2485. Friendly Reminders — 04

• Expecting Mr. Good Enough to make himself worthy of her creates relationship glue. The drawn out habit-forming process should have no precise rush or goal for her; just enable him to develop his worthiness. If marriage results, it will be his idea or it likely won’t last. The prove-his-worth glue should help her harmonize their togetherness (unless, of course, she assumes another persona after marriage).
• Men can’t duplicate God’s unconditional love, but they can show the earthly equivalent. That is, unconditional respect for individuals, especially those that reveal they don’t deserve it. (Strictly by the male nature, men only respect those who earn their personal respect.)
• Men are slow to adapt, but they follow for better or worse the moral and religious standards exemplified by women and especially their woman. (Men like for all women to live by the same values, standards, and expectations that are elevated above masculinity. In the past, men morphed into gentlemen in the wake of women who styled themselves as ladies. It makes women more mysterious, unpredictable, and not understandable. All of which makes them more attractive to men, when their inside attractiveness uplifts their outside appearance.)
• Projecting gratitude and respect reflects on hubby as her dependence. It  makes wife more valuable to him, even though she proves herself relatively independent in harmonizing the home.
• Professing psychological need of a man—‘I can’t do without you’— weakens her case to keep him. She acts too possessive. He’s neither pleased nor capable, and he dodges it until she gets sickening about it. Then he departs.
• These multiplex ingredients blend into maximum marital glue. Her likeability reinforces his significance. In his eyes he’s a better man for having her. His significance reinforces her need for a brighter future. She’s a better woman for having it brighter. Without those connections intensely exchanged, other single ingredients can be insufficient, e.g., love, respect, affection, vows, dependence.

 

2300. Preventive Relationship Maintenance — And Likeability

Motto: PRiM is very proper, ‘cause he doesn’t drop her.

For reasons having to do with the way men love differently from women, I connect all the emotional attractions of one person for another. It includes shortcomings that don’t disqualify but are found acceptable enough to be ignored. All of it rolled up into one fluffy little love ball called their likeability, which makes them uniquely different to every other person.

Everyone is as likeable as each other individual determines them to be. No two people judge or are judged alike. As women view love, it is inadequate to describe masculine behavior; men just don’t think and act the same way. Likeability closes the gap. It enables us to talk about men and women as they couple up and understand why mates do and don’t stay together. Why preventive maintenance before the fact is far superior to relationship management after the fact.

Likeability summarizes a person’s appeal to another. Your likeability to guy A is enough for him to marry you, but guy B wouldn’t think of it. OTOH, guy A’s likeability means nothing to you, but you’d give your heart and soul if guy B would just pay attention to you. It means you need to look for guys C, D, E, F, and G.

One’s likeability includes all the appealing attractions such as physical attractiveness, mental compatibility, love, like, affection, mutual respect, trust, patience, indirectness, and every other kind of trait and habit that appeals favorably to the other. Those features and habits that a man admires in a woman are virtues. The more virtuous, the more likeable to that man. As a woman sees desirable attractions in a man, she sees high merits. The more and higher the merits, the more likeable to that woman.

Likeability is personal taste and couple-connected. If each person remains likeable enough to the other, they tend to stay together. As life progresses, virtues and merits lose and gain importance. If virtues or merits weaken, then the couple starts to lose common interest, part their togetherness, and finally split their partnership or mated connection. So, as used here, ‘likeable’ means tending to glue one person to another and if likeability is mutual, a couple may form. If mutual enough, they may stay together. Unlikeable that may come later after a couple forms initiates the separation process although it never has to go that far.

As usual, there’s a catch. PRiM is the process of making oneself more likeable to another and finding more likeability in the other. However, we lack the ability to improve without error another person’s respect, trust, love, patience, etc. IOW, we should forget the details and work on the big picture.

