are valuable lessons here for those of you whose relationships don’t involve abuse, so please stick with me here and you’ll see what I mean):

Hi David,

My husband and I have been reading your newsletters since my we started having trouble last summer, and your book has made a world of difference in our life. We were in a bit of a death spiral, bored and frustrated with each other and had begun picking and sniping at each other in retaliation against what we both thought were deliberate attacks and disrespect, and I need to thank you for helping us get that all sorted out.

He’s back to being the man I married, and I feel better about our marriage and my life now than I’ve ever felt, because Karl never bores me anymore. He’s fun and playful one minute and strong and decisive the next, and in spite of his growing “spare tire” around his middle and his receding hairline, he keeps me in the clouds, if you know what I mean. And by the way, thanks so much for teaching him about the value of anticipation and taking it slow. We’re both enjoying that part of our life more than we did our dating and honeymoon periods combined.

I wanted to tell you about something I saw today, and have been seeing since our new neighbors moved in, but didn’t realize what I was really seeing until your newsletter about how men and women play differently. I thought that this was what our neighbor Gene was doing to his wife Carrie, but I think I was wrong. Every time we’re over there, no matter who is around or how Carrie really looks (she’s usually very slender and fit but sometimes she puts on a couple of extra pounds when she has to work late a lot at the hospital here), he’ll walk up and say to her, “You’re looking pretty chunky in those shorts (or pants or whatever). We’re going to have to get that weight off of you!” And then he’ll swat her on her bottom or pinch her or grab her and pull her skin to make love handles. It embarrasses her so badly that she’ll start crying and walk away, and he just laughs.

I thought for a long time that he was really that stupid and insensitive, but I’ve noticed other things lately. She never leaves the house without him, and very often when we’re all together and she’s asked a question, she’ll look at him before answering, and won’t answer until he makes eye contact with her and twitches some part of his face. I’ve never seen him hit her, and haven’t seen any bruises, but I think he’s controlling and abusing her, because she never looks happy and often the only way I can describe the way she looks is “trapped.” Is there anything that I can say to her to do for her to help her through this?

Thank you so much for your help, and for listening,
Nina

My reply:

Hi Nina,

I’m so happy to hear that you and your husband have had such success, and I’m equally sorry to hear that your neighbor is having such trouble. There is nothing to help her through, except exiting the relationship, unless she wants to risk going to jail by cracking him in the head with an iron skillet next time he abuses her.

Seriously, this is probably out of your league and hers. She needs some professional help to help her understand that she doesn’t have to tolerate his abuse and should in fact give him an ultimatum to either stop or leave, and that’s obviously not something that can be successfully handled by e-mail or phone, so she needs to find a local counselor.

What you can do for her is to point out to her that her accepting his behavior is self-destructive and unnecessary, and that if she is uncomfortable facing him down herself that she should get counseling from someone who specializes in abuse cases and start getting the problem handled. But be warned, she may try to suck you into her problems, and getting involved in your neighbor’s domestic disputes and relationship problems can land you in all sorts of trouble, including emotionally draining you to the point of damaging your relationship with your husband, so don’t let that happen.

Take care, and keep in touch,
David Cunningham

Now, what can the rest of us learn from this situation? First, some women are just as capable and skilled at this kind of controlling, demoralizing behavior as men; indeed, some of them are even better at it than we are. They may not even make a pretense of playing with you; they may just attack you outright in public, airing your dirty laundry, discussing your mistakes and failures, describing in detail your embarrassing moments, complaining about things you do, etc.

But not every attack is abuse. Now, pay close attention here…

When a woman does this infrequently and it’s limited to a single issue, like some on-going disagreement that you’re having, it’s a sign that the two of you are having a communication problem on that issue, she’s frustrated, and thinking that she may get you to work harder to listen to her if she gives you a dose of embarrassment and frustration as punishment. Not the best solution in the world for sure, but malice, control, and abuse are not the motivation behind the problem. She’s merely getting desperate for communication and trying to bully you a bit to get it and punishing you for making it rough for her. HOWEVER…

If the attacks are frequent, and not related to problems, but to things that destroy self-esteem, like overtly trying to embarrass you over your receding hairline or recent weight gain, being passed over for promotion at work, etc., hitting hot buttons that have nothing to do with anything in dispute, you have a spouse abuser on your hands, seeking to control you and keep you close to home by destroying your self-esteem and making you seek their approval.

