Women Are Complicated

(Hopefully) Practical Advice on Women

By
Charlie Elkins
Copyright © 2009 by Charlie Elkins
Garland, Texas
 Table of Contents

Dedications

Introduction

Special Message to Female Readers

Chapter 1: The Basics

Chapter 2: Characteristics Single Women and Men Look for in
a Potential Mate
Chapter 3: Flirting
Chapter 4: Dealing with Girls in School
Chapter 5: Dealing with Girls in College
Chapter 6: Dealing with Women as a Single Man
Chapter 7: Dealing with Women at Work
Chapter 8: Romance
Chapter 9: Romantic Movies
Chapter 10: Meeting Her Parents
Chapter 11: Engagement
Chapter 12 If You Must Break It Off
Chapter 13: The Wedding
Chapter 14: The Honeymoon
Chapter 15: Married Life
Chapter 16: Simple Techniques for Reducing the Frequency of
Marital Arguments
Chapter 17: Simple Techniques for Avoiding an Affair
Chapter 18: Marital Intimacy
Chapter 19: Pregnancy and Delivery
Chapter 20: The Woman’s Body
Chapter 21: Special Occasions and Gifts
Chapter 22: Women and Mechanical Things
Chapter 23: The Garage and Storage Space
Chapter 24: Your Duties and Responsibilities as a Husband
Chapter 25: The Five Senses
 Table of Contents Continued

Chapter 26: Food and Drink

Chapter 27: Timeliness
Chapter 28: Traveling with a Woman
Chapter 29: The Bed and Breakfast
Chapter 30: Ladies and Gentlemen
Chapter 31: Other Strange Behaviors
Chapter 32: Communication
Chapter 33: Emotion
Chapter 34: There are Certain Types of Women to Avoid
Chapter 35: Nagging
Chapter 36: Shopping
Chapter 37: Money
Chapter 38: Style, Grooming and Appearance
Chapter 39: Women and Colors
Chapter 40: Temperature
Chapter 41: Body Language
Chapter 42: Superpowers
Chapter 43: Jealousy
Epilogue: Women Get Older
 Dedications
This book is dedicated to my wonderful family.

First, to my lovely and talented wife, Becky, who embodies all the
good things that a woman can be and none of the bad things. After
more than twenty years of marriage, she is still mysterious and
complicated, yet more beautiful and alluring to me than ever. Most of
all, her unending devotion to me is baffling in light of my many
weaknesses. I don’t deserve her love, but I gladly accept it.

Next, to my beautiful, sweet daughter, Abigail, who has never

become the terrifying monster as a teenager that everyone told me
was inevitable. Instead, she has exceeded all my expectations and is
a bright light in my life.

Finally, to my handsome and brilliant son, Brazos, who constantly

amazes me with his growing maturity and intellect. This book was
originally begun to answer some questions he began asking when he
discovered girls at thirteen. Unfortunately, I don’t have any definitive
answers for thirteen-year-old girl questions. In spite of that, I hope
that he can use this information to be successful in dealing with
women, as he gets older.
 Introduction

This book is a compilation of my observations about women and their

behavior. For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated
with the differences between men and women, but only recently have
I begun to record my observations. I do not hold myself out as any
kind of expert, but merely an observer.

Although I am not a scientist, I have tried to approach the topic of

womanly behavior in a somewhat scientific manner. What I mean by
that is, because women are so baffling to me, I have found it
necessary to observe women and their behavior from an oblique
angle, much the same way that a nuclear scientist might study atomic
particles. The scientist can never actually see or hold an electron or
a quark or other atomic particle. He can’t literally climb inside an
atom or put an electron in a cage. He simply must conduct scientific
experiments that enable him to indirectly observe the results of
various interactions. From the results, he can extrapolate the nature
and potential behavior of those particles. He will make hypotheses to
predict other behavior, but not all of them will turn out to be correct.
Some of his experiments are costly failures, while others may lead to
small gains in knowledge. A precious few experiments lead to
breakthroughs in understanding. Through it all, the scientist attempts
to use his experiments in order to predict the behavior of his subject.
That behavior, while perhaps predictable, may not be explainable.
Other times, predicted behavior does not occur due to some unknown
or uncontrollable factor or worse yet, a degree of randomness in the
system. Some of the predicted behaviors may be counterintuitive or
mutually exclusive, yet somehow they all co-exist. Men who have
spent a lot of time around women will wonder if I stopped talking
about atoms and began talking about women because women are
much like atoms. Oftentimes they are unpredictable, complex,
counterintuitive, or even seem to be on the verge of flying apart into a
million pieces, yet they ultimately function in such a way that they
hold not only themselves, but also everything together.
I would not try to suggest that my observations of women are 100%
accurate. Generalizing about anything is a little risky. There are
undoubtedly many exceptions to my observations. For every
observation, there will at least one woman that will be completely the
opposite, yet she will embody many of the other traits and behaviors
that make women unique from men. I KNOW I do not completely
understand women nor do I think all women are alike. I simply
recognize that women are very different from men and, as a result,
their behavior is baffling to us, so it is incumbent on us to try to gain
knowledge of them because we have to deal with them constantly.

I freely admit that many of the points I make in this book may be
wrong, particularly about a specific woman in your life. In fact, you
may completely disagree with some of my comments. That’s
perfectly fine. As I’ve noted, all women are different. At the end of
several chapters, I provide some interesting experiments to help you
find out which one of us is right and learn more about that woman in
the process. Feel free to come up with your own experiments. Be
sure to document your results for later reference. Have fun.

Also, it is certainly true that I’ve often failed in my dealings with

women. Sometimes I failed because I did not have the benefit of any
knowledge at all and resorted to logic. Any woman will tell you that
male logic usually leads directly to the wrong approach to a woman. I
can testify to that. Frequently, I made the same mistakes multiple
times. Using hindsight, I can now sometimes see where I went
wrong.

While much of this book comes from personal experience, some of it

comes from listening to the mistakes of other men that (usually) lived
to tell about it. It is possible to learn from the mistakes and
successes of others. I strongly encourage it, but do not oversimplify
the “lesson learned” from someone else’s experience with a woman.
You will need to dig a little deeper to understand “the rest of the story”
if you hope to get that ultimate nugget of useful insight. By the way,
I’ve left out names to protect the innocent and the guilty.

Anyone reading this should understand that there are no absolute

rules to predict the behavior of a woman. There are too many
variables (including hormones). The reader should also understand
that, although a lot of these observations are presented in a
humorous way and contain a lot of generalizations, my intent is not to
debase or insult the female kind. I believe women are ultimately
higher beings than men and are potentially the greatest source of joy
in a man’s life. Also, my wife will read this and, if I insult her, I will be
in big trouble.

I would like to save other men some of the pain and anguish that
result when you do the wrong things. Now understand: a man will
sometimes do the wrong things. We have a built-in, hardwired
capacity for upsetting women. Each man will learn many lessons on
his own and may occasionally unfold new mysteries of womanhood in
his experience.

One other thing for the young guys reading this: You probably think
it’s different now and both guys and girls are more sophisticated. You
especially think that if you are in college or recently graduated. Your
parents and most other adults seem hopelessly out of touch with the
modern world that you have by the tail. I thought the same thing
when I graduated and I was wrong. I’m not suggesting that I am right
about everything in this book, but I am suggesting that you are wrong
if you think everything is different now. Women have always been
complicated and they will remain complicated in the future. You can
probably learn something from people that have already been
through some of the dumb things you are about to do.

More than anything, my advice is to try to approach women in a state

of awe and fascination. They are the objects of our affection and
desire because they are infinitely more wonderful and fascinating
than we are. The best women intuitively know this, yet are willing to
love us anyway. For that we should be eternally grateful. I know I
am. Enjoy.

Charlie Elkins
Garland, Texas
 Special Message to Female Readers

If this book makes you angry, first let me apologize. It was my fault
and I am very sorry. If I had listened instead of talking (actually
“writing”, but I’m on a roll here), I might have done better.

Without making any accusations, I suspect you did not read the
introduction where I tried to explain what this is all about. I know. It
was kind of long and boring. Besides, who actually READS book
introductions anyway? Really.

I felt the need to write this book because men, including me, do not
understand women at all. You may think that women are easy to
understand, but that is because you ARE a woman. It is really hard
for us. We are often baffled by your behavior. That is often why we
do the ABSOLUTELY WRONG THING around you. Please
understand that is not meant to suggest that there is something
WRONG with you or that something about you MAKES us do the
wrong thing. It is owing to the fact that men and women are
DIFFERENT from each other and men are not good at understanding
the differences. We are not good at it.

All that being said, I think that being different is a good thing. Even
though it gets complicated, I think the things that make a woman
different are terrific.

I know there are exceptions to a few things in this book. Okay, a lot
of exceptions. In a way, that illustrates my most basic point—women
are all different and much more complicated than men. Men have to
work at it to figure each of you out even a little bit. I have tried to
figure out the women that I know, at least a little bit, and this book is
the result of trying to figure them out. I do not claim to have been
successful, but just persistent.

So, although you probably think I am pretty stupid when it comes to

understanding women, I hope that at least you will cut me some slack
for working at it. Also, cut your husband or boyfriend some slack, too.
 Chapter One

The Basics
There are a few common attributes that stand out over time as you
deal with girls and women. That is not to imply that women are
predictable, but there are some basic points you can know about
them.

THEY’RE NOT LIKE YOU

• Courtesy of a friend’s very wise dad, the first and most basic rule
is: Women are different.
• However similar to each other they may seem to be, each woman
is different and unique. Do not think that because you begin to
understand one woman, that you have the entire gender mastered.
• One way to look at it is that men are like trucks and women are
like sports cars. Men are simple, strong, task-oriented, generally
easy to fix, and basically boring, but useful. Women are
complicated, high-maintenance, incredibly expensive,
unpredictable, fast, and hard to control, but so sexy. Oh, and
every man wants one.
• Women fantasize a lot, but not about the things that you do.

SO COMPLEX AND INTIMIDATING

• No matter how complicated you think calculus, robots, the origin of
the universe, nuclear science or anything else is, a woman is more
complicated than that.
• The only thing more complicated than a woman herself is the
relationship between a woman and her mother.
• There is nothing more intimidating than when a beautiful woman
suddenly looks you in the eye and smiles.
• The more physically beautiful a women is, the more likely she is
crazy.
• Women are convinced that men are just as complex as they are,
but we know the truth: men are very simple.
• A man is quite content with food, drink, shelter and a remote for
the TV. Physical activities like sex, softball, fishing, hunting,
 driving cars, and scratching our private parts are pretty important,
too. That pretty much covers it.
• Sharing our feelings, shopping, redecorating, talking on the
telephone, scrap booking, eating chocolate, sending notes, crying
for no reason, and burning candles are not among the basic
activities of a man. All of those things are very high on a woman’s
list of important activities. Notice a little difference in the two lists?
• Just because you do something and a woman likes it, don't
assume she will always like it or that it will have the same effect on
her next time. There are many factors that go into what pleases a
woman and they change with no warning.
• Not to mention the fact that you may have misread her reaction
entirely. She might have faked a positive reaction for some
reason. But also understand that if you don't remember next time
to do that thing that really did please her, she might be mad at you
for not figuring out what she likes.

MAINTENANCE REQUIRED
• When your mom gets old, it is your job to make sure she is taken
care of properly. She IS your mom after all.
• Women need to be needed. Sometimes I think that the only
reason women bother with men at all.
• Your sister is a girl and will become a woman. Your dad has pretty
much blocked out all the implications of that fact and still thinks of
her as his “little girl”, but deep in his subconscious he knows that
she will become a woman one day and it terrifies him.
• Women like to change things. Essentially, they are never quite
satisfied. You cannot modify that trait or talk them out of it—it’s in
their DNA. It does helps to explain a lot, such as why she keeps
rearranging the living room, puts so many pillows on the bed, puts
up curtains, paints walls, bugs you about going to the gym, makes
you dress nicer than you want to, and changes her hair right after
you get used to it.
• As a young man, you will spend much effort trying to get girls to
talk to you. As you get older, especially when you are married you
will wonder how to get them to STOP talking to you.
• Gray hair does not make a woman an old lady. Still, you shouldn’t
say anything about it.
• Never tell an emotional woman she is “over-reacting”.
• Never use the four letter word “c**t”. All women rightly consider
that word obscene and utterly insulting. It has no redeeming
qualities.

