Reader Responses to Asking for Intimacy in Relationships and Marriage

Some female readers respond to yesterday’s lesson on not asking for sex. Pay attention, Gentlemen, because this is the real deal, straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak…

I love the women who subscribe to this newsletter. They’re smart, funny, and I can always count on them to keep my horizons broadening and help set the things I teach in stone by demonstrating to you gentlemen that I’m giving you the facts, not just some hyped-up theory or opinion. I received a bunch of letters from the women on yesterday’s “Don’t Ask for Nookie” lesson, all of which contained a resounding “Amen!” in one form or another, and I’m going to share a few of them with you right now.

First, meet Teresa:

Hi David,

All I can say about being asked for sex is “EWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!” It creeps me out.

Teresa

For those who don’t speak girly-ese, raise “yuck!” “sick!” or “gross!” to about the 23rd power, and you’ll be getting close to the meaning of “creeps me out.”

Now meet Rhonda,

Hi David,

Men just don’t understand how repulsive it is to be asked for permission to do something that they should be doing. If you want to kiss a woman, you should already know whether you can by whether she lets you get close enough to kiss her. And for God’s sake, don’t make an announcement like, “I’m going to kiss you now,” because that comes across as asking. For me, I like the way Will Smith said to do it in that movie Hitch. Come 90% of the way and make me come the other 10% to kiss you. If I don’t come the other 10%, either I’m not interested or you’re going too fast.

Love your stuff. Get these guys into shape for me, will ya? I want a real guy so bad I could just die, and there’s none to be found around here, so hurry!

Rhonda

Hitch was a pretty good movie if you ignore the part where Will Smith wussed out at the end. Rhonda has a great point: if you’re moving into a woman’s space bubble too quickly she’ll back off immediately, and if you’re being so aggressive as to creep her out she’ll break off contact, so talking about kissing or sex or anything else is pretty silly. And besides, if you are generating attraction as you should be, she’s often going to be the one invading YOUR space bubble to get a kiss. Just ask Barb, who includes a LOT of great detail:

David,

I completely agree with your response to "asking" for sex. I can't think of a bigger turn-off than a man asking me if he can hold my hand or kiss me or asking me if we can have sex now. It's like a child asking permission to do something. It's a sign of weakness and insecurity to have to beg for sex.

It's a lose/lose situation. If she says yes, she's doing you some huge favor/chore. If she says no, you're going to feel rejected. Either way, you're setting yourself up for disaster because you're handing her your power on a silver platter.

My suggestion to Marcus is that he needs to do some serious inner work on his attitude and beliefs. Then at some point, take a leap of faith, believe in yourself and your power and trust that this stuff really works. Real men don't have to "ask", they just "do it". I think you'll be shocked and very pleasantly surprised to find that a woman just can't stop herself from responding positively to strength, leadership and personal authority in a man. I am a strong woman, but I want a man who is stronger than I am. I want to be able to surrender to his will. That's what gives me butterflies in my stomach and makes me weak in the knees.

A man may be aroused instantly, but that doesn't mean a woman is. We take longer since we don't have an on/off switch. For us, sex starts in the head, when
we begin thinking about the feelings. The anticipation. The suspense. The stimulation of not just my body, but ALSO my mind.

David's book has an entire section called "Great in Bed" to help build confidence in your lovemaking skills. And it is a skill we have to learn since we're not born knowing how.

I wish I'd had this book when I was still in my 25 year marriage, we could have either salvaged our marriage or I'd have known to move on much sooner.

Barb

I couldn’t have said it better myself! And note that Barb confirms that achieving attraction and arousal is not a near-instantaneous thing like it often is for men. We are largely visually stimulated, where a woman’s mind must be engaged to some degree with mystery, adventure, fun, etc. The alpha male attitude gets you noticed and ultimately cranks up the heat, but that “fun” element common to all men with self-confidence has to bridge the gap to get you there.

Notice that Barb says that she “wants to be able to surrender to his will. That takes trust, and if you don’t trust yourself enough to be confident, how the hell is she supposed to trust you at all??? I keep telling you gentlemen this isn’t rocket science…and there’s a pretty obvious reason for that…

Also note that she points out that “making whoopee” (the things I have to do to hide from the spam filters! LOL!) is a skill that we are not born with. We are born with an instinctive capacity for the raw act of procreation, but not for the pleasure that surrounds it if it’s done right. That requires knowing one of those things that Sigmund Freud was talking about when he said he didn’t know what women want. (And yes, I DO, because women tell me these things!)

So that’s it, the women have spoken, and have confirmed for you that I gave you the facts. And I have a lot more of them for you too, including the whole scoop on what women want, so if you want to get your marriage and relationship back in gear and get one up on Sigmund Freud in the process, come see me at http://www.makingherhappy.com/ right now.

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

Rules of Great Relationships and Marriage: Why Making HER Happy Makes EVERYBODY Happy

The explanation of yesterday’s promised “thunderbolt” – Why making her happy makes everybody happy, and what you can easily do to make it happen, automatically and consistently so that BOTH OF YOU enjoy it.

For those who had the bad fortune to miss yesterday’s edition, go back and read it, because it was good and because it sets up today’s edition. We’ve all heard “If mama ain’t happy, nobody’s happy,” (unless some of us have been living under a rock), and we’re all pretty well convinced that it’s a universal truth that will never be disproved. However, have you ever thought about the converse?

If mama is happy, everybody’s happy!

Why would I suggest such a thing? It’s the core of everything I’ve been talking about for a very good reason: it’s incontrovertible reality. Right now, I’m going to help you accept and understand this by explaining why.

It can be quite shocking when you realize how much of how we relate depends upon or is derived from this model (discussed in yesterday’s edition, so once again, if you’ve not read it, go back and do so before continuing here) of “men are hunters, women are gatherers.”

In case you’re not familiar with basic anthropology, here’s the super-short summary: in the earliest days of human existence, before agriculture and for some time after the development of agriculture, men hunted for meat and women gathered fruits, nuts, roots, etc. and raised the children; later, women most likely developed agriculture to have a more convenient food supply. One must remember that during this time, 90% or more of a person’s time was spent in securing a food supply.

We’re talking about a long, long time here, during which women were together, gathering and later farming in groups and learning to communicate, while men were out hunting alone or in small groups that kept very quiet to keep from scaring the game. These activities caused women to evolve to be genetically “wired” to be more social and nurturing, and have more sophisticated communications skills due to their activities causing the more rapid and full development of the bridge between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, called the “corpus callosum,” and the right hemisphere of the brain to develop more densely than in men.

They also developed a system of safeguards against nurturing the wrong kind of man. There are biological triggers that turn on this behavior when a woman sees strong alpha male behavior, which causes her to nurture in a manner appropriate to a mate, and in the presence of children; for many women, child-like behavior, such as a “middle-aged adolescent,” causes them to nurture and protect the man as would be appropriate for a mother, taking charge of the man’s life and affairs and attempting to save him in a codependent relationship. So since the process is biological and not logical, it is very difficult for a woman to resist and unfortunately, not foolproof; she can end up nurturing a man who is bad for her, like an alpha male with psychopathic tendencies who beats her, or a middle-aged adolescent with sociopathic tendencies who sucks her dry and moves on to his next host.

Whether you accept evolution as the cause of this difference or not, the difference is there, it’s consistent, and the behavior it creates is consistent; it’s what creates the feminine and masculine aspects of personality and communication skills and style.

Now, the big question: what does this mean to your relationship or marriage?

Generally speaking, women are naturally social, nurturing, and sensitive; men are not so much nurturing as protective. We are naturally loners; even when we’re in groups we often act competitively instead of socially and cooperatively. We are combatants; we tend to deal with problems by trying to overpower them or through other competitive means, not through any nurturing means, often even when it would mean converting an enemy to a friend. And let’s face it, a lot of men are finding out the hard way that women’s natural skill in non-verbal communication makes them superior negotiators and poker players in a great many male-female match-ups.

So how can you put this to work for you?

This is the great secret of relationships that is really no secret at all. If a man will create attraction for his female partner, her response will automatically be to respond with excitement, sensitivity, wife-like (as opposed to mother-like) nurturing, and attractive behavior toward him. She won’t have to put any effort into it, because it will all be triggered by her attraction. It’s biological, and therefore not only automatic, but unavoidable (which is what gets women in trouble with predatory users, abusers, and losers who have mastered attraction tactics and use it mercilessly to attract and hold their victims.) Why?

To fully understand and accept this, you must understand the intensity of attraction. The only good way I can explain this to men is to call your attention to what happens when you start feeling intense attraction, when you reach that point where you MUST have sex with a woman and then MUST experience orgasm with her. It is different for women in that attraction for us is mostly (but not entirely) a matter of visual perception and happens very quickly while for women it is actuated by a combination of a lot of triggers that confirm your status as an alpha male.

It is therefore built much more slowly, but if you can recall the thrill and urgency of that attraction and your desire to maintain access to the woman who creates it, you can then have at least a partially accurate frame of reference for the intensity of what women feel; for them, it is even more intense because those feelings build more slowly and have time to create more excitement. Also note that while our excitement creates an intense urgency that is satisfied after the orgasm, theirs creates less urgency but more emotional intensity, making for a longer-lasting effect.

One other thing that you should note is the effect of the hormone oxytocin (do not confuse this with the pain medication, oxycontin). Oxytocin is called “the cuddle hormone,” and it facilitates a mother bonding with her children and her husband. It is released in small amounts during physical touching, especially stroking the skin, and is released in large amounts after orgasm. It therefore follows that taking the time to build attraction for a woman to ultimately increase her excitement, desire, and arousal to the point where she can then experience orgasm (simple physical stimulation is seldom if ever enough for a woman – attraction must happen first) on a regular basis, she will be more apt to remain happily married.

It also means that not allowing that post-orgasmic cuddle that most women want is a REALLY bad move, guys. REALLY BAD. The woman you love is at that point overwhelmingly driven to snuggle up to you, and if you reject her at that point you might as well just call her some really ugly names and slap her, because it would have the same effect. Besides, in case you’ve forgotten, it actually feels pretty good to have a woman snuggled up to you, remember? So hang around for a few minutes instead of dashing to the bathroom or falling immediately to sleep. You may be surprised at the response that small consideration will bring.

So yes, in spite of what the politically correct would have you believe, sex is indeed a very important part of marriage and of a mentally, physically and emotionally healthy woman’s life (trauma, hormonal issues, chronic pain, etc., can interfere, but this is the exception, not the rule, so never assume this is the problem), and if it slows down or even stops, trouble is coming, if it’s not already upon you.

The bottom line? Make the effort to become the confident, attractive alpha male that will light her fire and keep it lit and you will start a largely self-sustaining chain reaction that will keep the two of you intimate, excited, and happy for years to come. The choice is of whether to have or lose this happiness is yours, so make the obviously good choice, and follow through. Everything you need to know to make it happen is in the pages of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage.” Download your copy today at http://www.makingherhappy.com and get started, because the journey is fun, and the destination is one to live for.

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

Is She Faking Orgasms? "Performance Monitoring" in Relationships and Marriage

How can you tell if she’s faking “the big O”? Does it matter? The truth may indeed surprise you!

Before I get into today’s lesson, I have a favor for you if you’re in the continental United States. One of my publisher’s brothers has a VOIP telephone company offering the same quality service as the large cable companies (I’ve seen Vonage and Magic Jack in action before using this, so I know you may have just cringed when you saw the letters “VOIP”), and they are having a holiday season special, their employees and family rate to all subscribers for life.

I use the service, and it rocks. $16 per month plus taxes, includes unlimited free calling to continental US, voice mail, 6-way conference calling, and a lot of other bells and whistles I haven’t used yet, and works with my fax machine; I have a second line for the fax, only $12 plus taxes. I was paying more than that for a single line, and don’t have to mess with “distinctive ring” to get the fax to work.

By the way, I’m not an affiliate marketer or getting a penny out of it. It’s inexpensive and works well, and they are making the offer to get word-of-mouth customer advertising, which makes sense to me since that’s were most of my business comes from as well and a lot of people have a bad impression of VOIP. Check it out at http://usnationwide.net/FriendsAndFamily/ and see what you think.

Now let’s get into today’s lesson. I’ve been going over this issue in my head on and off all day, and still can’t believe I’m writing it, but I keep getting hammered with the question, so I’m going to answer, and then I’m going to tell you something a lot more important…

The question is simple. Meet Todd, one of the many people who asked the question, and who did so in the fewest words while sounding intelligent:

Hi David,

How do I tell if and when my partner is faking her climax?

Thanks,
Todd

Todd’s a man of few but well-chosen words, isn’t he? To answer, there is no way to always tell with 100% certainty, at least not without medical monitoring equipment, but here are a couple pretty dependable bits that can help you figure it out.

First, if she appears to be screaming during the contractions (not between the contractions, but through them), she’s either faking or grossly exaggerating. Physiologically, that’s as near an impossibility as being able to hold your eyes open when you sneeze, and for the same reason. It’s in the “wiring” of her nervous system. The problem is that trying to exhale to scream during the contractions doesn’t work, so any noises of pleasure should be broken up by the contractions.

There are rare – and I do mean RARE – exceptions to this, according to what I have read in medically- and therapeutically-oriented books and studies on the subject, but the exceptions are mentioned in the context of nerve damage, birth defects, and anomalies so rare as, for example, having all your internal organs on the wrong side of your body (juxtaposition of organs is unrelated – the rarity is the point). Like I said, RARE.

Along the same lines is another very telling sign, but in the opposite way. It is reported by medical authorities on the subject to be near-impossible for a woman to experience any significant level of climax without her toes curling. No kidding. Note that if she knows about this, she can fake curling her toes, but if she’s bucking and thrusting and making all kinds of steamy animal noises and her toes aren’t curling, either she’s faking or she’s one of those RARE cases mentioned earlier. I’ll say only that I have never personally observed one of those RARE cases.

Now, don’t even think about asking me how you’re supposed to keep an eye on her toes while in the act. If I even try to answer that question the spam filters (annoying pieces of crap!) will be trapping 99% of this edition and few will ever see it. (Don’t get me going about spam filters. I finally found spam protection that works better than anything that uses content filters – see http://www.mailvice.com/ if you have your own domain name and you’re interested.) Just use your imagination, get into a position, like “canine”-style or “rodeo” style that lets you see her feet without being obvious, and don’t obsess over it. If she’s hot enough to have you in such a predicament, she surely has assets that are much more interesting than her feet. You shouldn’t be worried about it anyway. Why?

Because you ought to be doing it right and know it by the fact that your partner is acting like you are the “King Daddy Pleasure God” by giving you sexy looks, being playful with you, inviting YOU to the bedroom, etc. If you’re being the alpha male (not alpha dog! – see my free “Break-Up Busting 101” report for the distinction! A download link is at the bottom of this newsletter) and engaging in naughty play as you should be, especially in the way of slowly ramping up the action through the day as described in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” using her anticipation for maximum impact, you’re going to know, in no uncertain terms. A woman who’s happy in her bedroom makes it so wonderfully obvious by showing you that she wants to be there, and often! And she’s also a whole lot more open with coaching and feedback when she knows you’re listening to her, so getting those communications skills honed will help take a lot of the mystery (and consequent insecurity about whether you are pleasing her!) out of the equation.

If you’re having to worry about whether she’s faking, you have bigger problems than your sex life, and you’d better be getting your butt over to http://www.makingherhappy.com/ and downloading your copy of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” before she gets bored and frustrated and you end up either celibate or cuckold (that’s what we old farts were taught to call it when your wife sleeps with another man). You know as well as I do that if Mama’s not happy, nobody’s happy, and if Mama IS happy, EVERYBODY’S HAPPY, and this is proven daily to be your best shot at making that happen, so get busy!

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

Girls and Their Toys! Those Toys Are NOT a Threat to Your Relationship or Marriage

Some men get terribly insecure about women’s “toys,” responding with such nonsense as “How am I supposed to compete with THAT?” You’re not, and you should be glad that it’s a toy and not another man. Why not “grow a pair” and join in the fun?

Sometimes I get letters from readers that are truly upsetting. I’ll spare you the details of those emotions, but eventually I have to look past the gross insecurity and ignorance expressed in the letter and remember that my job is to help people learn to be smarter and better, and that they think the way they do (or FAIL to think at all) because that’s what they have been taught, and my beef is with the teacher, not the student. Meet Brent:

Hey David,

Man, I’ve got a problem. My wife has discovered “toys,” (the adult kind) and I can’t get her to leave them alone. Every time I come home when she’s been here alone, they are laying out and it drives me nuts. I mean, how am I supposed to compete with that? I’ve got to get her to stop, but I don’t know how. I’ve tried everything I can think of, and she just gets madder and madder at me when I try to tell her that she doesn’t need them. What can I do?

Thanks,
Brent

My response:

Yes, Brent, you have a problem, and it’s not your wife’s toys. It’s your attitude. What makes you think you are “competing” with her toys? And what makes you think that she needs to stop using them? If there’s something lacking in the bedroom, would you not prefer that it was her toys taking up the slack instead of another man, or had that occurred to you?

I obviously don’t know your wife, but every woman that knows me, including your fellow readers, will tell you that I know women well enough to say this: Whether she’s using toys because there is something lacking in your performance or because she just likes toys is irrelevant, and you’re showing a sickening level of insecurity by feeling you have to compete with them and an equally sickening level of arrogance or stupidity to think that you can decide for her what she needs and doesn’t need. So what’s up?

She’s leaving them out as an invitation for you to join her in using them! She’s mad because you’re being insecure and trying to shut her down instead of listening to her, taking the hint, and letting her share with you something that she enjoys! Get a clue!

Like it or not, that’s reality, and if you think you’re choking on that dose, this one isn’t going to go down very well, either: If you don’t get a grip, grow a pair of testicles worthy of a man, and stop acting threatened by some masses of inanimate plastic, there will be another man involved, either before or after the divorce, and he will likely be chosen partially on the basis of his willingness to share her toy pleasures with her.

It’s like this: your manhood is not a function of how big your “organ” is or how many orgasms you can give her through “traditional” intercourse, or any other kind for that matter. That’s machismo, ego, and chauvinism at its worst. Your manhood is a function of how well you handle the job of being a man! How much you act like the alpha male – smart, confident, witty, able to treat adversity as opportunity and adventure, comfortable being in the lead and making decisions (NOT forcing them on others, as you want to do with her toys), and letting that naughty inner child out from time to time to show her a good time.

How do you think you come off asking her how you’re supposed to compete with a few ounces of plastic or latex?

Like a freaking wuss!

The only way that toy can be used as a lethal weapon is to choke you with it, yet you’re acting scared to death of it. How manly is that? NOT!!!

Now straighten up, think like a man instead of an insecure, grab-asstic adolescent, and next time you come home and find your wife’s toys laying out, put on your best naughty boy grin and tell her that if she’s going to leave her toys lying around where you have to look at them, she’s going to have to let you play with them too, so it’s time to get naked and show you how they work, else she’s going to get a spanking. Yes, I’m serious!

She will be stunned at first because you’ve acted like such a wuss, and then she’ll get a little cocky to test you to see if you mean it. Pick up one of her toys and give her a good-natured swat on the behind with it, and crack wise with something like, “That seems to work, but I’m sure there’s a better use for this than that,” and dial up the naughty level a few notches.

Let her show you, and you pay very close attention to things like speed, pressure, direction, etc., then you take over and allow her to continue to coach you, which she may do with her hands or other body parts instead of spoken words, i.e., raising her hips to press toward you means more pressure, etc. – use your head and keep your cool, and everything will be fine. It’s a learning experience, a damned pleasurable one too, not a contest, so put that competition nonsense away and leave it there before it gets you hurt. This is about cooperation, not competition.

All joking and rib-poking aside, if you have a problem with this because of some kind of childhood sexual trauma, stop hiding from it and get help, because you’re cheating both of you out of a lot of things, including fun, trust, intimacy, etc. – things that no committed relationship can ever get too much of, right?

Take care, and keep in touch,
David

This mess could have been avoided if Brent just knew a little more about communicating with women and was comfortable with himself, two things that a whole lot of men have a huge problem with. If you are one of them, it’s time to give yourself – AND YOUR PARTNER – the gift of a break from all the stress.

Inside every man is an alpha male, and if he’s not in the lead in your life, he’s been suppressed, oppressed, or somehow pressured into the background, but he’s there, waiting to come out. Yes, he is! He’s been there ever since you were given that “Y” chromosome at conception! But…

Unfortunately, there’s not likely to be a hyper-skilled communicator that can rival any woman hiding in there with him unless you are an effeminate gay male that is so girly that every woman wants to go shopping with you, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t learn how to do much better than you are doing – so much better in fact, that she thinks you’re reading her mind at times.

Neither are hard to do, if you just apply a little time and effort to clearing out some bad programming and engaging in a little self-improvement, which is a whole lot easier than trying to put on an act for a creature that has about 100 times the capacity for sensing and interpreting non-verbal communication than you have. You can’t just ACT like a man, you have to BE a man; otherwise the stress of trying to act in contradiction to yourself will backfire on you. But the good news is that you just need to know what works and how to make the parts of what work that appeal to you a real part of your life, which is one of the most enjoyable processes a man can go through at any point in his life. Being a man is a LOT easier than trying to act like one, and a lot easier than not being one, too!

It’s all laid out for you, step by step, in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” and it’s waiting for you at http://www.makingherhappy.com. Download it and give it a shot, because life is too short to miss out on the good parts, and unless you and your partner are truly enjoying your manhood (literally and figuratively) you are missing out on a LOT of good parts.

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

Can You Take a Hint? Learn to, Now, If You Want to Have a Great Relationship and Marriage

It is a woman’s nature, due to the physical structure of her brain, to speak indirectly, often employing hints, signals, questions that are statements and vice versa, etc., that she has no idea that you can’t perceive and interpret. Do you have any idea what you’re missing? Or what she’s thinking because of it? It’s not a pretty picture, but you can easily improve it.

Gentlemen, I have a real treat for you today! A woman has written about the hints she dropped to her boyfriend to try to seduce him, and it’s an eyeful to say the least! Meet Evelyn:

Dear David,

I’ve read your book and I wish I had the money to buy your book for every man on the planet but I would have to read to them and no one has that much spare time. My god how hard can it really be to buy a book that tells you all you need to know about woman and be able to understand how woman speak??? It’s not brain surgery we are looking for them to perform, its just simple everyday things we are looking for them to understand.

