Learn What Women Secretly Say Behind Their Husbands' Backs About What They Want and Need, What Turns Them On and Off, and How to Make Her Feel Like You Can Read Her Mind!

...unless, of course you’re ready to go back to getting flamed over a lame pickup line in a bar or sitting at home reading the dating personals.  Or maybe just living with a cheating wife or girlfriend is more your style. No?

Whether you’re having trouble in your marriage or relationship now or wanting to stop it before it starts (and it can start with one wrong look or word!), you’d better read this:

Dear Bored, Frustrated, Confused, Or Celibate Friend,

Relationships, whether you’re married or not, go stale – the excitement fades, the sex slows down and nearly stops, schedules get filled with jobs, kids, hobbies, and chores, and before you know it, you’re both crawling in the bed at night and falling asleep, whether that’s why you went to bed or not. It may feel like the end of your life and damage your self-image, but at worst, it’s just the end of the honeymoon, and you’ve got yourself a lonely housewife or girlfriend who just might already be listed in the online personals or some lonely wife club.

What’s a Guy to Do? What Have You Tried?

(Start by installing the free MakingHerHappy browser toolbar to keep up with our blog articles, access chat and alerts, stop pop-ups, and much more!)

Solid relationship advice that you can immediately put to work for you is hard to find. Some go out to the library, bookstore or search engines looking for everything they can find on “marriage help” or “marriage advice,” “seduce my wife,” “love advice,” “relationship help,” or "relationship advice," or my favorite, “what women want,” and get a very vague and inaccurate picture from people who’d be better suited to writing psychology textbooks or religious sermons.

Sound familiar?

Others go to the other extreme, flooding Google and other search engines with queries for sources on extra-marital affairs or dating sites, such as “speed dating,” “dating advice,” “how to get a girlfriend,” “one night stand,” and even “macking” (the art of the one night stand), and don’t accomplish anything except setting themselves up for a divorce or other bad break up and having it hit the “Girly Grapevine” that they are a cheating scumbag.

Is this you?

There are a few who realize that creating and maintaining a happy and fulfilling relationship needs a more direct approach, especially those into self-help and self-improvement systems, and they go to millions of sites Google serves up with such search terms as “attract woman,” “seduction tip” and “sexual attraction,” but these pages and products, developed by some of the world’s more brilliant minds, like John Alanis (“The King of Let ‘em Come to You”), David DeAngelo (“Double Your Dating”), Shelly McMurtry (“First in Her Mind”), Tiffany Taylor (“Guy Gets Girl”), and Mari-Jo Tyler (“Laugh Into Love,” a relationship expert, sex therapist, and comedienne!), and which get huge results for people trying to become successful in the dating world, are developed mainly for someone IN the dating world.

But Wait!

Going back into the dating world and meeting strangers is what you’re trying to avoid, isn't it?! Trying to employ such attraction tactics, such as being unpredictable, which is irresistible to a woman you’ve just met, to a mature relationship will scare the living hell out of a woman with whom you are sharing a mortgage and a few kids, married or not!

She wants predictability, but is attracted to unpredictability.

There are a great many “toy boys” around who can give her that little thrill while you continue to provide stability, so the whole issue is a double-edged sword and a huge trap for both of you, as are many other things that trip a woman’s attraction triggers.

How do you sort it out? What do women want, especially in a long-term relationship? What feelings can you enjoy giving her that she will enjoy?

To make matters worse, you may have already been doing some research, and come across some of the dating gurus mentioned above. The advice they give is rock solid for the dating world -- it just doesn't get any better -- but they repeatedly say to their readers, "Once attraction is lost, forget it and move on, because it's gone, it's near impossible, if not entirely impossible, to bring it back."

Maybe for their readers, but take a closer look...

In the short window you have to create attraction in a new person and try to make it bloom into a lasting relationship, this is true. But, the rules and timeframes are different for committed relationships. Have you already given up? You shouldn't, because the fact that you're in a committed relationship works in your favor, and can actually motivate your bored girlfriend or wife to help you set things right under the right conditions.

How? Keep reading...

This problem of a “stale” relationship, one in which both parties, whether married or not, still love each other and are committed to staying together, or at least want to be, but their relationship is in a rut – their sex lives are near non-existent, their lives are routine and boring -- has happened over time and has become a “comfortable” habit. Judging by the results of studies conducted by people qualified and equipped to conduct them, the average married couple has sex only six times a year, in spite of studies conducted on these same people indicating that they think about sex hourly and often every few minutes.

How can this be a recipe for a happy marriage?

I’m going to make a bet that if you’re still reading this, either you’re in the same boat, or you’re the proactive sort that tries to stop problems before they start and don’t want to be part of that statistic. I’ve been happily married for the last ten-plus years at the time of this writing, and I can tell you from experience, my own and that of hundreds of other couples, that the good news is that reigniting her attraction for you is all that this situation requires for short-term success, and keeping that success this time around is a simple matter of completing two tasks and starting up two on-going processes, one of which will be on “auto-pilot” and one you will actively manage:

As simple as that sounds, that’s really all there is to it, but there are quite a few toe-stumpers, pitfalls, and outright traps along the way. I’ve investigated them, and with the help of a significant and still-growing support staff of women who are in or have been in mature relationships, have prepared a sizable report on how to make this all work in your life. This support staff reviews all advice and examples to make sure that everything is as accurate as possible with regard to how women react to various thoughts, actions, and conversational elements by gauging their own responses to the recommendations (and you can bet their husbands and boyfriends are loving life now!), so what’s included isn’t just an opinion of what works for one guy with one gal, it’s what works, period! You’re getting information on what makes women tick that every woman wishes you knew but few if any women would have ever told you in a way you could understand if you had just asked.

