Long-Term Effects of Health and Hormones on Your Relationship and Marriage

One of your fellow readers, a very sharp physician and personal friend, has an extremely important observation to share on the subject of hormones and female behavior.

Hopefully you read the last couple of newsletters describing the experience of a woman over-dosed on testosterone and her reaction to feeling male drives and experiencing male brain activity. If not, you can read Part 1 and Part 2 to get caught up before moving to the advanced lesson provided by Dr. Frank:

David....the problem goes beyond injections as you know. As young men, our hormones are high and many of us are sexually out of control. However, as we get older, our testosterone wanes and we become more like women. We become less aggressive. We settle down. We look more towards family life. We probably drop our guard in the boudoir.

Women, on the other hand, as their female hormones wane later in life, are faced with increasing testosterone levels relative to their estrogen. Women become more aggressive, more independent, more logical and less emotional to a degree, and, of course, their sexual appetite increases as you can see from your other reader’s letter. Hence, our bodies’ hormone levels and associated behavior are not in sync for most of our lives. This obviously lends credence to the 'seven-year itch (actually, 4-7 year itch). It also supports what we men fear most....that women can actually be just as sexually aggressive as we are...maybe even more as they get older.

It behooves your men to stay with your book so they can navigate this “reversal of fortune,” lest they find that their wives are satisfying their urges elsewhere.

Frank

Frank has thought this through quite logically and thoroughly (I’ve spoken with him several times and his personality is such that irrationality or shoddiness just isn’t within him), and you Gentlemen, and Ladies, should pay attention, and continue thinking, because now that the door is open, I might as well tell you that it goes even farther than this.

Male menopause is no myth; our hormones slow down at mid-life just as women’s. We don’t stop manufacturing sperm cells, but our growth hormones (pituitary and thyroid) and adrenal hormones (testosterone, epinephrine, cortisol – a.k.a., hydrocortisone, androsterone, and others – basically metabolic and gender-influencing) slow more rapidly as we age. Our brain structure does not change, so we do not pick up the female benefits of heightened communications skills and creativity, but we do slowly become more susceptible to the vulnerabilities estrogen creates in women, those of over-driven emotions, irrationality, insecurity, fussiness (even to the extent of drama), and lack of aggressiveness, even when it’s needed.

And as we lose some of the benefits of our masculinity, women gain them without losing some of the benefits of femininity; their communications skills and creativity are due to brain structure caused by estrogen early in life, not by on-going exposure to estrogen. Declining estrogen does not decrease their left-brain density, which facilitates their creativity, nor does it shrink their corpus callosum, the bridge between the hemispheres of the brain that gives them heightened communications skills and other things. BUT…

The change in their balance of estrogen to testosterone does do exactly as Frank described, making them more aggressive and less erratic, more rational, and often MUCH lower-maintenance with regard to drama, so much so that they may get tired of YOUR drama if your testosterone levels fall too far.

And the kicker, their libido will be climbing as your declines. And as they become more aggressive and their libido increases, they will be needing more from you in the bedroom, not less. Diet and exercise can do a lot to help in this regard, as can getting off of statin drugs and soy-ridden foods that raise your estrogen levels. Pregnenolone (the master adrenal hormone that is broken down into all the others), DHEA (the precursor to testosterone, and is a metabolite of pregnenolone), and testosterone itself can also be safely substituted with bio-identical hormone supplements, if required.

For those of you on statin drugs and concerned about stopping them, there is no medical proof whatsoever that statin drugs reduce blockages or heart attacks. Furthermore, high cholesterol is a symptom of low thyroid and/or adrenal output, not heart disease; cholesterol is the root of all the “sterol” (basically the hormones ending in “rone” or “sone”) hormones; too much of it means it is not being converted to the hormones we need, which in turn cause a lot of other health problems in addition to demasculinization.

The blockages associated with high cholesterol are in fact the result of either too little vitamin C in the body causing malformed collagen chains that weaken blood vessels or too much of the amino acid homocysteine eroding the wall of vessels at bends and junctions; each of these problems result in small fissures that hemorrhage and are clogged by LDL cholesterol, just like radiator “stop-leak,” and the bit of cholesterol that protrudes into the vessel collects more cholesterol and minerals that eventually build up to a blockage.

If you stop the hemorrhaging with proper diet that provides sufficient vitamin C and the B vitamins that keep homocysteine levels down and get even a modicum of exercise, high cholesterol is not an issue, let alone a threat, except as an indication of pituitary, thyroid, or adrenal issues, which can be life-threatening, as they DO lead to insulin resistance, and then diabetes, which brings high blood pressure (high blood glucose inflames the lining of blood vessels which decreases their diameter and raises pressure), severely impaired immune system, kidney failure, neuropathy, blood clots, amputations, and blindness, to name a few things. And yes, demasculinization, too.

So what do you do about all of this? We’ll talk about women in a minute, but for your health, I STRONGLY suggest you do not rely on mainstream medicine. Doctors don’t have the time, resources and energy to do their own research, and have to rely on the information provided by the drug companies. The information from the drug companies is SALES information. The studies they conduct on their drugs are to see if they can get it approved, and if it will make enough money to offset the lawsuits. Most doctors realize this to some degree and are willing to discuss treatment if you can bring them better information.

I am about to list the resources I personally use, and I do not have any affiliate or other arrangement with these resources and receive no benefit of any kind for recommending them. First is www.stopthethyroidmadness.com. Read their book even if you think you are the picture of health, because if the symptoms of thyroid problems start showing up, the overwhelming evidence is that your present doctor will NOT be able to treat you; they rely on lab tests that don’t indicate the effectiveness of the treatment and a treatment that provides only one of five thyroid hormones, a storage chemical that is supposed to be converted to the other forms and in many people, is not converted because of any one of many possible problems.