For example today I went over to my boyfriend’s to pick up some tapes he had made for me. I wasn’t going over there with just sex on my mind but to be honest I was really wanting to spend some time with him and hoping for a good roll around the bed while I was there. I was not sure how good he was feeling so I was not going to ask him straight out if he wanted some. I would just feel it out and see how he was acting. As I walked in he was doing something and we talked for a little bit then I decided that before I left I was going to give it a try and see if he wanted to spend some time on the sofa or in the bed with me.

I started dropping hints talking about sexy things and even went as far as to stroke his crotch one time while I was looking into his eyes and grinned and winked at him. When that did not work I would rub against him and kind of purr at him lean in for a kiss just anything I could do to get him to touch me and look at me.

In the end I finally told him I was going out this weekend and he could not touch my breasts because I wanted them to sit up and look nice in this low cut shirt I was going to wear. I know how he hates it when I go out with the girls because yes we do drink and knowing I can not always handle my drinks like I should and that I sometimes get into trouble flirting after a few drinks. He looked at me and said “it’s time for you to get undressed.” Well you know what went on from there but my point is what else could I have done to get the same results without saying “let’s have sex” straight out? I have no problem doing that once in a while but a woman likes for a man to know what she wants by actions with her having to spell it out for him every time.

Thanks for your time,
Evelyn

My reply:

Hi Evelyn, and thanks for writing. I would have had to be there to see what happened to give you a good answer, because what you are describing can be taken more than one way, and his demeanor and body language would have provided details that you left out.

It could be that he’s really that daft, but I’d find it hard to accept that a man couldn’t take the hint of you stroking his crotch to know what you wanted. It could be that he was making you chase him to heighten your arousal, but a man in-the-know will try to make that more fun for you instead of frustrating. It could be that he was extremely busy but didn’t want to tell you that he didn’t have time for sex play at the moment because he didn’t want to hurt your feelings, and either recognized your “desperation” or got jealous when you spoke of going out with the girls. It’s hard to say without the facts.

There’s nothing wrong with just inviting him to the bedroom or starting to undress him, as long as you are sure of his mood and physical condition, and as long as you don’t do it so often that he feels no challenge; men get bored in the absence of challenge just as easily as women. I’d strongly suggest trying to talk with him about it, in an exploratory, not threatening, complaining, or accusatory tone, and find out if he was unaware of the hints, just trying to save your feelings, or whatever.

No matter what he says, as long as it’s the truth, the two of you can get things worked out if you’ll simply focus on the issues and not each other’s fault or blame. ALWAYS focus on issues, not people, when addressing problems. That’s how the problems get solved without the people getting angry.

I’d also suggest you mention having bought my book and offer to let him read it because it would be the easiest way to bridge the communications gap the two of you appear to have, not to mention point out to him that if he’s going to tease you and hold out on you, it’s a lot more effective if he makes it fun instead of frustrating. He may well have been reading some relationship help material and picked up on the need to create a challenge for you but missed the part about making it fun.

Take care, and keep in touch,
David

Gentlemen, there are several things here for you to learn. The most obvious is that women do think about sex when we’re not around, and that they don’t like to just bluntly initiate their own seduction. That takes all the fun out of it for them because for them, sex is about anticipation, adventure, and contact; about getting to the orgasm, not the orgasm itself. It sounds odd to a man, but for the majority of women the majority of the time, the orgasm is simply the end of sex, not the purpose of it. They will drop hints because they want you to take the lead in the seduction process, playing, teasing, creating sexual tension to the point that they can’t hold back any longer and tear into you like they haven’t experienced an orgasm in twenty years. For them, it is that rush of anticipation and the intimacy and attention that follow that is their purpose for sex, and without that, they get bored to death.

That’s not to say that they don’t enjoy the orgasm, or multiple orgasms. Being able to perform like that is important for too many reasons to get into in one newsletter, but at this moment we are speaking of priority, and for most women most of the time, the chase, anticipation, intimacy, etc., will be somewhat more important than orgasm, and spending more time with her in those things will benefit you in ways that you will have to see to believe.

I will go to my grave saying this: Emotionally and mentally healthy heterosexual women like men and like sex, a lot, some of them even more than men. But they are biologically wired to enjoy being led and to be aroused by alpha male behavior, and they need for you to take the lead in moving them from curiosity or mild arousal to that wild, uncontrollable state that gives them that “swept off their feet” feeling. You need to learn how to recognize the hints and signals that she is so inclined, and you need to know the behavior that causes her to direct that curiosity and attraction at you instead of letting her get bored and ultimately directing it at someone else.

What? Your wife would never do that? Don’t bet on it, because what you are wagering is literally your marriage and family life. Affairs and divorces can happen between two people who love each other deeply, and they do happen all too often. Love does not create the attraction and excitement that keeps you intimately involved, and defeats her worst enemy, literally a woman’s arch-nemesis: boredom. (And conversely, attraction without love won’t keep you together either; rather, it creates one of those relationships where you have good sex but everything else sucks and you fight all the time because the compatibility isn’t there. It takes both.)

Quick review: Women deal with boredom the same way men deal with crisis; boredom appears on a woman’s emotional scale in the same spot as crisis on a man’s emotional scale. They will take desperate action if they have to, and if desperate enough, an involuntary survival mechanism kicks in and she literally cannot be held responsible for her actions. It’s not a moral or logical issue; it’s pure anatomy, physiology, and biology.

The good news – indeed, the GREAT news! – is that doing your job in the relationship and protecting her from boredom is one of the easiest and most natural things you will ever do, not to mention great fun! The biggest requirement is that you become a “real guy,” and shed all that ridiculous New Age and politically correct programming that we’ve been inundated with since the 1970’s. How hard can that be?

Quickly picking up your communications skills to a level much closer to hers is also easy. Very few of us will ever be on par with women as communicators because we don’t have the biological infrastructure to do so, but we can get close enough that they’ll meet us in the middle. Luckily, it’s one of those things where sheer awareness goes a very long way toward ensuring success, and it really doesn’t take that much effort once you know how everything works.

The bad news is that in order to be one of the very few guys who know, beyond any doubt, what women want, how to communicate effectively with them, and how to turn their sexual attraction to you on and off, you’re going to have to take a few hours out of your busy schedule of sitting on the couch channel surfing with a beer and read a book, 118 pages to be exact. And it’s going to cost you, too, a little less than dinner for two at a decent restaurant. That’s not so bad, is it? Think about it!

How many decades have you been telling yourself that “no man will ever know what women want” or that “communicating with a woman is a lost cause”? Even Sigmund Freud, the renowned psychologist, said, “The Great Question, which I have not answered, is ‘What does a woman want?’” Well, you can know, today, with just a few hours of reading. Interested?

Yeah, I thought so. So click on over to http://www.makingherhappy.com and get your copy of the book Evelyn mentioned, "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and become that guy you always wished you could be, that manly man who does manly things and who knows what women want, and what they are saying and even THINKING when they’re with you. It doesn’t get any easier or more affordable than this, so get moving! Never, EVER put off until tomorrow the success you can enjoy today!

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

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

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

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

Dear David,

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

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

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

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

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

Darlene

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. 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. 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, 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

Reader Responses Confirm: Your Diet Can Kill Your Relationship and Marriage

A reader comments about his experience after eliminating soy and the feminizing effects of the estrogen it contains from his diet. In short, he’s feeling like a man again! And other readers confirm that they're feeling better without it.

On July 17, I wrote to you about how soy estrogens have a feminizing effect on men because they tie up testosterone receptors and keep the male sex hormone from making you masculine while enhancing any potential feminine appearance and personality factors. I received the expected ranting and raving from people who feel (but don’t have one iota of scientific evidence) that soy is the ultimate healthful food, and prevents all sorts of diseases, including cancer (which incidentally, numerous scientific studies have proven can be CAUSED by soy estrogens, not prevented by it). However…

I also got several letters in the last two days from men and a woman who have had the good sense to try removing soy from their diet for themselves and see if they notice any difference in their demeanor, appearance, etc., to confirm or contradict what I reported. Here are a few of their notes:

Hi David,

I did as you suggested and stopped drinking the two glasses of soy milk my wife had me drinking every day, and I’m already feeling a lot more like my old self, and specifically, a lot more like the MAN I used to be. I thought getting cloudy-headed and having trouble focusing on tasks, and getting frustrated and fussy over things that didn’t bother me in the past was just old age setting in, even though I’m only 46. My wife has noticed the difference, too, and now she’s beginning to question her vegetarian diet and its effect on our kids. Thanks for the heads-up!

John T.

Hey Dave, [For future reference, I really prefer people don’t call me “Dave” – it’s not all that offensive, it’s just not “me,” if you know what I mean.]

My wife and I have been trying to have another baby, and not having much luck. In fact, we were getting pretty frustrated. After reading your article on soy, we started researching and found that soy has been linked to fertility problems. We’re vegetarians and eat a lot of soy-substitutes for meat products and drink a lot of soy milk, and this has us questioning our choice. However, I want to thank you for the information and to let you know that in following your advice and taking the lead in the research and discussion on the subject and doing the naughty play things you mention, my wife’s acting differently toward me, like sex isn’t just a chore to have the baby. My guess is we owe you a lot, so thanks!

Gary

(Note: birth control pills contain estrogen and progesterone, and estrogen interferes with thyroid and adrenal function that is crucial to fertility in women and lowers sperm count, so soy estrogen interfering with fertility in either gender is not a surprise.)

Hi David,

I was skeptical of your newsletter and of the book you mentioned [“The Whole Soy Story” by Dr. Kaayla Daniel], so I got a copy of the book and in trying to debunk what she says, ended up finding proof of most of what she said before giving up and accepting it as truth. My doctor has been harping at me over elevated homocysteine levels and estrogen levels, and I expect that when I see him next month I’ll see improvement. You may have saved me a heart attack, and I thank you.

Janelle

(It may have saved her from some form of cancer, too, as estrogen is a cellular reproduction hormone and elevated estrogen levels have been causally – not casually -- linked to several types of cancer, especially of the breasts and female reproductive organs.)

So guys, here’s the scoop: Nothing that makes you feminine or unhealthy is going to make you attractive, and soy has proven and is continuing to prove to be a major cause of wussification and feminization of men, along with a whole collection of health problems that studies have linked to soy (while my work is entirely related to relationships, it’s still very valuable information, and I urge you to read it):

1. Elevated homocysteine levels, a crystalline amino acid that erodes blood vessels and causes them to hemorrhage, which is then filled with LDL cholesterol, which acts like radiator “stop-leak” and seals the fissure, but continues to collect and forms plaque as it picks up minerals like calcium from the blood and ultimately, if unchecked, causes a blockage, which can result in heart disease, heart attack, stroke, pulmonary embolus (if the plaque breaks loose and lodges in the lungs, which is often deadly), etc.

2. Cancer, especially of the breasts and reproductive organs

3. Allergies and reduced immunity

4. Thyroid dysfunction (caused by genistein, a major constituent of soy products, which is known to depress the thyroid gland, causing stunted growth, lower intelligence and heart disease, any of which can indeed cause relationship-impeding problems)

5. Malnutrition and digestive problems (many people are allergic to soy, especially soybean oil, which is why potato chips cooked in “Olean” and other modified soy bean oils that supposedly lower fat content causes some people digestive upset.)

6. Nutrient deficiencies, including calcium (vital for bone health and the prevention of osteoporosis, and doctors blindly parrot the propaganda that estrogen-containing HRT helps prevent bone loss when it in fact contributes to it!)

7. Reproductive disorders (another relationship-straining possibility) and infertility (also caused by ingestion of genistein)

8. Cognitive and mental decline (care to bet on whether this could put a damper on a relationship?)

9. Psychosexual problems (high estrogen levels make concentration difficult, and make one “edgy” enough to interfere with libido, as you’ve seen in women who tend to drift to the shopping list and chore lists while in the middle of sex)

I want to be perfectly clear about this: I am not “attacking” soy, and have no agenda, except to report to you things that bona fide scientists and doctors have discovered, proven and reported about something that can have a severe impact on both your relationship and your life together. I’m not in this just to help people light things back up in the bedroom; it takes a healthy sex-life to have a healthy and long-lasting relationship, but it also takes communication, intimacy, love, trust, respect, etc., and good health certainly facilitates all of the above, does it not?

In case anybody is wondering, this whole apparent myth about soy being healthy started in 1995 when a character by name of Dr. James W. Anderson did what is called a “meta-analysis” of soy. Meta-analysis is where someone who can’t conduct their own study and doesn’t know enough about a subject to get a grant or involvement in a bona fide study gathers data from a collection of other studies and renders an opinion based on nothing more than statistical analysis and their interpretation of the findings.

Since those who use meta-analysis don’t know enough about the subject to independently study it directly, they have no way of knowing if the studies they throw into the mix were conducted correctly, are scientifically sound, etc., and bad results often follow as things are either taken out of context or based upon studies that are flawed, merely “suggest” something instead of “proving” it, turn out to be another meta-analysis of other studies, or turn out to be biased by virtue of who paid for the study.

Anderson’s meta-analysis was funded by Protein Technologies International, a major promoter of soy products – a pretty big red flag – but everybody jumped on the band wagon. Since then, Anderson himself has admitted that other studies conducted since 2005 have proven the inaccuracy of his initial study and findings by stating that these other studies have “reported less impressive results.” The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has also received warnings from its own staff experts about supporting the claims of a statistician, but they were ignored.

Consequently, governments of Israel, France, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand, among others, are issuing warnings against the use of soy formula for infants, especially regarding the effects of genistein. They’re slow to act, as any government is, but hopefully they’ll get around to noticing that it’s bad for adults, too.

In a nutshell, POSSIBLE benefits of soy use are clearly outweighed by PROVEN risks.

And, by the way, have you yet asked yourself whether the soy in your diet might be the reason for those expensive little blue pills you need to perform? Let’s see, raises estrogen, lowers testosterone uptake, interferes with thyroid, which lowers metabolism and available nitric oxide, which those pills are used to increase so that certain muscles are able to contract and hold blood in a particular area…are you getting the picture here?

So there it is, folks. It’s a long, complex story, and I may have provided more detail than many of you care to stomach, but I’ll not apologize for trying to take good care of you and providing facts instead of unsupported opinion and theory. I sell books on improving long-term relationships and counsel individuals and couples to make my living, but I’m here to help you live long and happy lives together, and I’m going to report to you any factual information I encounter that will help you to do that.

Speaking of selling books (big wink!), I’ve got a winner for you. It’s called "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and it covers so much more than attraction; it teaches the thorough evaluation of your relationship and its constituents, what you need to know to truly understand women, their needs, their habits and methods, and how to communicate with them, and how to build attraction for them to spice up your intimate life and protect them from their greatest enemy of all, BOREDOM.

Yes, I said boredom, and if you don’t believe me, just ask one of them! Then download your copy and get started on kicking your relationship up to notches unknown!

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

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

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

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

Dear David,

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

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

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

Dawn

My reply:

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

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

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

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

Take care, and keep in touch,
David

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

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

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

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

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

Beware: What You Eat Can Kill Your Manhood, Relationship and Marriage

There are some foods that should never be in a man’s diet (and probably nobody’s diet) because they block testosterone uptake and make him develop female characteristics and tendencies, as well as kill his libido. Yes, I’m serious, and you may be eating a lot of one of them in particular, the worst offender of all…

Those of you who have read my bio know that I’ve got a strong medical background for a non-physician; I’ve also been an herbalist since my teens and shell out about a thousand dollars a year on subscriptions to the best medical newsletters in existence, most of which are written by doctors and researchers who blow the whistle on the fallacies and frauds of mainstream medicine.

One topic that keeps coming up in ALL of these newsletters is that study after study is PROVING (not SUGGESTING) that plant estrogens attach to testosterone receptors and keep testosterone from being utilized in the male body, which in turn causes men to become less masculine, and in too many cases start becoming feminine, even to the extent of having their voice rise in pitch and developing female-like breasts and lactating in extreme cases. And, since testosterone promotes libido in both men and women and skews the rational/emotional balance toward the rational and easy-going, blocking the utilization of testosterone decreases libido and increases stress and drama! BAD IDEA!

(Plant estrogens do the same thing in the female body, which decreases a woman’s libido, and since she already has all the estrogen her body can tolerate, is also being proven to promote cancer, since estrogen’s main purpose in the body is to cause the proliferation of cells, which is normally is balanced by other chemicals in the body until a surplus is created by overactive adrenal glands – which if healthy, can produce as much or more estrogen than a woman’s ovaries – or ingestion of excess estrogen in food, birth control pills, or hormone replacement therapy, especially that using “equione,” literally horse estrogen and 1,000 times more potent than human estrogens– which has also been proven to promote cancer in too many cases and some doctors are now recommending against. Some tests of an HRT using equione were halted early because of an obscenely high incidence of thickening of uterine walls and the sudden onset of cancers.)

The biggest of all offenders is…brace yourself, especially if you are a vegetarian, SOY! Yes, that funny little green bean that tofu is made from, that is served as a sort of trendy Japanese delicacy called “edamame,” that is used to replace carbohydrates in a lot of low-carb foods (my wife tried the Nutrisystems diet for awhile, and I read the labels and was appalled at the amount of soy protein added), and is erroneously promoted as being more healthful than anything else that you can eat.

Don’t take my word for this. A Google search for “soy and testosterone” will give you over a million pages on the subject, including a most excellent book by Dr. Kaayla T. Daniel, a Certified Clinical Nutritionist, called “The Whole Soy Story,” which really blows all the myths about soy to bits. If your wife is fond of soy and trying to feed it to you for every meal, you can at least bring this to her attention and get her to stop pumping you and your sons full of estrogen. (Now there’s a hard thought, having your son’s voice go UP instead of down in his early teens!)

Gentlemen, I couldn’t be more serious if I tried. The evidence has been solid for several years, and I’ve abstained from writing about it because most people just won’t accept facts when they conflict with “common knowledge,” but there is so much overwhelming factual evidence now that it can no longer be ignored, just like people eventually couldn’t ignore that the Sun didn’t orbit the Earth, or that the Earth was round, or that two objects of different mass dropped from a height will strike the ground at the same time as long as wind resistance is constant across both objects, or that men can’t expect women to get excited about them if they’re acting like a woman instead of a man.

There’s not one word about soy or even your diet in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," but I’ve covered everything else that women want you to know about them, and a lot that many of them DON’T want you to know. So to make yourself everything the woman in your life really wants you to be (if she likes men, that is!) get the soy out of your diet and jump over to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage."

(Or keep doing what you’re doing, and when your wife keeps ignoring you in the bedroom, just double up on the soy and then you can fondle your own breasts! LOL!)

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

Is Your Intimate Behavior Killing Attraction, and Therefore Your Relationship or Marriage?

When people are together long enough to get comfortable they start doing things exclusive to their relationship, like “baby talk” and wearing sloppy or goofy-looking clothes, that might be immediately cute or novel to them, but can kill attraction deader than a rock. Sometimes they get so comfortable with it in private that they give the rest of us a dose of it, too! (Yeah, YUCK! is right!) Look for signs of this in your relationship.

I had a visit from a couple of friends, Bill and Cheryl. It was a study in “what not to do” as they say. They’ve been married for about twenty-six years, and acted SO married it almost seemed scripted to watch them. They finished each others’ sentences, ate from each others’ plates, talked “baby talk” to each other (gag!!!), and were about the shabbiest dressed wealthy couple I’ve seen in a long time.

She was in an oversized men’s sweat suit (despite the 90+ degree F. / 32+ degrees C. weather) because it was “comfortable” and wearing no makeup. He was wearing baggy cargo shorts, an over-sized graphic T-shirt, and sandals (accentuating his bow-leggedness, very knobby knees, and extremely large feet sitting below his rather robust torso, a left-over from his college days as a football player, giving him the look of some sort of cantilevered rock formation found in the deserts of the American Southwest).

Eventually she excused herself to the powder room, and I asked him how things were going, ready to bet the farm that they were comfortable and bored stiff; I would have won the bet. They had started out very into each other, having a lot of fun together, and things had cooled off quickly not long after their marriage.

They had joined that large group of couples in long-term relationships that sleep together every two months – yes, that’s a sad but true statistic, at least in North America. Adult couples in mature married relationships (two years or longer) average six sexual encounters per year. Sad, isn’t it?

These two were a textbook example of what happens when two people get too comfortable with each other. Take a close look at what they were doing. Is there anything whatsoever sexually exciting in hearing your partner talk like they are addressing a baby? Or like they are one? Not unless you’re a pedophile. “Sweet” as the girls say, maybe, but no way it’s sexy.

As for the flour-sack-esque, nearly homeless-looking attire, she might as well have been in an over-sized bathrobe with curlers in her hair and a cigarette dangling from a toothless mouth, and he might as well have been holding up a sign that said “will work for food” and looking like he hadn’t bathed in a month or two, except maybe in a bottle of cheap wine. Just makes you want to snuggle right up to one of them, doesn’t it? It's a shame, because properly dressed and groomed, they're a strikingly good-looking couple.

I also noticed that as they talked, if they weren’t doing the “baby talk,” they acted a lot more like girlfriends than husband and wife, especially the business with finishing each others’ sentences and reaching over to touch each other every time they started a sentence. Now, Bill is anything but effeminate, and when he spoke to me it was very “mano-a-mano,” and I found myself staring at him as he switched modes every time he switched between talking to me and his wife.

Don’t let this happen to you! A man and woman should communicate, freely and openly, but not in a way that kills their attraction for each other. They should be comfortable around each other, but not in ways that make you dull, sloppy, uninteresting, or project an extreme lack of self-respect.

Your partner should be the most important person in your life (other than yourself – holding your spouse as more important than yourself makes for a good romance novel, but makes for a disaster in real life) if you have a great relationship, and as such, they deserve the best in you, not the worst, the most interesting, not the most mundane. That’s how life-long love relationships are enjoyed, by keeping in mind that all other relationships are likely to be transient, and are therefore less important than this one.

Many people would shrink back in indignation or jump on a stump and start preaching at the mere suggestion that your partner be more important than even your children, and I’m not going to debate that subject with anyone; however, I will ask you to at least take a logical – yes, entirely unemotional -- look at it for a minute.

Your children come along, and you live with them day after day for eighteen years, plus or minus a year or two. Then they’re gone except for weekly visits if you’re lucky, if you are the average parent; more likely that you'll see them on holidays and when they want something.. Your partner, if you manage your relationship properly, was there before the kids, and will be there long after the kids have gone, day after day after day, “until death do us part,” right? You don’t want your adult children living with you, but you want your spouse living with you for the rest of your life, at least if you have a good marriage.

