Love & Relationships

Want Better Lovin’? Lower Your Expectations!

Men who like women understand women and don’t need them to change very much. Women who like men understand men and don’t need them to change very much. This lack of need or even desire for your partner to make changes is a primary reason for marital happiness.

Carin Rubenstein, author of The Superior Wife Syndrome, says that two out of three marriages suffer from a set up between men and women where the wives feel as though it’s all up to them because they can do it all so much better. And the men let them do it all, giving up and giving in to the women’s superiority. Those marriages are not happy unions because the wives feel like martyrs and the husbands experience themselves as inadequate.

Do Lower Expectations Mean A Happier Marriage?

In the third of marriages that don’t suffer from this syndrome, Carin has observed that the wives in those marriages have lower expectations of their husbands than do the superior wives. Expectations such as how perfect the house is, when and how the lawn is maintained, when and how the family cars are serviced and cleaned, how the little children in the family are fed, bathed, and put to bed, etc. Rather than a lowering of expectations around the family’s morals or values, it has to do with the details of life that are aggravated by the differences between the sexes.

Joseph and I recently interviewed Carin Rubenstein for our podcast. As a result, we wound up in an on-air conversation about how understanding I am about the coffee rings I frequently find on the kitchen counter. In our house, Joseph is the only coffee drinker, by the way.

Later, a listener fired off a bunch of questions about why can’t a man just finally learn to clean off the counter? Although she was used to listening to us talk about the benefits of taking 100% responsibility for the results that show up in a relationship, as well as hearing us discuss the natural differences between the sexes, it frustrates her no end for men to be sloppy housekeepers and the women to have to either nag them about it, surrender to it, or clean up after them. It turns out this is a major source of conversation among her and her friends. They’re all suffering from it!

We talked with her about men we know who are excellent housekeepers but emotionally absent from their wives and children. That no one is perfect and there is always the necessity for compromise and letting go. With our perspective of taking 100% responsibility for the results of your relationships, a natural question for us to ask her was, “Why have you created a string of romantic relationships with men who were all sloppy housekeepers; and, if that matters to you, are you ready to create a different kind of man with which to fall in love?”

You Create Your Own Reality

As creator of your own reality, if you bear a grudge in general against the opposite sex, the universe will conspire to prove you correct and only bring men and women into your life who will confirm your worst beliefs about them! Which brings us back to my first paragraph, men and women who like the opposite sex understand the opposite sex and don’t need them to change very much. This very much affects living with the opposite sex.

Women who like men know that men think differently than they do and they don’t usually lose patience with that fact. Men are more focused than women. They like communication to get to the bottom line quickly. Whether they are good or sloppy housekeepers, there are always things they just don’t see because their focus is centralized, whereas women naturally see a bigger picture.

Men live in the present moment. Women anticipate the future. And so when a snow storm hits at Christmas and he’s tracking in snow, grit, and mud to free up the driveway and take care of downed branches, he isn’t thinking about Christmas coming and the need to have the house cleaned and picked up for the sake of the holidays and company coming. After all that hard work, he wants to relax with the paper and call it a day.

How Superior Wife Syndrome Can Ruin Your Relationship

If his woman has the superior wife syndrome, it makes her nuts that he can’t read her mind, understand what’s required to get comfortably through the holidays, anticipate her needs, the children’s needs, and the soon to be company’s needs. If his marriage is one of the happy third not suffering from this syndrome, his wife appreciates all the hard work going into freeing the driveway of snow and the yard of branches and, frankly, happily works around him.

She’ll ask for a helping hand here and there but not with an attitude that, were it put into words, would sound something like, “Listen, you jerk. There’s a lot to get done around here, can’t you see that?” That martyred mind-set is the purview of superior wives whose husbands have given up because they can neither read their wives’ minds nor think like women think. It just isn’t in their DNA. They do not have access to it.

Happily married people understand the differences between the sexes and either accept it and get used to it or they celebrate those differences. Either way, their expectations, compared to the folks suffering from the superior wife syndrome, are lower. I’d rather be happy than have expectations met that will really only satisfy my desire to be right and not contribute to the health or happiness of the relationship. How about you?

If You Are The “Other Woman,” Read THIS!

By sarahelizabethmalinak

When a man has an affair with a woman who does not match his wife in terms of intelligence, accomplishment, and class, it is because he has no intention of replacing his wife with her. He has no intention of making a life with her. He has no intention of placing himself in the position to be her protector and provider. No matter how hot he is for her, he doesn’t respect her and has no intention of taking care of her. She exists to take care of his needs. To whatever extent his power and the seduction of pretending she is somehow superior to his wife feels good to her and seems to meet a need of hers; he does not, in fact, exist to serve her.

Does He Really Love You?

As Steve Harvey so beautifully says in Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man.

When a man loves you he does three things:

A man in love with you professes his love for you, both to you and to others.

A man in love with you provides for you.

A man in love with you protects you.