The first part of the report (it was a separate “free report” just for buying the product, but I’d rather keep it simple so you can make a single download!) will lead you through a fair and thorough assessment of yourself, your partner, and your relationship. It will help you to ask and answer the difficult questions that must be resolved before you can expect success going forward or find happiness if this partner isn’t “the one.”

To speed you on your way to a more intimate (and more fun!) relationship, in the second part of this report, which was another huge “free report” but is also integrated for a more effective product and your convenience, I’ve provided not only a few technical details, but also great examples of conversations you’ve probably had, mistakes you probably made in those conversations, and ways in which you can come out better when you have them again in the future.

Finally, we dig deep into what attraction really is, how it works, and how to make it happen! Pay attention here, because attraction, more than anything else, is what women want, whether they realize it or not, and you've got to create it for them or someone else will!

Why should you bother to read this report? Well for starters, it works! Just the awareness gained by the support staff in focusing on the material and pulling it all together revived and improved their relationships to honeymoon status. If that's not a good enough reason, let’s talk money for a minute...

How many hundreds or thousands of dollars do you think you might spend on marriage counselors and/or lawyers trying to fix your current problems (especially if you get caught in an affair)?

Are there kids involved? Do you want to risk only seeing them every other weekend?

The reasons are plentiful and should be pretty obvious!

Here’s what people just like you have said after reading and improving their relationships with “THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage":

You'll get all this in an immediately downloadable e-book (Adobe PDF format -- free Adobe Reader available at http://www.adobe.com) for only $39.97, which is a very small fraction of what a single hour in the office of a competent marriage counselor or attorney in most parts of the country. It's also less than the cost of a good meal for two in about any good restaurant. A meal lasts an hour; the benefits of this knowledge will last you a lifetime!

Complete With Bonus Reports You Can Use Right Now

"In case of Emergency!" - "Break-Up Busting 101" - a ten-part series of articles spanning 45 single-spaced pages (larger than a lot of other authors' primary e-book products!) on how to understand what brought (or can bring) your relationship to crisis. It will show you how to quickly bring her willingly back to the table so you can get your problems resolved as fast and peacefully as possible.

Plus it will get you both back to living a happy, exciting life again. From the feedback I've gotten, from my support staff and loyal readers, it will be a lot more fun and exciting than you've ever had together!

"Forbidden Knowledge!" - "What Women Want" - an eleven-part series of articles spanning single-spaced pages (again, a lot larger than a lot of other authors' primary e-book products!) on what women say they want, and even more important, what they respond to positively that they don't realize they want, helping you avoid those "be careful what you wish for because you might just get it" situations. You certainly don't need to be making any more of those "nice, sensitive guy who cries with her at chick flicks" mistakes, right?

You also get a free subscription to my daily newsletter.

You'll get additional tips and advice every single day and get your questions answered (and see others' questions and answers!) for as long as you subscribe. These daily gems give you additional insights and how-to information on every facet of relationships, marriage, attraction, naughty boy behavior, etc., you won't find anywhere else.

Now you'll have your own daily refresher delivered to you that will strengthen and enlighten you with a unique take on everyday problems and issues and how you can solve them. You are not alone, I'll be here every day to make sure you get it done and have the most fun you've had in years while you're doing it!

Your Risk Free, 100% Money Back, 365 Day Guarantee

To top it all off, your satisfaction is guaranteed for a full year from the date of purchase. That’s 365 days that you get to study the material and make changes in your life. If you can’t make the success that everyone else is making with this material, you’ll be promptly refunded simply by asking.

Friends won’t talk about successes nearly as often or nearly as long as they’ll talk about something that ticks them off. Your success is most important of all, and you're getting a full year to make it happen, but if it just can't happen, at least you'll be satisfied that we both gave it an honest effort and you were treated as promised. The bottom line is that improving your situation really is up to you, and it's time to choose to succeed.

No matter what your situation right now, you’ve got three choices:

Bring back that honeymoon magic!

Wishing you health, wealth, and happiness in all that you do,

Recent Articles from the MakingHerHappy.com
Newsletter and Blog:

Pleasure or Pain: More on Horseplay and "Picking" in Relationships and Marriage (See Original)