Okay, we’ve covered a few basics. Beginning in Chapter Two, we’ll

explore things in more detail. First, I bet you’re wondering if a woman
can really be that complicated. I mean, how complicated can they
really be anyway? Let’s try to find out, okay?

Fun Experiments for Chapter One

1. Your wife or girlfriend has probably told you that she would like
you to communicate with her. Next time the two of you are
together, take a few moments to “communicate” by telling her
specific details about your fantasies about another woman, maybe
a co-worker or, even better, one of her friends. Be as honest and
open as you can. Be sure to watch her expression as you open up
and communicate. Take notes and document your findings for
reference in your next relationship.
2. Give your wife or girlfriend an unexpected gift of her favorite
candy. Using a 10-point scale where 1 is very unhappy and 10 is
very happy, take note of her reaction, both immediately and later in
the day. Give her exactly the same gift every day for several
weeks, noting her reaction each time, until she asks you what is
up. Graph the results.
3. Next time you make your girlfriend or wife angry and she begins
arguing with you, very calmly say, “You are so immature” and walk
away. Starting with that day, place a large red “X” on the calendar
each day you don’t have sex with her. Make note of the number of
days (or calendars, if necessary) and red pens in that sexless
interval.
 Chapter Two
Characteristics Single Women and Men Look For in a
Potential Mate
Single women and men all over the world are searching for someone
to have a relationship with. You would think that, being the same
species, there would be a lot of similarity in what males and females
seek in someone. You would think that and, you would be wrong. In
fact, men and women look for very different characteristics in the
opposite sex. To complicate matters more, over the course of life the
desired features change. Here is my simplistic view:

Age Women think men Men think women

should be: should be:
Elementary • Nice • Somewhere else
School • Cute
• Other girls think so, too
High School • Popular • A cheerleader
• Handsome (optional if
popular enough)
• Have a neat haircut
• Cool
• Driving a car
College • On track for a good job • A cheerleader
• Good grades
• Handsome (optional if
job prospects are good)
• Smart
• Funny
• Driving a car
Twenties • Employed in a good job • A Hooters waitress
• Handsome (optional if
job is good)
• Getting his finances in
order
• Funny
• Responsible
 • A homeowner
• Not an alcoholic or drug
user
• Malleable
Thirties • Employed • A Hooters waitress
• Not an alcoholic, drug
user or gay
Late Thirties • Not in jail right now • A Hooters waitress
• Walking upright, still
breathing, and capable
of impregnating her
Forties • Rich • Employed in a good
job
• Responsible
• A homeowner
Fifties • Rich • Willing to cook
dinner
Sixties • Rich • Willing to tolerate a
balding fat man with
hairy ears and back
Seventies and • Somewhere else • Able to push his
up wheelchair and drive
to doctor
appointments
 Chapter Three
Flirting

Flirting with girls is fun. For some people it comes easily and
naturally. For others, it takes learning by trial and error. Interpreting
flirt signals from a girl is sometimes easy and sometimes not.

NOT A RISK-FREE ENDEAVOR

• You’ve probably heard the phase “flirting with disaster”. An
inexperienced young man who attempted to flirt with a girl way
outside his league probably coined that phrase.
• If a woman says you are cute or sweet, this is a big compliment,
no matter how stupid and unmanly it sounds to you or makes you
feel.
• Women look at a man’s eyes, shoulders, and rear, but not really in
the same way you look at those parts of a woman.
• If you want to meet beautiful women at a party, show up with a
beautiful woman. Beautiful women are highly competitive and they
will feel compelled to find out how you ended up with such a hot
date. At least one of them will need to know if she can get you
away from her.
• There’s no guarantee you will be able to get anywhere with the
woman that gets you away from the one you showed up with. It’s
still fun while it lasts.
• Flirting is supposed to be fun for both of you. Don’t give in to the
temptation to be insulting or sarcastic to the woman you are trying
to flirt with.
• Also, when flirting, don’t be overly suggestive or touch her in
inappropriate ways. There’s a fine line between being a flirt and
becoming “creepy”. You don’t want her to think you’re creepy—
women rarely change that assessment once they’ve made it.
• Don’t flirt with a married woman (unless she’s your wife). If a
married woman flirts with you, get away from her. Nothing good
can happen from flirting with a married woman or, if you are
married, flirting with any woman besides your wife.
Fun Experiments for Chapter Three
1. Find a really pretty girl that won’t go out with you, but does think of
you “as a friend”. Tell her about the “beautiful women are
competitive” hypothesis above. Ask her to accompany you to a
party. She won’t have to kiss you, but she should make it a point
to pay attention to you and laugh at your jokes. Explain to her that
this is not a come on and is being done purely as a scientific
experiment. Wander away from her during the party, perhaps to
get something to eat or drink. Measure how long it takes for
another attractive girl to come talk to you.
2. As a follow-up to experiment #1, observe whether your beautiful
friend that helped you test the theory begins to show an interest in
you during or after the party.
3. As a follow-up to experiment #2, go ahead and ask your beautiful
friend out. In the unlikely event that she says “yes”, feel free to
ruin your chances for a relationship by reverting to your dorky self
on the date.
 Chapter Four
High School Girls

High school is one of the greatest times of your life. It’s generally
where boys and girls become aware of each other and really begin to
interact. Boys and girls in their teens are pretty clueless about the
other sex but don’t know that, so crazy things can happen. It’s a
perfect time to gain experience, but not a great time to make long-
term decisions.

BEAUTY MATTERS
• At about thirteen or fourteen, your entire body will be filled with
testosterone and you will begin to really notice girls.
• Coincidentally, this is the age that you typically start high school as
a freshman and notice those senior girls. For the rest of your life,
your image of the ideal woman, at least physically, will be a
composite of several beautiful 18-year-old girls.
• This is not a big deal when you are a teenager; in fact, it’s perfectly
normal. It becomes a problem as you get older, since society
doesn’t look too kindly on men dating high school girls.
• Also, it’s very hard to find a grown woman that looks like an 18-
year-old. You will spend the rest of your life trying to reconcile the
physical reality of mature women with your pubescent “perfect
woman” mental composite.
• Reality check: It is a virtual certainty that the hottest girl in your
high school will NOT be the hottest woman at your 20th class
reunion.
• Why is that? I think it takes a woman a few years to settle into her
looks. My advice: You might want to wait till after college to pick a
wife.
• There’s no rule that says you can’t try making your girlfriend feel
like she looks like a supermodel. She’ll know deep down it’s not
true, but will appreciate the effort.
• Just be careful that you don’t actually convince her she’s a
supermodel. Supermodels are extremely vain and crazy.

DOES SHE LIKE ME OR NOT?

• If a girl really likes you and you don't have a relationship yet, she'll
avoid you and treat you like you don't exist. She'll flirt with other
guys that she doesn't like. If she thinks of you as just a friend,
she'll hang around you and talk to you, unless she thinks you like
her in which case she'll avoid you.
• Girls reserve the right to break all those rules at any time.
• No matter what girls at school say about certain rock stars or what
you read about groupies of grunge bands, it’s a safe assumption
that you ought to keep your hair and body clean.
• But, go easy on the cologne. Girls have very sensitive noses and
a little goes a long way.

GIRLS BECOME WOMEN

• When you get old enough to start seriously dating girls, step back
and take a hard look at what your mom is like as a woman. I know
this is creepy, but chances are, you will subconsciously be
attracted to women just like her. If your mom doesn’t seem to be
the type of girl for you (and she may not be), figure that out up
front and look for the kind of women that fits you.
• Before your sister gets old enough to date, your dad will say that
he’s going to do intimidating things like cleaning a shotgun when
her date shows to pick her up. What your dad hasn’t realized is
that his daughter will not tolerate him doing something idiotic like
that. Her mom probably won’t either.
• A teenage girl can deliver the ultimate look of disdain to a boy or
man.
• You will form your vision of the ideal woman while you are in high
school and it will probably be an 18-year-old girl. All your life, no
matter how much you want to ignore it, you’ll have an idealized
vision based on one or more 18-year-old girls.
• Unfortunately, the woman you marry will be forever moving away
from that ideal. Her body will be less and less like that of a
teenager. She will get more mature. She will think you are an
idiot (and probably a pervert) for being attracted to high school
girls.
• Rule of thumb: Don’t talk to your wife about being attracted to high
school girls.
• It’s strange, but in high school you will find girls with braces can be
quite attractive.
CONFIDENCE GAME
• One of the paradoxes of life is that girls like boys that are confident
around girls. If you aren’t confident, they ignore you. How are you
supposed to gain confidence when they won’t pay attention to
you? You just have to fake it.

NOT ONE OF THE GUYS

• Girls begin having their period at about 13. Whether they like it or
not, they are thrust into the beginnings of adulthood at that point.
Although they may seem giggly and silly, they are occasionally
thinking about much more grown up things than you are at that
point. What’s remarkable is that they still like boys their own age,
even though boys are utterly clueless about all those grown up
things. I guess that’s not really remarkable when I think about it,
because we remain pretty much clueless about those things when
we grow up.
• There are a lot of things that are inappropriate for guys to do with
girls in school. For example, it might be ok to slap another guy on
the butt during gym class, but it’s not ok to slap a girl on the butt
anytime, unless you are married to her. Even then, it might not be
a good idea sometimes.
• When you are in ninth grade and a really cute girl just up and sits
on your lap unexpectedly, you will experience all kinds of new and
wonderful feelings. You’ll begin a lifelong quest to re-experience
those feelings as often as possible.
• When a girl gives you her school picture, it probably means she
likes you.

DUMB MOVES
• When you take your girlfriend to a drive-in movie (assuming there
ARE drive-in movies anymore) and eventually stop watching the
movie to play kissy-face with her, it might pay to look around you
first to see if there is a car filled with friends from school watching
everything you do. You probably will be too preoccupied to think
about something like that, though. At least until Monday when you
get to school. Then you’ll think about it. A lot.
• When you finally have a serious girlfriend (hey, it could happen)
and she asks you what you are doing tonight, don’t tell her “none
of your business”. That could result in a breakup or just a black
eye, if you are lucky.
• By the way, if you say that after you are married, you might wake
up with a pair of scissors buried in your chest (or somewhere
worse than that).

