Switching Gears Coping With The Expected And Unexpected In Relationships And Marriage

What women want, they get more often than not; the only question is from whom or with whom will they get it...

I hope you're having a great day! The following reader comment blew me away when it first came in, and these many months later, it still does. Of all the letters I ever expected to get from readers, this one would have never been on the list. Meet Dawn:

Dear David,

I have been putting off writing you because I did not want to sound crazy. My boyfriend David and I bought your book so that we could see if we should really get married or not. He wanted to get married before now, but I kept putting him off because I felt there was something missing in our relationship. The thing is that I started finding his roommate attractive. I ended up spending the night with Eric (his roommate) while he was out of town. That night I found out that Eric had been reading your book the whole time and my David had not. I just wanted to say thanks, because Eric and I will be getting married in a few weeks and David is last week's trash.

I hope your book helps everyone as much as it helped me find the man I always dreamed of calling my husband.

Sincerely,

Dawn T.

I didn't originally write "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" to help anyone FIND a mate (although enough has been added to it that it will certainly do that quite well now), and to tell you the truth, I wrote it for GUYS (with a few BIG HINTS for women included). BUT, I've found through e-mails from readers that a lot of my sales have been to single women who are apparently smarter than us guys because they are reading material for guys to see what to prepare themselves for and ultimately seek out. I originally expected sales to women to be for their men, not for themselves. Women are taking initiative and going for it! After all, a huge part of their life is managing relationships; they are born wired to do it, and we could learn quite a bit from them about relationships if we'd take the time to do so -- I sure did!

However, Gentlemen, there are a couple of huge lessons here for all of us to learn, aside from the fact that what's in this book works. Women pay attention to what's going on around them, and they are extremely sensitive to not only behavior, but CHANGES in behavior. That's why I recommend in the first part of my book that if a man evaluates his relationship and finds out that it is one that should be kept and improved that he have the woman in his life read it as well.

This is to help her understand that she and your marriage are to be the beneficiaries (along with yourself, of course!) of the changes she's about to see, not a new girlfriend. A new girlfriend would often be a woman's first thought when she sees positive change in a man, and unfortunately, most of the time she'd be right. Let's face it Gentlemen, one of the things that get men caught having an affair is its effect as a confidence booster, which does change his behavior toward most, if not all, the people around him.

Another lesson is that women recognize when you're committed by the effort you make, and if you're caught slacking, you will be punished for it on some level, usually by having them withhold some part of themselves from you, whether it be time, consideration, support, favor, intimacy, sex, or whatever, and even by giving that part of themselves they withhold from you to another man. Being assertive and taking the lead in achievement, even the achievement of a better relationship, is sexy; being lazy or timid is anti-sexy. Take the hint, and get on the ball.

Make a hobby and a habit of taking responsibility for your life and doing constructive things to improve yourself and your environment (the space and circumstances around you - I'm not talking "green" here), and encourage others to do the same thing, a strong sign of leadership that no woman can resist. There is no person or group that can save the world, but if we all start taking better care of ourselves and the part of the world we live and work in, there won't be much room left for problems. We're proving that at our forum, http://forum.makingherhappy.com, as member after member figures out what's wrong or missing from their life and fixes it, and you'd be doing yourself a favor to join us there.

We all have a bit of a tendency to slow down and let things slide a little as we get older, and the more we let slide, the more the momentum builds, and the faster we and our situations decay, so fix everything before it becomes broken, and I'm talking about every aspect of your life - marriage, job, hobbies, physical and mental condition, EVERYTHING! There's no need to be an OVER-achiever, but be a "doer" and take care of yourself and your situation.

Start by going to http://www.makingherhappy.com and downloading your copy of my book "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage" and get your love life (and sex life) in order, and then keep right on going, with the job, friends, physique, etc., using the confidence gained by a happy home life to build your momentum. Do it now, because life's too short to do anything less than LIVE 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