On the issue of abuse, we have it just a little easier than most women. Most of us don’t generally have to worry about our wife beating our ass to a pulp and putting us in the hospital. But that’s about the only advantage. They can still hurt us financially in any number of ways, including burying us in debt and keeping us there, relentlessly putting us down in front of people to the point that we withdraw from the outside world to keep from being embarrassed in front of anybody we know, acting seductive toward other men in our presence or even bringing them home, and in extreme cases, even mixing things like mild poisons, things we’re allergic to (peanuts, shell fish, etc.) in our food in just high enough a concentration to make us miserable without endangering us. Abusers, male and female alike, don’t want their victim dead, they want them utterly submissive.

If you are with such a person, you can leave or throw them out. There may not be any criminal charges to file, and life may be a bit rough for a little while as you get used to being on your own again, but the truth is that no matter how insecure your abuser makes you feel, you don’t have to take it, and there are others in the world who will treat you with love and respect. It may take you awhile to heal and regain both your self-respect and your ability to trust women again, but you can do it, and I and thousands of others are capable of helping you through it, so you don’t have to do it alone, either.

Being well-matched is one of the cornerstones of a great relationship, and something I devote a lot of time and energy to explaining and helping you to understand in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and being strapped to an abuser for the rest of your life is definitely NOT what anyone would call “being well-matched,” unless of course you are a masochist.

Getting away from an abuser first requires ascertaining that you are indeed with one, then either quashing their abusive behavior or separating yourself from them (almost everyone ends up doing the latter), and then going through a process of healing and regaining your manhood and self-respect. It also requires that you recognize that the odds of being struck by lightning are better than the odds of finding some way to reform an abuser, and accepting that they’re not going to change for you or anybody else, nor are they likely to change for their own sake.

This must all be followed by overcoming any lingering fear you may have of future abuse, and then gaining a complete and working understanding of what a high-quality woman looks and acts like, how she thinks, and what she wants, and then evaluating yourself to see if some part of you needs to grow in order to satisfy such a woman.

The growing part is actually easy, because nearly all of us are born with a hero within, a part of us that wants to do better, have better, and be better, and the only thing that suppresses that part of us is bad programming that we pick up from the world around us. Remove the bad programming by accepting your true nature, and self-improvement comes very naturally and aggressively, because you suddenly realize that you both want and deserve it, and nothing can get in the way of you having it.

Great relationships don’t happen every day, but it’s not because they’re not available. It’s because even with all the school we attend and everything else we go through in growing up, very, VERY few of us are ever taught – by example or otherwise – what we need to know to find, build, and maintain a great relationship or marriage. We do what we’ve been programmed to do, or worse, what our insecurities, caused by our lack of understanding of the opposite sex, force us to do, and screw things up royally, and it doesn’t have to be that way at all.

As I said, I and thousands of other can help you, to varying degrees depending on our expertise and specialty, with any problems you have, but you have to first admit there is a problem and then choose to do something about it before any of us can do anything for you. I’ve been helping people with all sorts of problems my whole adult life, and I’m not a bit shy about saying that I’m one of the best you’ll find to help you, because I have thousands of business and individual clients to back me up on it, and nobody will ever tell you that I couldn’t help, at least to the extent of referring them to other competent help if their needs were outside my area of expertise. You can argue with opinions, but you can’t argue with history.

So what are you going to do about your problems? Are you going to just continue to wallow in them and hope somebody gives you a magic wand or powder or pill that makes them go away, or are you going to take the bull by the horns and get some help to get things going your way quickly so you can get back to (or get around to, if you never have) enjoying your life?

If you’re tired of things being touchy, rocky, scary, boring, tense, lonely or celibate in your relationship, stop tolerating it and let me help you fix it, a lot quicker and more easily than you would ever imagine, because I have the one thing above all others that you are lacking: good information that has been tested and worked for EVERYBODY who has used it, and it will work for you, too. Just jump over to http://www.makingherhappy.com/ and get your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and you’ll see what I mean.

