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

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

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

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

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

issue 2: my wife has sex when she wants & not when I want this has gone on so long that I don't even bother trying to be sexy with her, once again we have spoken but this ends up in a shouting match

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

Issue 1: for years my wife won’t kiss me I tell her it hurts but she says there’s no need. My wife thinks I am odd because I want a kiss & cuddle from her but she won’t when I tell her how I feel she ends up shouting at me then crying then sayings things will change & they do for a day or two then she is the same cold person with me, can I go on for the rest of my live feeling so unloved by her, I am 42 after 17 years marriage.

issue 6: after reading the above, even though I am not sure that I could leave her as we have 2 children but is there any point if feeling so low all the time & never seeing the light should I leave whilst I am able to start a new life, this would be the hardest ting that I have ever even thought about.

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

Do you see what’s going on here? These people have let problems fester for months, most for years, and there are some things that should be jumping off the page at you. First, and most important, is that they steadily get worse. You’ll also notice that it doesn’t matter if the deterioration of their relationship is fast or slow, the result is the same; they are either terminally unhappy and holding on out of fear, or they’re divorcing, and it’s not so easy to get out of or get over a 20-year relationship and start over in your forties or fifties, and one of these readers is in his sixties, and the wife he refers to is his second wife.

They’re all reaching out for help now, and most of them have chosen or will choose to accept it, but look at how many years they’ve spent being miserable that they could have spent being happy with each other if they had addressed their problems early and corrected them at that time. What’s the old saying? “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Small Changes Can Make a BIG Difference in Your Relationship and Marriage

A reader demonstrates how a small change in attitude can make a huge change in a marriage, in his case the excitement, energy, and intimacy levels, and how such changes are not difficult, but fun!

Before I get into today’s lesson, I need to remind you that we’re at the end of October, meaning that Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanza, and possibly other traditional gift-giving holidays are approaching, so do yourself a favor and start thinking about gifts for the women in your life now, while you have time to do it right. See my October 19, 2008 article on choosing the perfect gift for a woman for details.

Now for today’s lesson!

Check out my buddy Steve here, who has had a revelation that brought him the kind of success that every man wants and can have, if he can read on a fourth-grade level and follow a few simple instructions:

David,

It is amazing how sometimes a slight change in behavior by a man can trigger a much bigger response from a woman. A couple of weeks ago, I found myself wondering why my wife was being distant and seemingly uninterested in any approach I made to be even slightly romantic or sexual. In the past, I would have asked her what was wrong and spiraled into wussitude, making things worse.

Instead, I asked myself first if anything I had been doing could possibly be the problem and the light came on. Even though it might have seemed small or even insignificant, I realized that my approach had become more needy than manly. After giving myself a mental bitch slap, I relaxed and changed my approach to a more playful, I-can-take-it-or-leave-it one and dropped the neediness. The results put a smile on my face every time I think about it.

Last weekend, after a late lunch at one of our favorite restaurants, she asked if we could stop in a shop next door before we went home. I rolled my eyes (grinning all the time) and somewhat sternly said “OK, but make it quick.” Inside the shop, while we were walking through an aisle, out of anyone else’s view, she grabbed my hand and pulled it against a private part of her anatomy, for just a second.

Needless to say, the tension grew on the ride home and we ended up having a very hot afternoon. Keeping up with the same, over the next couple of days we teased each other back and forth, and after supper last night, she invited me to accompany her upstairs. After feigning a little indifference, I agreed and once again things continued quite nicely. Before turning off the lights last night, and again this morning, she told me how hot the sex was, and she sent me an email at work today saying she misses me. All this has occurred during the week before her “monthly” when normally her desires are somewhat diminished. And, by the way, we have been married for over twenty years.

David, the things you are trying to teach us really do work, and although I had been putting them into practice, I slipped a little. The good thing is that a quick evaluation of the situation and a slight change can make a big difference, and, as you say, it isn’t hard, its fun!

Thanks again for sharing your wisdom!
Steve

Steve gets a big “attaboy”! He bought his copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" on September 20, 2005, and he was writing me with advanced questions and success stories within a couple of months of that, and consistently up through March 2006. But then…

He got sidetracked and lost focus a little bit (what few details I have must remain confidential) and temporarily eased back into old habits. BUT! He recognized it, and having learned how to recognize problems and what to do about them, made a quick adjustment to eliminate that old wussitude that had begun creeping back in and BOOM! Right back into the honeymoon! And after over twenty years of marriage!

Incidentally, that’s why I repeat some of these newsletters every six months or so and why I recommend to those who buy my book to re-read periodically: so you can make sure that bad programming isn’t slipping back in, unusual work stress isn’t tearing you down, etc. So if you see one with a title or subject that looks familiar, don’t skip it. USE IT to make sure you’re still on track, and explore it to see if your new experience brings you something even better than it did last time.

