I wish every one of you could know how much fun it is at times to be me and do what I do with and for all of you. Yes, there's a lot of stress and frustration at times, but the success stories are exhilarating and some of the questions I get are just downright hilarious, like this one. Meet Kent:
David,
My wife and I have been married for 18 years, and we love each other deeply. However, we've fallen into that rut that everybody seems to fall into. We do things together and talk, but we just don't seem to have real fun or real intimacy anymore. We've done nothing but sleep in our bedroom every night this year but three, and I know exactly which three they were.
If it weren't for our hobbies, I don't know what we'd do. I spend much of my evenings in my workshop making jewelry boxes, turning pens, and doing other small woodworking projects, and my wife watches mystery and cop shows on TV. Every few days, she'll get particularly antsy and fidgety and announce that she's "going out for retail therapy" and come home with a bunch of stuff that she never wears or uses and it just ends up cluttering up the house, and then she complains about it and gives it away.
I keep telling her that she's giving away our retirement when she does this, and that she should keep receipts and return items that she's not going to use, but she claims that's too embarrassing for her. I'm at the end of my rope. Can you tell me how to explain to her why she needs to stop this?
Thanks,
Kent
My response:
Hi Kent!
There's no amount of explaining that you can do that will help the situation, and that's not because you're wife is stupid, impetuous, or enjoys trying to put you into the poor house. It's because she's bored. The thrill of the purchase gives her a temporary rush of adrenaline that relieves her boredom for about long enough for her to get home, then she's over it, and the purchases go into storage where she doesn't have to look at them and admit that the purchase was a mistake and face her embarrassment.
I don't see your name on my customer list and you've only been on this newsletter list for a little over a week, so I'm going to bet that you have no idea just what a destructive emotion boredom is for women. In a nutshell, it has much of the same impact on them that sheer terror has on us. Yes, that's right. I've proven it 100% consistently with several hundred women. They have feelings and thoughts of desperation, are almost entirely incapable of logic, and in extreme cases even have physical manifestations like trembling hands and nausea. The good news is that this is something you can fix.
Boredom is one of the things for which a woman looks to a man to for protection; it's the price you pay for her nurturing, and it's a biological mechanism, not a logical one. It's the result of chemical reactions natural to the female brain, and denying it or trying to find a way around it just doesn't work. The good news is that acting like a man and using a few well-timed surprises and other little things can give her the small but frequent doses of excitement she needs (something so small as finding a Post-It note with a few well-chosen and heart-felt words on it will more than suffice, as an example).
You'll find all of that and more explained in my book, should you choose to pursue it. Do the math, and I'm sure you'll quickly realize that your wife does more damage to your checkbook in each outing than my book will do to it once, and the results are not just guaranteed, they're a foregone conclusion if you use it. My customers have proven that consistently, time and again.
Take care, and keep in touch,
David Cunningham
So how about it, Gents? Is something like this going on in your household? Wives aren't the only ones that engage in retail therapy; men can be just as guilty of it as women. But where men can fix their boredom with a new hobby, women have the need to see a man, preferably their man, acting like a man, and to be entertained by him to some degree as well. They look to us for leadership (NOT control), and when we fail to provide it, boredom quickly ensues.
Boredom really makes women crazy. And it makes them incredibly vulnerable to attraction.
That's a double-edged sword, as some of you have found out a little too late in life. If you realize your mistake and create attraction for her to relieve her boredom, she's swept off her feet and good to go for as long as you keep it up, but if somebody else creates it for her, it is possible for her to turn her back on you completely, especially if she has tried over the years to tell you that the problem exists and your inter-gender communications skills have been lacking enough that you didn't understand what she was saying, because when that happens, a woman takes it that you don't care to hear her, not that you can't do it. Why?
Because she thinks that you speak and listen the same way she does, just as you think that she speaks and listens the same way you do, and no matter how much you want it to be that way, it just isn't so. Both of you can easily learn the other's natural communication style and quickly come to terms (you can easily communicate accurately with a woman by following three simple rules), but you do have to learn and then use what you have learned.
That doesn't take a staggering intellect; just a genuine desire. It's not rocket science, Gentlemen. It's women. They make up a little more than half the world's population, and if it were that difficult, our species would have been extinct long ago. But the knowledge you need has been ignored and even buried for so long that you never got the opportunity to learn it.
Instead, you had a bunch of idiots telling you that to impress a woman you take her to a chick flick and cry with her, and you spend more on clothing and skin care products than she does. And you're supposed to be nice and let her make all the decisions, like Mom said, right? Oh, and let's not forget that absurd business about buying their love with expensive jewelry and other gifts, or impressing them with big money and expensive cars. A bunch of pure, unadulterated B.S., or "bovine fecal matter" as we used to say in the service.
So what's going on at your house? Maybe your wife's not indulging in senseless shopping sprees, but is she happy? Fun? Engaged in your life and happiness? Or is she acting as bored, frustrated, and confused as you may be right now as you read this? Or would you even know?
Why take the chance? If you were hit with a divorce right now, what do you think it would cost you, in both financial and non-financial terms? Most of the men who write to me to say that they desperately need help because their wife just filed for divorce also say that they didn't know that there was even a problem, so yes, that's a fair question that you really need to answer.
Now, for a bigger question: If you could read a book that could mitigate some or all of that cost, putting you back into a happy relationship, or getting you out of one that you never should have entered with some dignity and finesse, not to mention having a friend for an ex-wife instead of someone waiting around every corner to stick a knife in your back, would you read it?
When I had to answer that question, there wasn't even a book to read. I had to write one! But you can read it; indeed, you can start reading it in the next few minutes. Just go to http://www.makingherhappy.com and download your copy of "THE Man's Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage." You'll see what I mean, and you can thank me for it when you're done. For now, just get started! The longest journey ever completed started with a single step, and for you, this is the one.
In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham"Being a man is something to which one should aspire, not something for which he should apologize." --David Cunningham
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