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.

Gentlemen, I hope you realize how privileged you are to have access to the experience and input of the women on this 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 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 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.

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

The Emotions of Relationships and Marriage: Love, Attraction, Need, and Lust

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Attraction for your partner is a wonderful thing, as is having them attracted to you, but attraction outside the partnership can be disastrous in the same way and for the same reasons as lust, except it can be worse because of the emotional element that goes with attraction. A relationship without attraction between the partners is a simple friendship, and a boring one. Such a relationship with love but no attraction is the relationship where you hear about partners having affairs, saying, “I love my husband/wife dearly, but I need more.” That “more” is the excitement, fun, etc., that are created by attraction, and if they are missing, trouble’s coming or already upon you.

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

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

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

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

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

What Women REALLY Want in Relationships and Marriage, Part 3A, Reader Tales From The Dark Side

We interrupt this series to bring you a reader’s own “Tale from the Dark Side,” a forty-year marriage in which the reward for good work was more work and the reward for wanting rational discussion was false accusations of control – BY THE CONTROLLER! Learn from this man’s mistakes, as he is now doing…

Yesterday’s edition got a lot of responses, a lot more than I expected. Many of you have had a run-in with “ignorance of a woman’s true desires,” and most of you who did gave strong evidence of having learned something from the experience, even if it was only that you needed to learn more about women to get along with them well in the long term; you’d be surprised at how many men never even learn that.

There was one letter that stood above the rest as having lessons to teach that all could learn from. Meet Roger (as always, the name has been changed to protect the reader’s privacy):

Hi David,

Your recent letter concerning your friend Matt has made me realise just how common such a situation can be. I have been married for almost 40 years with two daughters and three grandsons and for as long as I can remember, I have never been able to please her; always there is something else that she wants me to do. I realised this many years ago and now always make a joke of it. So as fast as I complete one project, she will have the next ready for me, sometimes before the first was finished! I just add them to my list of tasks these days, some will get done, some will never be done. My problem is that she has a real knack of making me feel guilty.

This is not just about projects, it could be a social event or something she simply does not approve of, but always I have a guilt feeling when I refuse. The feelings haunt me and I end up doing what she wants sooner or later in most cases. If I argue or try to discuss, I am accused of always wanting to control her. I am driven to succeed because I want the quiet life and the brownie points that come from approval. I am told she sings my praises to others, but never to me.

To give you some idea how it works, she wants me to tidy the garage so it can have a workbench, all the machines and space for me to work. She tells everyone how it will improve things for me, but she also wants me to move all the items stored in the garden shed to the garage so that I can demolish the shed. Then I am expected to build her a summerhouse in the space, not a prefabricated one, a purpose built brick and tile fantasy!

In my spare time I am expected to remodel and transform the gardens, paint the house, build a new two-level deck across the back, turn the second bathroom into a "wet" room and keep the maintenance of our other two houses up to scratch! I must finish the kitchen sometime too! In all this she has ignored the plans we had to convert the garage into a dining room whilst we built a new garage with attached workshop. Maybe this is because her new greenhouse currently occupies the site?

David, I am tired! I work a 9 hour shift, six days per week and generally get just one day off. I cannot afford to pay someone else to do the work as I am still clearing debts from a failed business venture and I am earning just a tad above the minimum wage. I am reading the book you kindly emailed to me after it got lost in transit when I downloaded, but have yet to put it into practice.

Recently she took a vacation with my daughter and grandsons at one of our cottages. It was tiring, but different and the boys were easy, spending their time surfing. What was I doing? I spent my evenings and a rare weekend off work, repairing and painting the beach hut! Trying to please her again! My own vacations are limited and restricted to the extent we cannot have time together and if I take time off without her, I am expected to work on one of the projects!