The catch is this paradox. You make yourself more likeable in two ways: a) by making him like himself better; b) by making yourself a better person. Not by trying to be more likeable yourself, although you should frequently take inventory by evaluating yourself against how he treats you. We all like to associate with people with whom we like ourselves. Without trying or even thinking about it, we like ourselves when with them; they are likeable to us and we usually mate with the most likeable.

This is PRiM in simplest terms. The primary job of keeping a man’s love is twofold. a) She does whatever it takes to read her man and keep herself both respected and likeable in his eyes. b) She does whatever it takes to find and keep her man likeable in her eyes. Both are required and relatively simple but not easy for a relationship expert.

2257. From Whence Comes Respect

Sir Eric at 2250 triggered this article. He said, “Before there was No-Fault Divorce, the wife’s behavior would have been legal grounds for a divorce, and now their husbands praise the same behavior!”

I quote from Wikipedia, “The earliest precedent in no-fault divorce laws was originally enacted in Russia shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution. …The purpose of the Soviet no-fault divorce laws was ideological, intended to revolutionize [transform?] society at every level. … California was the first U.S. state to adopt what are now called “no-fault” divorces in the United States in 1969.”

I hope to show that the damage to family stability and need of no-fault is caused by lack of mutual respect, in slight decline before no-fault but precipitously so ever since.

Men are driven to compete against Nature when it obstructs progress, compete with other men to enable progress, and shape and control human events. To the male mind, women aren’t part of that competitive world, just supporters, witnesses, or interferers.

The male competitive nature prevents men from respecting other men until they earn it by accomplishments that symbolize their significance in the male world. Significance, for example, in personal associations, professions, workplaces, fathering, sports, home. IOW, by value-added indications of accomplishments and personal significance, men earn the respect of other men; they earn mutual masculine respect by doing.

Women also have to earn masculine respect. Not in terms of individual significance for doing things, however, but by making themselves of significant value to supporting a man’s ambitions. Some mixture of success as female achiever and ambition-aiding significance—in competition with other women—earns the respect of men.

It enables each man to find, evaluate, and mate with the most respectful after evaluating the most respectable in his own judgment. Yes, selecting a mate begins with his respect of her before love ever invades his heart. (Selecting her based on respect also helps husband this way; how well wife is respected by other men adds to both his self-respect and respect of men.)

Thus, a man’s respect of men revolves around accomplishments that kind of generate a pecking order that varies and guides men through each competitive event and day. A man’s respect of a woman depends on her ability to accomplish significant things of lasting interest to him.

A woman’s respect of a man emerges differently. She loves first and learns to respect later. His accomplishments are not the root of her respect. It accumulates from his success helping her confirm her sense of self-importance as person, woman, mother, friend, girlfriend, fiancé, bride, companion, and the other roles she fills in their life together.

Now watch this ladies and tell me if I’m wrong. She respects him as the result of her making him important in her life. To the extent he doesn’t fit well in her plans for shaping their relationship, she doesn’t respect him. IOW, for the most part, if their relationship sours, it’s his fault and he doesn’t deserve for her to respect him.

Therein lays one root of early divorce. He respects and loves her. His habits and faults hit her wrongly, don’t meet her expectations. She tries to change him and he resists. She becomes frustrated, which makes her feel incompetent, which makes her feel unimportant in his life, which stimulates her to not show respect for him, which he sees as reason to depart if she hasn’t already filed for a no-fault.

Consequently, mutual respect depends on wife finding and keeping respect for husband and not letting his behavior diminish her appreciation for their relationship.

Perception is reality in such cases; whatever appears to be, is. Immature women and those who lack patience judge their man too quickly as not respectable enough. They act accordingly, hubby detects it as ingratitude, her likeability begins to fade and his love to weaken. All of which kills mutual respect.

Women expect her and his love and men expect mutual loyalty and likeability to hold their relationship together. The common denominator, however, is respect. And unless it grows into mutual respect, the no-fault is not far behind.

2256. Interface of Natural Love: Compatibility and Mutual-interest

To describe a couple’s love requires that it be examined in three stages: foundation, two personalities, and individual self-interests.