One of the women takes issue with being picked on the wrong way, and rightly so. If you’re going to do it, you’d better do it the right way, or you’ll be paying for it later. Understanding our differences makes it easy to get it right… Happy Independence Day America! Take a minute and remember what bought the liberties you enjoy today, a great many human lives over the course of two centuries, and resolve yourself to start doing a better job of protecting those freedoms before all the special interest groups end up stealing them right out from under your nose. Indeed, take a minute to read this Facebook post about what happened to the men who signed the Declaration of Independence. It will put things back in perspective for you. And by the way, that’s my Facebook profile, so if you’d rather follow me on Facebook, just do a friend request. My daily lessons are posted there every day, along with MySpace, Twitter, WordPress, and blog.makingherhappy.com. Write to me at support@makingherhappy.com if you can’t find me on one of the above and I’ll hook you up. And for those of you not in America, whatever freedoms you enjoy were bought with blood, too, and may be disappearing right under your nose, like the frog in the pan of cold water who won’t jump out before being boiled to death because he doesn’t notice the change. So be vigilant, and do what you can to earn more freedom instead of being disinterested, disenfranchised, and disinvolved while the disingenuous usurp control over your life. Yesterday’s newsletter on picking and playing touched off a barrage of “Amen’s” from the women whose husbands shied away from playing, but there was one that was on a different plane that we need to discuss. Her husband tries to play, but he goes about it all wrong. Meet Gina: Hi David, I loved this and all of your e-mails. I wish you could get my husband to understand this. He’s constantly making mean remarks about me, thinking that he’s being funny. He demeans me in front of his friends and family, my friends, family, and coworkers, and he’s embarrassed me to tears more times than I can count. He’s a good man, attractive, very alpha male, and keeps me moving, but when he does this I could just kill him, because it really hurts. He tells everybody I’m always late everywhere I go; it’s true. We have four kids and I have a hard time getting all of them ready to go anywhere. I have a hard time keeping my weight under control because I tend to eat more when I’m stressed, and I’m always stressed, and he’ll point out to people when I’ve gained weight or my clothes are too tight. He makes fun of me when I make any mistake, and makes it his mission to point it out to everyone for a week or more after. I can’t get him to understand that this isn’t funny and it hurts badly, and I’ve about had all I can take of it. When I told him that, he made fun of me for being dramatic! I love him with all I have, but I’m starting to feel like a verbal punching bag and to be honest, the main reason I’m always stressed isn’t our four kids, it’s living in fear of what he’s going to say next to mortify me! Can you help? Thanks so much, Gina I handled Gina’s request for help by private correspondence because there were some specific issues and instructions that I don’t want to go into here for several reasons, among them her privacy, but we do need to talk more about this. I have a good friend who also does this, and his name is Rick. He’s an alpha male from the ground up: retired cop, now consulting in law enforcement, sharp, articulate, and one of us guys who enters a room and everybody just turns and starts moving in that direction because they can sense leadership from across the room. He loves his “wife” (they never had a wedding, but have been together since dinosaurs roamed the Earth and regard themselves and conduct their lives as if they are married), and she both loves him and is wildly attracted to him, even after years of putting up with his sense of humor, but it is indeed a problem. He sounds just like Gina’s man, making fun of things like her weight that she is really sensitive about, and nobody, myself included, can get him to understand that he’s hurting her. He says she’s as tough as he is and that’s why he loves her. She’s tough as nails, but she’s also a woman, and even the toughest women have their hot buttons, just like men. She lives in constant torment of loving and being attracted to a man who inadvertently hurts her every other time he opens his mouth, and I really don’t know how much more of it she’s going to be able to take. Being tough doesn’t mean that nothing hurts; it means you go on with your life in spite of hurting, just like being brave doesn’t mean you’re never scared, it just means you do what you have to do in spite of being scared. And if something hurts too much for too long, most people will remove the cause, or remove themselves from the cause. What’s escaping Gina’s husband, my friend Rick, and a lot of other men I know is that this is an area where men and women are fundamentally different. Men jab at each other’s vulnerabilities to play and to help each other toughen up, and to challenge each other to do something about our vulnerabilities. We poke each other in the stomach when we notice a few more cheeseburgers and beers collecting around the belt line and make a crack like “Expanding the shed to keep your tool from rusting there, Bob?” There’s no telling how many thousands of years we’ve done it, and it’s a ritual of strengthening, and bonding, a sort of intimacy that only our friends are allowed to engage in with us. With women, it’s different. The only time you will hear a woman bring up another woman’s vulnerability to her face is if she is on the offensive. They only do it to hurt each other when they are being competitive or vindictive, and it hurts them badly when we do this. They may even try to excuse it as just us being us, but there’s that subconscious link to their communications infrastructure that still eats at them as if we had been a woman when we said something about their weight, or their feet, or a mole, or a gray root on a hair. It’s rejection, or an attack, not a joke, in their book. In our world, any minor flaw is something to rib your buddy about; in their world, it’s ammunition for the big guns. For us, mentioning our flaws is like a slap on the back and gets a laugh, while in theirs, it’s a slap in the face. That’s why I’ve said in previous newsletter that you can only say something in that kind of play if it’s plainly an exaggeration, like telling her she has a big butt if she has a very skinny butt and knows it, or call her “Bigfoot” when she has tiny feet, something so absurd as to be obviously a joke. Once you’ve established that baseline, you can push the envelope a VERY little at a time and gently find out where her limits are, and then push the envelope a bit, but start in the safe zone so that everybody has fun. We’re alike in many ways, and it often deceives us into thinking that we are alike in ways that we are entirely different, even opposite. It is these deceptive differences that make us unwittingly hurt each other when hurting each other is among those things that we indeed NEVER want to do. Not knowing about them – simple ignorance – is very treatable; it takes only a little knowledge. Not caring about our differences and not trying to learn about them and avoid hurting each other with them – apathy – is also treatable, but it takes more drastic measures, like a pitcher of ice water on the crotch, an iron skillet to the head, or in extreme cases, a divorce, or even a bullet or worse; Google “Lorena Bobbitt” if you need an example. The question you have to ask yourself is which ailment do you have, ignorance or apathy, and how is your ailment going to be treated? I’m going out on a limb here, but I’m going to guess that if you didn’t care, you wouldn’t be reading this, so we’re going to treat ignorance. That’s easy, fun, and dirt cheap. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can thank me later… LOL! If you’re here looking for validation of your mistakes instead of a fix for your problems, that’s not going to happen here. There are a bunch of people calling themselves a “support group” somewhere waiting for you with open arms and a big ol’ sob story just like yours if that’s what you’re after. (Yes, I know there are legitimate support groups who really help people, too, and so does everybody else, so hold the hate mail if you’re in one of them.) For right now, just concern yourself with getting the knowledge to fix this condition, and any others you may have, into your head and into practice, while your problems are still easy to fix. You can do it when they get hard, too, but it takes longer and everybody hurts a lot more in the meantime. Taking care of it NOW is your best bet. If you’re smart enough to see that, and want to fix your problems before they get any worse, and even go on to make everything better than it’s ever been, start by going to http://www.makingherhappy.com/ and downloading your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and you’ll see what those before you have already found: it’s solid, tested, proven knowledge and advice, and if you can put your pants on in the morning instead of offering them to a passer-by, you can do what needs to be done and enjoy it, for the rest of your life. In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day! David Cunningham "Being a man is something to which one should aspire, not something for which he should apologize." --David Cunningham