Long-story-short, as goes your pituitary-thyroid-adrenal functions, so goes your health in general, and mainstream medicine is not up to speed, while the doctors, researchers and patients that contribute at www.stopthethyroidmadness.com are compiling real-world results from real-world treatments and sharing the facts of their unsuccessful and successful treatment attempts. I recommend them because they very probably saved my life after spending years using mainstream treatments for an inactive thyroid and gaining weight, becoming diabetic, and watching my blood pressure go to 285/140.

In addition, I subscribe to several relatively inexpensive medical newsletters written by doctors who have dedicated a significant portion of their careers to research and have patient results to watch and report on. First is David Williams, MD, a globe-trotting pioneer and whistle-blower. He sells a lot of supplements to help fund his research, but his newsletter is highly informative and 100% factual. He’s at www.drdavidwilliams.com. I’ve subscribed almost non-stop for 20 years; breaks were mainly caused by being out of the country.

Another is David Brownstein, MD, possibly the world’s single top authority on the thyroid and one of the advisors at www.stopthethyroidmadness.com. His newsletter is excellent, factual, and easy to read. He’s at http://www.drbrownstein.com and has a great blog, newsletter, and several excellent books.

Russell L. Blaylock is another I highly recommend. I have over 60 editions of his newsletters on hand and expect I’ll be continuing this subscription for a long time. Another that is factual, thorough, and easy to read. He’s at http://www.blaylockreport.com.

There are some rather ridiculous blog posts that show up on Google searches of these sources, claiming they are frauds and fakes, but when you dig into them, you find that the people decrying them take issue with them selling supplements, or the fact that they are owned by a politically-leaning magazine, or just about anything else except that they quote and use verifiable studies to come to logical conclusions that make people healthy. In other words, if you’re going to fire a doctor, do so because he’s hurting you or can hurt you, not because you don’t like his politics or the way he dresses. And the same thing goes for keeping one; don’t just keep one because he gives you plenty of prescription drugs; keep him because he makes you healthy, and treats disease as a disease, with a cause to be cured, instead of a deficiency of medication.

One other resource I recently discovered and highly recommend is Jon Gabriel’s book, “The Gabriel Method.” It’s working wonderfully for me and several others whom I know. Even the guy’s story of what brought him to write his book is fascinating, from over 400 pounds to a trim 182, and unlike dieting methods, the longer you follow his program, the FASTER the weight falls off and you get in shape. Catch him at http://www.jongabriel.com.au, where he has a free newsletter, and you can buy his book on Amazon.com for about $11.00, but I bought his whole audio series and a copy of his book and the audio CD’s are great.

Giving total responsibility for your health to a doctor is like giving total responsibility for your safety to a police officer; it’s not their job to accept such responsibility. It’s your body, you live with it, and if you don’t take care of it, you will die. Period. Your health and personal safety are responsibilities that you should never, ever delegate. Be knowledgeable and prepared to handle whatever comes up. That’s what men do, right? And if you hesitated for even a second before an emphatic “YES!” came to mind, you and I really need to talk, because you’re farther gone than you realize.

As for what to do about women as they become older, first, look forward to it. They are far more enjoyable as they mature; indeed, I would not be surprised to find out that is why a lot of men prefer to date and marry women who are older than them. Second, learn all you can about typical male and female behavior. This will allow you to watch yourself for signs that your masculinity is waning so that you can do whatever is required to safely and effectively address the problem, and it will also allow you to be prepared for the evolution of your partner to a more secure and even aggressive woman.

Dr. Frank points out that a lot of men fear sexually-aggressive women. Why? Don’t we spend most of our lives WISHING women were more sexually aggressive? I can tell you from your letters that most of you are WISHING your wives were at least more sexually active and would be thrilled if they were indeed more sexually aggressive. Exciting your wife to the point that she becomes sexually aggressive is one of the cornerstones of what I teach, so if you’re afraid of it, you’d better wake up and get busy, because whether you want it or not, at some point, it’s coming, no matter what.

The good news is that as I’ve been explaining, it is indeed something to look forward to, not something to fear. The worst thing for most of you is performance anxiety, which is treatable with either some knowledge (write to me at tips@makingherhappy.com if you are the least bit dissatisfied or uncomfortable in the bedroom and I’ll point you toward some great resources), some testosterone, or getting your diet and exercise overhauled into something fit for a man instead of a couch potato who lives on deep-fried starch.

The rest of it requires simply knowing yourself, knowing your partner, being sensitive to changes in either, and knowing what to do. All of that is moot if you’re not getting along well enough today to stay together. You can learn about handling all of that from my newsletters, but you’ll find that you can learn A LOT MORE A LOT FASTER if you read MY book, "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," as those who have read it have already found out. And you can see how much I share in these newsletters, so imagine how much is in my book! It’s waiting for you at http://www.makingherhappy.com and every minute you spend without reading it is a minute spent at your own peril, without resolution for everything that has brought you here, so read it today. The clock – analog, digital, biological, or whatever – is ticking, and you can stay ahead of the game or spend ten times the effort playing catch-up. It’s your call, so make it a good one.

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

A Woman Lives Briefly As a Man, and Teaches a BIG Relationship and Marriage Lesson

EXCLUSIVE MUST READ! A female reader gets an accidental overdose of testosterone and spends a couple of weeks feeling what many men feel every day, and there are lessons for all in her experience!

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is HUGE. One of your fellow readers, Daphne, whom we’ve heard from before on a couple of occasions, is 40 years old and using hormone replacement therapy (HRT) after a total hysterectomy. The strangest thing happened!

For those of you who don’t know a lot about endocrinology, after a hysterectomy or menopause (which are in fact the same ultimate effect, as a hysterectomy causes sudden-onset menopause due to the loss of sex hormones produced by the organs and glands removed), women are often given a cocktail of hormones to try to replace the ones that were produced by the organs that were removed.

Many claims are made about preventing osteoporosis and other things, but the only thing that estrogen HRT has been clinically PROVEN to do is curb hot flashes and some forms of it (especially the one derived from horse urine, called “equione,” which is estimated at 1,000 times the cellular reproductive power of human estrogen) have also been proven to raise a woman’s chance of contracting cancer, especially if her HRT regimen includes synthetic estrogen (like equione) or high doses of natural estrogen.