CHEERLEADERS
• The more you are around most cheerleaders, the more you’ll
believe lobotomies were mandatory to make the junior high squad.
• Dating cheerleaders is highly overrated. Tell yourself this over and
over. It might make you feel better when they don’t seem to notice
you. It won’t make you feel better when one of them turns and
walks away when you make a lame attempt to start a
conversation.
• In spite of my previous advice, you WILL want to date one. Why?
First of all, because most of them are smoking hot.
• So, what can you do about it? Ask one out. So what if she says
“no”. You have nothing to lose anyway—you know you’re a dork—
so go for it, dude.
• By the way, try to get the cheerleader obsession out of your
system in high school, if possible. It can cause headaches later in
life. Trust me on this one.
• Somewhere along the way, one of those incomprehensibly
beautiful and unattainable cheerleaders...oh, sorry, I lost my train
of thought.
• Where was I, oh yeah, you might get the nerve to ask a particular
one of those unattainable girls to go to the prom with you—the
ultimate see-and-be-seen date. Let’s say she is, in fact, a
cheerleader. Let’s say she is blonde and has the most perfect
body…this is hypothetical, of course.
• Let’s say Katri…oops, I said this is hypothetical didn’t I...um…this
girl we’ll call “K” might even surprise you and agree to go out with
you.
• Whoa dude. This is BIG.
• Okay, time for a little perspective.
• Sorry for the buzzkill, but chances are pretty good (ie, 100%
certainty) she probably has no interest in YOU. Here’s the
backstory: The superstud captain of the football team dumped her
(!) for an even hotter girl on the drill team. The cheerleader is very
mad and she’s using YOU, some dork from THE BAND of all
things, to make the jock jealous.
• At this point, you are at a crossroads. You can get all self-
righteous about “being used” by a girl to make some other guy
jealous and how you are just as cool (in your own dorky way) as
that jackass football stud. Right.
• Or, you can embrace the fact that IT DOESN’T MATTER. A
smoking hot cheerleader agreed to be your date to the prom.
Stop. Let me repeat that. A cheerleader agreed to go out with
you. Yes, this is THE GREATEST THING THAT HAS EVER
HAPPENED TO YOU.
• In other words: Being used by a hot cheerleader is much better
than spending the prom with your band nerd friends.
• Don’t make the mistake of thinking this means you really have a
chance with this girl. Do NOT get infatuated and screw this up.
Let’s be real. She is way out of your league. You are a tool for
her.
• Before you get all fatalistic again, realize how liberating this is.
You don’t have to worry about convincing her you are worthy. All
your friends will be impressed you got the date at all. This means
the pressure is OFF.
• In other words: Use her right back, but be subtle about it.
• Use her for what, you ask?
o Impress your friends with your hot date.
o Increase your status with the cute girls in the band.
o Learn how shallow, insecure and narcissistic some girls can be.
o Observe the behavior of the football jock.
o Get an up-close look at a goddess.
o Pick up some juicy gossip on the popular kids.
o And, most important of all: score a mercy kiss at the end of the
date.
• Treat this as a once-in-a-lifetime adventure with no expectation of
a future relationship. She will forget you immediately, but you will
remember that kiss for the rest of your life.
• The rest of the story: If you make the mistake of getting chicken
pox two weeks before the prom (hey, I don’t know how I got
chicken pox) and even if you are mostly well by the night of the
prom and the doctor says you not contagious, she will somehow
know you’ve been sick.
• Let me spell it out: There’s no chance that “K”, the smoking hot
blonde cheerleader, will kiss you. That hurts. Ask me how I know.
Nurses
• When you are in high school, you will consider yourself bulletproof.
When you get a summer job and like an idiot, fall off a dump truck
and it runs over your leg, you might begin to realize you aren’t
bulletproof.
• However, you will have the opportunity to learn that many nurses
are really good looking.
• A gorgeous nurse, unlike that cheerleader, has compassion for
you. Even though you are a dork in a ratty t-shirt and old blue
jeans covered with tar and sand. Compassion, particularly from a
beautiful woman, is a good thing.
• When this happens to you, you’ll be pretty embarrassed when you
realize you’ve been laying on a gurney in the emergency room for
two hours with your ratty jeans torn wide open through the crotch.
• You’ll be annoyed with your friend that didn’t tell you while all
those hot nurses walked by.
• You’ll wonder if any of those nurses were impressed. They
weren’t.
• When a beautiful nurse asks you to put on a gown prior to
prepping you for surgery, she wants you to tie it in the back, not
the front. Ask me how I know.
• Be glad there isn’t a mirror for you to see what a dork you look like
with that stupid hospital robe on.
• You’ll have fantasies about nurses from this point on.

Fun Experiments for Chapter Four

1. Ask the best looking cheerleader at your high school out on a date.
Use a stopwatch to measure how long it takes her to say “no” or
just ignore you and walk off. Pick up your tattered ego and tell
yourself you didn’t really want to go out with her anyway. This is
called “lying to yourself” and it works until your friends start teasing
you.
2. After experiment #1, write an original romantic poem and drop it in
that cheerleader’s locker or purse. Be sure to put your name on
the paper. Record how long it takes her to get her football player
boyfriend to beat you up for stalking her.
3. Begin to dress and act in a way that you think is really “cool”.
Really play the part. Wear sunglasses indoors, if necessary.
Follow your dorky instincts and demonstrate your “coolness” by
constantly insulting any girls that actually tolerate you. Note their
reactions using the 10-point scale.
 Chapter Five
College Girls

College is a really great time in your life. You living away from home
among a huge number of fun-loving people your age. You have a lot
more freedom and will begin to understand what adulthood is. Well,
sort of. The girls in college seem mature. Suddenly, it’s like you are
around women. Yet, you don’t feel like a man, yet. Weird. One key
thing to be aware of: many of those “women” are already on the
prowl for a husband.

YOU CAN LEARN A LOT AT MEALTIME

• If you take a girl to a restaurant and she only eats celery or keeps
going to the bathroom every time she swallows food, you have
probably linked up with a girl that has an eating disorder and that’s
bad. One cruel, but effective way to find out for sure is to tell her
she looks good since she put on some weight. If she slaps you
and tells you that you’re a jerk, she just wasn’t hungry and is
probably OK. If she turns white and runs away in a panic, don’t
chase after her.
• Sometimes girls will make you cookies or brownies when you are
in college. This is a really good thing and you should praise her
endlessly for it, even if they are burnt or she left out a key
ingredient. You may have to eat one in her presence.
• If you live in a dorm or house with roommates and your girlfriend
decides to surprise you by leaving them in your room and the
cookies or brownies taste good, you can be certain that your
roommates will eat all of them before you get back to your room,
even if they have to eat an entire double batch of something and
risk getting sick.
• You’ll understand (on a certain level), because you’d do exactly
the same thing to them, but you will still be upset. Do not let your
anger at your knucklehead roommates cause you to forget that
your girlfriend cooked those things for you. You’ll need to figure
out what it was that she prepared for you on that empty plate
(probably from looking at the crumbs) and praise her for doing it.
• You may be able to score some sympathy (sympathy is good) by
telling her how bad you felt when you found out your friends had
eaten them, but the key is: you feel bad because IT WAS A GIFT
FROM HER and you weren’t able to enjoy her romantic gesture.
Don’t make it about you not getting to pig out the cookies.

ARTS & LETTERS

• If in college, you have a girlfriend and write her poetry, she’ll like it
even if it’s not very good. It shouldn’t be overtly about sex, though.
It needs to be about feelings and experiences. Women in college
dig feelings and are suckers for poetry and stuff like that.
• That said, if you write poetry and send it to a girl that you don’t
know at all or a girl that has already let it be known that she
doesn’t like you, you may be considered a stalker. That’s bad.
Not only will you have no chance with that girl, but she’ll tell
several other girls and they will be genuinely scared of you.
• One exception: If you are from France, an “artistic type” and really
good-looking, you can pretty much do anything you want and girls
will like it. By the way, nobody will fall for your fake French accent.

EXOTIC GIRLS
• Foreign girls can be incredibly attractive unless you find out they
don’t shave their armpits or wear deodorant. It might be good to
find out in advance if she has those kinds of “grooming issues”.
• As sexy as her foreign accent may be, she is still a woman and
has all the complexity that implies. You’ll just have a harder time
understanding her when she’s crying about something. It will be
easier to make her angry, though, since you’ll be clueless about
her cultural expectations.

MEET THE PARENTS

• It’s a big thing for her to introduce you to her parents. Much bigger
for her than it is to you.
• When she introduces you to her parents, you are a prospective
husband. Just act naïve and try to be respectful
• When your college girlfriend takes you to her hometown to meet
her family and the mom, two younger sisters, and girlfriend all talk
to you at once about at least four different things, you will form a
sympathetic bond with her dad.
• Her dad has been subjected to this for a long time and you have
just relieved him for a few precious moments. This is your little gift
to him and may keep him from killing you in the night if he catches
you kissing his oldest daughter.
• You will learn that her dad is quite the outdoorsman. He will take
you out to shoot shotguns and gig frogs. You’ve never done
anything remotely like that in your life because your dad is quite
the indoorsman, but let’s not worry about that. Her dad will think
you are a city-slicker, but may still like you simply because you’re
the first guy that seems to be able to get along with his crazy
daughter.
• The next morning when her sisters and her mom rush with no
warning into the frilly bedroom that you are sleeping in, it could be
a little shocking. Especially when you realize someone left a tent
pole under the blanket. Piece of advice: sleep on your side.
• It gets worse. As you wake up, you notice all four of them are still
wearing their pajamas (actually football jerseys and panties, if you
want to know the truth).
• At this point, you will experience some new feelings and thoughts,
several of which are immoral, not to mention dangerous if the Dad
happens to walk in. That’s the Dad that showed you his collection
of guns, knives and other weapons just the previous evening.
• You won’t know what to do, so you’ll just lie there on your side, all
uncomfortable and everything. Believe it or not, this is one of the
greatest moments of your life.
• No matter what else you do, don’t discuss with your girlfriend any
of those feelings and thoughts you had about her mom and
younger sisters.

BAD TRAITS
• If a college girlfriend tries to make you jealous frequently, get rid of
her. It means she has a screwed up idea of what love is and how
to get it. She’s nuts. No matter what else you like about her, this
is absolutely unacceptable and will eventually make you crazy.
She isn’t worth it.
• Women are frequently jealous. They intuitively know that men are
weak around women. We all have wandering eyes and, with other
attractive girls are prowling around, bad things can happen. Now
and then a little jealously is ok, but if she’s insanely jealous all the
time and you aren’t running around on her, she’s got a problem. It
 could be due to a lot of things, but you won’t be able to fix them.
You will probably do well to move on to another girl.
• If your college girlfriend lies to you regularly, even if it’s about
things that are inconsequential, get rid of her as soon as you can.
Girls that lie are really crazy. Trust me.

PARKING
• When you go parking with your girlfriend on a really cold night,
please be aware that you are not “fogging” the windows, you are
“frosting” the windows. Getting frost off the inside of car windows
isn’t all that easy, especially if you’re in a hurry to make curfew.

LAUNDRY
• One of things left out of college recruiting presentations is that you
have to do your own laundry. Colleges do this on purpose
because they know most guys are either terrified or highly
annoyed at the concept of doing their own laundry.
• No matter how much your mom educates you on proper laundry
procedure, you will feel compelled to find shortcuts to reduce the
time and effort involved. It’s what guys do. We are efficiency
experts, even when it doesn’t ultimately benefit us. In business,
we call it process improvement. In college, it is just laziness and a
desire to get back to watching sports or eating.
• Since most college boys don’t care all that much how they look
most of the time, doing your laundry infrequently and/or poorly (eg,
washing everything together at once) won’t really have that big of
an impact on you.
• However, one rule to remember is: Don’t wash your college
girlfriend’s bright red shirt in the same machine as your underwear
and socks. When you do it anyway because you are in a hurry,
just throw the now pink underwear and socks away and buy new
underwear and socks. This will save you a lot of grief in the dorm.
Trust me on this one.
• Because guys are basically perverted, you will get a secret thrill
out of putting your college girlfriend’s undergarments in the same
dryer as yours. She will, too, but not for the same reason.

DUMB MOVES
• If a girl in college is dumb enough to say her major is “getting
married and having babies”, the best comeback I’ve heard so far is
 “I’ll be glad to help you with your homework.” Hopefully, she’ll just
laugh and say, “You’re so silly”. The other alternative is that she
will mark you as a stalker. As previously noted, that is bad.
• Just because your girlfriend snuggles up to you when she’s
scared, don’t think that YOU scaring her will have the same effect.
Especially on a first date out in the middle of nowhere (in that
prime parking location you’ve scouted out and haven’t told any of
your friends about).
• When you try it anyway (because you are an idiot) with that
smoking hot girl with the fantastic kissable lips that you’ve
fantasized about kissing, it won’t turn out so well. You’ll end up
driving her home instead of completing the kiss and initiating the
“active snuggling” session you were hoping for. Ask me how I
know.
• When your girlfriend in college says, “I want to break up because I
can’t marry you” and you think, “Uh…what does MARRIAGE have
to do with it?” that is a clear sign that she is much more mature
than you are.
• It also means that you had no idea how close you were to being
roped into marriage. It means you are very lucky that she
recognized that and was honest enough to tell you. It also means
you are not ready for marriage. There’s nothing wrong with any of
that.
• Saying you’ve “run out of gas” while on a date as a lead-in to going
parking is pretty lame, but it might work once in a while. Actually
running out of gas on a date is stupid and will be a huge waste of
time.