What to Do When She's "Mean" to You: Horseplay and "Picking" in Relationships and Marriage (See Original)

Men frequently write to me complaining that their wives pick at them, needle them, push them to do things they don’t want to do, etc. How are you supposed to handle this? The answer might surprise you… I get a lot of letters like the following, and I’ve addressed the issue in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," but the frequency of these letters is scary. There are too many men who don’t recognize what this issue really is and how to deal with it, and families are literally coming apart at the seams because of this simple misunderstanding. Meet Jeff: Hello David, I need help. I haven’t yet read your book but I’ve been reading your newsletters for awhile and I think you can tell me this. My wife has picked up a bad habit of picking on me, making fun of me, being a smart-ass in front of our friends, etc. It’s really abrasive and embarrassing, and getting worse by the day. The more I ask her to stop, the more she does it, like she’s trying to push me into a fight. How can I stop it? Thanks, Jeff Well Jeff, you slacking cheapskate, if you’d read my book you’d know! Just kidding! LOL! Seriously, she’s not trying to start a fight at all. She’s trying to get you to play with her! You’re boring her to tears, and she’s trying to bring you out of your shell. Women like challenge, and they like a man to act like he “has a pair.” She’s challenging you to a verbal “joust” to have some fun. What she’s expecting from you is that you pick back at her, not in a mean, nasty, insulting way, but in that fun, naughty, pranksterish way as you probably cut up with your friends, at least at first, escalating it to get into chasing, tickling, playful pinching or spanking – you know, that kid stuff that you used to do when you drove her wild! What’s happening now is that she’s trying harder and harder to provoke you into showing that you have reproductive glands and a sense of humor, which is effect punishment for not doing so all along. If you don’t do it, you’ll find her losing interest in you pretty soon, so you’d better be finding your sense of humor, fast. And we are talking about humor here, no matter how pissy you might think she’s being. If she makes a smart crack about your big feet, make a smart crack about something that obviously IS NOT a problem; i.e., only make a remark about her big butt if she DOES NOT have a big butt and doesn’t obsess about having one. Find something to exaggerate to crack wise about so that it’s obvious that you’re playing, else you may strike a nerve and end up starting a fight while trying to play. I cannot overstress how you need to exercise a little sensitivity here. If she stubs her toe and is limping around but not seriously injured or embarrassed about the accident, then calling her “gimpy” is fair game, but if she is crippled, or if there was something embarrassing about the injury, like she was in a public place, stubbed her toe and ended up dumping a cup of coffee on a white blouse in front of her boss because of it, “gimpy” is off limits, at least until you see that she’s over the embarrassment, which will usually be if and when you see her smile or laugh a bit when talking about it with a girlfriend. The idea is to be obviously fun with your picking to give her a giggle and demonstrate that you are a playful guy, not some wuss who can’t take a joke and is afraid to dish one out for her or a jerk who is retaliating and being a mean bully instead of going along with the joke. Women don’t really want that much from us, Gents. It’s just that what they want is stuff that almost nobody is teaching these days, as we talked about with the Superman example yesterday; they’re politically incorrect for wanting it, and we’re politically incorrect for giving it to them. However, I am teaching it, after learning it from some gurus before me and adapting and expanding that by working with several hundred married women and their husbands, and I’ll teach you if you want to learn. Screw political correctness. It wasn’t in my wedding vows; was it in yours? So how about it? Are you ready to learn what may turn out to be the most valuable lessons of your life? Remember all those jokes you cracked about nobody ever being able to understand women, or know what they want, or what they’re saying, or how to pass all those damnable tests and traps they’re always laying for us? I could give you the old “be the first kid on your block to own it” spiel, but it doesn’t really matter if you’re first. What matters is that you’re successful, as quickly as you can get there. The quickest path to lasting success in your relationship is to go to http://www.makingherhappy.com/ and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and then just reading it and putting it to work. You’ll not find too many opportunities where you can have so much fun being so successful, if you find any at all like this one, so get busy. In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day! David Cunningham "Being a man is something to which one should aspire, not something for which he should apologize." --David Cunningham

Lessons From the Past About Women, Relationships and Marriage (See Original)