And yes, it does involve change. For some of you, BIG change, even RADICAL change, but still not DIFFICULT change; indeed, it’s quite easy and enjoyable change, because you’re changing from something external forces have programmed you to be back to what you were naturally born to be. All it takes is a release from the programming that is compelling you to do all the wrong things, things that you are in fact not enjoying at all. So embrace this change, revel in it, and celebrate it. Look forward to being better when you wake up every morning, instead of dreading whatever challenges the day might bring.

For some of you it will take a little longer, and for others not as long. It all depends on how much damage has been done to you and how quickly you can accept the simple truth that being a man is fun and easy, political correctness doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in your relationship or marriage except to work against it, and that male-female (“intergender”) communications are governed by three simple rules that any fourth-grader could understand and follow. In a nutshell, how long it takes and how well it works is entirely a matter of choice, YOUR choice. Are you feeling the power?

The power of choice is a wonderful thing when you feel it. You can be feeling it by the end of this day if you want. Just go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and empower yourself to make a few good choices, then watch what happens. I dare you…

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

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

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

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

David,

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

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

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

Thanks,
Kent

My response:

Hi Kent!

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

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

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

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

Take care, and keep in touch,
David Cunningham

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hi David,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hugs,
Daphne

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

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

Could this happen to you?

Has it already?

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

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

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

I can help Gene (and in fact, if anybody knows how to get in touch with him through his web site or other means and refers him to me, I’ll cut you a share of anything I make working with him!) and I can help you, too. I’ve helped people in far worse shape, and have their e-mails and their gratitude to prove it. So how do you start?

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

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

Turning Back the Clock to Better Days of Relationships and Marriage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Women Need Emotionally from a Man in a Relationship or Marriage

Let’s talk about what women want from a man in a relationship, especially their emotional needs, and how knowing this can save your relationship or marriage.

I’ve been working on an interview that has stirred up a lot of new ways of discussing things we’ve talked about in the past, different ways of approaching and explaining the same problem and solution that may shed more light on the age-old questions of what women want, need, and expect from a man in a relationship.

In my free “Break-Up Busting 101” report, which you can download by following the link at the end of this newsletter, you’ll find definitions and ramifications of the four emotions that relationships are most often based upon: love, attraction, need, and lust, all of which are incorrectly thought to be simply love. Please review this article before continuing if you are not familiar with its contents. (Also grab my free "What Women REALLY Want" report, and feel free to share both of these free reports with your friends, as they an help anybody, whether or not they are currently in a relationship.)

Of those four emotions two of them are both healthy and required in a successful long-term committed relationship, love and attraction. You, as a man, need to be an expert on these two emotions and how they work, if you ever want to be able to be happy in any relationship with any woman, committed or not. You’ll see why very quickly.

Love, being the value and/or importance that you place on someone, is the source of friendship, trust, loyalty, security, respect, etc. It’s the thing that creates the friendship that allows two people to “bond” in any capacity and to any degree. This doesn’t just pertain to your wife, but to all women in your life. It’s not a feeling of duty, or altruistic drive to sacrifice. It’s the source of the feeling of celebration of your next encounter, whether intimate or public, personal or professional, work or pleasure, not the source of fear that it won’t happen.

It’s important to understand this so that you can see both why a woman needs to love and be loved and why it’s not enough. Love provides for a woman feelings of stability and security, and creates the environment in which she can feel safe in letting her natural drive to nurture drive her. If love is lost as partners grow apart, she can become mildly to severely depressed and feel a sense of lack of purpose, and her feelings of loyalty, respect, friendship, etc. for her partner will diminish.

Women can lose their feelings of love and still stay under the same roof with a man, but it becomes a very limited partnership – you’re pretty much just roommates. You can get along, but there’s no trust, no real respect, no friendship, no intimacy, etc., a strained existence at best.

Attraction is an entirely different matter. If you’ve been with me for longer than a few days you’re familiar with the difference in men’s and women’s emotional scales, and how while male emotions run from negative to positive, with crisis being the male emotional nemesis, women’s emotional scale runs from zero to infinity, with little to no discrimination between positive and negative (as far as emotional comfort zone), and their emotional nemesis is not crisis, but boredom. If you never learn another thing from me, learn this:

Attraction is any and every woman’s ultimate salvation from boredom. Boredom is any and every woman’s ultimate torment, the very bane of her existence.