What is not common knowledge is that testosterone, the male hormone, is also needed and used by women to combat fatigue, heighten libido (it’s the only true aphrodisiac known to science), and actually does help with the formation and repair of bone and tissue. Indeed, estrogen is a metabolite (a by-product of the metabolism of) of testosterone; men metabolize more as DHT and other non-estrogen substances, while women metabolize more as estrogen, which is needed by all for cellular reproduction but in higher doses causes the femininization of the body, including the brain, skin, and other non-sexual organs.

When women have significantly too much testosterone for an extended period, it causes their voice to deepen, facial and other body hair to grow, libido is put into overdrive, and they get more aggressive; a lesser overage will cause minor symptoms like being less creative and more analytical, more calm and less fussy, a more masculine communications protocol (speaking more directly and less in tune to non-verbal messages, among other things), less emotionally-driven, more aggressive, etc.

This woman was given a dose that was determined to be WAAAAY beyond her natural tolerance in an injection, and she describes an experience that you simply must read for yourself. There are multiple lessons, some not so obvious, for both men and women in this letter, but I’m not going to go into those until tomorrow; putting everything in one newsletter or blog post would make it too long for most of you to be comfortable with or have time to read. In the meantime, I challenge you to read this letter and see what lessons you can derive from it yourself, and if you wish to share your observations, simply reply to this newsletter or write to me at tips@makingherhappy.com and don’t forget to indicate whether you want your observations shared with the other readers.

Without further ado, here again is Daphne, with a tale that you really should study, because she has a unique perspective after this experience, possibly the only woman alive who has lived feeling the male drives and testosterone-driven emotions to this degree, and her reaction to them contains the biggest lesson of all:

Dear David,

All my life I have heard people say if you could walk a mile in someone else’s shoes you would not be so fast to judge them. I have to tell you of such an experience that has proven this to me, and this was so serious I felt like I should share part of it with you. I will be giving you only a small portion of what I went through, but I hope it will be enough that you will understand that I really know what it feels like to be a man.

I’m 40 years old, had a hysterectomy twelve years ago, and a few weeks ago I went to see my gynecologist about a problem I was having with my hormone levels. Every time I was tested my hormones were lower than the doctor felt they should be, and he made such a big deal of it that I became concerned and made the choice to let the doctor give me a strong shot to see if this could get me back on the right track. In doing so I was given a very large dose of testosterone, which turned my body totally opposite of what I had ever been before. I started to view life on a whole new level.

It started out with me looking for sex everywhere. I was suddenly looking at every man I saw and some women as possible sex partners, and I had never done this, especially toward women! I thought at first I was going crazy. I would sit and look at them and could play out in my head all the thoughts I was having about them and what I could imagine we could do together.

I was also terribly aggressive and easily angered, wanting to get into fights with people who would piss me off and I never wanted to do that before, ever! For example during all this I was pulled over by a policeman and was given a ticket. Now most of the time I would cry or flirt or do whatever I had to get out of it and for the most part that would work for me, but this time all I wanted to do is punch the cop right in the face for being an ass to me.

There were so many changes in my life I could not possibly describe all of them for you right now. The point I wanted to get across is after I went through days of strange feelings and urges I had never had before I told my best friend about them and he looked at me and smiled and told me that all of what I told him about was what a man went through every day of his life until he got old enough for his testosterone levels to drop severely, which he said was somewhere between the late twenties and early fifties, depending on the man, and could be even later for some men.

I was blown away. I called my gynecologist and told him what my friend said and he confirmed that the dosage may have been too high and that I could be experiencing such side effects for several days, but not to be alarmed because they would stop when the testosterone was used and it returned to a more tolerable level.

Ladies if what I went through just for those few days is what a man goes through every day there is a lot more to being a man than we as women think. All I can say is I hope I never go through anything like this again. If the feeling of gladly passing up food for sex is a small part of how they feel then I say give them sex. I will never again tell my love that I do not feel like it or I have a headache for during that short period of time I got mad at my boyfriend for not giving me all the sex I wanted, and want it I did. With every single breath I took I wanted him, and sometimes not just him. When he did not want to give it to me I would look around and wonder where I could get it from.

Like I said, this is only a small part of what I went through and there is much more I could tell you and I might write it all down and send it to you one day, but I am just now starting to get some of the old me feeling like I should again. The main reason I wanted to write this is so that you woman readers might get a little better understanding of what our men go through all the time. I will promise you this before I ever tell my husband no again I will think about the experience I had and how I felt when he told me that he didn’t feel like it.

Daphne

What a story! I sincerely hope that Daphne chooses to share more of this story with us at sometime in the future, but aside from the drama of spending a few days feeling the urges and emotions that many of us men feel every day, there is a HUGE and significant lesson here for men. As I mentioned above, see if you can spot it, write to me at support@makingherhappy.com about it if you feel like it, and if I get the correct response from five or fewer people, a prize will be awarded, a copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and tomorrow I’ll reveal any winners and the big lesson after you’ve had some time to think about it and possibly win a prize!

Speaking of which, "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" is available for download right now at http://www.makingherhappy.com, and if you’ll read it diligently and learn its secrets, you’ll have the same inside-out view of women that Daphne got of men without having to have a large dose of estrogen or experience first-hand any of its side effects – an offer you can’t refuse, right?

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

Sometimes You Have to Be Tough to Have a Great Relationship and Marriage

Sometimes a woman quite literally NEEDS you to get a little tough with her. How do you recognize this, and how do you get tough without being abusive? Think “leadership”…

Yesterday was a really odd day. Everyone I know was having what you would call an “off day” of one kind or another. Allergies, colds, arthritis, lousy weather, vendor incompetence, boss incompetence, employee incompetence, customer incompetence, bad food, bad service, monthly cycle – you name it, somebody was going through it. The oddest thing was what happened with one of my best friends, Daphne.