1. The foundation is how they are born differently and then come together. That natural interface is described in the previous article (2255).
2. Rising above that foundation, two personalities must be compatible at the start or made so as their relationship develops. “Made so” implies that someone has to change in order to adjust enough to mix masculine competition and feminine cooperation into a workable solution. Men will change before conquest in order to capture a woman if she is more important to him than just for sex.

After conquest, however, instinctive male nature prevents conquerors from changing to please the conquered. So, each woman faces the frustrations of managing her sexual assets in such a way that enables her to integrate two diverse personalities into compatibility.

Moreover, women are blessed with sufficient ability. At birth they inherit an adjustable ability that enables them to achieve what they are after. Management traits of patience and flexibility that men lack (for dealing with women, that is) enable decisions wiser than his when she’s choosing a mate.

Simply by managing how competition about conquest morphs into cooperation without conquest, women can bring forth the blossoms of love in relationship development. The only requirement is that he pursues her for sex and she refuses until he meets her expectations for sufficient devotion to her above others. Without her love of him and his devotion to her, there’s not enough meat to share on the compatibility platter.

If she doesn’t ensure before conquest that he obligates himself to fulfill her expectations, then he assumes no responsibility toward or for her well-being. It torpedoes her ship, because the character, strength, and dependability of men is founded on personal obligation to fulfill whatever they consider their responsibility. IOW, making herself his responsibility is the essence of marital love, compatibility, and—up next—mutual-interest.

3. Self-interest motivates everyone. Unless forced, people don’t violate it. Unless charmed by a good woman, men don’t yield their self-interest to hers. Unless passionate about marrying a particular man, women don’t yield theirs either.

Integrating two very diverse self-interests into mutual-interest is the work of woman. Only she has the interest, traits, and ability to merge such opposing and tremendously personal ‘belongings’. The ingredients that drive self-interest—e.g., tightwad, promiscuous, responsible, fearful, integrity, passionate, ungrateful, selfish, courageous, stubborn, irresponsible—are owned and difficult to part with in order to accommodate someone else’s ingredients that might destroy or infringe on yours.

Integrating two individual self-interests into one synergistic mutual-interest requires monumental and continuous effort. It’s a—and perhaps the—major reason women are so well prepared for it. And men are not.

God designs, Nature endows, and hormones energize man and women differently and they face love at the interface described at 2255. After they meet, just about everything else that has to be done is accomplished by the woman. She integrates their personalities into compatibility and self-interests into mutual-interest. Thus, she earns her man’s respect by achieving marital success, which solidifies his love because respect is the foundation of it.

Blog 2252 — Her Wrinkles are Good

Her Highness Beloved at 2251 probably doesn’t realize she paid me the kindest compliment. She enabled me to think through a troublesome problem, that of wives blaming loss of husbands on female aging. I use facial wrinkles as the most prominent symbol that women use of their aging.

The sexes age very differently. For this article, I reduce it to two major causes and effects. She loses her youthful appearance and tries to restore it. He loses his sexual ability and tries to rejuvenate it. Out of shame, ignorance, and lack of concern of the other’s nature, they don’t try to compensate together but instead do unhelpful things for their marriage.

Sir Eric recently pointed out that men are primarily attracted to youthful looking females with narrow waists that produce an ‘hour-glass’ appearance. True, but those two factors take on a simpler role in marriage. (She’s already conquered and his urge to conquer others is quieted by marital obligation.)

Her youthfulness is a major part of the glue of their togetherness; it reminds him of his youthful capability or what he wishes he still had. She’s great to have around as reminder of what he once was and had for looks and ability. He sees her change, more from mature actions than appearance. Her wrinkles are not central, just a very small part of her morphing image. Nowhere near the importance that she gives them.

Nevertheless, she blames her wrinkles as losing her beauty and believes that he—were he not so considerate—also thinks the same. Consequently, women overreact about wrinkle development. They easily get lost hoping to find a way to ease their personal pain in hope of assuaging husband’s regret which doesn’t exist.