So logically, who is more important to your life’s happiness, someone who by definition (early death notwithstanding) will stick around for 18 years and be gone, or somebody who (again, early death notwithstanding) could be with you day after day for 50 years or more, if you give them a good reason to stay, like loving them, being interesting and fun to be around, sharing their values and celebrating their achievements with them? Pretty obvious, huh?

Obvious or not, and whether you accept it or not, real-world experiences bear it out. Marriage and parenthood are diametrically-opposed, and if you do not find a healthy balance point between them, one or both of them will suffer as a result. Men will probably be comfortable with this much more readily than women because of (as usual) biological factors, but everyone should think about it and come to grips with it as self-evident truth, because it helps you to at least appreciate the full significance of a commitment to a life-long relationship.

(And for any of you women who are right now thinking, “How dare he? My kids are going to come first and he can just get over it!” get this: if you make your husband take a back seat to your children or anything else, you give up your right to be upset, hurt, mad, or anything else when he chooses to let you take a back seat to something. Double standards and hypocrisy don’t work any better in relationships and marriage than they do anywhere else, so get some perspective before you make a choice that the whole family will ultimately suffer over. Put your marriage first if you want it to last a lifetime, or accept responsibility for spending your retirement years alone after alienating your husband by treating him like a second-class citizen.)

This doesn’t have to happen to you. It’s your choice, and it doesn’t take much effort. Basic awareness of the potential causes of the problem and choosing to do something other than commit one of those causes is really about all there is to it. Baby talk, men acting like girlfriends instead of men, and dressing yourself and acting in a way that does not project self-respect are only a few of the ways in which you can kill attraction dead, and knowledge is power!

Know what kills attraction, and what creates it, and use that knowledge to make one of those relationships that has you happy to be together for fifty or more years! (You wouldn’t believe the things people buy you for your fiftieth anniversary! Just kidding…) I put that knowledge together for you in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage.” It’s there, tested, working and guaranteed. All you have to do is go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download it, and then USE IT. It’s just that easy, and life is just that short that you don’t want to spend it being part of some miserable statistic.

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 and my blogs. They frequently provide extremely valuable insight anonymously, to you as a stranger, that you might not ever 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 although some women obviously thrive on drama and reliving bad times, not all of them do, and in fact may be having an emotionally-difficult time relating all of this just 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 the 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 them 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. And they should happen by mutual consent for the mutual benefit of the partners, not by coercion of one partner inducing the sacrifice of the other.

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, at best, winning a battle to lose the war.

Besides, if you’re doing what you should be doing and firing those automatic attraction triggers with leadership, authority, humor, mystery, adventure, expertise, etc. – the things that make being a man enjoyable -- 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, fully and incontrovertibly, 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

Sex As a Weapon In Relationships and Marriage, Part 1

So you think you’ve never paid for sex just because you haven’t visited a prostitute? If you’ve ever let a woman become even a little bored with you, you certainly have. Indeed, sex has been the weapon of choice for many women since the dawn of humankind because they can wield it so effectively, IF we let them…

You might remember Hannah, whose “ladies’ book club” had the contest to see who could entice their husbands to buy the most extravagant gifts for them just because they were bored, which you can review in yesterday’s edition, and I would strongly suggest that you do, because it was a “must read” issue. Hannah, a real “whistle-blower,” wrote with another account of something that many women have been known to do that men never suspect, and this one is a real “zinger”!

David,

You might remember my group of friends that meet a couple of time a month for time away from the family and husbands, our book club, but there were time that we did invite the men to join us. At one of the dinners we had one of the men stated that he had never nor would he ever pay for sex. Of course all the women at the table laughed and the men for the most part could not figure out why we though it was so funny. I think that they just thought we believed he was lying to us. The truth was we know all men pay for sex if they are in a relationship, or in his case married for 12 years to one of us. LOL!

His own wife, Carol, had just snookered him out of a pair of Chanel sunglasses that cost a couple hundred bucks. She liked to shop only in the best places. No Walmart for her, only specialty shops where they cater to you every need, in spite of the fact that she didn’t work and her husband was working two jobs most of the time to keep up.

She called her husband to tell him she was shopping and wanted those sunglasses and he told her that to spend that kind of money on sunglasses was crazy and this was one time he was going to say NO. Well you know how that went over and that night Carol did what most of the girls I ran with did when we really wanted something and were denied.

That evening after her shower she dressed herself up in her best and sexiest nightie and made sure he saw her every time she walked past him. That night she told him to go on up to bed that she was not really that tired and thought she would watch some TV and would be up later on. Later that night she crawled into bed next to him and made sure he knew she was there, but wouldn’t let him get close, teasing and tormenting him to death.

A couple of hours passed of her brushing against his leg in bed and she stated how hot the room was and takes off her clothes and climbs back into bed under the sheet once again making sure to wake him just enough to know what was going on. This time he made sure she knew he was there and as he started making advance toward her for some early morning naughtiness she did what some of us women do best. She reminded him of the sunglasses she had wanted and how much more she would be in the mood if only she could have those sunglasses so she could look good for him all the time.

As they lie together in what she described as :the after glow of getting her way,” she told him, “Now wouldn’t it have been much easier to let me have the glasses yesterday and you could have had me all you wanted last night.” As I listened to her tell her story and then show all of us her new shades, I could not help to remind all of my friends that this was the same man that only a few nights before had bragged to all of us he never paid for sex and never would.

I would like to state for the record I am no longer a part of that group and have since learned what it is like to take pride in earning what I get, and am so grateful I have a wonderful man now that took years out of his own life to teach me a very valuable lesson on such craziness. We have sex when we want it, which is often more than once each day, because we have both earned the right to have each other at anytime.

I wanted to share this with you because I thought you might get a kick out of it.

Take good care,
Hannah

When I read that, I was thinking, “not just ‘damn’ but ‘DAY-UM!” (That’s “damn!” with a strong southern U.S. accent, about two steps beyond “hot damn!” for those of you unfamiliar with the dialect!) There might be a lot of ticked-off men around when this hits the press!

But wait a minute. I don’t like to talk about “fault” because it’s usually pointless, but an issue of RESPONSIBILITY we can address is what really brought these two to where they are? He’s doing all the work, she’s spending all the money, and since she has no real interest in or appreciation of their sex life, feels free and apparently justified in using sex to get her way and put undo strain on the family finances. That can only be because he’s a pushover – WUSS! – and she’s bored with him and using retail therapy to get her kicks.

Yes, we can divine that from the situation, because even if she had childhood issues with material deprivation, if she were feeling the attraction that a woman should be feeling in a healthy relationship, she’d be finding other ways to arrange fulfillment of her material desires. So guys, brace yourself for a terrible truth:

If you have let your wife or girlfriend get bored, you are paying for sex. If you’re having any, that is. There’s no other conclusion that can logically be drawn.

Yes, that sucks. Out loud. Through a straw. But it doesn’t have to be that way. If you were trying to get a woman’s phone number or a date with her and blew the attraction, you’d be done, but if you’ve been together for awhile or have married, there’s a level of emotional investment there, for both of you. And that buys you some time to reignite the attraction and some motivation on her part to let you, and even help you! (Unless, of course, another man has unleashed the awesome power of attraction in her, rendering you pretty much a non-contender – it’s a double-edged sword.)

But you’re not going to reignite her attraction for you by letting her lead you around by the nose and trade you sex for expensive sunglasses – or anything else, of course. You’re going to have to take a good look at your life, figure out where the attraction was lost, figure out how to get it back, and learn enough about women in general and your woman in particular that you don’t ever screw it up again. Can you do that right now?

Not likely. If you could you would have already. Most of us simply aren’t born with what we need to get the job done. But there are a few of us who have the kind of personality that makes women like to talk with us and teach us things about themselves, and unlike most of the others, I chose to write a book for you about what literally hundreds of women have taught me so you wouldn’t have to try to figure it all out on your own.

They taught me about how to really evaluate a relationship, how to talk with and listen to a woman (which is a lot more science and a lot less art than we have been led to believe), and how women think and act, according to both what is important to them and their involuntary reactions to biological “triggers,” such as leadership, authority, mystery, humor, adventure, etc. They also showed me how their emotional scales are entirely different from ours, and how they can get in such bad emotional shape that they can internally justify any thought or action, no matter how strange or destructive, to get themselves back into their comfort zone.

That’s a lot, and it’s a big book, too. But get this: It’s working for everyone who is using it. That’s because it’s not just a bunch of theory and opinion. It’s a collection of facts that have been put together and tested, refined, retested, and ultimately proven. And among the many testimonials for its effectiveness that readers have sent me are some that I can’t even reprint because they’re too steamy for some adults to want to read and for any to want their children to see. That’s success, because that kind of intimacy doesn't happen in mature relationships that aren't working!

So whether you just realized that you’ve been paying for sex, you’re tired of fighting all the time, you’re sick of fearing – or seeing – affairs, or things have just cooled off a bit and you’re ready to kick them back up and save yourself the pain and aggravation of problems, this book is for you. So go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and get started. The longer you put it off, the worse it’s going to be, so the sooner you start, the easier and better it will be.

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

Why a Man Should Be Naughty, Not Nice, to Have a Great Relationship and Marriage

A male reader asks why his relationship is going to hell while he’s being the nicest, sweetest guy he can be. Let’s see if he likes the answer!

I’m both proud of this reader and dismayed at his question. I’m proud because he’s asking a good question, albeit one that is probably answered on my web site home page at http://www.makingherhappy.com, but I’m not going to fault somebody for taking the direct approach to getting needed information! I’m also dismayed that his life has gone this sour this soon after marriage; it usually takes twice this long, but he does hint that he’s doubling as a “girlfriend” for his wife. Meet Roy:

Hi David,

I just signed up for your newsletter yesterday, and I’m guessing you’re either some sort of guru or a real idiot if you’ve published a book like your ad claims, so I have to ask a question. I’ve been married for a little over a year now, and my marriage has gone from being hot dates and great sex to one never-ending routine. I can’t get my wife interested in doing anything with me anymore. She’s told me I’m the nicest, most considerate guy she’s ever met, and likes it that I’m “in touch with my feminine side” as she calls it, and we’ve been friends for years before getting married and get along fine, but the spark is gone. I’ve always heard that marriage is the surest way to kill the female libido known to science, but it’s not just her libido that has gone. I can’t even get her to go out to dinner with me anymore. I offer to let her choose the restaurant and everything, and she just won’t go for it. Is this the way it always goes, or am I missing some magical mystery ingredient? Help a brother out here!

Roy G.

My reply:

Well, Roy, you came to the right place for help, but I don’t know if you’re going to like the answer. It’s going to depend on how easily you can accept reality and adjust your attitude to match it. You see, you’ve been doing everything we men have been told to do all our lives, and it’s all wrong!!!

We grow up being told by our mothers, teachers and everybody else to be “nice” to women, to be considerate by letting them make all decisions, etc., and a lot of them even think they like it when a man does it if they’ve recently been with some abusive jerk who tried to control their life and didn’t even leave them room for input into a decision.

As you’ll find in my book, “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” it’s not a nice guy nor an abusive jerk that they really want and respond to, but a guy that’s in the middle, a guy who’s assertive without being controlling, confident, naughty without being an abusive jerk, and can at least grasp communications on a woman’s level even though he’s not wired with the equipment to be able to communicate on such a complex and sophisticated level. It’s love, respect, leadership, adventure and fun that they need, not somebody fawning over them and catering to their every whim, which all but a damaged few actually find boring and annoying.

I know it doesn’t sound right, but it’s a biological response, not a conscious or logical one, like her attraction mechanism is on autopilot, and women aren’t visually stimulated to attraction like men are, except to the extent that the sight of a man’s self-confidence and self-respect intrigues and excites them. Picture in your mind the ugliest, nastiest, smelliest old “ho” you can think of, and gauge your sexual reaction to that visual. There’s no changing it, either, is there? Well, to her, a boring nice guy who acts like a wuss and dumps all the decisions in her lap and doesn’t recognize her frustration with him acting that way is the same emotional picture as your mental image of that old “ho,” and her reaction is the same, and just as unavoidable, automatic, and if I may say so, violently sickening.

In a woman’s mind, nice guys are wusses; predictable pushovers that present no mystery, no challenge, and no strong self-image. Indeed, such men often appear to be trying to buy respect and affection because they can’t command it. The underlying thought is that if you can’t stand up TO her, you can’t stand up FOR her. And the idea of “easy pickings” being a problem shouldn’t be foreign to you, either; what do you pursue in your own life? The too-easy and boring, or the challenging and exciting? Pretty clear when you stand in another’s shoes, huh?

Obviously, since I had to write a whole book on the subject to cover it, I can’t tell you how to fix your problems in a few paragraphs of a daily newsletter. You’re best bet right now, since you’re already in trouble, is to go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download the book, “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” and start reading. Once you have a command of what you need to know, you’ll find it easy, and to some degree automatic, to get your attitude right and put what you’ve learned into practice. Procrastination is the tool of losers, and action the tool of achievers, so get busy! Life’s too short to spend another minute of it losing!

Take care, and keep in touch,
David

What else can I say? If the problem sounds familiar, the solution is the same. Get busy! And get happy!

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

What Men Can Learn from Women's Problems in Relationships and Marriage

A woman responds to the very recent “Girls and Their Toys” article, saying that she’s tired of suppressing her desire and being insulted for her husband’s inadequacies. Join us, and learn…

I haven’t mentioned it for awhile, but about a third of my newsletter readers and book purchasers are women; this has been surprisingly and delightfully consistent since the beginning. Some women are just curious, others want to keep tabs on what men are being told, some are looking for the drama of an argument, others for validation, and my favorites, the real achievers, are looking at advice to men on how to be the best man to help them form a picture of their own perfect man and develop relationship criteria to use in their own life. If only everyone were that organized and deliberate when it came to choosing a life partner!

These women have provided an endless stream of questions, ideas for research and newsletters, and constant confirmation that what I am advising you gentlemen to do is what will work. I want to thank you ladies for participating, both personally and on behalf of the male readers of my newsletter, blog posts and "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and ask you to not only continue to participate, but to hang a note on “the girly grapevine” inviting your friends to join us.

I mention this because a woman posted a comment on my blog regarding the recent article about girls and their toys. Her comment smacks of irony in a role reversal of stereotypes; she is the dissatisfied one and her husband is being non-responsive and defensive, and it’s a lesson that all men need to learn from. Meet M.:

David,

You hit the mark every time. I wish my husband would read your newsletters. I put him on your mailing list but I can’t make him take your very excellent advice. I'm so totally frustrated with my man, I am at a loss. We have had a few very tough years and I decided to really stick it out. I often wonder what I could do to make him crave me like he once did. We might have sex once or twice a month and it’s not that great. I have really suppressed my wild sex kitten flirty ways because I have been insulted too many times with comments like, "that’s all you care about". What can I do??? HELP!

M.

Gentlemen, watch the “back side” of this conversation and see how much of your own problems and potential solutions might be found here. In what I’m about to tell “M” lie many potential clues to reasons for things that have happened in your own life, and you may well learn more from my advice to M than M does, depending on your situation and experiences.

Hi M.,

I would have answered you privately by e-mail before posting this publicly but the one downside to blogs is that private communication is not possible, and I’m guessing you realized that before posting on a blog. There are a few things we need to talk about.

First, (and this goes for everybody else, too!) don’t sign somebody up for my newsletter or anyone else’s. Aside from ticking them off and having them report the newsletter provider as a spammer, it’s too impersonal, too indirect for a man to appreciate, and it won’t be taken seriously as anything but nagging. If you see something in a newsletter that you want your partner to read, print it, hand it to them, and tell them that you want them to read it because it expresses something that is important to you and that you want them to know but have been ineffective at communicating to them. Highlight or underline the parts that are most important to you to show that you’ve put thought, time, and effort into it.

Don’t walk away, wait for them to finish, even if you have to tell them that you need for them to do it immediately before they begin to read. Remember that men speak and need to be spoken to with what most women would consider downright brutal directness (not mean-spirited, but so bluntly as to leave no room at all for interpretative lee-way) most of the time.

This is not a time that you can do what women normally do and ask a question to make a statement or make a statement to ask a question. It’s one of those times that you must be so direct as you would be with a very small child, not because he’s stupid, but because we men just can’t communicate that way (until we’ve read "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage") and your margin for error here is near zero.

That brings me to the next point. He may not be as naturally sexually aggressive as you due to hormone levels, but a man with a low drive can still be excited and enticed into sex if he’s not stressed about it. The insults you speak of are a sign of frustration, and based on encounters with hundreds of couples on this subject, the source of his frustration could very well be from his inability to verbally connect with you when you try to talk to him about this. What to you feels like a discussion, or more likely, a negotiation, feels to him like nagging, because he just can’t hear what you’re saying.

You can’t express to him that you want more intimacy with him by asking him if he thinks everything is okay with your sex life. That’s the way a woman typically tries to enter such a discussion, and when a man hears a question like that, he doesn’t hear your statement that you have a problem that you want to discuss, he hears a request for information. He very likely said, “It’s fine,” or something like that, and left you feeling like he had shut you down and didn’t want to discuss it.

So being a good wife, you let a little time pass, tried to catch him in a better mood, and did it again, same response, same result, except this time he’s already answered the question, and the repeat comes across as a bit insecure and nagging, and the seeds of frustration are sewn. From this point on, the more you tried to talk with him about it, the more frustrated and defensive he got, until he started insulting you to try to keep you from bringing it up any more.

His frustration isn’t that you want sex, it’s that you “nag” him about it – there is never a discussion that resolves anything and brings achievement and closure to the issue, and to a man, that’s a thorn in his side; we live to resolve problems, not explore them. So you see, the problem is most likely not his libido, but your and his combined communications deficit. Neither of you is hearing what the other is trying to say.

Until you can get him to read a book like "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and learn to talk with you and listen to you closer to your own level, you’re going to have to try to talk with him on his, which is easier because it’s more primal, but is unnatural and may feel very odd to you. You have to be very direct with him, asking questions when you want to know something and making statements when you want to say something, because right now, like 99.9% of the men in the world, that’s all he knows and is capable of; it’s what he was born with and has lived with all his life.

And let me be perfectly clear on this point: when I say “very direct” I do not mean stern or in any way belligerent. I simply mean exactly what I said earlier, use questions to ask questions and statements to make statements, just as you would with a preschool child, but do not treat him like a preschool child, nor adopt any kind of motherly tone as you talk. He’s not a child; his communication infrastructure and protocols are simply similar to a child’s, less evolved than your own.

Tell him that you want to talk to resolve a problem that you have not been able to adequately communicate, and you think you can do a better job of it now because you have a better understanding of what his needs may be. Men are all about problem-solving, and you’ll have his attention, especially if he thinks it will put an end to what he perceives as nagging.

DO NOT dramatize. When speaking to a man, saying something once is enough. Nearly all of us get it the first time through, and find repeats very stressful and annoying; it agitates us in the same way that being bored agitates you. Tell him what you want and need, very bluntly, and listen to what he has to say on the subject.

As far as seduction, men are very much visually stimulated with regard to attraction, but we vary somewhat with regard to seduction. Some of us like to take it very slow, almost like women, savoring anticipation, while others like to just be pounced on or like to pounce on our women, playfully and for no apparent reason except intimate fun. What you must find out is what is sexually fun and satisfying to him, and unlike most women, most men will speak very directly about it or very openly and aggressively demonstrate it.

Don’t be afraid to coach him to meet your needs while you’re “in the act,” but don’t do it in a way that makes him feel incompetent or stressed into “performance anxiety.” It’s often easier to do it with gestures than words, guiding his body where you want it. Couples often find that their partner’s excitement makes them excited, so just let it all hang out and see where it takes you. Sex isn’t an act or a destination, but a journey, even a grand epic adventure if you allow it to be so.

Your first step on that adventure is to diffuse your husband’s frustration over your communications problems, because as things are now, he has come to associate sex with nagging and communications frustration instead of the carnal pleasures that your naughty “feline” side wants to give him. Once that is handled, the rest should be easy as long as you can keep the communications lines open and keep your problem-solving in a tone of exploration instead of finger-pointing, because allowing your “sex kitten flirty ways” to come back into the picture will then be exciting for him (and you!) as it once was, although you may have to learn how to present an image of being a little more hard to get to ignite his natural desire to chase you. If you’re too available, you may be taken for granted, just like a man who never gives his wife a chance to rise to the challenge of seducing him.

And incidentally, whatever you do, NEVER ask him why he isn’t erect, or what’s taking so long if he’s having a problem “rising to the occasion.” That is the surest way to create performance anxiety of sufficient degree to ensure that he won’t become erect, and will leave both of you frustrated. If it’s an on-going problem, it may be nothing related to you, his attitude, or any of the obvious causes; it may indeed be declining thyroid or adrenal function resulting in low testosterone levels. Have him see a doctor, and make sure the doctor looks for the cause and tries to cure it instead of just writing him a prescription for a chemical aid for becoming erect.

The hormonal deficiencies that cause that kind of problem have other severe aspects, including weight gain, diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart attack, so it is imperative that at a minimum his serum testosterone levels are checked, and if they are low, push the doctor to find the cause instead of just prescribing supplemental hormone cream, as it’s all inter-related. I have a thyroid problem, and have had to become and expert on the subject because I have yet to find a physician who is or wants to be. I highly recommend starting at http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com to get the facts, because thanks to the pharmaceutical companies, the physicians of the world don’t have them.

Take care, and keep in touch,
David

So Gentlemen, what could you learn from this lady’s problems?

For starters, how about that women have a lot of the same drives, needs, and desires that we do, and just as much trouble expressing them to us as we have expressing ours to them?

How about that they get frustrated just like we do over the same things that frustrate us?

How about that they know as little about us as we know about them?

How about that our differences can be very complimentary if we learn what they are and how they work and choose to put them to work for our mutual benefit instead of resenting them and competing to see who is going to change to meet the other’s expectations in an all-or-nothing scenario?

How about that your partner may have been trying for years to tell you something that you really want and need to know about her, something that could make your life together truly wonderful, and you never heard it? And because of that, you may have spent years fighting over the same frustrating issues, each of you thinking that the other was just being a nag or an inconsiderate jerk, when in fact you are both “functionally deaf” to each other.