A woman can reach the same feelings of physical and emotional discomfort (desperation!) from being bored that men can reach out of fear, anger, or any other emotion born of crisis. Stop here and think about that and let it burn in to such a depth that you will never forget it, because that one bit of knowledge can do more to save or prevent a troubled relationship than about anything else you can name.

Attraction, that “swept off her feet” feeling is what makes a woman’s life wonderful. There are things that reward her, like seeing that she’s been a good mother, etc., but creating attraction for her is her ultimate reward and the ultimate act of nurturing her, in exchange for all the nurturing that she gives the rest of the family.

So you see, what it all boils down to is that in a committed relationship, women need love to feel secure in giving of themselves, and they need attraction to feel alive and motivated to give their best. If you are going to sit on your duff with a beer and the TV remote control all evening, every evening, don’t expect her to be looking forward to doing anything but sleeping when bedtime arrives, and possibly sleeping with someone else at that.

No kidding. Since attraction and love are two entirely independent emotions and boredom is so utterly devastating to a woman, there may be no amount of love – hers or yours -- that is sufficient to keep a woman from engaging in an affair if you aren’t creating attraction for her. Think about that one for a minute, too…

It’s a double-edged sword. The bad news is that a woman can love you more than anyone else on Earth and still be compelled to engage in an affair to relieve the boredom the same way a man might be compelled to rob a bank to obtain the money to recover his wife or children if they were taken hostage. In extreme cases, it can literally be that overwhelming for a woman.

Yes, there are those who have self-esteem problems and have affairs in rapid succession, just like men do, looking for acceptance, approval, validation, etc., that they will never find, but those women are so consumed with feelings of need that they are not capable of love. I’m talking strictly about a woman who loves you here. And now for the good news…

It’s really the same news: a woman can be driven to have an affair even if she loves you more than anyone else on Earth, meaning that if she does have one and confesses it sincerely, along with a genuine desire to work it out and salvage your relationship, your best bet is most likely to do so. Why?

An affair isn’t a problem; it’s a symptom of a problem. If the problem is a simple deficiency of attraction, you can fix that, easily, and from what I’ve seen from the men who have used "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," pretty quickly, too.

Not so obvious is the fact that a woman who is rational enough and emotionally self-aware enough to realize that the affair was just a tension-breaker, that she loves you enough to discontinue the affair and confess it, and has the strength of character to do so is going to be very vigilant in protecting your relationship from similar problems in the future, so long as you continue to be committed to your marriage with her. Some even say that an affair is like a near-death experience, and those who survive them find they commit to and enjoy their relationships to degrees they never thought possible.

And no, I am absolutely not suggesting that women be given a blank check to have affairs or be categorically forgiven regardless of the reason for the affair, any more than I would suggest that women do the same for a man. I am saying:

1. When a man and a woman have attraction and no love, they have a great relationship in the bedroom, but not anywhere else. These couples fight to make up because sex is all they have together. There relationship is one of those bipolar catastrophes wherein the participants are either having sex or at each others’ throats, no middle ground. If you hear a man saying, “She’s great in the sack, but man, what a bitch!” or a woman saying, “He’s such a jerk, but he gets me off,” they’re in this kind of relationship.

2. When a man and a woman have true love, but have lost attraction, realizing that lost attraction, not lost love, is indeed the problem and addressing that by recreating the attraction creates a stronger relationship and should be pursued if possible. The only time it is unlikely to impossible is if another man has created attraction for the woman; again, attraction is a double-edged sword in the extreme. If you’re not creating it, there are others who can and will, and they’re not far away at any given moment.

3. When a man and woman have both true love and attraction, there’s nothing that can separate or take them down. Their relationship is impervious to outside influence because they will actively protect what they have.

4. When a man and woman have neither, and their relationship is based on need, lust, or anything but the combination of love and attraction, well, I’ll just say that I certainly wouldn’t want to live that life…and way too many couples are stuck in it. Such relationships are doomed to failure before they ever begin.

There you have it, and on the surface, it looks like a mess, but it is in fact a clear roadmap for getting out of a mess and staying out; a roadmap, but not detailed directions…

Those detailed directions, including how to accurately evaluate your relationship, how to accurately communicate with any woman so that you can have the intimate discussions required to overcome hardships and celebrate your life together, and everything you need to know about what makes women tick, what they want, and how to build and kill attraction in your relationship (straight from the mouths of women!), are in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," so go now and download your copy at http://www.makingherhappy.com while there’s still time to save yours, because every day that damage is done makes it just a little harder, and being men, we like to do things the easy way, right?

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

Distant Early Warnings Can Help Save Your Relationship and Marriage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Affairs and Cheating in Relationships and Marriage, Why Do Women Have Them?