SPENDING TIME
• In high school or college, it might occur to you in a rare
contemplative moment that during roughly 90% of your waking
hours you are thinking about making out with your girlfriend or how
you are going to get a girlfriend to make out with.
• If you still are able to graduate cum laude and get a white-collar
job making decent money, you probably have a genius IQ. One
sad fact about this is that you’ll continue to use 90% of your
brainpower thinking about women so you’ll never be able to use
more than 10% of that genius IQ on anything productive.
• This also explains why men are so ill-equipped to multi-task. We
don’t have enough remaining brainpower after thinking about girls
and doing the task in front of us to do anything else.
• In college, I was convinced that girls got together each week to
think up new ways to make their boyfriends miserable. I realize
now that they don’t need to meet to do that. It’s genetic.

THE “FRESHMAN FIFTEEN”

• Go slow as far as getting serious with freshman girls during their
first semester. Nearly every one of them gains at least 15 pounds
during their first semester college so you should date around and
give them a full semester to review their REAL bodies before you
narrow down your focus.
• You may find that your target list has radically changed by midyear
due to those unpredictable changes. Keep your options open so
don’t get tied down with the wrong girl.
• Some girls hit their prime in high school and go downhill from then
on. One way this manifests itself is RMSAD (Rocky Mountain
Spreading *ss Disease).
• Just remember that RMSAD doesn’t discriminate and can strike
any girl. Worse still, it doesn’t always find a “stopping point”.
• I hate to scare you, but you should know that girl can get through
college with no symptoms at all. Then, without warning, RMSAD
can attack that perfectly proportioned woman when she gets
pregnant. You can’t be too careful.
• There’s no known cure for RMSAD. Some guys learn to like
women with large “bottoms”.

OUTINGS
• Hayrides rarely live up to your expectations. That doesn’t mean
you shouldn’t go.
• Playing a guitar and singing folk songs around a campfire is pretty
effective with girls if you are reasonably talented and know more
than one song. That said, the guy playing the guitar can’t snuggle
with his girlfriend during the song.

AGE DIFFERENCES
• Remember that part about your ideal girl being about 18-years-
old? That doesn’t mean you should date an 18-year-old when you
 are 22. There is a huge difference between girls that are 18 and
22. Learn to date girls your own age.
• The word “fickle” defines how an 18-year-old girl behaves when
she is dating 22-year-old guy. If she’s really hot and you are
infatuated with her, this fickleness will make you insane. Try it and
see what I mean.
• At least you can stop asking that 18-year-old out if her fickleness
drives you crazy. Really, you can. It may be difficult.
• Just imagine if you lived in the times when parents arranged
marriages between 13-year-old girls and 22-year-old guys. It used
to be that way, so be thankful you live in modern times.

LEARNING EXPERIENCES
• When your college roommate, who is a Bible major, describes a
particular girl as being so desperate for boyfriend that she has an
“altar to the unknown guy” in her room, you’ll think that is one of
the funniest things you’ve ever heard.
• Since she’s pretty cute, you’ll also ask her out to see what the
implications of that desperation are. It won’t be that great and
you’ll have learned something about desperate women.
• There will be times when you will get utterly infatuated with a girl
and it won’t be mutual. It will hurt like crazy because you’ll feel
that she is the only girl in the world for you.
• This will be one of several exposures you have to Hell in your
young life. Thankfully, you will figure out that she’s not the only girl
(in fact, she’s probably not even ONE of the girls for you).
Eventually, you’ll get over her, find someone else, and wonder
what made you think she was such a big deal.
• Simultaneously dating two girls who happen to be friends will
create an interesting dynamic. The fact that both of them are
saying yes when you ask them out will not excuse, in their minds,
the fact that YOU are asking both of them out and putting them in
the awkward situation of both dating the same person. They will
confront you and demand that you MAKE A DECISION. At that
point, you’ll realize that, however briefly, you have achieved a
position of power over two women at once. It won’t last.
• You and your friends will talk about the girls you each date and will
compare notes. One of your friends will tell you that a girl he
made out with was a “moaner”. That will really intrigue you.
THE MAN-HATER
• When you meet a cute, but shy girl while “studying” in the library
and ask her out, you won’t think you’ve done anything out of the
ordinary. When you later learn that this girl is the “man-hater” that
all your friends have been too scared to ask out, you will suddenly
be a stud. All your friends will be totally amazed that you had the
nerve to ask out the “man-hater”. Enjoy this moment on the
pedestal. It won’t happen often.
• You find out eventually that the “man-hater” is sort of going out
with another guy. This guy is so handsome and athletic that you
actually think she’s stupid to go out with you. I mean this guy
defines the term “Greek god”. You know deep down you have no
chance with her once she realizes what a loser you are by
comparison.
• Then, it will suddenly occur to you that she agreed to go out with
you even though she had the Greek god as her main guy. You’ll
realize that you have zero risk in this situation (other than getting
beaten up by a Greek god). If she dumps you, no one will be
surprised and you’ll go on about your business. If she dumps him,
everyone will think you are a super-stud.
• So, you’ll ask her what’s up. You will find out that the Greek god
ignores her and treats her like dirt. This might be one of those
learning moments. If you aren’t too stupid, you’ll learn that girls
are a lot less interested in how a guy looks than you might think.
For a mature girl, it’s a lot more complicated than just finding the
hottest guy. It’s not that looks don’t matter to her, but she’s
looking for more than just eye candy.
• This new knowledge may enable you to summon the confidence to
ask out another girl that seems way outside your league. She
won’t always drop her stud boyfriend for you, but now you know
she might and that’s pretty cool.

Fun Experiments for Chapter Five

1. When you are with your college girlfriend in a public place on

campus (eg, the student center), make it a point to very obviously
check out every cute girl that walks by. Ever now and then shake
your head and whisper “whoa!” or “yessss!”. When a particularly
 attractive girl walks by, make the “rrrr-rarrr” sound like Roy Orbison
in “Pretty Woman”. Record her reactions using the ten-point scale.
2. Try openly dating two girls at the same time. If possible, pick girls
that know and like each other a lot. Observe changes in their
behavior around you and around each other. Record your findings
for future use.
3. After one of your college buddies mentions that he has a crush on
an unapproachably beautiful girl, tell him that, while standing
behind this goddess in the lunch line, you heard her fart. Audibly.
Observe whether he continues to have a crush on her. Wait a
couple of months to tell him you were lying. Note whether he
thanks you for destroying his fantasy.
4. Secretly measure the butt width of several attractive freshman girls
as soon as possible after the fall semester begins. It is critical to
get an early measurement as a baseline. For greatest accuracy,
use a measuring tape or yardstick while standing directly behind
her. Be careful that no one sees you! Take a new measurement
of each girl’s butt at least monthly for the full school year. Prepare
a graph showing the changes over time for each girl. Show it to all
your friends.
5. For a really scientific twist to #4, also record each girl’s weight on a
monthly basis and try to prove the age-old “Freshman Fifteen”
theory. I have no idea how you would obtain accurate female
weight data. I don’t suggest asking them since that might make
them more aware of their eating habits and skew the results. So
you’ll have to use your imagination collect accurate data. (If you
find an effective method, send us your technique for inclusion in a
later revision of this book.) Determine if they really gain fifteen
pounds on average. For fun, see if there is a direct correlation
between weight and butt width (some say they change
independently). Also, note your level of depression as you review
your growing database.
6. Beginning on the first day of a month, carefully notice changes in
the behavior, mood, and appearance of your girlfriend each day.
Develop a simple rating scale and record your findings on a
calendar for two or three months. Analyze your findings at the end
of the month and try to guess which days she experienced PMS,
when her period started and stopped, etc. Using a bright red pen,
circle those days and write in “PMS”, “Period”, etc. Proudly show
her the calendar (make a copy first) and ask how close you came.
Also, note her reaction to your findings.
 Chapter Six
Dealing with Women as a Single Man

Once you are out of college, living on your own or with a roommate
and working somewhere, you suddenly ARE an adult whether you
like it or not. If you’ve escaped college without getting married, then
you are now a “single”. You’ll realize pretty quickly that, while being
single has a lot going for it, the adult world is build around married
couples. Also, remember how a lot of girls in college were looking for
a husband? Now, nearly all the single women are on the hunt for a
husband. That fact will provide lots of willing women to go out with,
but at the same time it may be hard to date around since the women
will not tolerate long-term relationships that are not likely to end in
marriage. Since you are likely not ready to take on marriage just yet,
I suggest you try to date around for a while. It can be done if you set
some ground rules for yourself about not slipping too quickly into a
“relationship”.

Getting Dumped
• If a girl you’re infatuated with treats you like dirt, but then flirts with
you a few days later, even though you’ve already made the
decision to not ask her out again, you CAN change your mind.
More importantly, you can still make out with her one last time if
the opportunity presents itself. You can rationalize this classless
(but entertaining) behavior by deciding that you are getting even
for her treating you so bad.
• It will seem perfectly normal to ask a girl to go out with you again
after you’ve gone out a couple of times and it’s been fun and
everything seems alright. If, however, she tells you she really
wants to go out, but actually can’t because she has to clean her
brother’s apartment, you should recognize that as a brush-off and
never call her again. She is trying to tell you no, even if she
doesn’t realize it. If she really wanted to go out with you, she
would either find a way or, if she absolutely had to clean the
apartment, she’d invite you over to help her do it (and end up
making out at some point). Don’t rationalize that she wouldn’t use
such a lame excuse and think you still have a shot. Let her go.
• When another woman that is your friend and really knows about
women is ABSOLUTELY SURE that the girl (the one that told you
no because she had to clean her brother’s apartment) really likes
you, don’t believe it. When you ignore my advise and let her
convince you that you should persist in asking her out, you should
really not do it. Really. Even if she is the SINGLE BEST
LOOKING GIRL that you’ve ever gone out with, you should not do
it.
• When you do persist and call her again because she is SO HOT
and you talk her into going out with you, you’ll convince yourself
that she really did have to clean the apartment and that it wasn’t a
lame excuse. You will decide that she really does like you. You
will be wrong.
• What will then happen is that on the date while you are eating
dessert in a nice restaurant, she’ll casually mention that she’ll
probably end up marrying that guy back in Alabama that she broke
up with before she moved to Texas and started dating you. Yes,
the guy in Alabama that she told you was so dumb and clueless.
That guy. She’s going to marry him. You will not take this well. In
fact, you will feel highly disappointed in this latest bit of information
and you will realize I was right.
• The only words you’ll be able to croak out will be “waiter, check
please”. Then, because you didn’t believe me, you will be so
angry that you won’t be able to talk, but you will still have to drive
her the 25 miles back to Fort Worth where she lives. You will have
to listen to her saying “what’s wrong?” while you stare silently
ahead thinking you are SUCH an IDIOT.
• But that’s not all. When you walk her to the door because you are
still somewhat of a gentleman in spite of your anger and you
immediately walk away without kissing her good night, she’ll
actually be surprised. She will say, “I hope you’ll call me again”.
At this point your only desire will be to get in the car and beat your
head on the steering wheel. You’ll do that until the horn honks and
brings you back to reality.
• On the long, painful drive back home, you will reflect on this
experience and realize that you cannot understand women. They
are unfathomable. This is called “gaining experience”. It will also
be a funny story (much later) that you share with other guys when
you are commiserating about your experiences with women.
Some Girls Are Worth A Second Try
• Women love it when men come crawling back to them after you’ve
broken up with them for a year and a half to date four different
MUCH YOUNGER and VERY IMMATURE (but extremely hot)
cheerleader/drill team-type girls that wouldn’t give you the time of
day in high school but now will go out with you long enough to
totally break your heart (in one case, several times because you
are too stupid to stop asking her out).
• If you realize the girl you dumped is really the girl you should
marry and you have still have the opportunity to come crawling
back (ie, she hasn’t found another guy) go for it. Quickly.