It doesn’t take a lot to fix these problems. Genuine desire, a little patience, and good information will do the trick. And unlike a lot of problems, once these are fixed they are extremely unlikely to come back, because maintaining the solution is fun, enjoyable, and even intimate, and feels so good that you’ll automatically keep doing what works. It’s one of the few ways in which you can make life simpler yet more exciting and enjoyable at the same time!

You provide the desire and the patience, and I’ll provide the information, in my book "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," which you can download at http://www.makingherhappy.com. It’s been tested and proven, and coupled with your desire and effort, it will get you where you want to go and beyond, so get started right now, because life’s too short to wait.

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

Girls and Their Toys -- What's a Guy to Do, Especially in Relationships and Marriage?

Some men get terribly insecure about women’s “toys,” responding with such nonsense as “How am I supposed to compete with THAT?” You’re not, and you should be glad that it’s a toy and not another man. Why not “grow a pair” and join in the fun?

Sometimes I get letters from readers that are truly upsetting. I’ll spare you the details of those emotions, but eventually I have to look past the gross insecurity and ignorance expressed in the letter and remember that my job is to help people learn to be smarter and better, and that they think the way they do (or FAIL to think at all) because that’s what they have been taught, and my beef is with the teacher, not the student. Meet Brent:

Hey David,

Man, I’ve got a problem. My wife has discovered “toys,” (the adult kind) and I can’t get her to leave them alone. Every time I come home when she’s been here alone, they are laying out and it drives me nuts. I mean, how am I supposed to compete with that? I’ve got to get her to stop, but I don’t know how. I’ve tried everything I can think of, and she just gets madder and madder at me when I try to tell her that she doesn’t need them. What can I do?

Thanks,
Brent

My response:

Yes, Brent, you have a problem, and it’s not your wife’s toys. It’s your attitude. What makes you think you are “competing” with her toys? And what makes you think that she needs to stop using them? Or that you are qualified to tell her what she does and doesn’t need for her own satisfaction? If there’s something lacking in the bedroom, would you not prefer that it was her toys taking up the slack instead of another man, or had that occurred to you?

I obviously don’t know your wife, but every woman that knows me, including your fellow readers, will tell you that I know women well enough to say this: Whether she’s using toys because there is something lacking in your performance or because she just likes toys is irrelevant, and you’re showing a sickening level of insecurity by feeling you have to compete with them and an equally sickening level of arrogance or stupidity to think that you can decide for her what she needs and doesn’t need. That’s control, not leadership, and need, not love, you’re expressing. So what’s really up with her toys?

She’s leaving them out as an invitation for you to join her in using them! She’s mad because you’re being insecure and trying to shut her down instead of listening to her, taking the hint, and letting her share with you something that she enjoys! Get a clue!

Like it or not, that’s reality, and if you think you’re choking on that dose, this one isn’t going to go down very well, either: If you don’t get a grip, grow a pair of testicles worthy of a man, and stop acting threatened by some masses of inanimate plastic, there will be another man involved, either before or after the divorce, and he will likely be chosen partially on the basis of his willingness to share her toy pleasures with her.

It’s like this: your manhood is not a function of how big your “organ” is or how many orgasms you can give her through “traditional” intercourse, or any other kind for that matter. That’s machismo, ego, and chauvinism at its worst. Your manhood is a function of how well you handle the job of being a man! How much you act like the alpha male – smart, confident, witty, adventurous, comfortable being in the lead and making decisions (NOT forcing them on others, as you want to do with her toys), and letting that naughty inner child out from time to time to show her a good time.

How do you think you come off asking her how you’re supposed to compete with a few ounces of latex?

Like a freaking wuss!

The only way her toys can be used as a lethal weapon is to choke you with them, yet you’re acting scared to death of them. How manly is that? NOT!!!

Now straighten up, think like a man instead of an insecure, grab-asstic adolescent, and next time you come home and find your wife’s toys laying out, put on your best naughty boy grin and tell her that if she’s going to leave her toys lying around where you have to look at them, she’s going to have to let you play with them too, so it’s time to get naked and show you how they work, else she’s going to get a spanking. Yes, I’m serious!

She will be stunned at first because you’ve acted like such a wuss, and then she’ll get a little cocky to test you to see if you mean it. Pick up one of her toys and give her a good-natured swat on the behind with it, and crack wise with something like, “That seems to work, but I’m sure there’s a better use for this than that,” and dial up the naughty level a few notches.

Let her show you, and you pay very close attention to things like speed, pressure, direction, etc., then you take over and allow her to continue to coach you, which she may do with her hands or other body parts instead of spoken words, i.e., raising her hips to press toward you means more pressure, etc. – use your head and keep your cool, and everything will be fine. Experiment, slowly, and watch for signs of pleasure or discomfort. It’s a learning experience, a damned pleasurable one too, not a contest, so put that competition nonsense away and leave it there before it gets you hurt. This is about cooperation, not competition, and only a real man can participate.

All joking and rib-poking aside, if you have a problem with this because of some kind of childhood sexual trauma, stop hiding from it and get help, because you’re cheating both of you out of a lot of things, including fun, trust, intimacy, etc. – things that no committed relationship can ever get too much of, right?

Take care, and keep in touch,
David

This mess could have been avoided if Brent just knew a little more about communicating with women and was comfortable with himself, two things that a whole lot of men have a huge problem with. If you are one of them, it’s time to give yourself – AND YOUR PARTNER – the gift of a break from all the insecurity and stress.

Inside every man is an alpha male, and if he’s not in the lead in your life, he’s been suppressed, oppressed, or somehow pressured into the background, but he’s there, waiting to come out. Yes, he is! He’s been there ever since you were given that “Y” chromosome at conception! But…

Unfortunately, there’s not likely to be a hyper-skilled communicator that can rival any woman hiding in there with him unless you are an effeminate gay male that is so girly that every woman wants to go shopping with you, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t easily learn how to do a satisfactory job – so much better in fact, that she thinks you’re reading her mind at times.

Neither are hard to do, if you just apply a little time and effort to clearing out some bad programming and engaging in a little self-improvement, which is a whole lot easier than trying to put on an act for a creature that has about 100 times the capacity for sensing and interpreting non-verbal communication than you have. You can’t just ACT like a man, you have to BE a man; do that, by taking a manly attitude toward yourself and your life, and the behavior happens naturally. The good news is that you just need to know what works and how to make the parts of what work that appeal to you a real part of your life, which is one of the most enjoyable processes a man can go through at any point in his life.

It’s all laid out for you, step by step, in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” and it’s waiting for you at http://www.makingherhappy.com. Download it and give it a shot, because life is too short to miss out on the good parts, and unless you and your partner are truly enjoying your manhood (literally and figuratively) you are missing out on a LOT of good parts.

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

So She Says She Has a Headache: The Oldest Lie in Relationships and Marriage

A reader asks about the age-old lie, “Not tonight; I have a headache,” and its other iterations. He may not like the answer, but if he’ll accept it he can fix the problem, which is not her; it’s him.

I’ve wondered for a long time why I seldom receive a letter on this subject, because in the research phase of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” it was one of the first things to come up: the ages-old lie, “Not tonight, Dear. I have a headache.” It has other iterations, such as cramping, nausea, too tired (an extremely common one and easy to fake), menstrual discomfort, etc. Sometimes these complaints might be legitimate issues; at others they won’t. There is a pretty good way to know the difference, and a fool-proof way to eliminate the bogus ones. We’ll discuss all that in a minute, but first, meet Randy:

Hey David,

I have run into a stone wall with my wife and was hoping you might be able to shed some light onto a problem that is driving me straight to the sofa. It has to do with what else, sex. I know women think that is all a man thinks of, but how can you not when you never get it!

Every time lately I want to have sex with my wife she always has a reason that we can not do it. I have heard them all at this point, I am on my period, I have a yeast infection or bladder infection, I am too tired I have had the kids all day. Hey I am not a heartless SOB, but enough is enough how can a woman have a problem all of the time? I need some help here, how do I get her back in the bed with me and have sex instead of fighting for half an hour and ending up on the sofa every night?

Randy

My reply:

Randy, Buddy, let’s talk. There are two possible reasons for your wife’s behavior, those being that she’s really having that much trouble and that she’s not having that much trouble but it’s easier to fake something than to argue and fight about sex. It’s simple logic. She’s complaining of a problem, so the problem either does or does not exist. If the problem exists, there should be some signs of attempted remedy, and if not, she was bound to slip up sometime.

When she claims she has a headache, is her behavior consistent with having a headache? Taking some form of pain reliever, wanting you to rub her neck if it’s tension or taking antihistamines or decongestants if it’s sinus or avoiding bright lights and loud noises if it’s a migraine?

Incidentally, last I heard, the AMA was still saying that the average person has 6 headaches a year. That’s really ironic because that’s also the number of times the average couple who has been together longer than two years has sex in a year. (That is, of course, they’ve not discovered "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage", in which case they’re having sex several times per week to several times per day!)

Is she saying she’s too tired for sex and then going to sleep? Or is she claiming she’s too tired and then sitting on the phone with a friend, sitting at her computer, or watching TV for another two hours? Are there wrappers from feminine hygiene products in the trash can when she claims to be having her period?

Is she going to the doctor and/or drugstore and bringing home prescription or over-the-counter treatments for bladder infections or yeast infection when she claims she has one?

The point is that there is behavior that can be logically expected if someone has a genuine ailment, especially if it’s frequent. If their actions are contradictory to their words, they’re faking it to avoid sex. There is no other explanation.

Now the big question, why would she want to be avoiding sex?

There are very few people who don’t enjoy it, and their problems are pretty severe. If she has enjoyed sex with you in the past, it’s unlikely that she would have developed one of these major problems (like being raped) without you knowing about it. That leaves only one conclusion.

She’s no longer feeling attracted to you! Get this:

The slow-down of sexual activity a year or two after your marriage may seem normal because everybody complains about it and there’s a chemical change that stops forcing you to want it constantly, but it’s actually the first major symptom in the slow decay of a relationship. It doesn’t mean the relationship is over, but it’s now, not when you or she gets busted in an affair or somebody gets served divorce papers, that is the best time (other than before trouble starts, as a preventive measure) to start learning what you’ve needed to know all along and doing what you should have been doing all along to set things right while it’s still easy to do so. At this point, her feelings are still mostly positive, right?

Loves you? Maybe, even probably.

Loyal to you? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on whether someone else has created attraction for her and she’s responding to them. A woman will have sex with a man to whom she is attracted, and will not with a man to whom she is not attracted, at least not without resentment. It’s just that simple. There is also a strange tendency for people having an affair to refuse to have sex at home because they’re having feelings of fidelity for the person they’re involved with. So what do you do?

First, you forget about trying to find out if she’s sleeping with another man. That is irrelevant, and nothing good can come from finding out. She’s living with you, and that’s all that matters. Any woman would rather feel attraction for a man she’s living with, especially if she loves him, than any other man on the planet. It makes for a nice, tidy, secure, and enjoyable environment that is not possible under any other scenario. That is your edge. Don’t blow it by making accusations and digging around to find out something that you won’t want to know afterwards anyway. If you handle this right and your wife has any character at all, she’ll end up confessing sometime in the future anyway, or else her past will come back to haunt her. Forget about it.

Second, start creating attraction for her. You apparently did it for her at one time, or she wouldn’t have married you (even if she married you because she was pregnant, she slept with you – drunken daze notwithstanding – because you created attraction for her), so you have to bring it back, which is nowhere near as hard as creating it for a stranger, for a variety of reasons that I won’t get into here, but are fully explained in the book that will tell you how to create attraction for her, “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage.” She lives for it, yearns for it, and wants you to be the one creating for her, of all the men on the planet. Give her what she wants!

Take care, and keep in touch,
David

Gentlemen, that feeling you get that you would describe as “I’ve just got to have her,” is the same feeling women get when in the presence of an alpha male who creates sexual tension for her by flipping switches and withdrawing in a “two-steps-forward-one-step-back” dance that can go on for minutes to days. They’re not visually stimulated like we are with the human physique; it’s alpha behavior that gets them fired up more than anything, the confident, cocky, almost swaggering arrogance of a man who knows he can do anything balanced with the intellect to do what he chooses (it doesn’t matter whether you can do everything, only that you can do what you aspire to and need to do), the authority to pull it off, and the sense of humor to make it all enjoyable.

Putting on the act won’t do it, at least not for long. You might get way with it for a date or two with a stranger, but with your committed partner, it’s got to be you, the REAL you, not just an act you can put on and constantly be stressed out over the possibility of having her see through it. Help is instantly available if you’re ready to be the man you can be.

“THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” teaches you, as it has taught thousands of men, what you need to know and helps you to incorporate it into the real you, making you that confident alpha male you takes care of business and has fun in ways that drives women wild with desire.

It also teaches you the difference in how you communicate and how women communicate so that when she tries to tell you what she wants you’ll be able to hear and understand it. Believe it or not, many women have reported having affairs and getting caught in them so that their husband will see the example that “the other man” sets, because she’s tried to tell him and the message didn’t get through! The boyfriend wasn’t a boyfriend, he was the illustration in a “how-to” manual she tried to give him!

And, since women need love for security and attraction to feel alive, it teaches you what attractive behavior is, and the personality that causes it to happen naturally, the alpha male personality, and how to develop it so that you can enjoy the confidence that it brings you in all walks of life, not just in your relationship. It’s not just about relationship improvement, it’s about MALE improvement, about being a real man, and doing the manly things that real men do, and loving every minute of it.

The coolest part is that the manly things that manly men do and women love to see them do are fun! They’re things that men just naturally do, but in that idiotic fiasco of the 1980’s when women said they’d like for men to be more sensitive and men took that to mean sensitive INSTEAD OF manly and not sensitive IN ADDITION TO being manly, as the women wanted (they never state “the obvious”), men have just stopped doing and turned into a bunch of wusses.

Kill that inner wuss and let your inner manly man and inner naughty boy come back out to stay. I’ll teach you how. Click over to http://www.makingherhappy.com, download your copy of "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and let’s get started, because life is just too short to spend it being a wuss, not to mention celibate and on the couch!

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

Rules of Great Relationships and Marriage: Why Making HER Happy Makes EVERYBODY Happy

The explanation of yesterday’s promised “thunderbolt” – Why making her happy makes everybody happy, and what you can easily do to make it happen, automatically and consistently so that BOTH OF YOU enjoy it.

For those who had the bad fortune to miss yesterday’s edition, go back and read it, because it was good and because it sets up today’s edition. We’ve all heard “If mama ain’t happy, nobody’s happy,” (unless some of us have been living under a rock), and we’re all pretty well convinced that it’s a universal truth that will never be disproved. However, have you ever thought about the converse?

If mama is happy, everybody’s happy!

Why would I suggest such a thing? It’s the core of everything I’ve been talking about for a very good reason: it’s incontrovertible reality. Right now, I’m going to help you accept and understand this by explaining why.

It can be quite shocking when you realize how much of how we relate depends upon or is derived from this model (discussed in yesterday’s edition, so once again, if you’ve not read it, go back and do so before continuing here) of “men are hunters, women are gatherers.”

In case you’re not familiar with basic anthropology, here’s the super-short summary: in the earliest days of human existence, before agriculture and for some time after the development of agriculture, men hunted for meat and women gathered fruits, nuts, roots, etc. and raised the children; later, women most likely developed agriculture to have a more convenient food supply. One must remember that during this time, 90% or more of a person’s time was spent in securing a food supply.

We’re talking about a long, long time here, during which women were together, gathering and later farming in groups and learning to communicate, while men were out hunting alone or in small groups that kept very quiet to keep from scaring the game. These activities caused women to evolve to be genetically “wired” to be more social and nurturing, and have more sophisticated communications skills due to their activities causing the more rapid and full development of the bridge between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, called the “corpus callosum,” and the right hemisphere of the brain to develop more densely than in men.

They also developed a system of safeguards against nurturing the wrong kind of man. There are biological triggers that turn on this behavior when a woman sees strong alpha male behavior, which causes her to nurture in a manner appropriate to a mate, and in the presence of children; for many women, child-like behavior, such as a “middle-aged adolescent,” causes them to nurture and protect the man as would be appropriate for a mother, taking charge of the man’s life and affairs and attempting to save him in a codependent relationship. So since the process is biological and not logical, it is very difficult for a woman to resist and unfortunately, not foolproof; she can end up nurturing a man who is bad for her, like an alpha male with psychopathic tendencies who beats her, or a middle-aged adolescent with sociopathic tendencies who sucks her dry and moves on to his next host.

Whether you accept evolution as the cause of this difference or not, the difference is there, it’s consistent, and the behavior it creates is consistent; it’s what creates the feminine and masculine aspects of personality and communication skills and style.

Now, the big question: what does this mean to your relationship or marriage?

Generally speaking, women are naturally social, nurturing, and sensitive; men are not so much nurturing as protective. We are naturally loners; even when we’re in groups we tend to act competitively instead of socially and cooperatively. We are combatants; we tend to deal with problems by trying to overpower them or through other competitive means, not through any nurturing means, often even when it would mean converting an enemy to a friend. And let’s face it, a lot of men are finding out the hard way that women’s natural skill in non-verbal communication makes them superior negotiators and poker players in a great many male-female match-ups.

So how can you put this to work for you?

This is the great secret of relationships that is really no secret at all. If a man will make the effort to create attraction for his female partner, her response will automatically be to respond with excitement, sensitivity, wife-like (as opposed to mother-like) nurturing, and attractive behavior toward him. She won’t have to put any effort into it, because it will all be triggered by her attraction. It’s biological, and therefore not only automatic, but unavoidable (which is what gets women in trouble with predatory users, abusers, and losers who have mastered attraction tactics and use it mercilessly to attract and hold their victims.) Why?

To fully understand and accept this, you must understand the intensity of attraction. The only good way I can explain this to men is to call your attention to what happens when you start feeling intense attraction, when you reach that point where you MUST have sex with a woman and then MUST experience orgasm with her. It is different for women in that attraction for us is mostly (but not entirely) a matter of visual perception and happens very quickly while for women it is actuated by a combination of a lot of triggers that confirm your status as an alpha male.

It is therefore built much more slowly, but if you can recall the thrill and urgency of that attraction and your desire to maintain access to the woman who creates it, you can then have at least a partially accurate frame of reference for the intensity of what women feel; for them, it is even more intense because those feelings build more slowly and have time to create more excitement. Also note that while our excitement creates an intense urgency that is satisfied after the orgasm, theirs creates less urgency but more emotional intensity, making for a longer-lasting effect.

One other thing that you should note is the effect of the hormone oxytocin (do not confuse this with the pain medication, oxycontin). Oxytocin is called “the cuddle hormone,” and it facilitates a mother bonding with her children and her husband. It is released in small amounts during physical touching, especially stroking the skin, and is released in large amounts after orgasm. It therefore follows that taking the time to build attraction for a woman to ultimately increase her excitement, desire, and arousal to the point where she can then experience orgasm (simple physical stimulation is seldom if ever enough for a woman – attraction must happen first) on a regular basis, she will be more apt to remain happily married.

So yes, in spite of what the politically correct would have you believe, sex is indeed a very important part of marriage and of a mentally, physically and emotionally healthy woman’s life (trauma, hormonal issues, chronic pain, etc., can interfere, but this is the exception, not the rule, so never assume this is the problem), and if it slows down or even stops, trouble is coming, if it’s not already upon you.

The bottom line? Make the effort to become the confident, attractive alpha male that will light her fire and keep it lit and you will start a largely self-sustaining chain reaction that will keep the two of you intimate, excited, and happy for years to come. The choice is of whether to have or lose this happiness is yours, so make the obviously good choice, and follow through. Everything you need to know to make it happen is in the pages of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage.” Download your copy today at http://www.makingherhappy.com and get started, because the journey is fun, and the destination is one to live for.

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

Learning from Our Ancestors: The Immense Value of Anticipation in Relationships and Marriage

Time and again, we hear men are basically hunters, and women gatherers, or at least descended from them and still are “wired” like them, but what does this really mean in terms of how we view and enjoy life, and especially our lives together? More than you think; indeed, it permeates the entire relationship, including the bedroom, and can make the difference in whether your relationship lives or dies.

Today I want to discuss something that women have been trying to get men to understand for centuries: this thing they have with savoring anticipation, building excitement, and something that most men just simply can’t abide, at least not much: teasing, sexual and otherwise.

I hope we’re all long past the point of trying to adhere to this idiotic politically correct concept that there are no genetic differences between men and women other than the presentation of sex organs. Those of you who aren’t, if there are any of you left, either wake up and realize that we have a lot of differences, some of which can make one gender or the other generally – but not universally – better-suited to some things and not so well-suited to others, or stop wasting your time reading anything I send you.

Now hear this: We have unmistakable and easily identifiable differences, and while they do not make one gender or the other ultimately superior or inferior, we must recognize them and use them to understand each other better so we can enjoy our lives together as much as possible; else, they become a wedge that drives us further and further apart.

Among these differences is the way we treat goal attainment. Men, having evolved from hunters, generally enjoy the thrill of the chase to a degree, but the kill is the only reason for doing most things. Think of hunters or fishermen. There are “outdoorsmen” who love being in the country, outdoors, enjoying the sunshine and fresh air, for whom hunting and fishing are good ways to keep busy while enjoying nature, then there are the “sportsmen” for whom fishing and hunting are no fun if they come home with an empty stringer or creel, don’t have something strapped to the hood or bed of their vehicle, etc.

The sportsman characterizes most men’s attitude and approach to most things. We’re providers, protectors, problem-solvers, and repairmen, and we’re results-driven, so anticipation for us is stressful, and teasing gets old really fast; getting close and not going the rest of the way quickly can be utter damnation for us, so we tend to close the deal, no matter what it is, so we can move on to the next challenge or opportunity, and ultimately, the next result.

Gentlemen, women aren’t like us in this regard; indeed, for the most part, they are completely and utterly opposite! Think of the stereotypical image of a woman shopping as opposed to a stereotypical image of a man. When we want something, most of us just run in wherever we think is a good place to grab it and do so, quickly, and rush home with our spoils to share them with family, friends, etc. Women enjoy the shopping – the process of acquisition – as much as or even more than the acquisition itself. They delight in walking around looking at everything, comparing, imagining themselves wearing it, tasting it, sharing it, or whatever – anticipating the ownership and use and relishing it. How does this apply to our relationships?