Her hour-glass waist attracts primarily for sex. Her body attracts his. She’s great to have around as reminder of what he once was and had in bed. Body wrinkles don’t interfere much with sex. The really important things to men don’t change that much with age: lips, vagina, clitoris, eyes, ears, hair, breasts, plus cute or appealing mannerisms she displays during sex. Body wrinkles interfere with touch, perhaps, but a man’s body is also changing before his eyes and aging becomes acceptable with adjustments to expectations.

The Wifely Dilemma. That’s the surface but not the whole story. It deserves expansion of thought because women use wrinkles as an alibi for being cheated on or abandoned. IOW, they let wrinkles motivate them to do wrong things for marriage.

• Female vanity has a natural purpose. By paying close attention to making herself look her best, she learns to live with, deal with, and adjust to accepting the wrinkling that comes with age. The absence of daily attention, facial care, and mirror time turns wrinkles into a much bigger deal than warranted. (The more they are looked at, the less important they become.)
• Youthful appearance attracts and holds a man’s interest because it helps justify loving her. Tiny waist attracts him sexually and sex with her confirms his continued interest and love. (Unsuccessful sex casts doubt on his decisions about loving her. I know, women don’t let unsuccessful sex stop their loving their man. But men love very differently from women.)
• Gracious aging reminds a husband how smart he was to team up with her. She continues to be the gal for whom he gave up his independence. (When husband thinks about his or her aging, wrinkles play no part; too many other things are more important to the masculine side of married life.)
• As couples age, other emotional connections develop and reinforce a marriage around other than youthful appearance. The sexual hopes and dreams of men do not age but their sex drive declines. So, late in marriage, a thin waist is more appealing to a husband than a youthful face, which means that wrinkles don’t damage the marital landscape nearly as much as overeating for many years.
• The husbandly view of wives fits this model for life. When they met, he found her emotionally attractive, loyal and likeable as a promising fit for his personality and ambitions, and married her on that basis. Her sexual attractiveness held him spellbound until conquest and subsequent sexual relations reinforced her likeability. Simple, two factors. 1) Her loyalty and likeability confirmed his love and brought him into marriage. 2) Their sexual relations confirm his wisdom about 1).
• As they age, youthfulness and waist size merge to become part of their relationship. 1) Her loyalty and likeability continue to hold him and wrinkles play no part. 2) Sexual relations deteriorate with his aging and he forever looks for ways to restore his vigor with imaginative prods to his libido. Her sexual ability doesn’t age although her interest may, which may discourage her from helping husband restore his sexual thought and vitality in bed.
• Husbands neither dump wives nor chase trophies because of wrinkles, so wives do better when they rethink their relationship management style and practice and perhaps calm their ego in the process.
• Men take aging as inevitable and wrinkles for granted. Of course, women can’t stand being taken for granted, and so they imagine all kinds of spousal discrimination as they pass through middle age and into senior-ville. It’s wasted effort; far better for wives to focus on more meaningful shortcomings that may have crept into their marital persona.
• Women resent their wrinkles as taking away their beauty. Nature works quite contrary to that. It compensates and better than a face lift too. Men see it this way. Face lifts may remove wrinkles but they also remove lines that add character that nature uses to replace youthfulness with dignity and virtuous maturity. Men prefer signs of strong character to faux youthfulness. They can’t respect what appears to be phony and face lifts produce that impression however subliminal it may be.
• Wives like to believe that men abhor wrinkles. It provides an alibi. Changes in appearance due solely to aging are beyond her responsibility, so she has an excuse for letting both appearance and relationship deteriorate as if caused by aging. She can blame him as finding fault with her aging and ignore the other things that displease husbands.
• Woman-think does not make men think like women. That her appearance changes solely from aging means little to men. However, husbands begrudge bad habits that produce less desire for sex or that make them appear as suckers or worse to their masculine peer competitors.
• If men ever claim a lady’s wrinkles to be offensive, something much deeper and drawn out over time is behind it; wrinkles are the facade. The male nature urges men to motivate themselves to move forward with what they have and not get hung up on what they can’t change. Aging is easily acceptable to men, although the male ego sometimes gets in the way of his aging graciously (e.g., outlandish mid-life crisis.)
• If husband loves wife, her aging fits right in with his. He’s not going to cheat or dump her because of her wrinkles. Husbands dump wives because they lose their likeability and loyalty to their man. Just one example, he stays in excellent shape and health and she lets herself go to hell in a handbasket. It’s not her aging per se. It’s her unwillingness to stay abreast of his lifestyle—in this example—that means much to him and for which the relationship expert must accept responsibility.
• Men expect and live easily with slow aging and deliberate acceptance. Except, perhaps, when their woman goes overboard spending hard-earned money—unnecessarily to men—for face lift and other appearance changes the pursuit of which changes her role in his life to that of someone he didn’t marry.