Some Basic Rules

• When a girl says to you that she’d prefer a guy “just be honest”
about a relationship, you will probably believe her. You will think
that she actually wants you to honestly tell her if you don’t want to
marry her. That’s not what she means by “being honest”. I’m not
sure what she means, but it never means that she wants you to tell
her that. If you decide to believer her and do it anyway, she’ll hate
you. Forever.
• If you go out with a girl that is really good looking and you are
bored with her in the first ten minutes, it probably won’t work out as
a long-term relationship. Really.
• If a girl can almost beat you at arm-wrestling, you probably need to
get to the gym or date weaker girls.
• Never date a girl that can beat you up.
• You should date girls close to your age—say, within about three or
four years younger or older. By your thirties, the age range might
extend it little, but not much.
• Why keep her age range close to yours? There are a lot of
reasons:
o You have a lot more in common if you grew up in the same
generation.
o Teenage girls are really fickle and immature.
o Women start to get desperate for a husband as they approach
thirty. You need some time before you get railroaded into
marriage.
 o If she’s a lot older than you, at some point you will have to face
the fact that she probably has more in common with your mom
than you. ‘Nuff said.
• You and your single friends may be tempted to make rules about
not dating the same girl. That’s OK, but if your bonehead friend
stakes out a claim on a girl that you like and he doesn’t ask her out
within a month, tell him that time is up and you’re moving in.
• A good rule of thumb is that any woman that looks different from
you will seem “exotic”. For example, if you are a light-skinned
American, girls from Turkey and Latin America will seem exotic. If
you are a dark-skinned Latino, freckled redheads will seem exotic.
• After a while, the exotic part wears off and you realize she is still a
woman and all that implies. If it still works for you, that’s great.
• It never hurts to open a door for a woman. You don’t have to
make it into a big production, but it shows respect and all women
appreciate that.
• Although nice girls go to bars, your chances of meeting a nice girl
at a bar are not very good. It also sounds pretty cheesy when
people ask you where you met and you have to say, “in a bar”.
• If you and you best friend know a cute girl that you both just like as
a friend and one of you kisses her, thinks she’s terrible kisser, and
then tells the other guy about it, the other guy will feel compelled to
kiss her to find out if the assessment is true.
• If you tell a couple of other guys about the cute girl that didn’t kiss
either of you very well and one of those other guys ends up
marrying her, he’ll feel compelled to tell you that she actually is a
VERY GOOD KISSER, THANK YOU.
• You need to date a nurse at least once. They “know things” and
are professional compassion-givers. That’s a good combo.
• You may kind of like it when a girl uses baby talk to communicate
with you, but you can be sure you’ll get sick of it eventually. Dump
her early and find a girl that communicates like a grown-up.
• No matter how smooth you may think you are and how “into it” she
seems to be when you are making out, she knows exactly where
your hands are every second. Don’t fool yourself into thinking she
doesn’t notice.
• If you actively date around among the girls in a singles group at
church, at any given point in time, most of the girls in the singles
group will be angry at you. They’ll also be angry at the guy with a
 girlfriend and the guy that doesn’t date anyone. As long as the girl
that you are dating at the moment isn’t angry with you, you
probably won’t care about this at all.
• It’s tough to date someone you work closely with.
• It sounds kind of self-defeating, but when you ask a girl out, you
should try to project the future and imagine what it will be like
when you break up with her (or she breaks up with you). Is there
anything in your life that will be disrupted? Are you going to see
her every day after the breakup? Are you going to have to work
with her or sit by her or deal with her? Is she your boss or
someone who has great power over you? Will she tell everyone
you know terrible things about you? If the future looks particularly
bleak in that scenario, you might want to rethink this potential
relationship. Most dating relationships fail, usually for good
reasons, but avoiding the ones that will have serious fallout is a
wise move.
• When you’ve broken your engagement and take out that
INCREDIBLY HOT blonde you’ve been lusting for and you really
like her a lot and you ask her at dinner what she sees in her future
and she says “Eventually I want to get married, but keep working
so I can take the money I make to buy myself a Z car”, you may
realize that while she may be really good looking, she’s not the
brightest bulb on the Christmas tree.
• When you then, at only 22 years old, ask out another cute girl who
still lives at home with her parents (because she is just 18 years
old) and you find out from a friend that she told her mom and dad
that “one of the old guys asked me out”, you’ll realize what I said
about the difference between 18 and 22 year old girls is true. I
wish I had known that, although I probably would have ignored it
just like you will.
• Taking out a 45-year-old woman when you are 25 does not
“average out” all the 18-year-old girls you went out at 25.
• It’s a bad sign when you much prefer to talk to a girl’s father more
than the girl herself.
• When you get infatuated with a girl and she dumps you and you
keep coming back for more because you think she’s the hottest
thing you’ve ever seen, the final straw will be when you take her to
an outdoor Al Jarreau concert with some friends and she talks to
everyone but you the entire evening.
• You’ll realize that, even though she sometimes likes you and is
incredibly hot, she’s just not worth the pain and anguish. You’ll
make a commitment to NEVER go out with her again and won’t
break that commitment ever.
• Well, you won’t go out with her for at least for a least a couple of
days. Until she flirts with you. Then, you’ll talk yourself into going
out with her just one more time. After that one more time, you’ll
really mean it. You won’t EVER go out with her again. No, really.
• There will be moments in your single life when you will be with a
woman in some really wonderful place and situation. It will be so
exhilarating that you’ll want to bottle it. Enjoy the moment and let it
wash over you.
• You may experience those kinds of moments again when you are
married, but they will still be rare. You won’t be able to create
those moments for yourself; they’ll just happen when you are least
expecting it.
• Be sure to recognize that those rare extraordinary moments
shouldn’t become your definition of happiness. You and your wife
can be happy every day if you choose to. A lifetime of happiness
is much better than holding out for a few rare moments of
exhilaration.

Fun Experiments for Chapter Six

1. Take a girl out on a date to an expensive restaurant. When the

check arrives, tell her you’ve forgotten your wallet and need her to
pick up the tab. Don’t apologize. Note her reaction. When you
take her home, observe her willingness to give you a goodnight
kiss. Observe whether she answers the phone when you call her.
Ask yourself what you have learned about her from the way she
reacts.
2. Take a girl you really like to a ballgame, race or other event that
appeals to you. Observe how she behaves. Does she allow you
to pay attention? Does she pay attention and seem interested?
Does she ask you questions or seem to know something about it?
How do you feel being with her at something you enjoy? Does it
feel natural and comfortable or is it awkward? Does she
constantly try to draw your attention back to her?
3. Go with a girl you really like to something she really enjoys—
perhaps a musical. If possible, watch her behavior during the
event. Try to find out what she likes about it. Does she have the
ability to enjoy something with you around? Is it fun for you?
4. Remember those experiments with freshman girls in college?
Let’s try a retrospective experiment to see how women change
over the twenty years following high school and college. Select
several women in their thirties and forties that you know from work,
church, and other social situations. Make sure your sample
includes a range of weights and other physical attributes. Assign
an attractiveness grade (1-10 works well) to each woman. It’s
particularly important that you have several women in your sample
that have a low attractiveness grade. Using the Internet and other
sources (high school and college yearbooks are excellent if you
can locate them), find several photos of each woman when she
was 16-22 years old. Also, gather other intel, such as their sorority
memberships, athletic pursuits, clubs, etc. Assign an
attractiveness grade to each of those girls without considering her
current grade. Compare the grades for each woman. For those
women that went from high to low, can you find any indicators or
common traits that suggest the potential for decline?
 Chapter Seven
Dealing with Women at Work
Chances are good that whatever job you end up with, there will be
women there. Relating to women in a work environment has its own
set of rules and complexities. There are ever-evolving official rules
that you will need to learn and stick to closely. There are also many
unofficial and unspoken expectations in the workplace. You may
think that some rules from each set are unfair and confusing. You
might be correct. In any event, you will have to do your best to
master the rules and try to avoid losing your job. It will be you that
gets fired, not her. You’ll probably have to develop some simple
policies about what you will and will not do. You will be tempted now
and then to bend your policies, but don’t do it. If you don’t get a
handle on how to behave around women at work, you may be
branded a male chauvinist or, worse, find yourself in big trouble.

• In theory, the workplace is supposed to be gender neutral. Given

the existence of hormones and the plain fact that there is no such
thing as a neutral gender (excepting perhaps for a few people of
ambiguous gender that you may run into), the workplace will not
ever truly be neutral. That being said, as a general rule, you
should treat males and females in the workplace with the same
degree of professionalism.
• You should not, however, assume this neutrality means that you
can joke around with girls the same way you do with guys. Some
women are more comfortable with “maleness” in the workplace
than others, but you should always use care to not step over “the
line”.
• By the way, “the line” is totally invisible and it moves around a lot.
• One of the general rules of most workplaces is that you should not
date anyone in your direct chain of command, i.e., someone who
reports to you or to whom you report. The idea is that a romantic
relationship could create unfairness in how people are treated. If
you don’t understand how unfairness might creep into the
workplace, try dating your female boss and then dumping her for
 another woman in the same office, especially a younger, better
looking woman. Actually, don’t try that. Just take my word for it.
• Always keep in mind when you are thinking about dating a woman
at work: I will see this person again. Every day that I work here.
Even after we break up, I will see her. Got that image in your
mind? Still want to date that girl at work?
• If you ask out a girl at work and she says no, you probably should
drop it and move on. Act like it never happened, no matter how
disappointed you are. You don’t want to get a reputation at work
as either a stalker or a desperate guy.
• It’s hard, but if you date someone at work it would be wise to follow
the “don’t kiss and tell” rule. The workplace is where the
proverbial grapevine works most effectively and EVERYONE in
the company will soon know all about your sordid relationship.
• Depending on your job, you may have clients. It may be tempting
to date someone that works at the client. Do a little discreet
homework before you take that step.
• For example, you probably wouldn’t want to find out after the fact
that the controller of your client company is dating the smoking hot
receptionist that just turned down your invitation to dinner. Should
he be dating the receptionist? No, but if you end up losing the
account over it, it won’t be him in trouble.
• No matter how often a woman at work says her marriage is bad,
that doesn’t make it OK for you to date a married woman. Even if
she is really good-looking.
• You may have to take a business trip with a woman. While it may
be the gentlemanly thing to help her with her luggage, you should
never go into a hotel room alone with a female coworker,
particularly if either of you is married.
• You should NEVER work in a hotel room alone with a female
coworker. My personal policy is to never be alone with a woman
in a room with a bed in it. It doesn’t matter what she looks like or
how good or bad you get along with each other. It doesn’t matter
how important the work is, there’s bound to be a safer place to
work. Bad things happen when men and women are alone near a
bed. Even if nothing happens, you are setting yourself up for
trouble. Just don’t do it.
• On a business trip with a woman, you may end up eating dinner
together. Whenever possible, try to eat in a location that is well lit
and doesn’t make you look like you are a couple about to head
 back to the hotel for wild sex. This is particularly important if one
or both of you is married.
• Always remember that, no matter where you are in the world, you
may be seen by someone who knows you. If you don’t believe
me, notice how often you see someone you know in an airport or
hotel. People see you, too. They will notice and tell someone if it
looks like you are doing something you shouldn’t do.
• One way to casually establish your position as a married man is to
talk about your wife and kids in a positive way when you are alone
with another woman.
• You may have a woman as a boss. This can be a good or bad
thing, just like with a male boss, but there will be aspects of it that
are unique. Sometimes it won’t seem fair. Be prepared to deal
with it or get another job.
• Women typically cry more easily than men and this can hold true
in the workplace, too. Some women may be uncomfortable with it
because they feel they have to “be like a man” at work. The best
way to deal with tears in the workplace is to ignore whether the
person is a man or woman. Try to be supportive and
understanding where appropriate, but it’s almost always
inappropriate to physically hold a person of the opposite sex at
work.
• You may have a secretary at work. A good secretary becomes, in
several (non-physical) ways, like a wife to you. She will have
intimate access to your business life. She will represent you in
person, on the phone, and in writing; plus she’ll control your
calendar and travel plans. This means you will need to trust her a
lot. Don’t mix up those things with the relationship you have with
your actual wife. They are two totally different relationships.
• It is critical that your wife meet your secretary as soon as possible,
perhaps at lunch or an office event. Without being too obvious,
demonstrate your affection for your wife by touching her hand or
patting her on the shoulder while you’re talking. This will
demonstrate to both women that you love your wife.
• It is critical that your wife and secretary get along even if it means
they gang up on you once in a while. It’s better to have two
women bossing you around than to have your wife wonder if you
are fooling around with your secretary.
• If you exercise, it’s possible you’ll end up at the gym or out jogging
with a female coworker. Recognize that both of you will probably
 be wearing shorts and t-shirts, i.e., less than you normally wear to
work. You would do well to NOT comment on her clothing or her
body at this time or later.
• If your female co-worker has a really terrific body, you should not
consistently position yourself behind her when the two of you are
jogging. Do your best to NOT ogle her. She will know.
• Sometimes you will need to work late. As with traveling, you need
to use extreme caution when you are working late with a female
coworker that you don’t find yourself in a compromising position.
As always, this is more critical when you are married.
• It would probably be helpful for your wife to meet your coworkers
and for you to meet your coworkers’ spouses. This establishes the
actual relationships more clearly in everyone’s mind and reduces
the risk of something inappropriate happening.
• A good rule of thumb is: don’t flirt with women at work.
• If you work for a woman that micromanages you and she explains
that by saying, “It’s because I want to mother my staff” it’s ok to be
a little grossed out, especially if you already despise her. There’s
probably no good response to that statement since she’s your
boss, but take it from me that saying “I already have a mother and
a wife, so I don’t need you mothering me, too” may not be the best
thing for your career.
• Once in a while, you may run into the hot career-obsessed girl.
(There are guys like this, too, but you won’t be attracted to the
guys). Give a wide berth to this type of woman. The truly career-
obsessed will rationalize saying or doing ANYTHING to get ahead.
It’s hard to believe, but they spend 100% of their time thinking
about this. That means that, although she may appear to be
interested in you as a friendly coworker or even a boyfriend, at
best you are just a stepping-stone for her and as soon as she
determines you are no longer useful for her career goals, she will
cut you loose.
• Worse yet, if she decides that destroying your career will help her
in some way, she’ll do it. Don’t be naïve about women (or men)
like this.