It’s exactly the same story, especially when it comes to creating attraction. We see them, we think about them momentarily (or don’t), we become aroused, we want them, and it’s urgent. If you want to screw up an evening with a woman, a really good way to do it (most of the time – I describe the exceptions to this in my book) is to fast-forward to the romance scene early in the evening, or rush her into a sexual encounter without it having been part of the rest of the day.

Women need that feeling of anticipation, that teasing and waiting that we hate, to get amped up to where they need to be to enjoy it. Ask any woman about her most incredible sexual encounter, and you’ll find that the vast majority say nothing about having a man “in the saddle” for hours – it’s having a man hinting and teasing them for hours before the foreplay, then stair-stepping the foreplay, two steps forward and one step back, teasing and building that anticipation until they are ready to explode that they will describe as their greatest sexual encounter, because that’s how attraction and excitement is built for them.

Do NOT read past this point until you have full ownership of this concept, Gentlemen: for us, orgasm is the whole purpose of sex. For women, it’s merely the end of it. They like and need orgasm (the effect of orgasm on female brain and body chemistry is extremely beneficial!) but they are in no hurry to get there, and many could care less whether it is you or they who cause the orgasm as long as they get the anticipation and intimacy. Give her that, and she’ll be quite happy to “finish herself” or have you “finish her” by some other means if she needs an orgasm after you “finish.” (It’s really hard to keep this kind of discussion in such terms that wouldn’t make an adult cringe if their child walked up behind them as they read it without making it sterile and boring as some medical school text. LOL!)

I cannot overstress how important to your sex life it is, and will remain, for you to prolong the pre-orgasmic activities of sex for your partner to enjoy, because if you don’t, you’ll be done quite literally before she gets started, and it doesn’t take too many unfulfilling and frustrating episodes of that before she shuts down entirely; such sex is nothing more than a chore for a woman. It would be the same frustration and lack of fulfillment as a woman leading you up to the point of orgasm and then stopping, time after time. You would be missing what you see as the whole point of the encounter, just as she does if you move through it too quickly. And you know what happens when such an itch goes unscratched; sooner or later, somebody has to scratch it.

Never make the mistake of assuming that a woman enjoys the same things you do, especially in the same ways that you do, nor that she doesn’t. And whatever you do, don’t think that you know more about what she likes having done to her than she does. (Yes, men have written to me puzzled at how their wife didn’t respond to something they just KNEW she SHOULD like because some friend had said so, they’d read it somewhere, some other woman had responded to it, etc.)

They like being naughty like we do, and they like sex as much as we do, but in general they go about it in a very different way for maximum pleasure. For the umpteenth time, communicate, experiment, and find out what works with your partner! Prepare yourself for the greatest revelation you will ever have, a proverbial thunderbolt, and you’ve heard it a million times before:

If mama ain’t happy, nobody’s happy.

No, that’s not the thunderbolt. That’s to set you up for the thunderbolt:

If mama is happy, EVERYBODY’S happy!

I’m going to be explaining this in tomorrow’s newsletter. It is at the same time a so ridiculously cliché and yet revolutionary way of looking at relationships that it will make you laugh at its delightful simplicity and curse your failure to recognize it at the same time.

Meanwhile, you could already be getting the explanation of that and everything else we discuss here in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage.” It’s an instant-download, an e-Book in Adobe’s PDF format, at http://www.makingherhappy.com. Go ahead and download it now, because while some good things come to he who waits, others get away, and you need to know the difference. Life’s too short to spend it ignorant, especially if ignorance keeps you from living happily with your partner.

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

Who's Seducing Whom? Kicking It Up a Notch in Your Relationship and Marriage

A reader says I never write about seduction. Really? Let’s take a closer look.

I received the strangest e-mail from one you gentlemen, and I’m still trying chuckling over it. He said I never talk about seduction, and wants to know how to get his wife into bed. I write about it frequently, so I’m going to spell it out to make sure that there is no misunderstanding from this point forward on anyone’s part:

One of the first symptoms of a relationship starting to fail is a decrease in the frequency and intensity of sex. It’s not just age and busy schedules, nor hormones. It’s the slipping away of attraction, which leaves a void that has a name: BOREDOM. (And guys, you know that boredom is the bane of a woman’s existence, her archenemy, right?)

So you see, celibacy isn’t so much a problem as a symptom of a bigger problem, just like affairs: the lack of fun and excitement that leads to attraction, which in turn leads to more frequent sexual encounters with your partner. It takes both love and attraction to hold the relationship together, and that’s why we must talk about it and make sure that it gets fixed if it’s broken.

Hence, the sexual goal (there are many goals, both sexual and non-sexual) of creating attraction isn’t to get your wife into bed, but to make her want to get YOU into bed! (Among the other obvious ones are the aforementioned fun and excitement that keeps life interesting.)

Yes! Really! A quick reality check: They get excited just like we do, just as much, just as often. They’re more sexually powerful than we are too! You don’t think so? Look around you. How many women do you know that have multiple “O’s” vs. how many men? Yeah, that’s what I thought. They enjoy the process of seduction just as much as, if not more than, we do, as long as we give them the motivation to do it and make it worth their while by taking the time to let them do it right. How’s that?

Well, in a great many cases, when a woman “does it right,” she’s actually seducing both of you. Tell them, girls! When women act sexy for us, it turns them on as well. When you escalate it by giving them a little of what they’re after, and then withdrawing a bit, the challenge and anticipation eats them alive with delight, and they get even sexier trying to take you both to that next level, where you reward her with a little bigger taste and then pull back a bit, two steps forward, one step back, until she finally can’t take any more and just jumps your bones outright!

Seriously, if you follow the advice in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” and learn the skills of attraction and sexual mastery it contains, even if your partner has never responded to you aggressively in the past, she will tear you up (as long as she’s not been emotionally damaged by some trauma, like a rape) when you start flipping those attraction triggers and then slowly building up the tension and anticipation for her as described.

So you see, nearly EVERYTHING I’ve been writing about concerning attraction and communication has also been about seduction, YOUR SEDUCTION, and heightened communications skills have an indirect yet nonetheless profound bearing on seduction as well – how to get your partner interested in you again, closer to you, excited to be around you, enjoying seeing you being the alpha male, being turned on by you being a naughty, manly man who jumps in and out of naughty mode, creating and building sexual tension until she MUST have you. It’s one of several fool-proof methods of eradicating boredom that I teach!

The difference is subtle, but it’s profound, and for those who know the difference, the rewards are HUGE; hence, I’m going to keep writing about it, no matter how many newsletter editions and books it takes, until everybody who can “get it” does. Life is too short to live it lonely, celibate, and thinking that lonely and celibate or sneaking around in affairs are the only way to live, so go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” and start living the good life while you’ve got some life left to live!

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

It's TOO Easy to Destroy Your Relationship and Marriage When You Don't Talk With Your Partner

A reader letter demonstrates how a simple problem with a simple solution can be blown out of proportion to a damaging level if there is no communication to address the problem.

I hesitated to include this reader letter, because it’s going to make this newsletter a few paragraphs longer than normal, but aside from the fact that there’s some really good questions and answers involved, there’s also an EXTREMELY important lesson, for both men and women, to be learned from it. Bear with me for a few extra paragraphs and I’m sure you’ll find it worth the read.

By the way, note that the reader’s question is completely off-topic, and I’m not complaining about that and don’t want you to, either, because it leads to something very useful for everyone that is absolutely on-topic. Luckily, it was easy to develop some logical, practical and appropriate advice to give her and there were several women on the support team, including another counselor, who confirmed that it was what she should be told. But, the very fact that she presented this question to me, as someone doesn’t overtly offer sexual advice to anyone, should be a clear sign to all just how important both relationships and self-esteem are to women and that when things aren’t working, they will sometimes resort to desperate measures to try to bring things back to normal.

Luckily for Christy, the question landed with someone who could give rational, tested advice with the help of a research team instead of some whacko who could have done irreparable damage to her and her relationship by offering guess-work and opinion, or in the case of some less scrupulous individuals, whatever would manipulate her emotions the most. Here’s her first e-mail, and the subject matter is a little less “family-oriented” than I usually print, but please just bear with me because the resulting understanding will be well worth stepping outside your comfort zone for a moment – after all, these are real-world issues, and they don’t go away just because people don’t like to talk about them:

David,

I'm currently on my "monthly cycle" and during this time, my live-in boyfriend and I don't have sex. I still make it a point to try and please him, but he takes advantage of the "break" and masturbates to thoughts of other women. The other women are mostly fantasy -- movie stars, porn actresses, or faceless women in general. I consider myself a very attractive and satisfying woman (and he knows it), so I think it's questionable and even hurtful as to why he currently fantasizes about women (I also think porn is reserved for single men only). Our sexual relationship is VERY healthy, so I'm at a loss. Is this okay for men to do this when they're in a happy coupling? Can this be considered mental cheating?

Sincerely,
Wishing I was the only one

My reply:

Hi Christy!

Thank you for writing. Your question is a tricky one, and the correct answer depends on some details that you haven't yet provided. At first glance, it doesn't appear that there is a problem. If he's telling you that he's fantasizing about other women, he's being honest, and most likely faithful; if he were lying about it, or had any real desire for another woman, he'd be trying to conceal that, and lying to you about what stimulated him during masturbation.

Contrary to what women are unfortunately taught as they grow up, men don't masturbate because they are unhappy with their partner; we masturbate mainly for physical relief, especially if we are health-savvy and know that lapses in sexual activity cause a build-up of DHT and minerals in the prostate gland, which causes prostate congestion, which is uncomfortable to say the least, then Benign Prostate Hyperplasia (BPH, commonly known as swollen prostate or prostatitis) and has also been shown in clinical studies to be a prime factor in contraction of prostate cancer later in life.

As for whom he's fantasizing about, men are primarily visually stimulated sexually, and it may simply just be easier for him mentally to recall the images of things he's seen on the screen, especially if the two of you generally have sex with the lights out. Even the most sexually free men have some subconscious issues with masturbation because of the way parents deal with it, and frankly, it's prone to make us quite raw and sore if it takes too long, even with lubricant, so we tend to take the quickest and easiest path just to get it over with. If you're satisfying your man and he’s being honest and open about what he’s doing, the evidence says his masturbation is strictly preventive medicine, and I would strongly suggest to you that you don't try to read anything into it.

If you are insecure with him recalling the images from porn movies (speaking of which, many couples sit and view porn films together, sometimes as a mood enhancer, sometimes looking for adventurous techniques, etc., but it's by no means something that a woman should be concerned about unless he's spending more time with porn than with you, or is burning up half his paycheck with porn movie rentals, which is an obvious sign of some kind of mental problem) as he masturbates, there are a few things you might consider, among them, having sex while you're on your period, if you can find a way that's not uncomfortable, like in the shower (unless of course your objection is that it's painful during that time), or offer him some other form of sex in addition to or in lieu of his masturbation.

The main thing is to try to find a way to make it pleasurable for both of you, don't try to read anything into it, especially any kind of shortcoming on your part or infidelity on his, and use it as an opportunity to find new intimacy in your relationship. If you allow it to impact your self-esteem, both of you will pay dearly for that mistake, and if you feed any insecurities about his fidelity over this issue, you'll send a strong signal that he can't be honest with you about some things without being punished for it, and punishing honesty can turn into a relationship-killing problem.

I hope this helps. I'm not going to publish this in my newsletter unless you feel that it adequately answers your question and you're okay with having this show up in the newsletter, with or without your first name (I never use full names when quoting readers). If we need to discuss this further to fully address your issues, please feel free to write back.

Sincerely,
David Cunningham

Now, her final reply:

Thanks for your quick reply! I'm comfortable having this in the newsletter if you choose to do so, but then I wouldn't get to read anything new tomorrow :p. I think your response was logical and it helps me realize I'm just fueling my own insecurities. I'm definitely going to buy your book!

Thanks!
Christy

Now, note the last sentence before she says she’s going to buy my book: my response was logical and helped her to realize that “she was just fueling her own insecurities.” Ladies and gentlemen, I cannot overstress how nearly all women are prone to do this, obviously some much more than others, and how all it takes to put things right is simple, honest communication. It would have been far better if Christy’s boyfriend had answered her question instead of me, but he apparently made her believe that he was too “closed off” to discuss it, or just blew it off as something “she should just get over.” WRONG ANSWER!


What he should have done when it was cursorily discussed (which they must have done because she had details that she could have only had if he had provided them, like who he was involved with in his fantasy images), was to recognize that she wasn’t being whiney, she was looking for dialog and understanding, and he should have left her an open channel to discuss her feelings and how the two of them might approach their “down time” that could be more satisfying for both of them. Women get through problems by first talking about the problem, especially the emotions that the problem generates, and then negotiating a resolution.

Refusing to take part in that process comes across to women as dismissal, and on a scale of one to ten, that’s about a seventeen for being bad for your relationship or marriage. And the ugly part is that he may not have recognized her concerns if she said something like, "And you think this is okay for a married man?" which is how a woman says, "I don't think a married man, especially MY married man, should be doing this."

The Lesson: Gentlemen, when women bring up anything that has to do with your relationship, they are concerned; they actively manage their relationships of all kinds, and work the hardest to manage the ones most important to them. Don’t make light of their concern and blow them off, because you then leave them to their own devices and assumptions, which are mainly emotionally-based since it’s an emotional issue and they are emotionally-driven, in lieu of factual information, to try to handle the situation for themselves, and this will never end well. If they were secure enough for it to end well, they wouldn’t have been concerned in the first place. They can easily grasp fact and logic when you give it to them before they have a chance to get upset and get amped up on drama adrenaline, so talk WITH (NOT “TO”) them when they want to talk instead of waiting until they force you to talk.

Ladies, until your partner has been through my book and fully understands how you view relationships and communicate, he will have little to no clue as to the importance of this subject matter because he is unfamiliar with your priorities and not skilled enough at interpreting advanced female communications protocols and techniques to read between the lines. Try to keep your emotions in check and your wits about you, and know that you have to voice your concerns, bluntly and verbosely, and looking disturbed and rolling your eyes as you omit a guttural exhale doesn’t constitute bluntly and verbosely. You must be patient, and spell it out for them. When you do this, they may still not completely understand your dilemma or why it’s such a big deal at first, but will understand that since you’re speaking bluntly when they’ve never heard that before, it must be something incredibly important and you will have their undivided attention long enough to make progress, unless they are just a complete and utter moron.

I’m sorry that it took so much verbiage to get this across, but this is such a shining example of what can happen in a communications vacuum and how easily it could be avoided that I just had to do it. Unlike some, I can’t do things half-heartedly or half-assed, and I hope that you will settle for nothing less as well. I’ve taken the same approach in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” giving you 118 single-spaced pages of solid, tested information (in normal type) when most reports and e-books in the $40 range are more like 30-60 pages of double- or triple-spaced large type; I was advised by others in the industry to keep it that short so I could “fluff it up” and turn it into a paperback later, which I found disgusting to say the least. Download your copy today at http://www.makingherhappy.com and start getting along, instead of just getting by.

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

Is She Faking Orgasms? "Performance Monitoring" in Relationships and Marriage

How can you tell if she’s faking “the big O”? Does it matter? The truth may indeed surprise you!

Good grief. I’ve been going over this issue in my head on and off all day, and still can’t believe I’m writing it, but I keep getting hammered with the question, so I’m going to answer, and then I’m going to tell you something a lot more important…

The question is simple. Meet Todd, one of the many people who asked the question, and who did so in the fewest words while sounding intelligent:

Hi David,

How do I tell if and when my partner is faking her climax?

Thanks,
Todd

Todd’s a man of few but well-chosen words, isn’t he? To answer, there is no way to always tell with 100% certainty, at least not without medical monitoring equipment, but here are a couple pretty dependable bits that can help you figure it out.

First, if she appears to be screaming during the contractions, she’s either faking or grossly exaggerating. Physiologically, that’s as near an impossibility as being able to hold your eyes open when you sneeze, and for the same reason. It’s in the “wiring” of her nervous system. The problem is that trying to exhale to scream during the contractions doesn’t work, so any noises of pleasure should be broken up by the contractions.

There are rare – and I do mean RARE – exceptions to this, according to what I have read in medically- and therapeutically-oriented books and studies on the subject, but the exceptions are mentioned in the context of nerve damage, birth defects, and anomalies so rare as, for example, having all your internal organs on the wrong side of your body (juxtaposition of organs is unrelated – the rarity is the point). Like I said, RARE.

Along the same lines is another very telling sign, but in the opposite way. It is reported by medical authorities on the subject to be near-impossible for a woman to experience any significant level of climax without her toes curling. No kidding. Note that if she knows about this, she can fake curling her toes, but if she’s bucking and thrusting and making all kinds of steamy animal noises and her toes aren’t curling, either she’s faking or she’s one of those RARE cases mentioned earlier. I’ll say only that I have never personally observed one of those RARE cases.

Now, don’t even think about asking me how you’re supposed to keep an eye on her toes while in the act. If I even try to answer that question the spam filters (annoying pieces of crap!) will be trapping 99% of this edition and few will ever see it. (Don’t get me going about spam filters. I finally found spam protection that works better than anything that uses content filters – see http://www.mailvice.com if you have your own domain name and you’re interested.) Just use your imagination, get into a position, like “canine”-style or “rodeo” style that lets you see her feet without being obvious, and don’t obsess over it. If she’s hot enough to have you in such a predicament, she surely has assets that are much more interesting than her feet. You shouldn’t be worried about it anyway. Why?

Because you ought to be doing it right and know it by the fact that your partner is acting like you are the “King Daddy Pleasure God” by giving you sexy looks, being playful with you, inviting YOU to the bedroom, etc. If you’re being the alpha male (not alpha dog! – see my free “Break-Up Busting 101” report for the distinction! A download link is at the bottom of this newsletter) and engaging in naughty play as you should be, especially in the way of slowly ramping up the action through the day as described in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” using her anticipation for maximum impact, you’re going to know, in no uncertain terms. A woman who’s happy in her bedroom makes it so wonderfully obvious by showing you that she wants to be there, and often! And she’s also a whole lot more open with coaching and feedback when she knows you’re listening to her, so getting those communications skills honed will help take a lot of the mystery (and consequent insecurity about whether you are pleasing her!) out of the equation.

If you’re having to worry about whether she’s faking, you have bigger problems than your sex life, and you’d better be getting your butt over to http://www.makingherhappy.com and downloading your copy of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” before she gets bored and frustrated and you end up either celibate or cuckold (that’s what we old farts were taught to call it when your wife sleeps with another man). You know as well as I do that if Mama’s not happy, nobody’s happy, and if Mama IS happy, EVERYBODY’S HAPPY, and this is proven daily to be your best shot at making that happen, so get busy!

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

Women's Comments on "Don Juan DeMarco" That Tell You EXACTLY What They Want in Relationships and Marriage

Women respond to my advice for you to watch the movie, “Don Juan DeMarco,” in my St. Valentine’s Day edition, and you should hear – and learn from -- what they have to say!

I received a bunch of comments about the movie, “Don Juan DeMarco,” that I mentioned in my St. Valentine’s Day edition, and you should read it if you missed it. Some of the guys were saying they really didn’t get it, others complaining that it was a lame movie (it was a chick-flick, and guys, if you want to learn about women, chick-flicks can be a great source of good info), and others saying, “Amen, brother!” because they did as I asked and studied the characters and how they interacted instead of watching for breasts, butts, gunfire, explosions, comedy, loud music and special effects, which is what most guys look for in a movie. However…

What really got my attention were the responses sent in by the women. There was a common thread, and let’s see if you can pick it out. First, meet Tammi:

Dear David,

Whenever my daughter and I have extra time together we like to watch movies together. She is now 16 I find it funny to see how she reacts to some of them. At your suggestion, last night we sat down with our large bowl of popcorn and turned on Don Juan Demarco. Within the first 10 minutes of the movie I was ready to find that man and have my turn with him! As we watched I found myself placing myself in the position of the actress he was with. I have always loved Johnny Depp and that was the original reason I wanted to watch this movie, but as the movie went on I did not even notice him in the movie. All I could think about was how I wish that Don Juan was the man I would be spending the night with.

I also noticed something else going on with my daughter. She had noticed as much of the sexiness of the movie as I did and even at the age of 16 was responding as much as dear old mom, especially to that early scene where he’s holding the woman’s hand in the restaurant and caressing and kissing her fingers and her knuckles are white as she grips the table cloth trying to keep from jumping his bones right there in the restaurant.

If your male readers will watch this movie and to pay close attention they to can have their woman sticking to their seats and just by the soft caresses or the soft kissing of the hand have then upstairs in no time having the time of their lives with their wives or girlfriends.

Tammi

And now, meet Joannne:

Hi David!

GAWD, I hate you! I’m going to be stuck to my couch for the next week after watching that “Don Juan DeMarco” movie you suggested. That first scene was SOOO HOT! I don’t really hate you, but I really didn’t realize what I’ve been missing in a man, and you’ve opened my eyes. I’d give anything to have a man so able to look at life and see the best that could be found like he did. It would be such a joy after living with all the bitching and moaning I live with now. I never really cared for Johnny Depp, but watching him play that character has given me a whole new appreciation for him and for men in general. If a man on the TV screen can make me feel like that, I long to think what a real man can make me feel. Can your book make my husband like this? If so, I want a hundred copies! I still get wet when I think about him kissing her fingers. Damn you! LOL! Just kidding!

Thanks so much for the dream,
Joanne

And this is Devonia:

Dear David:

How did you know something like that could turn me on so much? Was your wife watching the movie with you when you watched it or something? I got so wet watching that scene where Johnny Depp was playing with that woman’s fingers in the restaurant I would have stuck to the chair I was sitting in if it were leather. As it was I left a wet spot on the upholstery. When they showed her white knuckled from grabbing the table cloth I laughed because my knuckles were white were I was gripping the arms of the chair. I’m going to make my husband watch it with me tonight. He’ll see how it affects me and either be really smart and get a clue or be really stupid and ridicule me for getting excited over something on TV, in which case I may just have to start looking for someone who’s a little more attentive, if you know what I mean. In any case, thanks for the thrill!

Devonia

Did you spot the common thread? These women literally got wet watching another man seduce another woman on television! No matter what you may think, women want to be seduced. They want romance. They will live vicariously through others to get it, even on TV, but sooner or later, they want the real thing. They want to enjoy their life, and if they’ve chosen to enter into a committed relationship, they want to enjoy it with him. They want him to take charge and make things happen, to look around and see the good things in the world, especially in them.