When a married man has an affair with you, he is in no position to profess his love for you to anyone outside the relationship because it puts him and his reputation at risk. He is in no position to provide for you either. Even if he buys you expensive gifts or sets you up in an apartment, you have no legal claim on this man. When he changes his mind about you or if he dies, you get nothing and you have no recourse to use your romantic tie to him to get anything.

Steve Harvey says that providing for his woman is “the very core of manhood.” As his mistress, your man isn’t free to express himself with you at his masculine best. This results in resentment towards you and contributes to his lack of respect for you.

When a married man has an affair with you, he cannot protect you from those who will judge you once they know you are romantically linked to a married man. He isn’t in your life enough to protect you from the slings and arrows of life. He cannot protect you from people who mistreat you because to do so puts him at too much risk. When a married man has an affair with you, he puts you in harm’s way. This is why the movie, “Fatal Attraction,” terrified a generation of men. When the mistress put the cheating husband in harm’s way, she completely undermined his power in that relationship, in his marriage, and in the rest of his life.

In the short term, the thrill of the chase, the excitement of being “bad,” and the newness of sex with you can make him appear to be gloriously happy with you. It will not last.

Are There Any Exceptions To This Rule?

There is one caveat to this observation. Sometimes two people genuinely fall in love while cheating on their spouses. Sometimes, when marriages are in trouble and ending, the next love comes along before the marriage has had a chance to come to an end. It is a complicated way to begin a relationship and carries fragility and vulnerabilities that singles who fall in love don’t have to deal with. In such a case, you will find your man either professing his love for you, providing for you, and protecting you or taking action to speed up the day when he can do so.

If you are a married man’s mistress, be deeply honest with yourself about how you perceive him. Take a good long look at whether or not he is making himself free to profess his love for you outside the relationship, genuinely provide for you, and be there to really protect you. If not, confront the fact that he will never really be yours but will always belong to someone else and decide if this is good enough for you.

You are worthy of better love. If he can’t provide it, what are you waiting for?

North Ireland Rocked By Cougar Affair

By drbonnieeakerweil

Here’s a twist on the typical political affair: this time, the person perpetrating the affair was a woman. And her lover was 19. She’s Iris Robinson, a member of the Irish parlaiment and wife of Ireland’s first minister. Additionally, a radio show in Britian is alleging that Ms. Robinson organized a nearly $83,000 business deal to establish her lover’s business without declaring her interest. The program also pointed guilted the first minister, saying he became aware of the relationship and the deal but didn’t alert authorities.

What Drives An Affair?

I’ve written a lot about the affairs we see perpetrated by politicians ~ it’s nothing new. Typically the reasons boils down to similar reasons for just about everyone in positions of power: they’re more vulnerable to engage in this type of behavior because of stress, separation and loss – factors which I deal with in-depth in my book Adultery The Forgivable Sin, where I discuss healing the hurt after an affair. These aspects can come from a variety of places: stress from their job, separation from their significant other or family, loss of a higher position, an election, money, their youth or any one of a number of things. It’s likely that Ms. Robinson (an ironic name, we know) was suffering from any or all of these things but her transgressions go deeper.

The so-called cougar mentality (older women who give their time and affection to younger men) can rear its head for a variety of reasons.

1. Lack of affection from their partner (this is a common theme in a variety of adulterous relationships, not just ones featuring a vast age difference)

2. Low self-esteem, the need for attention and acceptance. No matter how well the cheater’s partner treats them, no matter how good the relationship is, they need a larger “audience” to boost their ego.

4. Sex addict. Just like a drug addict, the sex addict isn’t thinking about the destructive consequences to themselves or others. Their focus is driven by the addiction.

5. When a person can’t deal with reality very well, they escape by cheating. Some people escape to drugs or alcohol, some escape by playing the fantasy world.

The Link Between Affairs And Financial Infidelity

The financial issues make this particular affair even more interesting as Ms. Robinson committed financial infidelity not just against her husband (by utilizing her finances to engage in a sexual affair) but also, potentially, against her responsibilities as a politician. Garnering such substantial support for someone who turns out to be a lover should be scrutinized. As I discuss in my book, Financial Infidelity, people typically commit this type of infidelity (and sexual infidelity as well) against their partners as a way to escape a certain problem. This could be true in the Robinson’s personal life and it could also be true in her public and political life as well.

One of the unfortunate things is that any type of affair will never allow you to ESCAPE a problem but will instead create more stress, thereby helping the adulterer spin out of control in a cycle of stress/infidelity, stress/infidelity, and so on. This sad situation is yet another example of the powerful being addicted to risky behaviors, and drives home the necessity of fostering a loving, communicative relationship where you can be honest with and about yourself, and with and about your partner.