Fun Experiments for Chapter Seven

1. After you’ve worked someplace for a while and you’ve gotten to
know some of the single guys there, identify one that is both dumb
 and a jerk. Working with some of the other guys, talk the dumb
guy into believing that the most senior single woman in the
company is desperate to go out with him. Convince him to ask her
out, if possible in front of all of you. Pay close attention so that you
can observe the trajectory of this relationship. Meet together
afterwards to discuss what you have learned from his experience.
2. When you start working at a company, make it a point to scope out
all the hot women there as quickly as possible without discussing
them with the other guys there. Write down your guess as to
which one(s) will be the daily topic of conversation among the guys
(eg, “Did you see what X is wearing today?”). Were you right?
3. When you have to pick up a female executive at the airport, decide
ahead of time that you will not help her with her bags unless she
asks. Monitor her anger level at having to ask you. Track your
career trajectory after this event.
 Chapter Eight
Romance
You probably think you know all about romance. You’ve watched
movies and television shows. You’ve dated girls for a while. You’ve
probably planned a “romantic” date and given a girl some flowers or
something. The fact is, unless you are French or a poet, every girl
you meet has one hundred times more knowledge about romance
than you do. It’s not a matter of whether you think they are right—the
fact is, women define what is romantic. You don’t have to be an
expert on romance, but if you want to succeed with women, you need
to get a better handle on it. You’re not going to get the truth on
romance from TV and movies. That’s too simplistic. You’re going to
have to actually talk to women to find out. You don’t have to talk to
women you are dating. Just about any woman can give you good
information on romance.

• Women want you to be romantic and to mean it. At the same time.
That sounds easy to a woman, but it’s very hard for a guy.
• If you try to be romantic, but are doing it just to please her, she'll
probably figure out you're faking it and be mad at you.
• If you don't try at all to be romantic, she'll be mad at you.
• Sometimes when you actually mean it and act on your feelings in a
seemingly romantic manner, she won't notice. Worse, she might
think you're "just trying to get something" (she’s probably right
about that) and get mad at you.
• Other times you will not even know you've done something
romantic and she’ll get all snuggly with you. Chances are, you will
spoil everything by admitting you didn't do it on purpose and she'll
then be mad at you. Try to go with the flow on the rare occasions
when you get it right.
• Are you beginning to see how complicated this is?
• No matter how much you may feel you love, lust for, and ache a
particular woman at this moment, if you don’t also LIKE her, she’s
wrong for you.
• Sometimes it’s still fun to do a little necking with that girl that you
don’t particularly like, but you lust for. I’m not going to tell you not
to do it, because you will. Just don’t let it get serious.
• Most women think there’s ONE PERFECT GUY reserved for them.
That guy in her mind is a lot like Prince Charming. Most of the
time when you fall in love with a woman, you won’t be remotely
like Prince Charming. You know you are not a perfect guy. If you
want to marry this girl, you will have to work to convince her that
once in a while you can be a reasonable facsimile of Prince
Charming now and then. If you are lucky, she will be willing to live
with that.
• Ironically, another girl that you don’t love, and maybe don’t even
know, will conclude you are her Prince Charming guy. You may
not ever know about it, but you can be sure that the only reason
she thinks that is that she doesn’t know you very well.
• Your job, and believe me that it’s a lifetime job, is to make the girl
you love decide that you are that guy. There is no magic formula
for accomplishing this, but you need to try.
• No matter how much of a tomboy she is, she still thinks of herself
as a princess. If you can make her feel like a princess most of the
time she’s around you, you’ll have made a big step in the right
direction.
• One true test of compatibility is a road trip alone in a car with your
girlfriend for more than ten hours.
• The first time you see her without makeup and her hair all greasy
and matted from sleep, you will be scared. You will be astounded
at how different she looks. That reaction is perfectly normal. That
doesn’t mean you should ever mention it to her. The less you say
about it the better.
• Women like getting flowers from guys. I went out with one girl who
told me that she thought giving flowers to a girl was dumb. I’ve
never met a woman before or since that who felt that way.
• Having a good job and a savings account is very attractive to a
woman. It won’t make up for everything else bad about you, but
it’s a start.
• Having money makes a man more attractive. Having a lot of
money makes a man really attractive. Some women will marry for
money, but most are smart enough not to.
• During college and afterwards, most girls are looking for a
husband. Beware the ones that are really straightforward and
 above board about how much they want to get married. In my
opinion, that’s a good sign she is very naïve about what marriage
is all about and will settle for the first guy that asks her out. Don’t
let that guy be you.
• Girls fantasize about weddings and being married. Guys do not.
As a result, guys have no idea how big of a deal a wedding is to a
girl.
• Marriage is not as scary as it seems, unless you marry a psycho
woman.
• Figuring out why a woman loves you is difficult, particularly when
you realize what a bonehead you are most of the time. Thankfully,
if she’s a good woman and treats you right, you don’t have to know
why she loves you. Just be glad that she does and try to earn it as
best you can.
• Women notice how you treat old people, little kids and animals.
• It’s not always easy to tell when you are really in love with a
woman. Infatuation is not love—it’s just a temporary obsession.
Lust is definitely not love—that’s just physical desire.
• True love includes infatuation and lust, but stays around when
infatuation and lust are gone. True love is a lot more like
friendship than most people realize.
• Ultimately, true love is what you do regardless of what you feel at
the time.
• No matter what the testosterone flowing through your body and all
your friends and TV and movies say, you should wait till you are
married to have sex.
• Don’t put yourself in a position where it’s easy to have sex before
marriage.
• If you and your wife both haven’t had sex with anyone before
marriage you will never have to worry about STD’s, AIDS, and
what do when she becomes pregnant out of wedlock.
• Sex without the love and security of marriage is still sex so it’s
exciting and fun. It’s just ultimately empty and wasteful. Ask any
guy who has slept around and he’ll tell you that as soon as the sex
is done, he can’t wait to get away from the woman. You won’t feel
that way about your wife after sex.
• Women have a thing about candles. Whether it’s a single candle
on the table (the “candlelight dinner”) searing your cornea as you
try to look at her during dinner or a dozen scented candles around
 the bathtub during a bath (while you wonder about the risk of fire),
she likes them. Probably something to do with the warm light and
the association with romance. Anyway, you will never understand
it, so just get over it.
• Women want to be respected by men. Some of them don’t
behave in a way that warrants much respect, but if you want to be
considered a gentleman you should give all of them the benefit of
the doubt.
• Some women get more attractive the better you get to know them.
That’s a good trait to find in a woman you want to marry.
• Some women have a little indefinable something about them that
makes them more attractive than they seem like they have a right
to be while other women are aesthetically perfect, but register a
zero on the lust meter. I’m not sure why that is, but I like to think
that it’s something to do with a naturally occurring body chemical
like those pheromones you read about in magazines.
• Just imagine if you could buy pheromones and they really worked
and you could score any chick you wanted at any time.
Pheromones sound like a great idea, don’t they?
• Then, just imagine that women also could buy pheromones. One
day you wake up, look across the pillow and realize your wife had
run out of her pheromones and was actually incredibly ugly.
Maybe pheromones aren’t so great after all.
• Learn how to hold and care for a baby while you are single. You
can do this by working in a nursery at church or helping some
single moms. The (mostly) women in the nursery will be thrilled to
show you what to do. One day, when you are called upon to
handle a baby, whether it be your own, or someone else’s, in front
of your wife/girlfriend, she’ll be impressed.
• Women think walking in the rain is romantic. It’s actually cold, wet,
and uncomfortable, but if her blouse gets wet and sticks to her, it
might be worth it.
• There are times when all you want from a woman is sympathy.
• Most women like it when you can make them laugh. In interviews,
women will almost always say they want a man that will make
them laugh. That doesn’t mean that you should make fun of her.
• Holding hands with a woman is one of the most romantic things
you can do.
• Seeing an old married couple holding hands is very romantic to a
woman.
• At formal events, women like to hold your arm. No matter how
much you do it, it will always feel a little awkward.
• Unlike you, a woman will actually READ an entire greeting card,
especially the serious ones. When you pick out a greeting card for
a woman, you should actually read it first and make sure you are
comfortable with the message since she will assume you mean
what it says. If you don’t, you could find yourself in trouble.
• Don’t be surprised if little old ladies point out that you and your
girlfriend will make cute babies when you get married. Little old
ladies love to see cute couples get married and make babies.
• If you decide to take that girl you met roller-skating at the lake, it
might be a good idea to find out first if she knows HOW to skate.
Finding out that she does NOT know how to skate or, more
accurately, how to STOP on skates, halfway down a steep
sidewalk that ends at a railroad crossing will be too late.
• When a girl that doesn’t know how to stop on skates hits the
railroad tracks and slides on her bottom for several yards in gravel,
the medical term for the resulting condition is “contusion of the
buttocks”.
• Eventually, you may mature enough that you 1) know you want to
get married; 2) know what you want in a wife and it’s not “a
Hooters Waitress” anymore; and 3) know who you want to marry.
• It’s very possible that THE girl is dating someone else and doesn’t
even know who you are. If you are certain she is the girl for you,
you may have to take her away from another guy. I don’t have any
advice to you about how to do that, but if you are absolutely
certain she is the right girl, do what you have to do (short of
violence) to win her away. Don’t worry about the other guy too
much. There are other girls and he probably isn’t that serious
about her anyway.
• Men often approach things in a linear, step-by-step fashion.
Women often do not follow a linear path, however, from a man’s
perspective, women appear to approach romance and marriage in
the following steps:
o Step 1: Identify the target male
o Step 2: Attract him
o Step 3: Date him
o Step 4: Maneuver him into proposing marriage
o Step 5: Plan and execute the wedding
 o Step 6: Build a family
o Step 7: Gradually change him, no matter how painful and
difficult it may be, into the husband and father she knows
in her heart that he ought to be.
• Amazingly, women actually ENJOY going to weddings and
showers. These events reinforce a woman’s hardwired belief that
romantic love with a man is possible.
• As painful as it may be for you to do, now and then you should
agree to go with her to a wedding without whining and
complaining. You should dress appropriately (generally jacket and
tie are appropriate) and resist the urge to make snide comments
about overweight bridesmaids or any other aspect of the event.
For her, this is fun and serious at the same time, much like
watching the super bowl is for you.
• If you are dating a girl, going to a wedding with her can be
classified as a date, but you’ll probably be expected to append
some date-oriented activity on the end, such as stopping
somewhere for coffee or dessert. If you are seriously interested in
the girl, this post-wedding activity can be a terrific time to learn a
lot about her views on engagement, weddings, married life, etc.
She will want to talk about the wedding, so GENTLY probe for her
opinions. Don’t overdo it and definitely don’t take notes while
she’s talking to you. If you simply must write something down,
step to the restroom at an appropriate break.
• A lot of guys struggle to come up with ideas for dates. Remember
the golden rule of dating: it should be “about her” not you (take
note, you’ll see this concept again). Ironically, a date where you
do something side-by-side is often better and results in more
relationship-building than a date where you simply focus on each
other. Here are some suggestions with a brief editorial on each
one:
o Attending a sporting event together—If she’s a big fan of
the sport, this will be a great thing. Otherwise, it should
be very occasional because she will see it as being about
you rather than about her (ie, it will not be “romantic”).
o Playing golf or miniature golf—A great way to do
something fun together and get to see her bending over
frequently at the same time. Watching a beautiful woman
bend down put a golf ball on a tee and then swing a golf
 club is almost pornographic (I suggest you not let her
know you are thinking that). Avoid making it a
competition unless she is highly competitive and insists
on it. If she beats you, do not get angry, but just enjoy it.
o Attending a movie, play or musical—If she likes it, this is a
good thing. Just remember that you will not be able to
talk with her during the event, so try to fit in dinner or
coffee before/afterwards. You need to pay attention to
her sometime during the date.
o Cooking a meal together—You may not be a cook, but
chances are she is. Working together on a meal is a
terrific way for her to subtly pretend to be married. Be
patient and make it fun. She will love it.
o Going on a picnic—Very romantic. Just think ahead
about the weather, insect infestation, etc. Bring food and
drink that you know she likes. Little extras like a vase
with a flower, music, or a special dessert go a long way.
o A surprise picnic is particularly good. You can have
everything in the trunk of your car and let her know about
it when you arrive. Or, you can have someone deliver
things to your destination and, surprise!, you are having a
picnic.
o Visiting an art museum—Most women are much more
sensory than men so this can be very nice. If you are not
into art, then be very patient and try not to rush the
process. Ask her what she likes.
o Do something crafty—Going to a painting or pottery class
can be highly sensual. Restrain yourself—do not make
lewd sculptures or rude comments. Let it be fun,
especially for her.
o Walk a dog in the park—Most women love animals and
how you treat an animal suggests how you will treat her.
If you don’t have a dog, do a friend a favor and walk his
dog.
• Before a date, let her know how she should dress. It is very
important to her whether she should dress formal, semi-formal,
informal, casual, etc. You may not know the difference. If not, ask
someone. If you still aren’t sure, tell her you what you know about
 the event. Try to match the formality of what you wear with what
she will wear.
• Given a choice, women will generally prefer to dress up while most
guys will prefer to dress down.
• Some silence on a date is okay, particularly if it’s a first date. That
being said, it’s your job to keep the conversation going. It’s
perfectly okay to think up some conversation-starters ahead of
time, just don’t let her see you looking at your notes. Do your best
to appear genuinely interested in her answers and give her time to
talk. Don’t rapid-fire questions at her or grill her. If she seems
touchy about a topic, move on. Some (probably) safe and light
first date conversation starters:
o What do you do for fun?
o What are your hobbies?
o What is your favorite place to visit?
o What kind of music do you enjoy?
o Do you like movies? Which one is your favorite?
• While you are listening to her, it may be tempting to argue with
something she says. While it is okay to mildly disagree, it will not
do you any good to try to ‘win’ an argument. Besides, you will
have plenty of opportunities to argue if you end up marrying her.
• There is always the possibility that you will get caught up in the
moment during an early date with a woman and say something
that you may regret later. It is very common to feel infatuation
early in a relationship. This happens because you have not had
time to experience the flaws of the girl you are with. Try to be
cautious, particularly in what you say, until you have really gotten
to know the girl.
• Remember that every girl wants her man to worship and adore
her. Some girls actually want ALL men to worship them. Those
women are very dangerous and not likely to be satisfied. Most
other women only want ‘the right guy’ to. No matter how perfect
she may seem, do not fall into the trap of worshipping her (openly,
at least) on the first date. That makes you look weak. Do,
however, show her respect and courtesy at all times.
• A woman wants to respect the man that worships her. Thus, as
the relationship matures, you somehow have to maintain a certain
distance and element of control that commands her respect, yet
 also demonstrate your utter dedication and passion for her. This is
hard.
• Never talk about your ex-girlfriend on a date. Even if your date
brings it up, drop the subject. If she does bring it up, smile and
say something like, “I don’t want to talk about her, I’m with you
tonight.”
• Your date, assuming she does want to be out with you in the first
place, wants to find out more about you, particularly what you ‘feel’
about things. Other than sports and, perhaps how angry you are
with your ex-girlfriend who dumped you, you probably cannot think
of anything you have feelings about, so you need to do some
thinking ahead of time.
• When you begin to describe your feelings about something early in
the dating process with someone, try to tone down your
descriptions. For example, use “I like” rather than “I love”. As
ridiculous as it may sound, women seem to want to apply
expressed emotions about other things to themselves—kind of like
trying on clothes. You do not want her trying on “I love” or “I hate”
this early.
• Even if she seems to encourage it, resist the temptation to brag
about yourself. Try to be humble and gracious. That will impress
her more than being a braggart. If she likes you, she will find out
all about your accomplishments on her own.
• Compliment her appearance early in the date and then do not harp
on it afterwards. Too much attention to her looks will make her
feel you are either trying to “get something” or have never been on
a date with a beautiful woman before. Either way, you seem
desperate.
• After the obligatory (but sincere) compliment on her looks, try to
compliment the way she thinks or feels. That demonstrates you
are listening and might even be a ‘sensitive guy’.