Why do women have affairs? For the same reason most men do: because there’s nothing exciting them at home. What excites them may be quite different from what excites us, but they don’t deal with boredom any better than we do (in fact, it’s far worse for them!), so don’t expect them to – do something about it before it happens!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When he got home, she showed him the book and told him I had written it and wanted their evaluation of it, which was true (I’m always interested in reader feedback on any of my books), and over the days that followed I got letters and phone calls from him about various things, and when it was obvious that he had a good grasp of what attraction is, and how powerful a force it is in a woman, especially when she is bored and vulnerable, I told Dina it was time to find an opportunity to confess, which she did within a couple of evenings as they were discussing part of the book.

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

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

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

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

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

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

These things came from my book, some personal coaching to help them get through the emotional upheaval at times, and their knowledge of each other. The biggest thing that it took was the commitment to do what was necessary to fix the problem, which was much easier to make when they had read "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and therefore knew that it could be done, what would be required, and that it was worth it.

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

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

What Can Your Kids Teach You About Building a Great Relationship and Marriage?

Did you ever notice a couple of teens getting hot and heavy in a public place? Ever wish you could go back to those days? You can, if you’ll just let yourself…

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

Dear David,

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

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

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

Dawn

My reply:

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

They just let go, and do what comes natural. When was the last time that you tried it? You say you want that kind of heat and passion, but who’s keeping you from having it, other than yourself? Don’t worry about two pounds you gained during the holidays; when the lights are out or his eyes are closed, he’ll never be able to tell the difference, except you might feel just a little better pulled up close to him.

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

There is no aphrodisiac in the world that will guarantee good sex tonight or tomorrow night (or in the morning!) like good sex last night! Don’t let the world put a damper on your sex life. Get yourself up to Alpha Male standards, fire that woman up, and get into her and let her get into you like you did when you were teenagers. If you need a little help turning the clock back, go to a drive-in instead of renting a DVD, or get a room in a cheap hotel, not the kind you would rent today, but the kind you rented when you were a teenager and weren’t supposed to be renting a room! Add that seedy, naughty flavor to the mix, and play up the mischief, nostalgia, and “getting away with something” angles. Have fun with it – and each other!

Take care, and keep in touch,
David Cunningham

Gentlemen, everywhere you look is something that can help you to revive and enhance your relationship if you know what to look for. Knowing what to look for comes from having that romantic, can-do hero’s attitude and knowing what women want. You don’t have to be young, rich, powerful, or drive a fancy car to get your wife’s attention; you just have to be a man, a REAL man, the man she went crazy over and married. If you want to keep her attention, you keep her guessing, not at whether you’ll be around tomorrow, or have a job next week, but at what kind of excitement you’re going to create for her today. Will it be walking into a room like you own it, telling a grand tale, or whisking her off to some fun place or activity? The choice is yours, and she expects you to make it.

Women have affairs because they are bored, not because they don’t love their husbands anymore; lost love comes well after lost attraction, if it comes at all (ever heard that bit, “I love you, but I’m not in love with you anymore,”?). All you need to become a master of attraction and supreme boredom-fighter, the confident ultimate male who knows what women, especially his partner, want is contained in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” and you procrastinate at reading and using it at your own peril. Get ahead of the curve and stay there by going to http://www.makingherhappy.com and downloading your copy right now, and bring back that passion, intimacy, and honeymoon, because life’s too short to spend it playing catch-up.

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

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

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

I got a very humorous and insightful comment on the October 14, 2007 edition (about how far women will go to escape boredom) from one of the newest readers which spawned a great lesson for you. It’s great because it’s an issue that is tough for the untrained man to deal with but the solution is easier and safer to implement than you might otherwise imagine. Here’s the note that started it all (the name has been changed to protect the brilliant):

*****
Note to Self:

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

~~~~~~

Hi David,

Damn. That is scary. And VERY instructive.

Thanks, - H.

*****

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

*****
Note to H.:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

People who want to get things done will support your effort to the best of their ability because they have others leaning on them for performance. Even the owner of the company has people leaning on him: his customers! Nobody wants to finish the day with egg on their face, and when you speak up like this you establish yourself as somebody who looks ahead and acts rationally instead of an egomaniac with a hero complex or a persecution complex who would sacrifice himself to be noticed and risk his boss’s and his company’s reputation to do it. Whining about being over-worked is entirely different from saying that you've assessed risk and it will be in everybody's best interest to bring more resources to bear on the project, so don't think that you're telegraphing weakness by saying that you need something if you really need it.

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

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

Involve your wife in the examination after you’ve looked for yourself, invite her input and compare it to your own. Impress upon her the need for balance as well. She shouldn’t be letting her job, hobbies, you, or especially the children (which many women are unfortunately VERY pron