Tiger And Elin: Brush With Death

By drbonnieeakerweil

As more and more media outlets are reporting that Tiger Woods and his wife, Elin, may in fact be getting a divorce, I have a suggestion for them: break up to make up – or what I call a brush with death. One publication was reporting that Tiger offered Elin a hefty sum just to agree to stay with him for two years, so at least for one reason or another, he apparently wants the relationship to continue. Of course it’s completely understandable why Elin would just want to cut and run. She’s likely humiliated and burnt out on all the attention and speculation she’s received not only the past few weeks but over the last several years of being in the spotlight. She’s probably more than a little shell shocked and I would recommend that anyone in that situation give themselves some space.

Can Tiger And Elin Make It?

But I think it’s possible for them to eventually put the pieces back together. Sure, no one can really know what Tiger’s motivation was for offering her a settlement to stay with him but it shows that he DOES want her to stay with him in some way. And Elin has a right to be upset and angry – she SHOULD be angry over the way she was treated. I delve into the specifics in my book, Make Up Don’t Breakup, but something like this can’t be fixed overnight of course – there are deeply engrained patterns at work here and a lot of betrayal and deception at play. Which is why I recommend the brush with death – which I also talk about in the book, Adultery The Forgivable Sin – or breaking up to make up: the idea that the couple wants to make things work in the long run, but need some time to sort through their anger, frustration and other emotions on their own.

Overcoming The Obstacles

Now, I’m not talking about something where the couple breaks up with the “cushion” that it “might work out at a later date.” (How many times are we all guilty of saying, hoping for, or believing that?) What I’m talking about is an intentioned break up with the idea of continuing to work toward a healthy solution – when two people still want to be together, but have major obstacles to overcome.

But here’s the catch: the couple HAS to be committed to working things out, or else this can just be used as a license to act out on temporary emotions – actions that often have lasting implications. This would obviously only make the situation worse. When done for the right reasons – and under supervision of a therapist or counselor – A temporary break up can help resolve certain issues, and creates a shake-up that many couples need. In certain circumstances, this is the only thing that will create an action step which will make reconnecting and making up easier to do. Remember that creating this strategy – and it MUST be a strategy, not something entered into half-heartedly – is not the end of the relationship, but rather a new beginning.

Setting Yourself Up To Succeed In The New Year!

By maryannecomaroto

Can you remember what your New Year’s resolutions were last year? How did that work out for you? Let’s see, mine were: to be less judgmental, and to slow down and take myself less seriously. No easy task for the hyper-vigilant monster that dwells deep in (and, unfortunately, outside) my subconscious.

For some of us the ritual of setting New Year’s resolutions is an attempt to temporarily assuage the harsh reality of our lifestyle, for others a gleeful renunciation of inconsequential nonsense because…we can. Yet statistics show us that an overwhelming 40% of folks who resolve to better themselves actually achieve their goals! Here are some helpful tips from an enthusiastic veteran of this annual tradition that can help you succeed, too!

How To Succeed This Year

1) First, you may want to review your last attempt at setting your intentions. Were you successful? Why, or why not? Setting achievable goals is an art. Anyone can set them, but is a different thing all together to achieve them.

2) Want it, bad! I notice when I pick something I want to exclude, heal or change about myself or my life, I am almost always successful when I really and truly want it! Therefore, I am willing to stretch myself and do what it takes to make it happen. So you gotta ask yourself, how much do you really want it?

3) Make a public declaration! You don’t need to alert the press (unless, of course, you feel the need), but you might want to gather a few friends (one could work) and declare your resolve. Surrounding yourself with supportive people is an essential part of any success; always has been, and, as far as I can see, always will be. Got cheerleaders? If not, get some!

4) Post your goals where you can see them! For something to become a habit it takes 40 days of repetition. Put ‘em in a place you will see, until they become as habitual as brushing your teeth. Good idea, put ‘em on your tooth brush. Get creative. My girlfriend gave me a teddy bear with a timer to help me take timeouts!

5) Get back on the horse! Just do it! Look, no one is perfect, and this is never the objective. It’s about practice, about replacing self-defeating habits and behavior with juicy, practical alternatives that move you towards thriving. So, you fall off the horse, brush yourself off and get back on! The sooner, the better. Don’t waste your time beating yourself up. There is no proof that it helps, and is usually a unproductive waste of time!

6) Half time! Mark your calendar/iPhone/whatever, six months out to check in with yourself! Heck, mark your calendar every month with a pop-up, but set it up in advance. Especially if you’re like me, I love little surprises that remind me to feel good about myself!

7) Reward yourself! You deserve it! Think of something that will motivate you throughout the year. Something you want for yourself or maybe your children. Maybe start a retirement or money-market account with all the money you are saving by not buying cigarettes or by partying less. Whatever helps motivate you in healthy ways!

And, in case you were wondering, yes, I have been less judgmental, and am doing my damndest to take everything (including myself) less seriously! As I speak I am sitting in Carmel Valley just overlooking the ocean, about to take a walk with my husband and our dog, Bella, our treat to ourselves for a job well done in 2009.