Many lessons from the past, before the feminists and media decided to attempt the castration of our gender, are being lost, things that our fathers and grandfathers knew from childhood about women and keeping them happy. Tune in to see a biggie… One of your fellow readers, truly one of the sharpest of you, sent me this little pearl of wisdom: You might point this out to your readers someday - an idea I got from one of my son's movies: Clark Kent and Superman are the same guy, but Lois Lane is only attracted to Superman - Clark is someone she can only see as a friend. A little story we all learned so young it's permanently part of our thought process! How profound! And how sad, that we’ve seen that story and that double image for so long and so many of us have been unable to make that connection until this moment. Superman acted as he did in the guise of Clark Kent to kill Lois Lane’s attraction for him. Think about that! He was nice, agreeable, indecisive and ultimately left decisions up to her, never assertive, never took the lead on anything, never initiated conversations – the consummate wuss! And he was the same guy as Superman, the guy she couldn’t stop thinking about. “Oh, but that was a comic strip,” you say! Sure it was, written by men of the early and middle 20th century, before the wussification movement of the late 60’s through the present. These men who wrote that comic strip and did those shows (it was in black and white for a long time, and if memory serves, was on radio long before it was ever on television) knew about attraction because it wasn’t politically incorrect at that time to acknowledge that there are distinct and delightful differences between the sexes that can enrich any relationship if the partners in that relationship understand them. Decisive man of action, or nerd who talks to his feet through his hand – which one do you think any woman would go for? It sickens me to think about the hero images being painted for our kids today. We had Superman, the Lone Ranger, Babe Ruth, Lou Gherig, The Green Hornet, The FBI Guys, James Bond, etc., and what do they have? Barney, the Teletubbies, and that man’s man of the world, Sponge Bob Squarepants. Gender-neutral at best. And it doesn’t get any better if you look at films for people our age. You may recall from the editorial in the “Where Have All the Real Man Gone” editorial quoted in my free “Break-Up Busting 101” report that Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Chuck Norris, Clint Eastwood, etc., have been replaced by Demi Moore and Angelina Jolie, with our gender being represented by Will Farrell, Hugh Grant, etc. Real fine examples of attraction-building heroes, huh? Gents, it’s like this: A woman’s greatest enemy in the world is boredom, bar none. Wussy men who won’t act like a man, take the lead, make decisions, etc., are boring. When she gets bored, she picks fights, then has affairs, then leaves if you don’t finally get the message. It’s really just that simple, and Ladies, please feel free to comment on this to help me get these men to see that this is as big an issue to you as their job security is to them! You need to know how this works, and you need to know how to listen to and speak “girly-ese” so that when your partner starts trying to tell you that you are boring her (and you can bet the farm that she will, whether she wants to or not!), you can respond appropriately in a timely manner and head off the trouble that is going to follow. And most of all, you need to know that being the kind of man that every woman enjoys is a whole lot easier and more fun than being the one they merely tolerate, or dismiss as a wuss. I can and will teach you, as hundreds of women have voluntarily taught me, if you’ll jump over to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage." It’s easy, it’s enjoyable, it’s easily affordable, and it’s guaranteed, so you have no excuse. The earlier you stand up and take action, the easier it is, so stand up and do it now, or maybe you’d prefer to continue making life hard on yourself… In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day! David Cunningham "Being a man is something to which one should aspire, not something for which he should apologize." --David Cunningham

It's Never Too Late to Fix the Problems in YOUR Relationship or Marriage (See Original)