We met over ten years ago, and when we did, she was a mess. Totally submissive, living for the approval of others, and living under the thumb of a wimpy, manipulative, predatory, wife-beating husband and a highly-controlling and manipulative mother. She asked me one day fairly early in our friendship how I had come to be so tough and independent, and how I could live being self-confident and caring absolutely nothing about what others thought of me. I steered her to some targeted reading, especially some of Ayn Rand’s most excellent work, and we talked about different problems and how to solve them.

She became fiercely independent, ultimately “wearing the pants in the family” (not a surprise at all given her husband’s nature; bullies always capitulate when you call their bluff) and presenting such a strong image to her mother that her mother went from being dominating and manipulative to seeking Daphne’s approval at every turn because she was intimidated by Daphne’s independence. That was about nine years ago, and she’s held the line ever since…that is, until yesterday.

There had been a lot of turmoil over the weekend, including a funeral, a couple of family problems, a severe migraine, etc., and by Monday morning she was so mentally fatigued and her testosterone so depleted (it balances the creative and emotionally-driving effects of estrogen, and too much influence from estrogen makes women – and men – uncharacteristically – or more, for some of them -- erratic, unstable, and agitated, a medical condition known as “estrogen dominance”) that her self-esteem became challenged, and she suddenly started acting like she had when we first met, very dramatic, needy, approval-seeking, etc. As the day wore on, it was getting worse instead of better.

To finish putting this in perspective, Daphne is one of the brightest women I know, with an IQ of around 130-140, very emotionally aware, and extremely competent at self-evaluation. She’s one of the top three women on the support staff who helped with the development of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and who continue to respond to surveys, questions, reader dilemmas, etc., with useful insight because she can “step in and out of herself” at will and remain entirely objective through the whole thing, which is very unusual among women, who tend to get wrapped up in the emotion of an experience and don’t want to quickly shut it down and analyze it, even when it would be to their extreme benefit to do so.

Do you have the picture now? A smart, fiercely independent woman who is quite adept at side-stepping her own emotions to rationally examine them has reverted to behavior not exhibited in nearly a decade, and as the day wore on, as I tried to point out what was happening, it got worse instead of better. I knew what was coming when she said, “I just feel like I need a good cry.” Why?

She’d been to a funeral and yet she needed a good cry? Danger Will Robinson! Danger! That’s a dependable sign of MAJOR emotional energy build-up looking for an outlet; “needing a good cry” is bad enough, but when a woman has been to a tear-jerking event like a funeral and still “needs a good cry,” well, where I grew up they would say something like, “You ain’t seen trouble yet, but it’s comin’!” Emotional energy is like any other kind of mental energy. Thought is the result of chemical reactions in the brain causing electrical impulses at the nerve synapses. This tells you what?

That the stress of all the emotion from the weekend had put her brain chemistry out of balance. Some women have more of a problem with this than others, but the symptoms are the same; they get weaker and more clingy, then needy, then irritable, and finally they sound like they’re spoiling for a fight, and you can hear the stress and anger start building in their voice looking for an outlet. The big question is “what do you do?”

First, you have to avoid the urge to let her engage you in a fight. If you can spot the “I just need a good cry” stage, suggest to her that she sit down for a chick-flick, and invite a girlfriend over to share it with her if she doesn’t want to be alone, not because you don’t care, but because it would be bad for both of you if you step into the “girlfriend role,” even temporarily. If she can “bleed off” during the chick flick, she’ll be fine. But you can’t always catch her in that state because she may pass through it and be in bad shape while you are apart, such as while one or both of you are at work. If that happens, you’re going to have to deal with it; there’s no escaping it, at least not without extreme risk.

If she gets bad enough to need a fight to bleed off, she’ll say something to put you on the defensive and then jump to get you to jump back; a big clue that this is about to happen is that whatever she seems to be upset about would normally be something trivial, or is even something that she obviously contrived, albeit involuntarily. It’s chemistry, and until you’ve been driven by something like this, it’s hard to understand or identify with it, but a woman will have very little to no choice about starting a fight once they reach this point. (Chick flick, anyone?)

Giving her a good fight will reset her brain chemistry, but it will also create a lot of embarrassment, hard feelings, scars and other aftermath that neither of you really want to deal with, and while she might be able to dismiss the things she says to you, even knowing that she’s in a involuntary predicament due to a chemically-altered state, you may never forgive or forget them, as she may never forgive or forget the things you say to her in response to what she said to you SPECIFICALLY TO PROVOKE THE ALTERCATION. We’ve all seen how things, once said, cannot really ever be taken back, no matter how much they weren’t really meant at the time. You need a confrontation, but not a fight. How do you do that?

Remember the many times I’ve mentioned leadership as a biological trigger for attraction? The chemical balance in the brain is a biological matter. When she finally had things built up to try to start the fight and made a snide remark to try to provoke me, I took a stern tone that she had probably never heard me use before, and said, “Just hold it! You are not going there with me!”

That’s leadership (decision-making), and authority (establishing a boundary), but it’s also a confrontation (denying her the fight and doing so in a stern tone). I thought for a second she had dropped the phone until I heard her breathe, and then continued, “This is not about me and you, or even me or you separately. It’s about all the emotional turmoil that you went through over the last few days, and you’re looking for a fight to sort it all out. There’s a better way to handle this.”

I went on to explain what had happened, maintaining the stern tone of a friend who is verbally roughing up another friend for doing something silly, and gradually softening it as I proceeded over the next couple of minutes. After a couple of minutes of silence as she took it all in, she interrupted me in mid sentence with, “Oh my God! I’ve been doing this all day, haven’t I?”

It was like hearing somebody come out of a daze, and Gentlemen, you MUST understand this, for many women, it really is like coming out of a daze. When they get off balance like that, they are truly in an altered mental state, and may not even remember some things that happen or have an accurate sense of the passage of time. This does not in any way make them inferior, weak, flakey, or insane, any other kind of sexist nonsense. It’s just the way they are, and something that we have to be aware of and work around – NOT SUFFER IN SILENCE OVER -- if we are going to have a long-term relationship with them. It comes with the package, and you can help them though it or be made miserable by it. A pretty obvious choice, huh?