If you’ve still not seen this movie, you’re cheating yourself and your partner. Indeed, watch it with her, and when you see her gripping the arm of the couch a little too firmly as he kisses her hand, take her hand and lead her to your bed, or just start something right there on the couch by kissing her fingers and such, then go back and watch the rest of the movie afterward, “snuggled up in the divine afterglow of the pinnacle of passion,” as DeMarco might say… or don't, and don't be surprised when your wife "starts looking for someone a little more attentive," as Devonia says.

For those of you who still don’t get it, women often read romance novels and watch romance movies to get themselves amped up for YOU, especially when you’re not doing a good job of creating attraction and romance and getting them into the kind of mood where they want to seduce you. If you see your wife reading a romance novel in your bed, don’t be an idiot and bitch about the light keeping you awake. Watch for signs of excitement, like darting eyes and elevated breathing, then gently take the book from her as you start making magic!

Guys, this is one small example of the tremendous insight and advice that you will find in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” not just my own, but also that of hundreds of couples who have helped research and test the contents of this book both before and after its writing. Every man alive should read this book if he ever wants to be happy in a long-term relationship with a woman, because no matter how much you think you know, there’s always something valuable that can be learned from the experience of others that can be used to make your life together even better. Indeed, I have multiple unsolicited testimonials declaring that it should be required reading in high school!

Face it, if you already knew everything you wanted and needed to know about getting along and getting it on with women, you’d be writing this newsletter, not reading it, so go for the gusto and become an expert! Go to http://www.makingherhappy.com/ and download your copy right now, because life is just too short to spend it doing anything less than enjoying it, especially if you have a woman in your life!

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

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

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

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

Dear David,

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

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

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

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

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

Darlene

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can Naughty Be Nice? It Can Certainly Help Your Relationship and Marriage!

Women have a naughty side just like men; indeed, there is much more about them that is similar to us than different when you can see the whole woman without the blinders that Hollywood, traditions (especially religious), outdated ideas of etiquette, etc., can impose. The thing you have to know is what to do to bring it out…

I hate to say this, but I’ve got some male newsletter readers in whom I’m getting really disappointed, not because they’re not succeeding, but because they’re not trying to succeed. I have talked and even preached ad nauseam about the value of intermittent doses of “the naughty boy” in making men interesting to women and giving women a way to open up and both be and have fun, and huge numbers of people are doing this and succeeding with it. Look at this letter I just received:

What's up David,

Your book is excellent and a must read to any guy that calls himself seriously being in a relationship with a woman. I have read other books on attraction and I've gotten great results, but things are different in a long term committed relationship. Recently (before reading your book) I noticed that something was missing, so I began to search on the internet and I found your product.

I want to thank you because since reading your book I've brought the life back into our relationship. I began using your sexual tension methods and they work like a charm. By not being so easy, making her wait, and anticipate, then withdrawing only to start up again has reversed what had been happening.

Realizing that she is supposed to be the predator and I'm supposed to be the prey has opened up an unknown world of possibilities. She went from acting like she was sleepy all the time to being overtly sexually interested (ready to attack me). She even says that she can't understand why she's always horny while she's around me.

After reading your book I just played around with turning her on and then backing off (not just jumping in and going for the gusto). After doing that a few times I wish you could've seen the look on her face (priceless). I was only playing around but based on her response sexual tension is more powerful than I could've imagined. I am practicing this art to perfection, because once you understand what's going on it's EASY and FUN for me and for her. We both can feel the tingles again when we are together.

Thanks. And keep up the good work.
C.

A very typical letter, really, and it came the day after his purchase! Thousands of men and women have written such letters to me confirming that everything I teach works, and some of the couples that helped with the research and testing of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” commented that the naughty behavior was the most enjoyable part of the research. But get this…

In spite of all that, these jokers, instead of just trying it and seeing for themselves that it does indeed work wonders, write me e-mails and even call and pay my consulting fee to sit and tell me that they don’t see how this could possibly work, or even worse, that it can’t possibly work, because “I just don’t understand” their situation or their wife.

Folks, I’m about to let you in on one of life’s very few “great truths,” here and now: the words “but you don’t understand” and “but you’ve got to understand” are almost always the leper’s bell of a pragmatist – a person who cannot accept reality and will fight tooth and nail to try to get you to concede that whatever fantasies and contradictions are in their head compose a valid, if alternate, reality, which it never does. There’s one reality, and we’re all living in it together, like it or not, for better for worse, ‘til death do us part, etc. These people are looking for validation of their mistakes, not improvement of their situation.

As a general rule, I fire pragmatists immediately upon contact because they are a usually a waste of time, but before firing these guys, I’m going to present the scoop on naughtiness one more time, and I’m going to invite all of you, who are welcome to send in comments, questions, etc., at any time, to write to me with comments about this specific material to be reprinted for these guys in a final attempt to jerk their butts into this reality in which we all live. Maybe then they can stop looking for rationalization and validation of their mistakes and lack of action and start taking action and getting results.

Women have a naughty streak, just like men, and from what I’ve seen, it runs just as deep and wide as any man’s and might be just a tad more devious because women are generally a bit more emotionally-driven and creative than men. However, many of them won’t show their naughty side until a man does first, thereby inviting her to show hers!

While working as a corporate consultant, I often overheard conversations between small groups of women in offices when they didn’t know a man was around that if transcribed into text without names would be indistinguishable from men’s, to include bizarre sex stories, gas-passing contests and stories (including “pull my finger” games and trapping someone beneath the bedclothes with an “eruption”), tales of marauding sexual exploits, etc., using language that might embarrass the proverbial sailor.

These same women, when men were around, were very prim and professional, not to mention poised and well-mannered when we met at a lounge somewhere after working hours.

The key to unlocking this fun, very naughty behavior, especially the sexual side of it, is to be naughty in their presence, deploying the “naughty boy grin” after making some teasing remark or action that invites them to retaliate with naughtiness of their own. The naughtier you are, the naughtier they will be; very few women have the self-confidence to just let their naughtiness hang out, and we can’t blame them for it, either.

Some of their earliest memories might be of being told that little girls are made of “sugar and spice and everything nice” while little boys are made of “snips and snails and puppy dog tails” and being told that various things are “simply unladylike” and that “good little girls don’t do that.” Whether it was male oppression or mother’s trying to program their daughters to try to look better than a normal woman is irrelevant. And once you get them going, it’s a blast!

Add to that childhood programming the time-honored high school Monday morning ritual where all the guys come in and tell all the sex stories from their dates over the weekend, most of which didn’t really happen, and for the rest of the week the guys who had a good story about getting laid were the heroes and the girls they slept with were the hussies, jezebels, floozies, sluts, whores, or whatever nasty nametag was in vogue at the time. You can bet they hated that, and while we’re all older now and most of us understand that women enjoy and seek out sex as much as men, those idiotic high school games, which were traumatic at the time, left scars that are buried deep but still having an impact today, even though the events that caused the impact may be long forgotten.

As an aside, Parents, talk to your children about this double standard and encourage them to not engage in it. Our generations haven’t dealt too well with the problems it causes, but future generations might be able to avoid them if we tell them how. The feelings of guilt many parents try to threaten their daughters with to try to make them avoid sexual situations doesn’t help them avoid anything but talking to you about sex and their problems, and the only thing it helps them to do other than that is feel guilty about having slept with a boy and feeling like they now need to marry him when he’s not good for her.

Obviously, this is in conflict with religious teachings, and you’ll have to find your own balance between religious satisfaction and addressing these purely biological, psychological and emotional issues as a parent; I’m merely trying to call your attention to the psychological impact of things that parents and teenagers do to teenagers that continue to hurt them into adulthood so that you can try to raise them to act responsibly, in a way that doesn’t leave deep-seated emotional scars from repeated guilt trips.

Getting back to our main subject, women love to play and have fun as much as men, in many of the same ways, especially those that include challenge and naughtiness. Once you clear the way for that behavior by leading her into it by example, she’ll not likely go any farther than you do, so gradually in the same manner of stair-stepping that you would use to slowly let sexual tension build for orgasms that would make the darkest chapter of her sexual diary (also covered in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage”!), lead her into naughtiness, two steps forward, one step back, and watch her reactions. As long as she’s laughing or smiling, you’ve not gone too far. If you say or do something that causes her demeanor to change to anything that doesn’t look like she’s having fun, other than feeling sexy, especially if it looks blank or negative, you went too far (or too fast), and need to immediately back up to the last known point of pleasure without dwelling on whatever it was that crossed the line.

At some point, the naughtiness builds so much excitement and fun that it starts creating sexual tension, and as you see her transition, go with it! Let it get sexy, and then see how sexually naughty she wants to be as well! Again, if you go too far, immediately back up to what was working without killing everything by dwelling on the mistake. If she wants you to know anything about it, she’ll tell you later. What she wants now is to get back on track and be having fun again.

One caveat: No woman wants a man who does nothing but act like a brat or a clown. They want a man who can have fun WITH them (NOT at their expense!) when it’s time to have fun, the great man who becomes the naughty boy and gets her worked up, maybe for a few seconds, minutes or hours, and returns to the great alpha male who is strong, heroic, and projects authority and leadership. The switching between the two is very powerful, and keeps you from being tagged as predictable, and worse, irresponsible.

Now, get busy! Keep in mind that having never seen your female partner doing something doesn’t in any way mean she has never done it or never wanted to do it with you. As with all things regarding attraction, you as the male partner must define authority for her by taking the lead; clear the way for her inner prankster and sexual hellion to come out to play, and if you’ve never done it before, well, you’re in for one hell of a surprise!

There are pages and pages of examples of how to understand your female partner and bring out all her best behavior, including all the fun and sexual excitement she’s capable of, as well as how to take her to levels of fun and excitement she’s only dreamed of – maybe even never dreamed of-- in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage.” Women helped develop it, verified that it works, and are buying it all over the world, both to learn about themselves and to teach their men about themselves. Many are also reporting buying it to learn what a great guy looks like, because they’re tired of picking out losers.

That’s a pretty tough accolade to ignore! Meanwhile, men are writing letters of success and thanks daily, and you’re missing out. So download your copy now at http://www.makingherhappy.com and turn up the naughty dial, because life’s just too short to spend it with a frown on your face, no matter what the cause.

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

Preparing for Valentine's Day, a Great Way to Turn Things Around in Your Relationship or Marriage

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, and you need to be thinking about it now, not on your way home from work on February 14. Here’s some help in the area of choosing the right gift.

Before we get into how to get prepared for Valentine’s Day, I want you to read an excerpt from a letter I got from one of my female readers who “felt” that I wasn’t aggressive enough in trying to make sure that you understand the idea of “mutual consent”:

...A man can create attraction and a woman can respond physically but not really want to do anything with this man. I have been in this situation. If I had been asked verbally there is no way that I would have gone through with it. Many women, especially younger women, feel great expectations to be sexual; our society promotes the idea that a man's way goes. Many women have been raped in this way but because they did not say no verbally they feel like they cannot complain or acknowledge the pain men have caused them. While having non-verbal consent is fine especially in an established relationship. I especially like the quote you had a while back where the man (I cant remember his name) said “I lean in 90% for the kiss and she comes in the last 10%.”

Also while I am a fan of the rough hasty sex described the other day, I have a warning for the men who do this: if she is saying something do not assume it is positive. Having to say stop 3 times with the last a yell is a very frightening experience.

Men pay attention to your partners. 1 in 4 women and 1 in 8 men have been sexually abused. Many things may be frightening for you partner. This is why consent is so important you do not want to damage your partner and as the statistic shows it is very likely that one of your partners has been abused. I also believe if more young men and women were taught about the importance of consent verbal or non-verbal many accidental rapes could be prevented.

Regards

If our society really promoted the idea that a man’s way goes, I and the entire marital and dating advice industries would be out of a job, because the biggest problem women voice to me and the other gurus is that men are wusses who won’t engage properly in sex play (this reader might be quite young and dealing with horny teenagers who have boundary issues instead of men). But that aside, Her concerns for men (and women) respecting boundaries is legitimate. So once again, Guys, “no” means “no;” don’t ask for sex, but don’t push it on a woman either; and the straightest path to the bedroom is playing and teasing her so that she gets all amped up and takes YOU to the bedroom. (And read my book so you’ll know the right way to go about that! LOL!)

So let’s get to the Valentine’s Day fun!

I got a question from a reader a few days ago that reminded me that it’s time to prepare for St. Valentine’s Day. Those of you who are historically-inclined know that this day was originally instituted as a day for old flames to get back in touch with each other, back in the days when very long courtships were the rule and women didn’t approach men; it was acceptable on this day for women to contact a former suitor and invite him to resume his pursuit, although a proper lady would never do so in so many words, of course! The mere announcement that she was widowed, or her engagement was broken for some reason, was “understood” as the invitation. ;-)

It has since evolved into an occasion upon which women expect “romantic” gifts, and one of the biggest mistakes you can make with many of them is the traditional, boring, and very impersonal dozen roses and box of chocolates. A woman wants a gift to be very personal, regardless of cost, so that she knows it was carefully chosen – or even constructed, if you are good at creating gifts of any kind – just for her. One of your fellow readers has seen the light, and asked for help. Meet John:

Hi David,

I have read your book and have seen the light. After 12 years of marriage I have slipped into pre-packaged holiday gift mode. I am having trouble coming up with new ideas for this Valentine's Day. Could you recommend some new ideas? My birthday is a few days before the 14th and my wife has planned a short trip out of town for us that weekend. Last February we were talking divorce, this year after reading your book and actually seeing that I had become foolishly predictable and boring, I've turned OUR life back on. I am now running out of ideas to keep her on her toes. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thank You
John

My reply:

Hi John!

Congratulations on getting things turned around! If you're like most men, you're not running out of ideas, you've run out of inspiration and need a quick refresher course on the art of choosing gifts for a woman to remind you of where to look in your life with your wife for ideas. I could name off a hundred things that somebody else’s wife would love that your wife may have no interest in at all, and would in fact be insulted by, because they aren't something very personal and obviously chosen specifically for her. This must come from within you, because you are the guy who lives with her.

Start by going back to the gift section in "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," which is short and to the point, and then I'm going to give a list of a few newsletters that expand on the subject. As you read these things, plug you and your wife, your upcoming plans, your history, etc., into the processes and examples and you'll most likely be flooded with very good ideas.

(Those of you who have not yet downloaded your copy of "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" can find that same gift advice in my free “What Women Want” report, which you can download at your convenience.)

After you do this, whether you come up with ideas or not, write back and we'll do a quick double-check and either make sure you've made some good choices or figure out what got in the way of you making a good choice and get you moving on the right road. This is one of those "give a man a fish and he eats for a day, but teach him to fish and he eats for life" kind of things, and luckily, what you need to read to review doesn't amount to more than probably 3-4 pages at most, because the subject really isn't that difficult once you recapture that "groove" that you know you're going to get back into when you start reading; you'll knock her socks off for sure!

Here are the issues you need to read:

Buying the Perfect Gift (11/27/08 - This is the book excerpt on gifts, in case it's easier than finding your copy of the book, and you can skip it if you have your book or my free “What Women Want” report handy).

A Female Reader Writes in About Gifts (11/13/05 - Probably the best newsletter on the subject after the excerpt from the book)

How Much Is Too Much? (01/09/09 - Defining the rules about excessive gift-giving, expectations, buying love, etc.)

Ballroom Dancing (10/09/05 - Ballroom dancing lessons are still a huge romance and attraction-builder, especially if your wife likes to dance!)

Girls and Their Toys (11/22/08 - about women and adult toys, in case your wife likes naughty things)

(For those of you who have never visited my newsletter archive, the address for the archive index is http://www.aweber.com/z/article/?mhh_tips and it's just plain HTML web pages. You scroll through the directory to find each article and just click on the link to get it on your screen, then hit the "back" button on the screen or press the backspace key on your keyboard to return to the directory.)

And by the way, double congratulations for having the forethought to deal with this now instead of on February 14, like 99.8% of other men will do. That's the mark of an achiever, and you get bonus points for that!

Take care, and keep in touch,
David Cunningham

Gentlemen, this really isn’t that much reading to do if you don’t remember the material, so don’t let the fact that it’s five articles deter you from doing this right. There are few things that you can do for a woman that endear you to her like selecting a truly great gift for her, not because she’s some kind of materialistic gold-digging “ho,” but because choosing a great gift for a woman requires that you pay attention to her, know intimate details about her, and consider those things when buying or making something for her.

Most women would melt over a carefully-selected bunch of wildflowers, that contained scents and colors she liked, and only perfect flowers, maybe matched her eyes or something like that, and possibly were accompanied by a brief handwritten note that said something like “You’re my favorite thing, of ALL things…” than a dozen roses or orchids with a piece of jewelry hidden in them and a $10 super-card from Hallmark.

Every woman can receive roses, thousands of women can receive that same piece of jewelry, and who knows how many people receive that same card? BUT! There will never be a bunch of flowers like the one you picked ever again, and if what you wrote on the paper was something she’s never heard, doesn’t sound “canned” (so don’t be an idiot and copy something cute from a card, because many women spend a lot of time browsing card verses in stores looking for good cards and emotional rushes), and is something that she would expect you to mean when you say it, it’s just for her too, and devastatingly special. And let’s not forget the bonus of including something small and durable that can go into her “treasure box” to remind her of her favorite times with you when she feels lonely, down, or really ticked off at you!

Indeed, one of the greatest stories I received from a reader featured a “card” that was a short note written on a sticky note (like 3M “Post-It” notes) and was stuck on a picture of the two of them wrapped in plain brown paper. The paper was from a grocery sack from the grocery they first shopped in together after they got married, and inside was a picture from their honeymoon in a frame that he had made in his shop from magnolia wood, her favorite flowering tree. The total cost was pennies (his neighbor had cut the magnolia tree to get it out of the way and he’d asked for some of the wood), and the impact was maximum romance because he had thought it through and put in some personal effort.

Caution: Don’t just run out and try to find wildflowers in February because I mentioned them, either! Spend some time getting to know your partner or thinking about what you know about her, and think about how you could combine some things she likes into some unique gift that leaves no doubt in her mind as to why she received it. Ha! What am I saying??? There will be no doubt in her mind why she received anything! If it’s the wrong thing, there will be no doubt that you’re in insensitive idiot, and if it’s the right thing, well, take your vitamin E and make sure your medical insurance is paid up in case she injures you when she pounces on you later, because giving the right gift is some pretty hot stuff!

Gift-giving is one of the many areas where men fly blind when trying to get along with women because we’re not trained to know how they think and what they like as we grow up. Our mothers train us to be “nice” and to defer all decisions to women to be “considerate” and to buy extravagant gifts for women to impress them, and bless their hearts (as we say in the South), they have no idea that they’re setting us up for disaster, but they are. They should be teaching us how to choose a good woman, how to communicate with women, and how to keep a woman interested and excited enough to enjoy our company for years and years. They don’t, but I will!

All you need is a copy of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” and you can download it at http://www.makingherhappy.com with a few mouse-clicks. Do it now, because you never know when she might decide she’s had enough and you’ll be another one who’s been thinking everything is just fine until she hands you the divorce papers, and when you ask in that shocked voice, “What’s this about???” she says those immortal, bone-chilling words that sends shock and confusion into the very soul of every man who hears them: “See! You NEVER LISTEN TO ME!”

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

More on the Issue of Rape Fantasies

Good afternoon, Guys and Gals,

I just received a really interesting reponse to yesterday's newsletter, and while there may not be any direct lesson for you within the information, it provides some historical perspective that indicates that this is a long-standing misunderstanding. Please take a minute and see what you can glean from it:

David,

I was impressed with your response to the gentleman who wasn't sure how to handle what he thought his wife wanted, which, he thought, might be some kind of rape.I particularly appreciated your strong caveats.

There is more to this than some folks think.

Years ago, a guy named Aram Bakshian read a bunch of romance novels so the rest of us wouldn't have to. He concluded that all of them--as in 100%--included some kind of rape of the heroine, preferably a duke or something. "Edwin/ward/mund/gar, the sullen, darkly handsome Earl of Loamshire cheated of his rightful place has to make a living as a pirate. He captures our heroine, takes her back to his ship {he's always the captain, for some reason} and throws her on his furs. Or something".

Mona Charen in National Review discussed the feminists' reaction. They accused him of promoting rape, a non sequitur which indicates he'd hit a nerve.

I gather that romance novels are a $2 billion business, which is more than the GDP of some nations sitting at the UN. And, unlike a bottle of whiskey which has approximately the same unit cost, the purchaser can re-use the romance novel, or give it to another. In fact, you can get them for free, endlessly, at the library which will probably tell you that's their most popular category.
It would appear that romance novels are addressing something quite important to a lot of women. Or romance novels are convincing a lot of women about something which will become quite important, if confusing.

Some years ago, Christina Hoff Sommers published "Who Stole Feminism" which dealt with many of the feminist shibboleths such as the SuperBowl domestic violence incidence and women in education and a number of other items. Then, as if she'd run out of ideas before getting to a proper book length, she devoted the last section to an extensive discussion of the romance novel and the alpha male. She used the mother of all romance novels, Gone With The Wind, for the most part. Discussed the issue with women. Even, in a version of an experiment, referenced a number of young ladies from enlightened top-tier colleges who went into publishing and cleaned up the alpha male. Sales tanked. They would. The alpha male is supposed to ravish the heroine, according to Sommers. Or else.

When the unfortunately-related William French Smith was accused of rape, the trial sparked a popular discussion of whether a woman has the right to say no. This was kind of dumb, since the basic issue of the trial was whether "no" had been said at all.

One of the interesting happenings in this widespread discussion was that a C&W singer withdrew a song whose subject could apparently be described as "a real man wouldn't take no for an answer. if he had guts, he might get lucky". In other words, "take the risk or be forever a wimp." The singer, whose name I can't recall (a female, for heaven's sake) said she didn't want to be the occasion of injury to anybody.

Now, it costs money to front a song. You buy it, you write it, you pay studio time, you hire sidemen. If it isn't the best you can get, you're throwing money away. It costs money to play it, at least in the sense that you want to play the best you have to keep ratings up. It costs money if the audience is bored or offended and stays away from your concerts. You don't front all that money unless you think you have a reading on the audience. And these guys were pros which meant they had a better than average chance to be right about the audience. That's how they made their living.

So, somewhere out there, they must have thought with a better than average chance of being right, are a substantial number of women thinking something like, "I didn't mean forever. I just hadn't made up my mind." And there are guys thinking, "I know she liked me better than him. Her sister said so. But I wanted to do the right thing. He kept after her and they had to get married. So he married her and they have two children...." "She said no and I backed off and her roommate says she wonders if I'm gay...."
And the pros are probably right.