Fun Experiments for Chapter Eight

1. Ask a girl out on a date. Show up in blue jeans and a t-shirt. Don’t
have a plan and ask her what she wants to do. When she talks,
make it a point to redirect the conversation to you. Brag about
yourself if possible. Don’t pay attention to her. Notice carefully
 how she responds during each phase of the date, particularly the
goodnight kiss.
2. If anyone will go out with you after experiment number one, ask
another girl out on a date. Go to a little trouble and wear
something nicer than jeans. Maybe even wear a shirt with buttons.
Wash your car. Have a plan for the evening that includes taking
her to a restaurant. Ask her questions about herself and actually
listen. Smile. Look into her eyes when she’s talking. Notice her
responses, particularly the goodnight kiss.
 Chapter Nine

Romantic Movies
Okay, I know I said you have to talk to women to really find out about
romance. That’s true, but you need to understand that women do get
a lot of their ideas about romance from movies. More importantly,
women like to WATCH romantic movies, much the same way you like
to watch sports. You CAN glean a few good ideas from romantic
movies, but you have to keep in mind that you live in the real world
and a lot of that stuff won’t work.

• Girls generally prefer sappy “chick-flicks” much more than action

movies. Men are the opposite. Once in a while you are going to
have to watch a chick-flick with your girlfriend or wife. As painful
as it may be, consider it an investment in your relationship with
her.
• Some chick-flicks are actually entertaining (never admit this),
especially if they are funny and the male lead is an actor you like.
Chances are, your girl won’t pick those movies very often. If you
get to pick the movie, choose one of those. I suggest the “Grant”
formula—nearly every Hugh Grant and Cary Grant movie is pretty
good.
• Women will watch the same chick-flick over and over until they
have the lines memorized.
• One downside of this is that your romantic dialogue and behavior
will pale compared to the guys in those chick-flicks. It creates a
standard in her mind that you’ll never be able to live up to. Of
course, she’ll never live up to the standard set by Angelina Jolie
and Nicole Kidman, but it won’t help you to mention that.
• In my view, “The Notebook” is pretty much the ultimate chick-flick.
• By the way, if you find yourself choosing to watch “The Notebook”
over and over again, you need counseling.
• There is one exception: you consider yourself a true student of
womanhood and treat “The Notebook” as a study guide for
understanding a woman’s romantic fantasies. The movie pretty
much runs the gamut of EVERY female romantic fantasy, so
 although very difficult to do, watching it could help you understand
women much better.
• Of course, it could also make you go insane. I don’t recommend it.
• If you feel compelled to study a chick-flick, but can’t stomach “The
Notebook” there is an alternative that has many of the same
characteristics: “The Bridges of Madison County”. One thing this
movie has going for it is that it stars Clint Eastwood. You might be
able to play through the pain of the movie by recalling Clint in his
action movies.
• Since you probably aren’t going to watch either movie, here’s my
brief synopsis of each one.
o Notebook: Old man (James Garner) is reading a love
story to an old woman (can’t remember her name) with
dementia in a nursing home. As he reads, the movie
time-shifts to show the people in the story. Poor guy falls
in love with rich girl (she’s hot, no idea who actress is).
Girl inexplicably marries rich jerk who naturally starts
cheating on her. Poor guy is devastated that he lost her
and becomes a hermit in an old house till she comes back
to see him for some reason and they have sex in the old
house. Movie time-shifts back to present where you
realize they got married and became James Garner and
loony old woman. At this point you slowly realize (if you
are paying attention) that the old man is reading her
THEIR STORY over and over even though she has no
idea who he is (question: why not ignore her and find hot
older woman while there’s still time?). Suddenly, wife
temporarily regains her senses and they begin to kiss, but
then she slips back into dementia and begins to scream
that he’s molesting her. Not sure what happens after that,
but they end up dying in each others’ arms. Why they like
it: Women love the idea of a husband who is utterly
devoted and willing to sacrifice happiness for wife even
when she has no idea who he is and won’t even kiss him
without screaming. Why we hate it: It’s morbid,
depressing and unrealistic.
o Bridges: Famous National Geographic photographer
(Clint) comes to Pennsylvania to photograph old covered
bridges for some reason. Meets unhappy married woman
(Meryl Streep—not that hot) and has brief wild affair and
 then leaves never to see her again (perfect scenario to
avoid jealous husband, if you ask me). Although he is
famous and could nail hot chicks worldwide, he
inexplicably decides to become celibate (!) FOR THE
REST OF HIS MISERABLE LIFE and, naturally, writes
her tons of love letters. He dies. Later when she dies,
her kids find all the secret love letters and piece together
the affair and aftermath. Why they love it: women love
the idea of a guy who is utterly devoted and willing to
sacrifice happiness (and sex) because he can’t have
HER. Why we hate it: A wild weekend with Meryl Streep
doesn’t justify a lifetime of celibacy. Also, it’s unbecoming
of Clint and morbid, depressing, and unrealistic.
• Why do women watch these morbid, depressing, and unrealistic
chick-flicks? My theory is that because women are SO emotional,
they actually ENJOY exercising different emotions in totally
unrealistic fantasy situations. Maybe it’s like the way guys like to
vicariously experience manly behavior by watching sports and
action movies.
• Taking a girl to a movie as a date can be fun, but remember to
pick a movie that SHE will like. Remember that a date is
something you are doing to impress HER. This may require you
asking her some questions ahead of time to find out, for example,
if she actually likes horror movies or thrillers. You don’t want to be
the guy that took her to a movie that she was grossed out on or,
worse, walked out on. That being said, sometimes a movie turns
out to be something totally different than you expected. If you
discover early on that the movie is unexpectedly inappropriate in
some way, it would be a gentlemanly thing to do to lean over and
say, “this isn’t what I expected and I’m uncomfortable. Would you
care to leave and do something else?” At first, this may seem like
an extraordinary waste of money, but it demonstrates that you are
actually thinking about HER first, not the movie. Plus, if she IS
offended by the movie, you probably won’t be blamed for it.
• Don’t go to a movie for most dates with a girl. Remember, even if
she seems a little shy at first, a girl wants to talk more than just
about anything else in the world. You can’t talk during the movie,
so your “getting to know each other time” is limited.
 Chapter Ten