Eventually, after talking for a few minutes (and Daphne making several apologies and sounding very embarrassed), we got back to the point in a prior discussion about her saying that she felt like she just needed a good cry. Sometime before we spoke today, she watched some old sad movie, had a good cry, and was herself when I called this morning to share a reader e-mail with her. This brings up the other VERY important point…

When women say they “need a good cry,” they’re not being prissy little wuss-bags. They know that they are off-balance, and have learned over time that it’s going to take some kind of extreme emotional event that is sustained for a fairly long time (as emotional events go) to get things back in balance. It is VERY difficult to create a positive event that can create this intensity and duration of emotion, so they usually use something negative but inert, like a sad movie, to get them started and keep them going, and by the time the movie is over, they’re bled out, stabilized, and generally okay. Are you with me here?

Women don’t like sad movies because they enjoy being sad, they like sad movies because they provide a needed emotional rush and release that rids them of negative energy and sets their body chemistry right without having to engage us in a fight and damage our relationships. A woman’s life is mostly about managing her relationships, thanks to her brain structure and chemistry that give her the signature social nature of womankind, and they really do try to protect their relationships a lot more than many men. Hence, when your partner wants to watch a sad movie, don’t interfere. You don’t have to sit there through the whole thing, and again, should have her invite a girlfriend over to watch it with her, but…

If there is no girlfriend available or she doesn’t want to do that, you don’t want to be cast in the role of girlfriend because it kills attraction over time. Tell her that you don’t like sad movies and don’t play well in the role of girlfriend, and that you’ll be in another room, but if she gets upset and wants to be held a bit you’ll be happy to “pop in” for a few minutes if she asks. Being a strong shoulder to cry on is a far cry from being a girlfriend sharing in a drama festival. Crying at chick-flicks was part of the bad advice in the 1980’s that got us into this mess, so don’t go there, ever. You will indeed be very uncomfortable in the girlfriend role if you have an ounce of masculinity in you, and you’ll kill attraction and respect in her. There’s just no upside for either of you if you try to substitute for a girlfriend for even a minute.

If you do have to spend a few minutes with her while she watches, monitor her as she does, and if you notice tears starting to form sit down with her for a bit and snuggle her up, then a few minutes after the scene changes and she’s dried up for a few minutes excuse yourself for a bit. She doesn’t need a baby sitter, but it will feel good to have you there holding her when the tears come, and it will be endearing to her to have you tolerate a few minutes of that movie to help her get through it. Don’t feed into it, or egg her on, or start crying yourself. Just sit still, pull her close, and do whatever you do when she doesn’t feel good and you snuggle her up, such as hair-stroking, nuzzling, etc.

Incidentally, this is NOT the time to try to make sexual advances, but if she does, even subtly by holding a kiss longer or advancing from a “love” kiss to an aroused kiss, go with it if you can regularly bring her to orgasm, because that will release energy and reset chemistry just like a good cry for most women, according to those who have answered my surveys. If you can't, adding frustration to what's already bothering her is likely a pretty bad idea.

If she has difficulty with orgasm, or if you just don’t know how to get her there, I can point you to some helpful resources (just e-mail me or follow any of the reader-recommended links in the sidebar of this post), and I’d STRONGLY suggest you avail yourself of them, because no matter how much either of you try to downplay the issue, if she suddenly discovers that somebody else can while you can’t, or even suspects that somebody else can when you seldom or never have, you will have one of the worst of all problems on your hands: a bored wife in whom someone else has created attraction. Attraction is like a foot race, whoever gets there first wins.

Women are like us in a lot of ways, but in the ways they differ from us lie the potential for a lot of misunderstanding and lack of appreciation, not to mention good old-fashioned BIG trouble. They try to tell us what they need, but one of those differences is how they communicate with us, which really throws a wrench in the works. But, there’s help if you’re smart enough to know that you need it and man enough to accept it…

I brought a group of nearly 200 women together to find out what they want from men and life, and then worked with the 118 couples made up of the “attached” women in the first group with their men (about one-third of them were unmarried or divorced) and worked them over nine ways from Sunday to find out what went right and wrong in relationships, how men and women differed, how to communicate with them, and how to make or break that wonderful feeling of attraction, that emotion that women so desperately crave and which truly brings out the best in them when they feel it, so much so that they will literally kill to protect that feeling.

That research was compiled into my e-book, "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," which was given back to the couples for testing and fine tuning, and all of them, as well as everyone who has bought it since (unless somebody has failed to complain and get a refund when they felt like it, and can you imagine that happening today???) has improved their life and/or relationship, and I have more unsolicited testimonials to that effect than you could ever imagine. Some relationships can’t be improved because they never should have been formed in the first place, and this book helps you to identify and exit them peacefully as well. And the best news of all is…

That you can have it now! It’s an instant download, 118 pages in PDF format, single-spaced and optimized for printing on standard letter-size paper, so you can read it on your screen or carry it with you and read it on the train, plane, or your favorite easy chair – YOUR CHOICE. Just choose! Go for it now, so you can start replacing boredom, frustration, and fights with happy times and a higher standard of living and self-esteem, because life is too short to spend it just wondering why things aren’t going so well when they could be going great!

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

The Science of Stress in Relationships and Marriage: Women Do It Differently, and Men Need to Know How

Scientists have discovered the chemical cascades that occur when a woman is under stress, and who would have guessed that it’s very different from men and make them respond differently? LOL! And you can bet that it has an impact on your relationship and marriage.

There is an author by name of Gale Berkowitz whose work I keep running across in researching women and their behavior. She impresses me tremendously because she is thorough in her research and doesn’t interject a lot of opinion in her writing; she presents a lot of facts and when something is hypothetical she’s labels it as such, something I insist upon in this work because the stakes are too high in a troubled or failing relationship or marriage to consign anything to guesswork, theory, opinion, or anything else except solid logic based on the hard facts of vast and relevant experience. Follow up on her work at the link provided if you want some interesting and relevant reading.