A reader who has been married for forty years demonstrates that it’s never too late to fix common relationship problems, even forty-year old problems, if you know what to do and just do it. There have been a lot of new readers sign on lately (welcome aboard!), so for the benefit of you newbies, I want to start by saying that while I get a lot of e-mails with success stories, I don’t share them with the rest of you unless there is some specific lesson that you can learn from it. I never liked receiving such e-mails (or reading blog posts) that said nothing more than, “So-and-so did good and you can too if you buy now,” and I’m not going to bore you with them either. Yes, I have a book to sell if you need it, but I have a lot to teach you outside of that book, too. I also want to urge you to grab my free browser toolbar to have instant access to blog posts, flash messages, a reader chat room, great stuff like pop-up blocking and Internet radio, games and gadgets, and other goodies. Some of us are having a lot of fun with it, and you should join us. This story started in April 2006 when “Roger” (name has been changed to protect his privacy) subscribed to this newsletter and in early June 2006 bought a copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," a few days after that. He had a little trouble downloading the e-book because of Windows security features (128-bit SSL for you computer geeks) that had not been installed on his computer, and in the course of getting it straightened out he dropped a few details of his situation. I’ll quote some of them here to give you a feeling for where he started at the time of his purchase: Hi David Many thanks for your help in this. What little I saw indicates it is going to be a very useful reference book and answer some questions concerning things that happened years ago. We have been married for 40 years this year, but it has been a rocky road and still is occasionally. Regards, Roger Hi David, Your recent letter concerning your friend Matt has made me realize just how common such a situation can be. I have been married for almost 40 years with two daughters and three grandsons and for as long as I can remember, I have never been able to please her; always there is something else that she wants me to do. I realized this many years ago and now always make a joke of it. So as fast as I complete one project, she will have the next ready for me, sometimes before the first was finished! I just add them to my list of tasks these days, some will get done, some will never be done. My problem is that she has a real knack of making me feel guilty. This is not just about projects, it could be a social event or something she simply does not approve of, but always I have a guilt feeling when I refuse. The feelings haunt me and I end up doing what she wants sooner or later in most cases. If I argue or try to discuss, I am accused of always wanting to control her. I am driven to succeed because I want the quiet life and the brownie points that come from approval. I am told she sings my praises to others, but never to me. To give you some idea how it works, she wants me to tidy the garage so it can have a workbench, all the machines and space for me to work. She tells everyone how it will improve things for me, but she also wants me to move all the items stored in the garden shed to the garage so that I can demolish the shed. Then I am expected to build her a summerhouse in the space, not a prefabricated one, a purpose-built brick and tile fantasy! In my spare time I am expected to remodel and transform the gardens, paint the house, build a new two-level deck across the back, turn the second bathroom into a "wet" room and keep the maintenance of our other two houses up to scratch! I must finish the kitchen sometime too! In all this she has ignored the plans we had to convert the garage into a dining room whilst we built a new garage with attached workshop. Maybe this is because her new greenhouse currently occupies the site? David, I am tired! I work a 9-hour shift, six days per week and generally get just one day off. I cannot afford to pay someone else to do the work as I am still clearing debts from a failed business venture and I am earning just a tad above the minimum wage. I am reading the book you kindly emailed to me after it got lost in transit when I downloaded, but have yet to put it into practice. Recently she took a vacation with my daughter and grandsons at one of our cottages. It was tiring, but different and the boys were easy, spending their time surfing. What was I doing? I spent my evenings and a rare weekend off work, repairing and painting the beach hut! Trying to please her again! My own vacations are limited and restricted to the extent we cannot have time together and if I take time off without her, I am expected to work on one of the projects! I am considering building her a dungeon! :-)) There is a lot more to this than meets the eye, but I will not bore you with all the details of the problems in our marriage. I do not give up easily, but there are times when I seriously consider cutting my losses. Divorce is out of the question as we both feel it might make the other happy! Any advice you can offer would be appreciated. I simply want time to complete a few things on the list without her adding items faster than I can delete them! I can live without the approval for completed projects, but it would be nice if the feelings of guilt could be stopped too. Thanks for listening Kind regards, Roger Do you see what’s been going on here? Roger’s been married to this woman 40 years, and has been tested and tested and tested to see if he’ll stand up to his bratty wife’s whims. Think about this: If they’ve been married 40 years, he’s around 60 years old, still working a 54-hour work week, and she’s dominating every free minute he has. When he tries to stand up to her, she guilt-trips him into complying anyway. I sent Roger a brief bit of encouragement, pointing out that she could only make him feel guilty if he allowed her to do so, and that from his description of his situation, he could easily take charge and turn things around after he had finished reading "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and knew how to position himself and interpret his wife’s words and actions to separate the whims and tests from the legitimate issues that she really expected his full attention and cooperation on. Three weeks passed, and then I receive this in response to the lesson on attitude (the reader who chastised me and ended his subscription because I was boring him by providing TOO MUCH valuable information free of charge): Hi David, The guy who wrote complaining you were too verbose, is never going to listen to women! He has missed the point completely and seems ill-educated concerning a number of matters, which makes you wonder why he signed up in the first place. As you say, the winners listen, read and learn. I am putting some of the advice contained in your book into practice, with some spectacular results and a lot of amusement. There is a long way to go, especially after 40 years, but I can feel the difference. I thought you might also be amused by a couple of little anecdotes. The first concerning the first time I listened as she went around the house, to tell me about her day. Instead of requesting that she comes to the point, I allowed her to ramble on as she wanted, I asked occasional questions, nodded now and then, made comments and all the time I was making eye contact. Not once did I try to fix anything and after about 30 minutes of this, she suddenly stopped speaking and stared at me. I asked what was wrong, only to be told that I was behaving strangely and had not walked off when I got bored because she did not come to the point! I simply grinned at her and said I was simply listening to her experiences of the day! Since then, I have repeated this procedure and it has resulted in her being much more relaxed and a lot more helpful to me. I also spotted a recent test of my resolve following which she behaved like a spoiled brat. I forget now what it was about, but I know I explained my reasoning and asked if she had any other thoughts, but warned if she continued to behave like a spoilt child I would put her across my knee and give her a good spanking! I then grinned and made a grab for her, but she was too quick and ran off laughing! Not long ago this would have degenerated into a full blown row. As I said a long way to go and a lot more to introduce, but results are coming faster than anticipated. Thank you. Enjoy your day Regards Roger I don’t know about you, but in my experience, heading off even one spoiled brat tantrum and turning it into an attraction-building exercise like that would be worth the time and effort to read a whole encyclopedia of e-books, and he only read one! That’s two to four hours, depending on how fast you read. And what’s really cool is that Roger will now be able to do that every single time the situation arises, and will be able to take charge when real issues arise and get through them with respect and cooperation instead of a “full blown row” as well! Knowledge is indeed power, Gentlemen, the power to shape your environment, your day and your destiny. Now, get this into perspective. Forty years of bad behavior creates a lot of inertia – the strong tendency of things to keep doing what they are doing until acted upon by an opposing force of equal or greater magnitude. In behavior, we call it habit. Roger’s wife has a forty-year old habit of being a brat and pitching a fit. Roger HAD a forty-year old habit of putting up with it to keep the peace. In under three weeks, he learned and improved enough to break a forty-year old pattern of bad behavior and turn it into a positive event (that had SERIOUS positive repercussions in the bedroom that night – and there’s another thing for you to ponder: a healthy and fun “intimate” life at age 60 after being together 40 years! Can you imagine?). The lesson? It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been a wuss, or thought that giving in to all your wife’s whims was what you needed to do to get along, or how long you’ve been going about communicating with her the wrong way, it’s all correctable, if you know what to do. You don’t have to live out the rest of your life having someone you love drive you nuts with control issues, bratty behavior, dramatic fits, talking for hours and seemingly saying nothing, treating you like a child instead of a husband, being bored with your bedroom life (or having none at all), or any of those common problems (other than incompatibility, which unfortunately can only be fixed by divorce) that established couples complain of so commonly that they’re all as cliché as the image of a knight in shining armor on a white horse. Just learn what to do, then do it. Roger’s no dunce by a long shot, but you have to agree that if Roger can overcome 40 years of bad behavior in a few weeks, while working that 54-hour work week and doing everything else he has to do, the odds are pretty good that anybody, including you, can do it in your own relationship or marriage, no matter how long you’ve been together. So give it a shot! Jump over to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and learn what you need to know to fix what needs fixing, and just do it! (Nike really struck gold with that slogan, didn’t they? It’s a powerful statement, and an even more powerful attitude, one every real man has and every man and woman alive should have.) In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day! David Cunningham "Being a man is something to which one should aspire, not something for which he should apologize." --David Cunningham