The Single Woman’s Dilemma.

• I disclose a bias. I personally favor tummy tucks as more appealing to husbands and am against face lifts because they are more appealing to wives. To me, the former aids compatibility and the latter weakens it. Money spent on compatibility is more beneficial than that spent on the female ego. But that’s just this man’s opinion.
• As for single women, I don’t fault face lifts. But women should be advised of this. To remove wrinkles for the sake of being differently attractive for the next guy can be beneficial. If her reason is to like herself better, it won’t be beneficial and she’s wasting money.

Pardon, ladies. I’ve made a bigger thing out of facial wrinkles than I initially intended. But I don’t have the time to shorten it.

2159. Dating in Mid-life — Part B3: Elephant in the Room

Here’s politics in the raw. During your first date, two conquerors face off. He seeks sex without obligation, but expects to pay some price that you determine and he hopes to minimize. You seek a permanent relationship by doing whatever you think it will take.

I think of successful relationship development in four stages that develop progressively and remain dependent on each other. 1) His interest matches your likeability. 2) His loyalty matches your love. 3) His commitment matches mutual promises of sexual fidelity. 4) His devotion matches your plans for your future together. But an elephantine risk for you lurks in the background.

His primal and endless urge to conquer attractive women has spotlighted you as a target. Don’t disregard the importance of that urge hardwired in his psyche. Be prepared, know what’s forthcoming if you yield sexually.

This is the elephant: He will reveal a different persona if and when he conquers you. The elephantine risk is whether you will end up as keeper, booty, or dumpee.

Conquest releases his nature to hunt again, and you discover what you really mean to him. You tame that elephant if you successfully develop a mutually loyal relationship while dating. Then in courtship you expand promises of loyalty to commitment and on to mutual devotion, which effectively ties the elephant’s leg to a well-anchored peg in the ground.

Your importance to a potential conqueror does not guarantee that you will remain important to him after conquest. If he hasn’t pledged exclusive loyalty based on good character, committed faithfully based on words of integrity, or become devoted to you so obvious in his actions—all before you yield—then he feels no obligation to refrain from hunting elsewhere.

Devotion to one woman is the only thing that truly tames—not kills, just tames—a man’s hardwired hankering to conquer attractive women. Devotion develops out of his daily actions and reinforcing words designed to please himself by pleasing you. Growth toward devotion also energizes him to not disappoint you. He routinely if not often enough pleases you and finds opportunity to please himself for lifting your spirits whether you need it or not. He goes all out on your behalf when you hurt inside or outside. Furthermore, his actions and attentions are consistent and persistent and not dependent on his convenience.

When we see a man who falls in love at first sight, we see devotion formed instantaneously. It isn’t the love that females sense and claim. Masculine loyalty and faithfulness spring out with effects that match female love.