In an article in Melissa Kaplan’s “Chronic Neuroimmune Diseases” newsletter, Gale Berkowitz discusses research that confirms that women’s chemistry causes them to respond to stress in a very different way than we men do. She and other researchers refer to it as a “tend and befriend” response, as opposed to the more masculine “fight or flight” response.

You can refer to the original article for the full details on the chemistry, but the short version is that they have isolated a hormone called “oxytocin” that buffers the fight or flight response and causes her to tend to children and gather with other women instead.

It’s interesting to note that estrogen enhances the effects of oxytocin and testosterone diminishes it. Both genders have both estrogens and testosterone (estrogen is in fact a whole family of hormones, all of which are “metabolites,” or by-products, of the metabolization of testosterone – yes, fact is sometimes stranger than fiction!), but the balance is different. Men have more testosterone than estrogens, while women have more estrogens than testosterone.

This lays waste to a common misconception about stress-handling, and it is one that you need to be VERY aware of in your interaction with women. When a crisis arises, stress is created, and in men, the fight-or-flight response engages, and we move very quickly to eradicate the threat and neutralize the crisis. We’re biologically driven to do so.

Not so with women. They don’t just choose to sit and talk about problems instead of correcting them. They are as biologically driven to pull the kids up under their wing and have what appears to us to be a “drama fest” as we are driven to tell everybody to hide and lock the doors while we deal with the threat.

Not all threats can be immediately dispatched. You can kill a barbarian or wild bear crashing through your door, but other problems can take time, such as health or financial problems. Our method of dealing with the barbarian doesn’t work with a wife who has just found out she has breast cancer any more than calling a dozen girlfriends and talking for hours would deter a barbarian or a bear.

Consequently, fight-or-flight works best for immediate threats, while tend-and-befriend works better for long-term problems, especially with regard to stress relief. We can stress ourselves to death while feeling helpless as weeks and months of cancer treatment lag on, just as women can be stressed to death by being thrown into a situation requiring immediate action. We need closure, they need familiarity, social interaction, emotional build-up, and emotional release, THEN action if there is still any call for it.

This is another wonderful example of how understanding our differences and using them to compliment each other instead of competing with each other works to make a stronger and more intimate relationship. If you’re faced with a long-term problem, try to take it more at your wife’s pace than your own; don’t indulge in dramatizing and such, but ease up a bit on the push, handling things as they can be effectively handled instead of trying to bully everything into submission. If you’re faced with an immediate threat, don’t waste time trying to goad your wife to action.

Give her a brief period for input if she wants to give you some and then move on and eliminate the threat. Tell her that there will be time to talk after the threat is no longer bearing down on you, but for right now, since the window of opportunity to deal with the threat is so narrow, you just have to go with the best you can do at the moment and you can talk about emotions or further corrective actions later.

Cooperation, not competition, is the single most distinguishing characteristic of a successful long-term relationship of any kind, and it’s especially true in a marriage or other live-in arrangement. You’re right there in each other’s faces, and you need things to share and draw you together, not constant points of contention to tear you apart.

There are many differences that we can treat as complimentary, and others, such as opposing values, which cannot be resolved. Hence, some great relationships have problems that make them look bad, and other, utterly terrible relationships have a few redeeming features that make them look more attractive than starting over – the comfortably unhappy crowd that I talk about from time to time who will eventually split or torment each other into a wasted lifetime of misery. The difference is not always obvious, but if you’re ever going to be happy with another person, you must know it and recognize it when it confronts you. There is no other way.

To know this and everything else you need to know to fix, maintain, and enhance a good relationship with problems or end a bad relationship with dignity and as friends, go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage." Life is short, so don’t spend it guessing…

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

A Woman Lives Briefly As a Man, and Here Is the BIG Relationship and Marriage Lesson For All to Learn From Her Experience

Part 2 of 2: EXCLUSIVE MUST READ! A female reader gets an accidental overdose of testosterone and spends a couple of weeks feeling what many men feel every day, and there are lessons for all in her experience! Yesterday we studied the letter, and today I show you what you should have seen…

I’ve waited as long as I can to publish this edition because I was really hoping to hear from someone who saw the most important lesson to be had here, but I’ve not yet. However, I will say that based on the answers to surveys and other questions, many editions, even the ones marked “urgent” or “must read,” don’t get read for several days or until the weekend because we’re all getting too busy for our own good, so I’m not going to construe this to mean anything more than that the majority of people simply haven’t had the time to read and think about it yet.

In case you missed yesterday’s edition, here’s a letter from a reader who, in a nutshell, got an accidental overdose of testosterone in her hormone replacement therapy dosage and got to spend several days being influenced by it as a man does, especially young men, and there is a glaring lesson for all men embedded in her response. If you’ve already read it, skip past it to the commentary that follows to discover one of the most important things you’ll ever learn about women.

Dear David,

All my life I have heard people say if you could walk a mile in someone else’s shoes you would not be so fast to judge them. I have to tell you of such an experience that has proven this to me, and this was so serious I felt like I should share part of it with you. I will be giving you only a small portion of what I went through, but I hope it will be enough that you will understand that I really know what it feels like to be a man.

I’m 40 years old, had a hysterectomy twelve years ago, and a few weeks ago I went to see my gynecologist about a problem I was having with my hormone levels. Every time I was tested my hormones were lower than the doctor felt they should be, and he made such a big deal of it that I became concerned and made the choice to let the doctor give me strong shot to see if this could get me back on the right track. In doing so I was given a very large dose of testosterone, which turned my body totally opposite of what I had ever been before. I started to view life on a whole new level.

It started out with me looking for sex everywhere. I was suddenly looking at every man I saw and some women as possible sex partners, and I had never done this, especially toward women! I thought at first I was going crazy. I would sit and look at them and could play out in my head all the thoughts I was having about them and what I could imagine we could do together.