Emotional Pain and Clear Thinking Don't Mix, Especially in Relationships and Marriage (See Original)

A reader’s letters over a three-month period demonstrate how the pain and stress of a troubled relationship or break-up can kill your ability to think clearly and make you very vulnerable to having your buttons pressed by people trying to help you, and how you can recover if you choose to. I want to get away from the subject of break-ups for awhile, but I have to give you this one last lesson before we get completely away from the subject, because this level of stress may happen to you someday and I need to prepare you for it. Fair warning, this is a little longer than usual because I’m quoting several e-mails, but men and women alike can learn a lot from this if you’ll take a few extra minutes to read it. Fights, fear, insecurity about your future, etc., those things that eat at you when your relationship isn’t going well or has ended, are a lot more destructive than most people imagine. Yes, it’s obvious that it hurts and makes you lose sleep, but the degree to which it can inhibit logical thought and even make you lash out at those who want to help you through tough times is not so obvious. I’m going to share with you three letters, all written by the same reader, two of which were written within less than a week of his subscribing to this newsletter, and the third one today. Bear with me, as the point will become very clear toward the end. Meet J., a man who has been in a lot of pain but is obviously finding his way out of it and back to mental clarity and stability: (His first letter, captioned “ohmigod,” received after he had read only one issue of this newsletter:) astounding does anyone actually believe any of this? so - if your partner is bored of you, its your fault my parents told me that only boring people get bored its you, the man's job, to dance attendance on her and make her feel special just what kind of relationship do your readers have with their women - and what kind of woman is it who lounges around like a spoiled teenager expecting to be "swept off her feet" by her man maybe if she made an effort to find stimulating shared experiences and PUTTING SOMETHING INTO the relationship, instead of seeing her husband as some kind of personal satisfaction service, she might not be quite the miserable self-centered bitch you think all women are holy cow, get a grip - if you REALLY think this kind of woman is the best a man can get you're lost lost lost buddy kind regards, J Kind regards, huh? I didn’t know it until later, but he had just come out of a bad relationship, and pretty much got the meaning of the newsletter he read entirely backwards, as any of you who have been reading my newsletters longer than a couple of days already realize. It was pretty obvious that he was angry and in pain, especially in the level of sarcasm in his writing, but I wasn’t yet sure that it was a relationship at the core of his problem. I wrote back to tell him so, and not realizing that he had just been through a break-up and was looking for an outlet to ventilate, replied with a fairly short and demure response: Good morning, J., I'm sorry, but you have taken whatever it is that you're responding to so far out of context that I can't even determine what post or newsletter you might be speaking of. I don't ever speak of fault, except to tell men and women not to preoccupy themselves with fixing fault and blame, and to take responsibility for whatever they may be able to improve in their relationship instead. As for being part of the problem, yours is the first negative comment I have received from anyone since I began this, and I can forward you hundreds of e-mails from readers of both my newsletter and my book where these people are telling me that they have turned their relationships completely around and that they are now better than they have ever been, including their original honeymoon period. I can only guess that you either have a hot button that was pressed by something you read or that this is yet another case of two peoples being separated by a common language. I appreciate you taking the time to write, but frankly, I might have been a lot more interested in what you have to say had you exercised a bit of tact in lieu of sarcasm about how I write and where I live. I hope you find whatever it is that you are missing, because you are obviously not a happy man. Regards, David …and he replied with the following, captioned “OK” the next day: read your latest contribution with interest of course men shouldn't habitually complain about how little support they get from their wives but its my experience that men are caught in a double bind, their women are allowed to be behave like dependent irrational little girls and be as assertive and independent as they like - they are encouraged to be both - "girls" and "women" - and woe betide any man who questions their right to be which they want to be at any given time men on the other hand are expected to be supportive and independent at the same time, and find their support away from the relationship - "Big Guys" support, unfortunately, is often needed at inconvenient times so men are screwed, not by women, but by blogs like yours which tells them to stop being a "wuss" and insists that its their fault that they can't be superheroes and not have ordinary human needs like everyday love well, buddy, you seem to be part of the problem and not the solution and you use 10 words (badly written American corporate-speak at that) where one will do keep up the good work! kindest fraternal greetings J "Keep up the good work!" and "Kindest fraternal greetings"??? At this point it was pretty obvious that he’d been through a break-up or two, was awash in a sea of negative emotions, and needed somebody to rough him up a bit to wake him up to the fact that he was indeed reacting emotionally and needed to pull back and look at what he was doing, attempting to alienate me with sarcastic remarks and possibly others who were interested in helping him. I hate having to “read somebody the riot act” as the saying goes, but every man knows that there’s nothing like getting stomped on a bit to make you realize that somebody does care about what’s going on with you, else they would just leave you, exposed and vulnerable, to wallow in pain and self-pity, so I sent him the following: J., You'd probably be a much happier person if you spent a little more time listening and learning and a little less time trying to argue with people to defend the mistakes you've made in your life. People use all of this, every day, and they write letters to confirm how well it works. Before it was ever published, it was tested on over a hundred couples with complete success. The information I use concerning attraction is based in part on information that people like John Alanis, David