I am considering building her a dungeon!:-))

There is a lot more to this than meets the eye, but I will not bore you with all the details of the problems in our marriage. I do not give up easily, but there are times when I seriously consider cutting my losses. Divorce is out of the question as we both feel it might make the other happy! Any advice you can offer would be appreciated. I simply want time to complete a few things on the list without her adding items faster than I can delete them! I can live without the approval for completed projects, but it would be nice if the feelings of guilt could be stopped too.

Thanks for listening.

Kind regards,
Roger

What can you learn from Roger’s predicament? Do you recognize the trade he has been engaging in for many years? He’s trading unappreciated effort for the promise of approval. A man shouldn’t seek the approval of a woman any more than a woman should seek the approval of a man. It tips the balance in the relationship too far to one side and throws everything out of whack.

Do you also recognize that she’s using guilt as a tool to usurp the authority that he should be both defining and exercising in their relationship to keep excitement and attraction alive? And the bit about when he wants to discuss something she truncates the discussion by accusing him of wanting to control her, when in fact her manipulations are for the purpose of controlling him? Methinks she doth protest too much, as the saying goes…

Roger and I have had other correspondence since this letter, and he’s going to do well in cleaning this mess up. He’s reading and learning, and getting his ducks in a row. The task before him is to refuse to allow his wife to use guilt and manipulation to control his actions, stop seeking her approval, and to take back the authority she has usurped from him, the authority over his own life, effort, schedule, the money he earns and how it is spent, etc.

His wife is in for a rude awakening, but history indicates that unless she is sociopathic and entirely devoid of character, a genuine predator, she will actually love him and respect him, not to mention become wildly attracted to the new authority and strength in him, when he makes the changes he is currently preparing for. If she is indeed a predator, he’ll recognize it and get out. “But he’s been in it for forty years!” Yes, and that’s forty years too long to live with a manipulative predator, right?

As an aside, guilt is something you CHOOSE to feel, not something that someone can force you to feel. If someone tries to make you feel guilty, you can simply choose to feel righteous (if you are) instead of letting them motivate you to ignore reality and accept the guilt they want to heap upon you for their own gain. If you do indeed owe a debt, you should make good on it out of good character, not guilt or fear of reprisal. That’s just what real men do. Anything else is too complicated and dramatic.

It’s not often that you see two people remain in such a one-sided relationship for so long, but even when things have gone so wrong for so long, they can still be fixed, and a lot faster than you’d ever think until you’ve experienced it, if you only know what the woman in your life really wants as a woman and as your partner, and that’s just not that hard to find out if you have the tools for the job.

The tools? Knowledge and desire. Knowing what women want in general, how to clearly communicate with them, and how to turn their attraction on and off will take you to a level of intimacy you never imagined possible, and from there you can learn what she as an individual secretly yearns for and responds to with complete certainty.

If you didn’t have the desire, you wouldn’t be reading this newsletter day after day looking for the knowledge. I’ve had a couple of complaints that my newsletter and blog posts sound like a sales letter, and maybe they do at that. I give away a lot of free information to prove that the information I’m selling is both valid and valuable.

All that I ask in exchange for all the free information I give you is that you take a good hard look at your life and try to find a way to apply what I give you, and that you occasionally at least consider taking the plunge and committing a few hours of reading and the cost of a good meal for two to go ahead and learn everything you need to know now, and making the effort to make your relationship all that it can be.

Some of you do, and write me letters describing fantastic results, and some of you don’t, apparently thinking that you’ll learn all you need to know from my newsletters or that you really don’t need to do anything. You will eventually find that position to be in error, and you’ll be downloading this book somewhere down the road when your relationship is in much worse shape and harder to and more painful to endure and try to fix, or worse maintaining the comfortably unhappy status quo or heading for divorce court.

It is at that time that you will realize that you could have read my book many times over in the time that you have spent only reading my newsletters (which, by the way, are infinitely more meaningful to those who have read the book), and that the cost of a good meal could have saved you a lot of time and a lot of pain, frustration, anger, money, celibacy, and no telling what else.

So I would urge you to make things easy on yourself. Go on now to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," as well as a free report I’ve bundled with it on how to quickly understand the true causes of a break-up and stop it quickly when things finally blow up. Life’s too short to waste it, so don’t waste any more of it being anything less than happy.

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