I was also terribly aggressive and easily angered, wanting to get into fights with people who would piss me off and I never wanted to do that before, ever! For example during all this I was pulled over by a policeman and was given a ticket. Now most of the time I would cry or flirt or do whatever I had to get out of it and for the most part that would work for me, but this time all I wanted to do is punch the cop right in the face for being an ass to me.

There were so many changes in my life I could not possibly describe all of them for you right now. The point I wanted to get across is after I went through days of strange feelings and urges I had never had before I told my best friend about them and he looked at me and smiled and told me that all of what I told him about was what a man went through everyday of his life until he got old enough for his testosterone levels to drop severely, which he said was somewhere between the late twenties and early fifties, depending on the man, and could be even later for some men.

I was blown away. I called my gynecologist and told him what my friend said and he confirmed that the dosage may have been too high and that I could be experiencing such side effects for several days, but not to be alarmed because they would stop when the testosterone was used and it returned to a more tolerable level.

Ladies if what I went through just for those few days is what a man goes through every day there is a lot more to being a man than we as women think. All I can say is I hope I never go through anything like this again. If the feeling of gladly passing up food for sex is a small part of how they feel then I say give them sex, I will never again tell my love that I do not feel like it or I have a headache for during that short period of time I got mad at my boyfriend for not giving me all the sex I wanted, and wanted it I did. With every single breath I took I wanted him, and sometimes not just him. When he did not want to give it to me I would look around and wonder where I could get it from.

Like I said, this is only a small part of what I went through and there is much more I could tell you and I might write it all down and send it to you one day, but I am just now starting to get some of the old me feeling like I should again. The main reason I wanted to write this is so that you woman readers might get a little better understanding of what our men go through all the time. I will promise you this before I ever tell my husband no again I will think about the experience I had and how I felt when he told me that he didn’t feel like it.

Daphne

Okay guys, does anybody see it? It’s staring at you from within the next to last paragraph:

“Ladies if what I went through just for those few days is what a man goes through every day there is a lot more to being a man them we as women think. All I can say is I hope I never go through anything like this again. If the feeling of gladly passing up food for sex is a small part of how they feel then I say give them sex, I will never again tell my love that I do not feel like it or I have a headache for during that short period of time I got mad at my boyfriend for not giving me all the sex I wanted, and wanted it I did. With every single breath I took I wanted him, and sometimes not just him. When he did not want to give it to me I would look around and wonder where I could get it from."

Women have the capacity to understand what it feels like to live with the burning drive of testosterone all day every day, and will respond to that understanding with the same nurturing behavior they exhibit for us regarding any needs or desires we have, IF THEY ARE PRESENTED WITH THE INFORMATION CORRECTLY.

What constitutes correctly? Think about it. What do girls grow up hearing about boys, and women continue to believe about men? That ALL WE THINK ABOUT IS SEX, and will lie, cheat, steal and rape if necessary to get it. But that’s not true, is it? We don’t choose to be driven to think about sex as often as we do, and in fact, we don’t THINK about it often at all. We desire it, and often need it, when something sexual is in front of us. It’s a subconscious eruption or a reaction to a stimulus, not something we contemplate. But that’s not what women grow up and live believing.

They grow up hearing from their parents and each other that “guys just want to get into their pants,” and it’s said as something dirty, demeaning, diabolical, and deceitful. When they grow up, they are surrounded by a bunch of pushy, grab-asstic boys who don’t care who they insult or hurt and by a bunch of socially-inept wusses who never learned that neither women nor sex is scarce and are under the influence of myths like "women don't like sex," “women want a nice guy,” and “a guy has to be considerate and let the woman make all the decisions.” So how would you expect them to react?

The lesson is that if you can really talk with your partner about how things really are in your life, openly, honestly, and in detail, help her to understand how things are, and show her the same courtesy and respect by listening when she tells you how things really are in her life, world, etc., or how she feels about how things are in your life or hers, it comes across far differently than if it is presented as some sort of demand on her (“I’m your husband and it’s your duty to have sex with me”) or as some sort of wussy plea of need (“I just can’t help myself, and if you don’t sleep with me, I’ll feel bad about myself and it will be all your fault,” or the classic wuss-out, “A man has needs, you know…”). Understanding of needs and conditions motivates a woman to nurture to deal with the situation, while bullying, badgering, whining, and sulking motivate her to separate herself from the situation, and YOU!

This doesn’t just apply to sex, or even just to intimacy in general. It applies to everything that goes on between the two of you. If you have goals that you want your wife to help you meet somehow, or even just goals that you don’t want he to resent or resist, explain to her what these goals are, and why they are important to you, and tell her that she can help if she wants and it will be appreciated if she does, instead of demanding that she “get her ass in gear and get with the program,’ telling her to keep her nose out of your business, or whining about how you never got a break and the system is against you and that she owes it to you to pitch in and cover your ass. Invite her to tell you about her goals and interests as well. And listen with interest as she responds with how she feels about what you’ve told her and what she’s told you. That simple act will do more for your trust, respect, and intimacy than you can imagine until you see it in action.

There is no way that two people in a committed relationship can ever know too much about each other’s goals, desires, needs, preferences, etc., and talking openly and honestly about them is by far the best way to make things understood. Aside from the obvious benefits of the building of trust and friendship as these things are discussed, there will also be the building of intimacy and excitement as you come closer together and celebrate your victories together. It’s as automatic as the rising and setting of the sun.

Oops! All that talking and listening requires bridging that inter-gender communications gap that we’re all born into and few of us ever find out way across. What’s the old cliché, “Drat! Foiled again…”? Well, no, not this time…

You guessed it: It’s all in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," which is available for download right now at http://www.makingherhappy.com, and once you’ve learned what it has to offer, you’ll be having frequent picnics on that inter-gender communications bridge you’re going to quickly build. Could life get any better? Sure, and you’re going to make it so, if you start now…

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

A Woman Lives Briefly As a Man, and Learns a BIG Relationship and Marriage Lesson

EXCLUSIVE MUST READ! A female reader gets an accidental overdose of testosterone and spends a couple of weeks feeling what many men feel every day, and there are lessons for all in her experience!