D'angelo, F.J. Shark, and Ross Jeffries (dating gurus) proved effective as much as ten years or more before I ever took it up and adapted it for use by people in committed relationships. I couldn’t care less what your parents taught you. Mothers teach their sons to be "nice guys" and kiss women's behinds, try to buy their affection, and dump all the decisions in their laps with regularity, because it's what they think they want, but when they get it, it turns them off completely. Making a woman feel special is done by listening and responding, and by acting like a man, not by "dancing attendance on her" or any other form of serving her. I have no idea where you get this idea that I said anything about a woman lounging around like a spoiled teenager. Women do day-dream frequently throughout the day about feeling sexual attraction. It's why they read romance novels, and why they start fights when men ignore them. It’s how they prevent boredom if left to their own devices, and is far preferable to affairs and such. Women do try much harder than men to put something into relationships, but it usually comes after attraction is triggered and after they feel commitment. I don't know of any mentally healthy women who see their husband as some sort of personal satisfaction service, and I see no evidence of them being miserable or self-centered. This is the last time I'm going to waste my time writing you. You've read one of my newsletters, apparently half-assed because you have no clue what I am telling people, and you're trying to argue with me that what I'm teaching doesn't work when (a) you don’t even know what I'm teaching, (b) if you were such an expert, you wouldn't be reading anything I've written to start with, you'd be getting rich selling what you know, and (c) everybody who has and is using it is doing so with outstanding success. Nobody who has ever used my information has ever said anything about it except how well it works, and nobody who has ever used it has asked for a refund, and I extend a satisfaction guarantee for a full year after purchase, so if they wanted to do so, they would have. That speaks for itself, as does the reality of the results that my material is giving those who use it. Your options now are to either read and learn or argue with somebody else, because I don't really care what you think, what you agree with, or what your parents told you, and until you understand what I'm saying and have tried it, you're not in any position to criticize it. What I'm teaching came straight from working with hundreds of women to find out what they respond to, and then working with their men to make sure that men can understand and do what is required. It's reality, there is no arguing with it, and if you don't like it, you can sod off and be miserable while the rest of us are enjoying a great relationship with our wives and girlfriends. I don’t deal in opinions and have no time for armchair pundits; either get in the game or get off the field. David I didn’t hear back from J. for awhile, and he did exactly what every real man does when confronted with such a wake up call. He dug in, paid attention, found his way out of the pain and frustration, and put his brain back in charge of his well-being, proving to himself and the rest of the world that the pain of even the worst break-up can be very temporary if you can keep your wits about you, with or without the help of friends and other concerned parties. This message was received captioned “from your (former) tormentor”: Hi David, Remember me? I was the guy who pissed you off a few months ago. Well, I still haven't read your book, but I have been reading your daily emails and I am not too proud to admit when I have made a misjudgment. I'm looking forward to reading your book, but a lot of what you say in your emails makes rock solid sense to me (and at 41, I've had enough unhappy girlfriends/bad relationships to realise that I must be getting something wrong). I'm going to recommend your project to friends, read your book and come back with some constructive comments (I am presumptuous to say). I think you come from a good place. I latched onto "makingherhappy" in a bad way, because, in my last relationship, I spent a huge amount of energy trying to make an immature girl happy and made myself very unhappy and ill in the process. Here's a thought though: I have to go into a workplace where this girl will be. Ex-partners and work, now there's a thorny issue. Maybe not for you, but it’s a tricky one nonetheless..... with all good wishes, J So, J., no, you didn’t piss me off, and this time I believe you when you send “best wishes.” And you’ll know how to handle the girl in the workplace after you’ve read "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," so don’t worry. You see, Folks? When you’re having relationship troubles and feeling like your guts are being ripped out at every turn, you need a release for that frustration, and the most likely and unfortunate outlet is someone who is trying to help you precisely because you have their attention. Remember that, and guard yourself against it, because not everyone is able to recognize that an outburst is an act of reaching out for help, and you have to admit that it’s a very poor way to ask for help in any case. What I recommend when anyone is having relationship or other problems that breed frustration, fear, pain, etc., is ACTION! Don’t sit back wondering what will happen next and waiting for it to happen. Dig in and find the cause of the problem and do something about it. It’s an excellent outlet for all that negative energy because it converts it into something constructive, achievement and stress relief, and it has the added benefit of MAKING THE PROBLEM GO AWAY! You can’t beat that with a stick, can you? Whether you’re facing nuisance or disaster, the key to making it go away is two-fold: knowing what to do and then doing it. “Think things through, then follow through,” was famed U.S. Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager’s “six-word formula for success,” and it works. “Thinking things through” in your relationship requires a sense of reason and a solid working knowledge of what you and your partner want and need and how you can best communicate. Yep, that’s in "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," which you will find at http://www.makingherhappy.com. The best news is that if you read it before you have problems, you’ll likely never have any because you’ll work together to keep them out of your relationship, but if you do have problems, you can fix them. Just don’t alienate everybody you know while you’re trying to get through it. In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day! David Cunningham "Being a man is something to which one should aspire, not something for which he should apologize." --David Cunningham