A lot of time is required to tame and then peg that elephant to the ground. Months and perhaps a year or more depending on you and your romance target. You have by far the greater challenge, which is why God gave you relationship expertise. You  hold him off sexually while making and keeping yourself attractive, likeable, and loyal to his satisfaction. Your wordy expressions of love don’t work nearly as well as those qualities; his primary sensor is eyes and not ears, his expectation is satisfaction and not happiness.

However, a natural process exists that you can use. No guarantees, but the odds favor you as successes accumulate inside the process described as He Walks Himself to the Altar (coming later).

I almost forgot. In the dating arena, the elephant shrinks in size with aging. Huge at age 30, by age 60 it should be dwarf-size, perhaps self-tied to the peg in the ground, and of little risk or threat. You ladies know how to adjust according to the age of your romance targets.

Risk takers win, and that’s for tomorrow at #2160.

2152. Push Husband Out, It’s Easy

Her Highness Mia inquired about clarity on minor subjects, but it prompted me to rant. Nothing she did or said. Just me reminding myself. So, she and you can take yourself personally out of what follows. No accusations aimed your way. However, some of it applies to women everywhere just to the extent they find something of interest to do or undo.

Pointed at all women, the writing just comes better in second person, you, and hopefully reads more interestingly that way.

It doesn’t matter if cheating husband’s other woman is perfect partner or not. If he sought her out, it means you’re not the perfect partner he thought he married. You were the love of his life. So what fractured, shattered, or crumbled his love into nothing with any loyalty left for you? It’s not even a shadow of what left the altar.

I’ve preached it for several years. Positive and affirming emotions such as love and respect do not hold marriages together. Not as much as negative emotions rip marriages apart. Such as a continual bombardment of irritants, criticism implied or stated, and mini-failures to close the gaps of emotional differences. In short, the lack of relationship expertise that recognizes little nods of negative connection and finds ways to abolish them.

Counselors and advisors advise continually on what to do to please your partner. It may help a little but it’s not the answer for marital success. Your time is better spent avoiding what ticks off your partner or spouse. Stop kicking him and kick yourself.

When a husband takes up with another woman, he’s at fault. No way to justify it. However, we can examine his motivational background.

His love depends on his respect for you, so how did you undermine it? Nag? Criticize? Withhold sex? Enable him to feel inadequate in bed? Blame him? Point out his shortcomings? ID his faults? Treat him as uninteresting? Talk endlessly about things of no interest to him? Feed him what you like instead of what he likes? Get up grouchy in the morning? Nag? Do little to please him but expect him to please you continuously? Act grouchy after work? Have too many headaches at night? Refuse to entertain his friends? Resent his hobbies or habits that take him away from you? Dislike yourself and too lazy to do something about it? Forget who you were that attracted him to you? Plan to return to your natural personality once you hooked him? Always act sick with little reason? Manipulate him? Never smile at him? Fail to confirm his importance in your life? Never try to please him for the pleasure it gives you? Keep alive your own negative attitude? Fail to show gratitude for what he does? Fail to show your dependence on who he is? Complain to girlfriends about him? Expose his foibles to others? Show disdain for him in public? Embarrass him? Whine endlessly about all your problems? Fail to teach the kids that dad ranks higher in the pecking order than they do? Fail to grant him the status of family leader? Nag? Spend too much money with the false expectation you will like yourself better? Expect him to make you feel better about yourself? Disturb him unnecessarily at his job? Express complaints about him in front of the kids? Overeat as if you deserve it to feel better about yourself? Fail to acknowledge your secondary role in family matters (as he sees it, darling, not as you suppose it should be)? Fail to step up to your responsibilities for harmony in the home? Fail to use your relationship expertise to generate harmony between the two of you?