Richard

See what I mean?

Thanks to Richard for sharing, and I wish you all a wonderful day,
David Cunningham

Be Careful What You Wish For, Part 2: Fantasies In Relationships and Marriage

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 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, 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..

If you really want to go there, 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,” 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Learn From Women's Responses to Asking for Physical Intimacy in Relationships and Marriage

Some female readers respond to yesterday’s lesson on not asking for sex. Pay attention, Gentlemen, because this is the real deal, straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak…

I love the women who subscribe to this newsletter. They’re smart, funny, and I can always count on them to keep me on track and help set the things I teach in stone by demonstrating to you gentlemen that I’m giving you the facts, not just some hyped-up theory or opinion. I received a bunch of letters from the women on yesterday’s “Don’t Ask for Nookie” lesson, all of which contained a resounding “Amen!” in one form or another, and I’m going to share a few of them with you right now.

First, meet Teresa:

Hi David,

All I can say about being asked for sex is “EWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!” It creeps me out.

Teresa

For those who don’t speak girly-ese, raise “yuck!” “sick!” or “gross!” to about the 23rd power, and you’ll be getting close.

Now meet Rhonda,

Hi David,

Men just don’t understand how repulsive it is to be asked for permission to do something that they should be doing. If you want to kiss a woman, you should already know whether you can by whether she lets you get close enough to kiss her. And for God’s sake, don’t make an announcement like, “I’m going to kiss you now,” because that comes across as asking. For me, I like the way Will Smith said to do it in that movie Hitch. Come 90% of the way and make me come the other 10% to kiss you. If I don’t come the other 10%, either I’m not interested or you’re going too fast.

Love your stuff. Get these guys into shape for me, will ya? I want a real guy so bad I could just die, and there’s none to be found around here, so hurry!

Rhonda

Hitch was a pretty good movie if you ignore the part where Will Smith wussed out at the end. Rhonda has a great point: if you’re moving into a woman’s space bubble too quickly she’ll back off immediately, and if you’re being so aggressive as to creep her out she’ll break off contact, so talking about kissing or sex or anything else is pretty silly. And besides, if you are generating attraction as you should be, she’s often going to be the one invading YOUR space bubble to get a kiss. Just ask Barb, who includes a LOT of great detail:

David,

I completely agree with your response to "asking" for sex. I can't think of a bigger turn-off than a man asking me if he can hold my hand or kiss me or asking me if we can have sex now. It's like a child asking permission to do something. It's a sign of weakness and insecurity to have to beg for sex.

It's a lose/lose situation. If she says yes, she's doing you some huge favor/chore. If she says no, you're going to feel rejected. Either way, you're setting yourself up for disaster because you're handing her your power on a silver plate.

My suggestion to Marcus is that he needs to do some serious inner work on his attitude and beliefs. Then at some point, take a leap of faith, believe in yourself and your power and trust that this stuff really works. Real men don't have to "ask", they just "do it". I think you'll be shocked and very pleasantly surprised to find that a woman just can't stop herself from responding positively to strength, leadership and personal authority in a man. I am a strong woman, but I want a man who is stronger than I am. I want to be able to surrender to his will. That's what gives me butterflies in my stomach and makes me weak in the knees.

A man may be aroused instantly, but that doesn't mean a woman is. We take longer since we don't have an on/off switch. For us, sex starts in the head, when
we begin thinking about the feelings. The anticipation. The suspense. The stimulation of not just my body, but ALSO my mind.

David's book has an entire section called "Great in Bed" to help build confidence in your lovemaking skills. And it is a skill we have to learn since we're not born knowing how.

I wish I'd had this book when I was still in my 25 year marriage, we could have either salvaged our marriage or I'd have known to move on much sooner.

Barb

I couldn’t have said it better myself! And note that Barb confirms that achieving attraction and arousal is not a near-instantaneous thing like it often is for men. We are largely visually stimulated, where a woman’s mind must be engaged to some degree with mystery, fun, etc. The alpha male attitude gets you noticed and ultimately cranks up the heat, but that “fun” element common to all men with self-confidence has to bridge the gap to get you there.

Notice that Barb says that she “wants to be able to surrender to his will. That takes trust, and if you don’t trust yourself enough to be confident, how the hell is she supposed to trust you at all??? I keep telling you gentlemen this isn’t rocket science…and there’s a pretty obvious reason for that…

Also note that she points out that “making whoopee” (the things I have to do to hide from the spam filters! LOL!) is a skill that we are not born with. We are born with an instinctive capacity for the raw act of procreation, but not for the pleasure that surrounds it if it’s done right. That requires knowing one of those things that Sigmund Freud was talking about when he said he didn’t know what women want. (And yes, I DO, because women tell me these things!)

So that’s it, the women have spoken, and have confirmed for you that I gave you the facts. And I have a lot more of them for you too, including the whole scoop on what women want, so if you want to get your marriage and relationship back in gear and get one up on Sigmund Freud in the process, come see me at http://www.makingherhappy.com right now.

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

Learning from Our Ancestors: The Immense Value of Anticipation in Relationships and Marriage

Time and again, we hear men are basically hunters, and women gatherers, or at least descended from them, but what does this really mean in terms of how we view and enjoy life, and especially our lives, together? More than you think; indeed, it permeates the entire relationship, including the bedroom, and can make the difference in whether your relationship lives or dies.

Today I want to discuss something that women have been trying to get men to understand for centuries: this thing they have with savoring anticipation, building excitement, and something that most men just simply can’t abide, at least not much: teasing, sexual and otherwise.

I hope we’re all long past the point of trying to adhere to this idiotic politically correct concept that there are no genetic differences between men and women other than the presentation of sex organs. Those of you who aren’t, if there are any of you left, either wake up and realize that we have a lot of differences, some of which can make one gender or the other generally – but not universally – better suited to some things and not so well-suited to others, or stop wasting your time reading anything I send you.

Now hear this: We have unmistakable and easily identifiable differences, and while they do not make one gender or the other ultimately superior or inferior, we must recognize them and use them to understand each other better so we can enjoy our lives together as much as possible; else, they become a wedge that drives us further and further apart.

Among these differences is the way we treat goal attainment. Men, having evolved from hunters, generally enjoy the thrill of the chase to a degree, but the kill is the only reason for doing most things. Think of hunters or fishermen. There are “outdoorsmen” who love being in the country, outdoors, enjoying the sunshine and fresh air, for whom hunting and fishing are good ways to keep busy while enjoying nature, then there are the “sportsmen” for whom fishing and hunting are no fun if they come home with an empty stringer or creel, don’t have something strapped to the hood or bed of their vehicle, etc.

The sportsman characterizes most men’s attitude and approach to most things. We’re providers, protectors, problem-solvers, and repairmen, and we’re results-driven, so anticipation for us is stressful, and teasing gets old really fast; getting close and not going the rest of the way quickly can be utter damnation for us, so we tend to close the deal, no matter what it is, so we can move on to the next challenge or opportunity.

Gentlemen, women aren’t like us in this regard; indeed, for the most part, they are completely and utterly opposite! Think of the stereotypical image of a woman shopping as opposed to a stereotypical image of a man. When we want something, most of us just run in wherever we think is a good place to grab it and do so, quickly, and rush home with our spoils to share them with family, friends, etc. Women enjoy the shopping – the process of acquisition – as much as or even more than the acquisition itself. They delight in walking around looking at everything, comparing, imagining themselves wearing it, tasting it, sharing it, or whatever – anticipating the ownership and use and relishing it. How does this apply to our relationships?

It’s exactly the same story, especially when it comes to creating attraction. We see them, we think about them momentarily (or don’t), we become aroused, we want them, and it’s urgent. If you want to screw up an evening with a woman, a really good way to do it is to fast-forward to the romance scene early in the evening, or rush her into a sexual encounter without it having been part of the rest of the day.

They need that feeling of anticipation, that teasing and waiting that we hate, to get amped up to where they need to be to enjoy it. Ask any woman about her most incredible sexual encounter, and you’ll find that the vast majority say nothing about having a man “in the saddle” for hours – it’s having a man hinting and teasing them for hours before the foreplay, then stair-stepping the foreplay, two steps forward and one step back, teasing and building that anticipation until they are ready to explode that they will describe as their greatest sexual encounter, because that’s how attraction and excitement is built for them.

Do NOT read past this point until you have full ownership of this concept, Gentlemen: for us, orgasm is the whole purpose of sex. For women, it’s merely the end of it. They like and need orgasm (the effect of orgasm on female brain and body chemistry is extremely beneficial!) but they are in no hurry to get there, and many could care less whether it is you or they who cause the orgasm as long as they get the anticipation and intimacy. Give her that, and she’ll be quite happy to “finish herself” or have you “finish her” by some other means if she needs an orgasm after you “finish.” (It’s really hard to keep this kind of discussion in such terms that wouldn’t make an adult cringe if their child walked up behind them as they read it without making it sterile and boring as some medical school text. LOL!)

I cannot overstress how important to your sex life it is, and will remain, for you to prolong the pre-orgasmic activities of sex for your partner to enjoy, because if you don’t, you’ll be done quite literally before she gets started, and it doesn’t take too many unfulfilling and frustrating episodes of that before she shuts down entirely. It would be the same frustration and lack of fulfillment as a woman leading you up to the point of orgasm and then stopping, time after time. You would be missing what you see as the whole point of the encounter, just as she does if you move through it too quickly. And you know what happens when such an itch goes unscratched; sooner or later, somebody has to scratch it.

Never make the mistake of assuming that a woman enjoys the same things you do, especially in the same ways that you do, nor that she doesn’t. And whatever you do, don’t think that you know more about what she likes having done to her than she does. (Yes, men have written to me puzzled at how their wife didn’t respond to something they just KNEW she SHOULD like because some friend had said so, they’d read it somewhere, some other woman had responded to it, etc.)

They like being naughty like we do, and they like sex as much as we do, but in general they go about it in a very different way for maximum pleasure. For the umpteenth time, communicate, experiment, and find out what works with your partner! Prepare yourself for the greatest revelation you will ever have, a proverbial thunderbolt, and you’ve heard it a million times before:

If mama ain’t happy, nobody’s happy.

No, that’s not the thunderbolt. That’s to set you up for the thunderbolt:

If mama is happy, EVERYBODY’S happy!

I’m going to be explaining this in tomorrow’s newsletter. It is at the same time a so ridiculously cliché and yet revolutionary way of looking at relationships that it will make you laugh at its delightful simplicity and curse your failure to recognize it at the same time.

Meanwhile, you could already be getting the explanation of that and everything else we discuss here in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage.” It’s an instant-download, an e-Book in Adobe’s PDF format, at http://www.makingherhappy.com. Go ahead and download it now, because while some good things come to he who waits, others get away, and you need to know the difference. Life’s too short to spend it ignorant, especially if ignorance keeps you from living happily with your partner.

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

Why Men Have Affairs, and How You Can Stop Them from Destroying YOUR Relationship and Marriage

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

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

Good morning,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Please help.
James

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

Hi James,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Take care, and keep in touch,
David

I saw a purchase notification from James within 24 hours, and I fully expected it. Why? Because he’s not in denial about his situation. When people finally face the fact that what they are doing isn’t working and start asking for help, they usually go through with fixing it. The exception is that group of people who define “help” as having someone do everything for them instead of providing the information and support they need and then getting out of the way and letting them do what needs to be done so they can own their own achievement and feel good about it.

That, Gentlemen, is where I come in. I’ve done the research with hundreds of couples to find out what makes for good and bad relationship and how you can evaluate your own, what women want and what truly makes them tick, and how to easily return to that natural male behavior that flips their attraction switches and turns up the heat, saving them from their primary enemy, boredom. Do you realize what this means to you?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear David,

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

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

Thank you,
Tia

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

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

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

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

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

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

So what are you supposed to do?

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

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

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

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

Is She Faking Orgasms? "Performance Monitoring" in Relationships and Marriage

How can you tell if she’s faking “the big O”? Does it matter? The truth may indeed surprise you!

Good grief. I’ve been going over this issue in my head on and off all day, and still can’t believe I’m writing it, but I keep getting hammered with the question, so I’m going to answer, and then I’m going to tell you something a lot more important…

The question is simple. Meet Todd, one of the many people who asked the question, and who did so in the fewest words while sounding intelligent:

Hi David,

How do I tell if and when my partner is faking her climax?

Thanks,
Todd

Todd’s a man of few but well-chosen words, isn’t he? To answer, there is no way to always tell with 100% certainty, at least not without medical monitoring equipment, but here are a couple pretty dependable bits that can help you figure it out.

First, if she appears to be screaming during the contractions, she’s either faking or grossly exaggerating. Physiologically, that’s as near an impossibility as being able to hold your eyes open when you sneeze, and for the same reason. It’s in the “wiring” of her nervous system. The problem is that trying to exhale to scream during the contractions doesn’t work, so any noises of pleasure should be broken up by the contractions.

There are rare – and I do mean RARE – exceptions to this, according to what I have read in medically- and therapeutically-oriented books on the subject, but the exceptions are mentioned in the context of nerve damage, birth defects, and anomalies like having all your internal organs on the wrong side of your body. Like I said, RARE.

Along the same lines is another very telling sign, but in the opposite way. It is reported by medical authorities on the subject to be near-impossible for a woman to experience any significant level of climax without her toes curling. No kidding. Note that if she knows about this, she can fake curling her toes, but if she’s bucking and thrusting and making all kinds of steamy animal noises and her toes aren’t curling, either she’s faking or she’s one of those RARE cases mentioned earlier. I’ll say only that I have never personally observed one of those RARE cases.

Now, don’t even think about asking me how you’re supposed to keep an eye on her toes while in the act. If I even try to answer that question the spam filters (annoying pieces of crap!) will be trapping 99% of this edition and few will ever see it. (Don’t get me going about spam filters. I finally found spam protection that works better than anything that uses content filters – see http://www.mailvice.com if you have your own domain name and you’re interested.) Just use your imagination, get into a position, like “canine”-style or “rodeo” style that lets you see her feet without being obvious, and don’t obsess over it. If she’s hot enough to have you in such a predicament, she surely has assets that are much more interesting than her feet. You shouldn’t be worried about it anyway. Why?

Because you ought to be doing it right and know it by the fact that your partner is acting like you are the “King Daddy Pleasure God” by giving you sexy looks, being playful with you, inviting YOU to the bedroom, etc. If you’re being the alpha male (not alpha dog! – see my free “Break-Up Busting 101” report for the distinction! A download link is at the bottom of this newsletter) and engaging in naughty play as you should be, especially in the way of slowly ramping up the action through the day as described in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” using her anticipation for maximum impact, you’re going to know, in no uncertain terms. A woman who’s happy in her bedroom makes it so wonderfully obvious by showing you that she wants to be there, and often!

If you’re having to worry about whether she’s faking, you have bigger problems than your sex life, and you’d better be getting your butt over to http://www.makingherhappy.com and downloading your copy of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” before she gets bored and you end up either celibate or cuckold (that’s what us old farts were taught to call it when your wife sleeps with another man). You know as well as I do that if Mama’s not happy, nobody’s happy, and if Mama IS happy, EVERYBODY’S HAPPY, and this is proven daily to be your best shot at making that happen, so get busy!

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

Girls and Their Toys -- What's a Guy to Do, Especially in Relationships and Marriage?

Some men get terribly insecure about women’s “toys,” responding with such nonsense as “How am I supposed to compete with THAT?” You’re not, and you should be glad that it’s a toy and not another man. Why not “grow a pair” and join in the fun?

Sometimes I get letters from readers that are truly upsetting. I’ll spare you the details of those emotions, but eventually I have to look past the gross insecurity and ignorance expressed in the letter and remember that my job is to help people learn to be smarter and better, and that they think the way they do (or FAIL to think at all) because that’s what they have been taught, and my beef is with the teacher, not the student. Meet Brent:

Hey David,

Man, I’ve got a problem. My wife has discovered “toys,” (the adult kind) and I can’t get her to leave them alone. Every time I come home when she’s been here alone, they are laying out and it drives me nuts. I mean, how am I supposed to compete with that? I’ve got to get her to stop, but I don’t know how. I’ve tried everything I can think of, and she just gets madder and madder at me when I try to tell her that she doesn’t need them. What can I do?

Thanks,
Brent

My response:

Yes, Brent, you have a problem, and it’s not your wife’s toys. It’s your attitude. What makes you think you are “competing” with her toys? And what makes you think that she needs to stop using them? If there’s something lacking in the bedroom, would you not prefer that it was her toys taking up the slack instead of another man, or had that occurred to you?

I obviously don’t know your wife, but every woman that knows me, including your fellow readers, will tell you that I know women well enough to say this: Whether she’s using toys because there is something lacking in your performance or because she just likes toys is irrelevant, and you’re showing a sickening level of insecurity by feeling you have to compete with them and an equally sickening level of arrogance or stupidity to think that you can decide for her what she needs and doesn’t need. So what’s up?

She’s leaving them out as an invitation for you to join her in using them! She’s mad because you’re being insecure and trying to shut her down instead of listening to her, taking the hint, and letting her share with you something that she enjoys! Get a clue!

Like it or not, that’s reality, and if you think you’re choking on that dose, this one isn’t going to go down very well, either: If you don’t get a grip, grow a pair of testicles worthy of a man, and stop acting threatened by some masses of inanimate plastic, there will be another man involved, either before or after the divorce, and he will likely be chosen partially on the basis of his willingness to share her toy pleasures with her.

It’s like this: your manhood is not a function of how big your “organ” is or how many orgasms you can give her through “traditional” intercourse, or any other kind for that matter. That’s machismo, ego, and chauvinism at its worst. Your manhood is a function of how well you handle the job of being a man! How much you act like the alpha male – smart, confident, witty, comfortable being in the lead and making decisions (NOT forcing them on others, as you want to do with her toys), and letting that naughty inner child out from time to time to show her a good time.

How do you think you come off asking her how you’re supposed to compete with a few ounces of latex?

Like a freaking wuss!

The only way that toy can be used as a lethal weapon is to choke you with it, yet you’re acting scared to death of it. How manly is that? NOT!!!

Now straighten up, think like a man instead of an insecure, grab-asstic adolescent, and next time you come home and find your wife’s toys laying out, put on your best naughty boy grin and tell her that if she’s going to leave her toys lying around where you have to look at them, she’s going to have to let you play with them too, so it’s time to get naked and show you how they work, else she’s going to get a spanking. Yes, I’m serious!

She will be stunned at first because you’ve acted like such a wuss, and then she’ll get a little cocky to test you to see if you mean it. Pick up one of her toys and give her a good-natured swat on the behind with it, and crack wise with something like, “That seems to work, but I’m sure there’s a better use for this than that,” and dial up the naughty level a few notches.

Let her show you, and you pay very close attention to things like speed, pressure, direction, etc., then you take over and allow her to continue to coach you, which she may do with her hands or other body parts instead of spoken words, i.e., raising her hips to press toward you means more pressure, etc. – use your head and keep your cool, and everything will be fine. It’s a learning experience, a damned pleasurable one too, not a contest, so put that competition nonsense away and leave it there before it gets you hurt. This is about cooperation, not competition.

All joking and rib-poking aside, if you have a problem with this because of some kind of childhood sexual trauma, stop hiding from it and get help, because you’re cheating both of you out of a lot of things, including fun, trust, intimacy, etc. – things that no committed relationship can ever get too much of, right?

Take care, and keep in touch,
David

This mess could have been avoided if Brent just knew a little more about communicating with women and was comfortable with himself, two things that a whole lot of men have a huge problem with. If you are one of them, it’s time to give yourself – AND YOUR PARTNER – the gift of a break from all the stress.

Inside every man is an alpha male, and if he’s not in the lead in your life, he’s been suppressed, oppressed, or somehow pressured into the background, but he’s there, waiting to come out. Yes, he is! He’s been there ever since you were given that “Y” chromosome at conception! But…

Unfortunately, there’s not likely to be a hyper-skilled communicator that can rival any woman hiding in there with him unless you are an effeminate gay male that is so girly that every woman wants to go shopping with you, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t learn how to do much better than you are doing – so much better in fact, that she thinks you’re reading her mind at times.

Neither are hard to do, if you just apply a little time and effort to clearing out some bad programming and engaging in a little self-improvement, which is a whole lot easier than trying to put on an act for a creature that has about 100 times the capacity for sensing and interpreting non-verbal communication than you have. You can’t just ACT like a man, you have to BE a man. But the good news is that you just need to know what works and how to make the parts of what work that appeal to you a real part of your life, which is one of the most enjoyable processes a man can go through at any point in his life.

It’s all laid out for you, step by step, in “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage,” and it’s waiting for you at http://www.makingherhappy.com. Download it and give it a shot, because life is too short to miss out on the good parts, and unless you and your partner are truly enjoying your manhood (literally and figuratively) you are missing out on a LOT of good parts.

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

So She Says She Has a Headache: The Oldest Lie in Relationships and Marriage

A reader asks about the age-old lie, “Not tonight; I have a headache,” and its other iterations. He may not like the answer, but if he’ll accept it he can fix the problem, which is not her; it’s him.

I’ve wondered for a long time why I seldom receive a letter on this subject, because in the research phase of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” it was one of the first things to come up: the ages-old lie, “Not tonight, Dear. I have a headache.” It has other iterations, such as cramping, nausea, too tired (an extremely common one and easy to fake), menstrual discomfort, etc. Sometimes these complaints might be legitimate issues, in others they won’t. There is a pretty good way to know the difference, and a fool-proof way to eliminate the bogus ones. We’ll discuss all that in a minute, but first, meet Randy:

Hey David,

I have run into a stone wall with my wife and was hoping you might be able to shed some light onto a problem that is driving me straight to the sofa. It has to do with what else, sex. I know women think that is all a man thinks of, but how can you not when you never get it!

Every time lately I want to have sex with my wife she always has a reason that we can not do it. I have heard them all at this point, I am on my period, I have a yeast infection or bladder infection, I am too tired I have had the kids all day. Hey I am not a heartless SOB, but enough is enough how can a woman have a problem all of the time? I need some help here dude, how do I get her back in the bed with me and have sex instead of fighting for half an hour and ending up on the sofa every night?