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is HUGE. One of your fellow readers, Daphne, whom we’ve heard from before on a couple of occasions, is 40 years old and using hormone replacement therapy (HRT) after a total hysterectomy. The strangest thing happened!

For those of you who don’t know a lot about endocrinology, after a hysterectomy or menopause, women are often given a cocktail of hormones to try to replace the ones that were produced by the organs that were removed. Many claims are made about preventing osteoporosis and other things, but the only thing that estrogen HRT has been clinically PROVEN to do is curb hot flashes and some forms of it (especially the one derived from horse urine, called “equione,” which is estimated at 1,000 times the cellular reproductive power of human estrogen) have also been proven to raise a woman’s chance of contracting cancer, especially if her HRT regimen includes synthetic estrogen (like equione) or high doses of natural estrogen.

What is not common knowledge is that testosterone, the male hormone, is also needed and used by women to combat fatigue, heighten libido (it’s the only true aphrodisiac known to science), and actually does help with the formation and repair of bone and tissue. Indeed, estrogen is a metabolite (a by-product of the metabolism of) of testosterone; men metabolize more as DHT and other non-estrogen substances, while women metabolize more as estrogen, which is needed by all for cellular reproduction but in higher doses causes the femininization of the body, including the brain, skin, and other non-sexual organs.

When women have significantly too much testosterone for an extended period, it causes their voice to deepen, facial and other body hair to grow, libido is put into overdrive, and they get more aggressive; a lesser overage will cause minor symptoms like being less creative and more analytical, a more masculine communications protocol (speaking more directly and less in tune to non-verbal messages, among other things), less emotionally driven, more aggressive, etc.

This woman was given a dose that was determined to be WAAAAY beyond her natural tolerance in an injection, and she describes an experience that you simply must read for yourself. There are multiple lessons, some not so obvious, for both men and women in this letter, but I’m not going to go into those until tomorrow. In the meantime, I challenge you to read this letter and see what lessons you can derive from it yourself, and if you wish to share your observations, simply reply to this newsletter, and don’t forget to indicate whether you want your observations shared with the other readers.

Without further ado, here again is Daphne, with a tale that you really should study, because she has a unique perspective after this experience, possibly the only woman alive who has lived feeling the male drives and testosterone-driven emotions, and her reaction to them contains the biggest lesson of all:

Dear David,

All my life I have heard people say if you could walk a mile in someone else’s shoes you would not be so fast to judge them. I have to tell you of such an experience that has proven this to me, and this was so serious I felt like I should share part of it with you. I will be giving you only a small portion of what I went through, but I hope it will be enough that you will understand that I really know what it feels like to be a man.

I’m 40 years old, had a hysterectomy twelve years ago, and a few weeks ago I went to see my gynecologist about a problem I was having with my hormone levels. Every time I was tested my hormones were lower than the doctor felt they should be, and he made such a big deal of it that I became concerned and made the choice to let the doctor give me strong shot to see if this could get me back on the right track. In doing so I was given a very large dose of testosterone, which turned my body totally opposite of what I had ever been before. I started to view life on a whole new level.

It started out with me looking for sex everywhere. I was suddenly looking at every man I saw and some women as possible sex partners, and I had never done this, especially toward women! I thought at first I was going crazy. I would sit and look at them and could play out in my head all the thoughts I was having about them and what I could imagine we could do together.

I was also terribly aggressive and easily angered, wanting to get into fights with people who would piss me off and I never wanted to do that before, ever! For example during all this I was pulled over by a policeman and was given a ticket. Now most of the time I would cry or flirt or do whatever I had to get out of it and for the most part that would work for me, but this time all I wanted to do is punch the cop right in the face for being an ass to me.

There were so many changes in my life I could not possibly describe all of them for you right now. The point I wanted to get across is after I went through days of strange feelings and urges I had never had before I told my best friend about them and he looked at me and smiled and told me that all of what I told him about was what a man went through every day of his life until he got old enough for his testosterone levels to drop severely, which he said was somewhere between the late twenties and early fifties, depending on the man, and could be even later for some men.

I was blown away. I called my gynecologist and told him what my friend said and he confirmed that the dosage may have been too high and that I could be experiencing such side effects for several days, but not to be alarmed because they would stop when the testosterone was used and it returned to a more tolerable level.

Ladies if what I went through just for those few days is what a man goes through every day there is a lot more to being a man than we as women think. All I can say is I hope I never go through anything like this again. If the feeling of gladly passing up food for sex is a small part of how they feel then I say give them sex. I will never again tell my love that I do not feel like it or I have a headache for during that short period of time I got mad at my boyfriend for not giving me all the sex I wanted, and want it I did. With every single breath I took I wanted him, and sometimes not just him. When he did not want to give it to me I would look around and wonder where I could get it from.

Like I said, this is only a small part of what I went through and there is much more I could tell you and I might write it all down and send it to you one day, but I am just now starting to get some of the old me feeling like I should again. The main reason I wanted to write this is so that you woman readers might get a little better understanding of what our men go through all the time. I will promise you this before I ever tell my husband no again I will think about the experience I had and how I felt when he told me that he didn’t feel like it.

Daphne

What a story! I sincerely hope that Daphne chooses to share more of this story with us at sometime in the future, but aside from the drama of spending a few days feeling the urges and emotions that many of us men feel every day, there is a HUGE and significant lesson here for men. As I mentioned above, see if you can spot it, write to me at support@makingherhappy.com about it if you feel like it, and if I get the correct response from five or fewer people, a prize will be awarded, a copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and tomorrow I’ll reveal any winners and the big lesson after you’ve had some time to think about it and possibly win a prize!

Speaking of which, "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" is available for download right now at http://www.makingherhappy.com/, and if you’ll read it diligently and learn its secrets, you’ll have the same inside-out view of women that Daphne got of men without having to have a large dose of estrogen or experience first-hand any of its side effects – an offer you can’t refuse, right?

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