Change your habits/personality/behavior from the woman he married? Refer to him minor problems with kids that you could solve if you weren’t fearful the kids would dislike you? Find less interest in him than other people and things outside the home? Fail to read and understand just what goes through his mind during both good and bad relationship incidents? Fail to help him recover from his mistakes and self-caused accidents? Disagree with each other in front of the children? Fail to reward him for special tasks that please you? Overdo pillow talk with irrelevant or unimportant issues? Resent his frustrated sense of independence? Find ways to shame him? Use too many words, rather than silence-that-informs, to plead your case that he upset you? Nag? Resent his rest and recreation with TV and beer immediately after work? Fail to show faith in his judgment when he’s intent on doing things his way (e.g., not asking for directions). Elevate your job as more important than his? Fail to trust him. Resent his earning satisfaction daily at his job while happiness comes to you after years of striving? Disrespect men generally and it leaks over onto him?

You see, I enumerated many ways that you could and perhaps still do that disappoint him. If he provides any feedback, you ignore it. In any event, before he met you at the altar he expected none of the above or he would have left you standing by yourself. Now he takes it out on you. He resents, resists, and eventually retaliates on some simple thread the camel’s back could not carry.

Men are not inclined to stay married to women who are not the same one they married. Some men do it by sneaking off to cheat first. Others let their woman’s surprises turn them into abusers. Still others just walk out. Finally, a few hang around having had their masculine courage smashed into apathy; they prefer the certainty of misery to the uncertainty of change, which then reverses the game by costing them your respect.

Men follow inspiring female leadership in relationships. When will relationship experts learn to lead men respectfully in ways that men accept with dignity and gratefulness? Learn to make themselves more important by making themselves less obvious, less intent on being completely understood, less convinced that only they know what’s proper, and less convinced that micro-management will improve their marriage?

The pinkie finger article is aimed at highlighting your upsets and leaving unstated what you expect out of him. It dumps your displeasure in his lap to do with as he pleases, which gently and without accusing flips his ‘Uh Oh’ switch to read: ‘I probably should not do it that way again’. Self-correction is a much more agreeable meal for him to digest, which makes you as the relationship pinkie-waving ‘cook’ look much more dependable, friendlier, and likeable. He can easily learn that he wants to remain closer to you rather than another.

NOTE: More reasons to justify use of the pinkie will be disclosed in a day or two. If you have reasons, feed them to me and thanks for doing so.

 

2141. Compatibility Axioms #651-660

651. Devotion is observable. He courts her delicately and doesn’t push too hard for conquest, because he’s afraid of losing her. [222]

652. Commitment is infatuation, lust, love, or maybe half-empty words. The only proof lies in the absence of breaking up. [222]

653. Promises make a risky commitment, as females see it, but it’s often better than nothing. Women crave to be cherished but that only flows out of a man’s devotion. [222]

654. Inspiring and energizing her man without de-motivating him is difficult. But a woman’s natural relationship expertise provides enough talent and skill—if she also practices patience, indirectness, and cooperation instead of competition about decisions that are personally his. [227]

655. Only one way exists to find out if a man is really after a woman for herself. Withhold sex until he proves himself willing and worthy by honoring her ideals, standards, and expectations that he give up his freedom just for her. [227]

656. Long-term marriage boils down to this: She chose him. She’s the relationship expert. Experts critically qualify someone trying to sell them something. Later, they make necessary adjustments to live with what they ‘purchased’. [227]

657. Promises and words of commitment fade easily under daily pressures. Acts of commitment reinforce feelings, promote permanency, and grow into devotion capable of surviving daily pressures. [227]

658. Some women learn the hard way. They dress erotically to capture a man and follow up with sloppy dress and grooming. Eventually they find that it turns his head toward other neat and erotically attired females. Other women learn the easy way. They know and avoid sloppy appearance and inattentive personal grooming at home and in public. [228]

659. Feminist thinking in the home inspires women to favor ingratitude for their man’s imperfections rather than gratefulness for his manliness and strengths. Eventually, a man tires of it, his respect wanes, alienation sets in, and disruption or departure follows. [228]

660. Women expect to kiss a frog into prince hood. Men expect their woman to elevate them from prince to king. Modern women fail to provide this second ‘promotion’. [229]