Randy

My reply:

Randy, Buddy, let’s talk. There are two possible reasons for your wife’s behavior, those being that she’s really having that much trouble and that she’s not having that much trouble but it’s easier to fake something than to argue and fight about sex. It’s simple logic. She’s complaining of a problem, so the problem either does or does not exist. If the problem exists, there should be some signs of attempted remedy, and if not, she’s bound to slip up sometime.

When she claims she has a headache, is her behavior consistent with having a headache? Taking some form of pain reliever, wanting you to rub her neck if it’s tension or taking antihistamines or decongestants if it’s sinus or avoiding bright lights and loud noises if it’s a migraine?

Incidentally, last I heard, the AMA was still saying that the average person has 6 headaches a year. That’s really ironic because that’s also the number of times the average couple who has been together longer than two years has sex in a year (if, of course, they’ve not discovered "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage", in which case they’re having sex several times per week to several times per day!)

Is she saying she’s too tired for sex and then going to sleep or sitting on the phone with a friend, sitting at her computer, or watching TV for another two hours? Are there wrappers from feminine hygiene products in the trash can when she claims to be having her period?

Is she going to the doctor and/or drugstore and bringing home prescription or over-the-counter treatments for bladder infections or yeast infection when she claims she has one?

The point is that there is behavior that can be logically expected if someone has a genuine ailment, especially if it’s frequent. If their actions are contradictory to their words, they’re faking it to avoid sex. There is no other explanation.

Now the big question, why would she want to be avoiding sex?

There are very few people who don’t enjoy it, and their problems are pretty severe. If she has enjoyed sex with you in the past, it’s unlikely that she would have developed one of these major problems (like being raped) without you knowing about it. That leaves only one conclusion.

She’s no longer feeling attracted to you! Get this:

The slow-down of sexual activity a year or two after your marriage may seem normal because everybody complains about it and there’s a chemical change that stops forcing you to want it constantly, but it’s actually the first major symptom in the slow decay of a relationship. It doesn’t mean the relationship is over, but it’s now, not when you or she gets busted in an affair or somebody gets served divorce papers, that is the best time (other than before trouble starts, as a preventive measure) to start learning what you’ve needed to know all along and doing what you should have been doing all along to set things right while it’s still easy to do so. At this point, her feelings are still mostly positive, right?

Loves you? Maybe, even probably.

Loyal to you? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on whether someone else has created attraction for her and she’s responding to them. A woman will have sex with a man to whom she is attracted, and will not with a man to whom she is not attracted, at least not without resentment. It’s just that simple. There is also a strange tendency for people having an affair to refuse to have sex at home because they’re having feelings of fidelity for the person they’re involved with. So what do you do?

First, you forget about trying to find out if she’s sleeping with another man. That is irrelevant, and nothing good can come from finding out. She’s living with you, and that’s all that matters. Any woman would rather feel attraction for a man she’s living with, especially if she loves him, than any other man on the planet. It makes for a nice, tidy, secure, and enjoyable environment that is not possible under any other scenario. That is your edge. Don’t blow it by making accusations and digging around to find out something that you won’t want to know afterwards anyway. If you handle this right and your wife has any character at all, she’ll end up confessing sometime in the future anyway, or else her past will come back to haunt her. Forget about it. (Or “fuggidaboudit” as they say in New York City!)

Second, start creating attraction for her. You apparently did it for her at one time, or she wouldn’t have married you (even if she married you because she was pregnant, she slept with you – drunken daze notwithstanding – because you created attraction for her), so you have to bring it back, which is nowhere near as hard as creating it for a stranger, for a variety of reasons that I won’t get into here, but are fully explained in the book that will tell you how to create attraction for her, “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage.” She lives for it, yearns for it, and wants you to be the one creating for her, of all the men on the planet. Give her what she wants!

Take care, and keep in touch,
David Cunningham

Gentlemen, that feeling you get that you would describe as “I’ve just got to have her,” is the same feeling women get when in the presence of an alpha male who creates sexual tension for her by flipping switches and withdrawing in a “two-steps-forward-one-step-back” dance that can go on for minutes to days. They’re not visually stimulated like we are with the human physique, it’s behavior that gets them fired up more than anything, the confident, cocky, almost swaggering arrogance of a man who knows he can do anything balanced with the intellect to do what he chooses, the authority to pull it off, and the sense of humor to make it all enjoyable.

Putting on the act won’t do it, at least not for long. You might get way with it for a date or two with a stranger, but with your committed partner, it’s got to be you, the REAL you, not just an act you can put on and constantly be stressed out over the possibility of having her see through it. Help is instantly available if you’re ready to be the man you can be.

“THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” teaches you, as it has taught thousands of men, what you need to know and helps you to incorporate it into the real you, making you that confident alpha male you takes care of business and has fun in ways that drives women wild with desire.

It also teaches you the difference in how you communicate and how women communicate so that when she tries to tell you what she wants you’ll be able to hear and understand it. Believe it or not, many women have reported having affairs and getting caught in them so that their husband will see the example that “the other man” sets, because she’s tried to tell him and the message didn’t get through! The boyfriend wasn’t a boyfriend, he was the illustration in a “how-to” manual she tried to give him!

And, since women need love for security and attraction to feel alive, it teaches you what attractive behavior is, and the personality that causes it to happen naturally, the alpha male personality, and how to develop it so that you can enjoy the confidence that it brings you in all walks of life, not just in your relationship. It’s not just about relationship improvement, it’s about MALE improvement, about being a real man, and doing the manly things that real men do, and loving every minute of it.

The coolest part is that the manly things that manly men do and women love to see them do are fun! They’re things that men just naturally do, but in that idiotic fiasco of the 1980’s when women said they’d like for men to be more sensitive and men took that to mean sensitive INSTEAD OF manly and not sensitive IN ADDITION TO being manly, as the women wanted (they never state “the obvious”), men have just stopped doing and turned into a bunch of wusses.

Kill that inner wuss and let your inner manly man and inner naughty boy come back out to stay. I’ll teach you how. Click over to http://www.makingherhappy.com, download your copy of "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and let’s get started, because life is just too short to spend it being a wuss, not to mention celibate and on the couch!

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

Why Nice Guys Finish Last in Relationships and Marriage, Part 2, Neediness That You May Not Recognize

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Be Careful What You Wish For, Part 2: Fantasies In Relationships and Marriage

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 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, 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..

If you really want to go there, 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,” 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

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

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

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

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

Dear David,

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

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

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

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

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

Daphne S.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reader Responses Confirm: Your Diet Can Kill Your Relationship and Marriage

A reader comments about his experience after eliminating soy and the feminizing effects of the estrogen it contains from his diet. In short, he’s feeling like a man again! And other readers confirm that they're better off without it.

On July 17, I wrote to you about how soy estrogens have a feminizing effect on men because they tie up testosterone receptors and keep the male sex hormone from making you masculine while enhancing any potential feminine appearance and personality factors. I received the expected ranting and raving from people who feel (but don’t have one iota of scientific evidence) that soy is the ultimate healthful food, and prevents all sorts of diseases, including cancer (which incidentally, numerous scientific studies have proven can be CAUSED by soy estrogens, not prevented by it). However…

I also got several letters from men and a woman who have had the good sense to try removing soy from their diet for themselves and see if they notice any difference in their demeanor, appearance, etc., to confirm or contradict what I reported. Here are a few of their notes:

Hi David,

I did as you suggested and stopped drinking the two glasses of soy milk my wife had me drinking every day, and I’m already feeling a lot more like my old self, and specifically, a lot more like the MAN I used to be. I thought getting cloudy-headed and having trouble focusing on tasks, and getting frustrated and fussy over things that didn’t bother me in the past was just old age setting in, even though I’m only 46. My wife has noticed the difference, too, and now she’s beginning to question her vegetarian diet and its effect on our kids. Thanks for the heads-up!

John T.

Hey Dave, [For future reference, I really prefer people don’t call me “Dave” – it’s not all that offensive, it’s just not “me,” if you know what I mean.]

My wife and I have been trying to have another baby, and not having much luck. In fact, we were getting pretty frustrated. After reading your article on soy, we started researching and found that soy has been linked to fertility problems. We’re vegetarians and eat a lot of soy-substitutes for meat products and drink a lot of soy milk, and this has us questioning our choice. However, I want to thank you for the information and to let you know that in following your advice and taking the lead in the research and discussion on the subject and doing the naughty play things you mention, my wife’s acting differently toward me, like sex isn’t just a chore to have the baby. My guess is we owe you a lot, so thanks!

Gary

(Note: birth control pills contain estrogen and progesterone, so this is not a surprise.)

Hi David,

I was skeptical of your newsletter and of the book you mentioned [“The Whole Soy Story” by Dr. Kaayla Daniel], so I got a copy of the book and in trying to debunk what she says, ended up finding proof of most of what she said before giving up and accepting it as truth. My doctor has been harping at me over elevated homocysteine levels and estrogen levels, and I expect that when I see him next month I’ll see improvement. You may have saved me a heart attack, and I thank you.

Janelle

(It may have saved her from some form of cancer, too, as estrogen is a cellular reproduction hormone and elevated estrogen levels have been causally -- not casually -- linked to several types of cancer, especially of the breasts and female reproductive organs.)

So guys, here’s the scoop: Nothing that makes you feminine or unhealthy is going to make you attractive, and soy has proven and is continuing to prove to be a major cause of wussification and feminization of men, along with a whole bunch of health problems studies have causally linked to soy (while my work is entirely related to relationships, it’s still very valuable information, and I urge you to read it):

1. Elevated homocysteine levels, a crystalline amino acid that erodes blood vessels and causes them to hemorrhage, which is then filled with LDL cholesterol, which acts like radiator “stop-leak” and seals the fissure, but continues to collect and forms plaque as it picks up minerals like calcium from the blood and ultimately, if unchecked, causes a blockage, which can result in heart disease, heart attack, stroke, pulmonary embolus (if the plaque breaks loose and lodges in the lungs, which is often deadly), etc.

2. Cancer, especially of the breasts and reproductive organs

3. Allergies and reduced immunity

4. Thyroid dysfunction (caused by genistein, a major constituent of soy products, which is known to depress the thyroid gland, causing stunted growth, lower intelligence and heart disease, any of which can indeed cause relationship-impeding problems)

5. Malnutrition and digestive problems (many people are allergic to soy, especially soybean oil, which is why potato chips cooked in “Olean” and other modified soy bean oils that supposedly lower fat content causes some people digestive upset.)

6. Nutrient deficiencies, including calcium (vital for bone health and the prevention of osteoporosis, and doctors blindly parrot the propaganda that estrogen-containing HRT helps prevent bone loss when it in fact contributes to it!)

7. Reproductive disorders (another relationship-straining possibility) and infertility (also caused by ingestion of genistein)

8. Cognitive and mental decline (care to bet on whether this could put a damper on a relationship?)

9. Psychosexual problems (high estrogen levels make concentration difficult, and make one “edgy” enough to interfere with libido, as you’ve seen in women who tend to drift to the shopping list and chore lists while in the middle of sex)

I want to be perfectly clear about this: I am not “attacking” soy, and have no agenda, except to report to you things that bona fide scientists and doctors have discovered in well-structured and executed clinical studies and reported about something that can have a severe impact on both your relationship and your life together. I’m not in this just to help people light things back up in the bedroom; it takes a healthy sex-life to have a healthy and long-lasting relationship, but it also takes communication, intimacy, love, trust, respect, etc., and good health certainly facilitates all of the above, does it not?

In case anybody is wondering, this whole apparent myth about soy being healthy started in 1995 when a character by name of Dr. James W. Anderson did what is called a “meta-analysis” of soy. Meta-analysis is where someone who can’t conduct their own study and doesn’t know enough about a subject to get a grant or involvement in a bona fide study gathers data from a collection of other studies and renders an opinion based on nothing more than statistical analysis and their interpretation of the findings.

Since those who use meta-analysis don’t know enough about the subject to study it directly, they have no way of knowing if the studies they throw into the mix were conducted correctly, are scientifically sound, etc., and bad results often follow as things are either taken out of context or based upon studies that are flawed, merely “suggest” something instead of “proving” it, turn out to be a meta-analysis of other studies, or turn out to be biased by virtue of who paid for the study.

Anderson’s meta-analysis was funded by Protein Technologies International, a major promoter of soy products – a pretty big red flag – but everybody jumped on the band wagon. Since then, Anderson himself has admitted that other studies conducted over the past ten years have proven the inaccuracy of his initial study and findings by stating that these other studies have “reported less impressive results.” The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has also received warnings from its own staff experts about supporting the claims of a statistician, but they were ignored.

Consequently, governments of Israel, France, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand, among others, are issuing warnings against the use of soy formula for infants, especially regarding the effects of genistein. They’re slow to act, as any government is, but hopefully they and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) get around to noticing that it’s bad for adults, too.

In a nutshell, possible benefits of soy use are clearly outweighed by PROVEN risks.

So there it is, folks. It’s a long, complex story, and I may have provided more detail than many of you care to stomach, but I’ll not apologize for trying to take good care of you and providing facts instead of unsupported opinion and theory. I sell books on improving long-term relationships to make my living, but I’m here to help you live long and happy lives together, and I’m going to report to you any factual information I encounter that will help you to do that.

Speaking of selling books (big wink!), I’ve got a winner for you. It’s called "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and it covers so much more than attraction; it teaches the thorough evaluation of your relationship and its constituents, what you need to know to truly understand women, their needs, their habits and methods, and how to communicate with them, and how to build attraction for them to spice up your intimate life and protect them from their greatest enemy of all, BOREDOM.

Yes, I said boredom, and if you don’t believe me, just ask one of them! Then jump over to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy and get started on kicking your relationship up to notches unknown!

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

What Men Can Learn from Women's Problems in Relationships and Marriage

A woman responds to the very recent “Girls and Their Toys” article, saying that she’s tired of suppressing her desire and being insulted for her husband’s inadequacies. Join us…

I haven’t mentioned it for awhile, but about a third of my newsletter readers and book purchasers are women; this has been surprisingly and delightfully consistent since the beginning. Some women are just curious, others want to keep tabs on what men are being told, some are looking for the drama of an argument, others for validation, and my favorites, the real achievers, are looking at advice to men on how to be the best man to help them form a picture of their own perfect man and develop relationship criteria to use in their own life. If only everyone were that organized and deliberate when it came to choosing a life partner!

These women have provided an endless stream of questions, ideas for research and newsletters, and constant confirmation that what I am advising you gentlemen to do is what will work. I want to thank you ladies for participating, both personally and on behalf of the male readers of my newsletter, blog posts and "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and ask you to not only continue to participate, but to hang a note on “the girly grapevine” inviting your friends to join in with us.

I mention this because a woman posted a comment on my blog (when I ran this article a year ago) regarding the recent article about girls and their toys, (see it in my newsletter archive if you missed it). Her comment smacks of irony in a role reversal of stereotypes; she is the dissatisfied one and her husband is being non-responsive and defensive, and it’s a lesson that all men need to learn from. Meet M.:

David,

You hit the mark every time. I wish my husband would read your newsletters. I put him on your mailing list but I can’t make him take your very excellent advice. I'm so totally frustrated with my man, I am at a loss. We have had a few very tough years and I decided to really stick it out. I often wonder what I could do to make him crave me like he once did. We might have sex once or twice a month and it’s not that great. I have really suppressed my wild sex kitten flirty ways because I have been insulted too many times with comments like, "that’s all you care about". What can I do??? HELP!

M.

Gentlemen, watch the “back side” of this conversation and see how much of your own problems and potential solutions might be found here. In what I’m about to tell “M” lie many potential clues to reasons for things that have happened in your own life, and you may well learn more from my advice to M than M does, depending on your situation and experiences.

Hi M.,

I would have answered you privately by e-mail before posting this publicly but the one downside to blogs is that private communication is not possible, and I’m guessing you realized that before posting on a blog. There are a few things we need to talk about.

First, (and this goes for everybody else, too!) don’t sign somebody up for my newsletter or anyone else’s. Aside from ticking them off and having them report the newsletter provider as a spammer, it’s too impersonal, too indirect for a man to appreciate, and it won’t be taken seriously as anything but nagging. If you see something in a newsletter that you want your partner to read, print it, hand it to them, and tell them that you want them to read it because it expresses something that is important to you and that you want them to know but have been ineffective at communicating to them.

Don’t walk away, wait for them to finish, even if you have to tell them that you need for them to do it immediately before they begin to read. Remember that men speak and need to be spoken to with what most women would consider downright brutal directness (not mean-spirited, but so bluntly as to leave no room at all for interpretative lee-way) most of the time.

This is not a time that you can do what women normally do and ask a question to make a statement or make a statement to ask a question. It’s one of those times that you must be so direct as you would be with a very small child, not because he’s stupid, but because we men just can’t communicate that way (until we’ve read "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage") and your margin for error here is near zero.

That brings me to the next point. He may not be as naturally sexually aggressive as you due to hormone levels, but a man with a low drive can still be excited and enticed into sex if he’s not stressed about it. The insults you speak of are a sign of frustration, and based on encounters with hundreds of couples on this subject, the source of his frustration could very well be from his inability to verbally connect with you when you try to talk to him about this. What to you feels like a discussion, or more likely, a negotiation, feels to him like nagging, because he just can’t hear what you’re saying.

You can’t express to him that you want more intimacy with him by asking him if he thinks everything is okay with your sex life. That’s the way a woman typically tries to enter such a discussion, and when a man hears a question like that, he doesn’t hear your statement that you have a problem that you want to discuss, he hears a request for information. He very likely said, “It’s fine,” or something like that, and left you feeling like he had shut you down and didn’t want to discuss it.

So being a good wife, you let a little time pass, tried to catch him in a better mood, and did it again, same response, same result, except this time he’s already answered the question, and the repeat comes across as a bit insecure and nagging, and the seeds of frustration are sewn. From this point on, the more you tried to talk with him about it, the more frustrated and defensive he got, until he started insulting you to try to keep you from bringing it up any more.

His frustration isn’t that you want sex, it’s that you “nag” him about it – there is never a discussion that resolves anything and brings achievement and closure to the issue, and to a man, that’s a thorn in his side. So you see, the problem is most likely not his libido, but your and his combined communications deficit. Neither of you is hearing what the other is trying to say.

Until you can get him to read a book like "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and learn to talk with you and listen to you closer to your own level, you’re going to have to try to talk to him on his, which is easier because it’s more primal, but is unnatural and may feel very odd to you. You have to be very direct with him, asking questions when you want to know something and making statements when you want to say something, because right now, like 99.9% of the men in the world, that’s all he knows and is capable of; it’s what he was born with and has lived with all his life.

And let me be perfectly clear on this point: when I say “very direct” I do not mean stern or in any way belligerent. I simply mean exactly what I said earlier, use questions to ask questions and statements to make statements, just as you would with a preschool child, but do not treat him like a preschool child, nor adopt any kind of motherly tone as you talk. He’s not a child; his communication infrastructure and protocols are simply similar to a child’s.

Tell him that you want to talk to resolve a problem that you have not been able to adequately communicate, and you think you can do a better job of it now because you have a better understanding of what his needs may be. Men are all about problem-solving, and you’ll have his attention, especially if he thinks it will put an end to what he perceives as nagging.

DO NOT dramatize. When speaking to a man, saying something once is enough. Nearly all of us get it the first time through, and find repeats very stressful and annoying; it agitates us in the same way that being bored agitates you. Tell him what you want and need, very bluntly, and listen to what he has to say on the subject.

As far as seduction, men are very much visually stimulated with regard to attraction, but we vary somewhat with regard to seduction. Some of us like to take it very slow, almost like women, savoring anticipation, while others like to just be pounced on or like to pounce on our women, playfully and for no apparent reason except intimate fun. What you must find out is what is sexually fun and satisfying to him, and unlike most women, most men will speak very directly about it or very openly and aggressively demonstrate it.

Don’t be afraid to coach him to meet your needs while you’re “in the act,” but don’t do it in a way that makes him feel incompetent or stressed into “performance anxiety.” It’s often easier to do it with gestures than words, guiding his body where you want it. Couples often find that their partner’s excitement makes them excited, so just let it all hang out and see where it takes you. Sex isn’t an act or a destination, but a journey, even a grand epic adventure if you allow it to be so.

Your first step on that adventure is to diffuse your husband’s frustration over your communications problems, because as things are now, he has come to associate sex with nagging and communications frustration instead of the carnal pleasures that your naughty “feline” side wants to give him. Once that is handled, the rest should be easy as long as you can keep the communications lines open and keep your problem-solving in a tone of exploration instead of finger-pointing, because allowing your “sex kitten flirty ways” to come back into the picture will then be exciting for him (and you!) as it once was, although you may have to learn how to present an image of being a little more hard to get to ignite his natural desire to chase you. If you’re too available, you may be taken for granted, just like a man who never gives his wife a chance to rise to the challenge of seducing him.

Take care, and keep in touch,
David Cunningham

So Gentlemen, what could you learn from this lady’s problems?

For starters, how about that women have a lot of the same drives, needs, and desires that we do, and just as much trouble expressing them to us as we have expressing ours to them?

How about that they get frustrated just like we do over the same things that frustrate us?

How about that they know as little about us as we know about them?

How about that our differences can be very complimentary if we learn what they are and how they work and choose to put them to work for our mutual benefit instead of resenting them and competing to see who is going to change to meet the other’s expectations in an all-or-nothing scenario?

How about that your partner may have been trying for years to tell you something that you really want and need to know about her, something that could make your life together truly wonderful, and you never heard it? And because of that, you may have spent years fighting over the same frustrating issues, each of you thinking that the other was just being a nag or an inconsiderate jerk, when in fact you are both “functionally deaf” to each other.

It doesn’t take a lot to fix these problems. Genuine desire, a little patience, and good information will do the trick. And unlike a lot of problems, once these are fixed they are extremely unlikely to come back, because maintaining the solution is fun, enjoyable, and even intimate, and feels so good that you’ll automatically keep doing what works. It’s one of the few ways in which you can make life simpler yet more exciting and enjoyable at the same time!

You provide the desire and the patience, and I’ll provide the information, in my book "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," which you can download at http://www.makingherhappy.com. It’s been tested and proven, and coupled with your desire and effort, it will get you where you want to go and beyond, so get started right now, because life’s too short to wait.

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

Girls and Their Toys -- What's a Guy to Do, Especially in Relationships and Marriage?

Some men get terribly insecure about women’s “toys,” responding with such nonsense as “How am I supposed to compete with THAT?” You’re not, and you should be glad that it’s a toy and not