Meeting Her Parents

You will meet parents of girls during high school when you pick them
up for a date or get introduced at a ballgame. Although you should
try to make a good impression, that kind of meeting is much more
casual and is not the same thing as “meeting her parents”. When you
are in college or a single and you develop a serious relationship, at
some point she is going to want to introduce you to her parents.
Unlike you, she thinks of you as a potential husband and part of the
program is introducing you to her parents.

• You probably haven’t even thought about meeting your girlfriend’s

parents, but you will have to if the relationship is serious. She will
see to it. There is no way to predict what a girl’s parents will be
like or what her relationship is with them or whether they will think
you are the “right guy”. You can try to ask her a few questions, but
you are probably not going to get much useful information from
her.
• Ultimately, you will just have to be yourself around them. “Being
yourself” is a little like what the US Army is talking about when
they say, “Be all that you can be”. You should be on your best
behavior and try to act like an adult, even if it’s hard.
• Remember, she may be your girlfriend, but she has been their little
girl a lot longer and they love her.
• Also, keep in mind that eventually you WILL grow up and be an
adult. It happens. This is your chance to try out the being-a-
grownup thing. Give her and her parents a sense of what you
might turn out to be when you really do grow up. Trust me, they
are interested in knowing that.
• Some things to avoid when you meet her parents: squealing the
tires on your car in front of their house, being overly “affectionate”
with her in front of them, making jokes about their house or cars,
being rude or argumentative with them, breaking wind or belching
at the dinner table (or anywhere else around them), eating like a
pig, insulting your girlfriend or her family, implying that their
daughter is a GREAT make out artist, talking about your prior
 girlfriends, hitting on her mom or sister (no matter how good
looking they are), or slapping any of the family on the bottom.
• Joking about sharing your girlfriend’s bedroom with her so you can
“get some action” would also be a mistake. These are just
examples, but hopefully you are getting the general theme of not
making a total fool of yourself.
• Her dad undoubtedly has a preferred chair in the den or living
room. It’s probably the optimum chair for comfort and TV
watching. Your natural inclination will be to gravitate to that seat.
Take a deep breath and do NOT sit there. That is HIS chair.
When you visit and first step into the TV room to watch “the game”
with her family, take a moment to let her dad sit down first so you
don’t inadvertently get his chair. If you do get his chair, he’ll be
annoyed with you but may not say anything. At first.
• Even if her dad is totally whipped by her mom, it’s your job to
pretend he is the alpha male, the king of his castle. Defer to him
and don’t try to one-up him.
• Her mom may have very different rules than you are used to about
where food can be taken in the house. You should ask your
girlfriend or, if necessary, her mom about it. Don’t wait till you’ve
already taken food into the living room to ask if there’s a rule about
eating outside the dining room. There may also be unspoken rules
about serving plates and about who gets up from the dinner table
to get the salt and pepper, etc. Try to find out ahead of time or, if
all else fails, ask before you do something.
• Her mom will likely cook for you. She may go all out and really
serve nice food. Or, she may serve things like cereal and bologna
sandwiches. She may burn everything. Hopefully, you are not a
really picky eater, but even if you are, try to eat what is presented
to you without making faces or complaining.
• If her mother is from a foreign country, you may be exposed to
some very different foods and customs. Once again, you should
do your best to handle it graciously.
• Remember that even if you make a good impression the first time,
you can still screw it up later. Believe it or not, you don’t even
have to be around them to screw it up. Things you do, like
cheating on her with another girl or just being mean to her will
probably get back to the parents. If you are serious about a girl,
don’t give her too many reasons to say bad things about you to her
parents. Oh, and her friends can also rat you out, too.
• Oh and one other thing: once you are married, no matter what you
think about your in-laws, you should always take the side of your
wife when there’s a conflict. You married her, not them. Plus, it’s
your wife that you get in bed with every night, if you take my
meaning.
 Chapter Eleven
Engagement
Not every man gets married, but most do. Before you can get
married, you have to get engaged. For most men, this seems like an
unnecessary and time-consuming (and expensive) step, but women
think it is really important. Yes, you might be able to talk your
girlfriend into eloping, but, trust me, that’s not the route you want to
take. Engagement is a transitional period between being single and
married. It will introduce you to many of the mysteries of
womanhood. You need this transition. It won’t necessarily be fun,
although it can be if you work at it, but don’t let that make you think
it’s not critically important. It’s important, if for no other reason,
because SHE thinks it’s important. That’s one of those “mysteries of
womanhood” you are going to be getting introduced to. Get ready.

• It’s not an absolute requirement that your mom and dad approve of
your fiancé’, but if deep down you are embarrassed to bring her
home to see your parents, you might want to move your foot off
the gas and tap the brake pedal on this relationship.
• Your fiancé to-be has fantasized about engagement, the wedding
dress, marriage, having a family, etc for her entire life. It would
not surprise me at all if scientists one day prove that baby girls
think about engagement and marriage while still in the womb. You
have not. In fact, you probably have not thought about
engagement at all. News flash: You are just an ordinary guy, but
are suddenly going to be expected to live up to her highly intricate
fantasy, mostly without even knowing any of the details.
• You have zero chance of living up to all her expectations for the
fairy tale, fantasy engagement period. Zero. Oh, but that doesn’t
mean you can opt out. You signed up for this when you got
engaged and now are going to have to try.
• If your girlfriend says she wants to get a permanent in her hair the
week that you secretly plan to ask her to marry you and you tell
her to PLEASE NOT GET A PERMANENT because you hate the
smell and don’t want to associate that smell with your
engagement, she may feel compelled to get a permanent.
Immediately. Why? Because she’s a girl.
• If you go to your girlfriend’s house the night before you plan to ask
her to marry you, her sister will answer the door because your
girlfriend got that permanent and is afraid you won’t like it. Your
girlfriend will be standing in front of the sliding door with the setting
sun behind her. Naturally, you will squint to see who that with the
sun behind her. At that point, she’ll scream, “YOU HATE IT!” and
run into her bedroom. You will have no idea what has just
happened, but, and this is important, it will be entirely your fault.
• Still want to get engaged tomorrow?
• If your fiancé goes back to college for one last semester and you
don’t miss her AT ALL, you might have made a mistake on this
girl. Ask me how I know.
• If you break your engagement with your college sweetheart and it
hurts really badly for about two days, then you feel FANTASTIC,
you can be pretty sure you did the right thing in breaking up with
her.
• An engagement can be broken. Don’t do it lightly, but do consider
it a time for you to figure out what you’ve gotten yourself into.
• The engagement is entirely about her. She’ll remember every
detail of it for the rest of her life. You probably won’t. Don’t make
it funny or goofy. This is the one time where spontaneity is not
appropriate. Think it through and put your best into this one. Then
it is a Nike moment—just do it.
• Let her tell the story of your relationship her way, no matter how
much it embarrasses you.
• As dumb and embarrassing as it is, getting down on one knee is
actually a good idea when you ask her to marry you. Especially if
it’s in a crowded restaurant or some other very public place. This
is part of the fantasy. It means a million things to her, but one of
them is that you cherish her and are so humbled by her perfection
that you must kneel before her.
• That sounds crazy doesn’t it? Remember: This is the girl YOU
picked to be your wife and you WANT her to say yes and feel like
it was the best decision she ever made. Do everything you can to
win her over and remember what I said about it being about HER.
• The engagement ring is not just a “piece of jewelry” (there will be
plenty of that later in marriage). It’s THE RING and she will wear it
the rest of her life.
• I don’t know if those magazine ads about spending two months’
salary are legit (in England, they say ONE month’s salary—what’s
 that all about?), but don’t be a cheapskate. This is the single most
important piece of jewelry (not to be construed as the ONLY piece
of jewelry) you will EVER purchase. She will absolutely cherish it,
so go all out on this one.
• I’ve always believed that you should pick the ring out yourself and
surprise her with it. Not everyone does that, so you will have to
make the call on whether that’s the best thing to do with your girl.
• Here’s why I think surprising her with the ring (and the question) is
good. It demonstrates that: 1) You’ve put some thought into this;
and 2) You can actually plan and execute something more
complicated than picking a restaurant. She will pick up on that.
• Picking out the ring on your own is going to be terrifying. You
don’t know a thing about engagement rings (hopefully you are
aware of that fact) and yet this decision is just about as important
as it gets. You will have to put a little effort into this.
• It wouldn’t hurt for you to go to a jeweler and bone up on
engagement rings BEFORE you try to find out what she likes.
Jewelers are fully prepared to educate you. It’s their job because
they very much want to sell you something. Don’t go to buy
something right away. Go to several jewelers (the owner-operator
stores are better than the chains) and tell them what you are trying
to do. Ask them what information you need to have to make the
right decision. Take notes. It’s worth the effort.
• Keep in mind that, unless you’ve just been stalking her, she’ll have
a pretty good idea that you are heading in the direction of
engagement. Women may be subtle and indirect in relationships,
but don’t take that to mean they are not laser-focused on your
behavior when it comes to the possibility of marriage. Unlike you,
they have wanted to get married all their lives. So, that means she
is fully primed to give you the information you need, if you take the
right approach to find out what kind of engagement ring she
“might” like.
• How do you do that? I know you want to get to the point and
collect the information you need so you can act on it. You want to
just blurt out, “Hey, what kind of engagement ring do you want if I
ever ask you to marry me?” WRONG. Sorry, this is a time to play
the game with finesse. That seems hard for you because you are
a lummox. Look at it this way: it’s like fishing or hunting—you
have to study your prey, plan your moves ahead of time, and act
 smoothly and quietly. Plan on taking a couple of months to gather
this information.
• Keep in mind that women LOVE to talk about romantic things like
engagement rings, but they also don’t want to seem desperate to
get married (particularly if they ARE desperate). So it will be
counterproductive to be totally obvious and hammer her with a
dozen questions in an impersonal, just-the-facts-ma’am way. You
will risk hurting her feelings and probably will not get the accurate
information anyway. Instead, you have to ask an indirect question
now and then, and, in case it hadn’t occurred to you, you must
actually LISTEN and REMEMBER what she says.
• There are some subtle ways to collect that much needed data. If
you both know a couple that has gotten engaged, ask her what
she thinks about the couple getting engaged. How did he ask her
“the question”? Did he give her an engagement ring? Even if you
already know the facts about that engagement, you will learn a lot
about your girlfriend from this conversation. Her opinions and
observations about other people will help you learn what she
wants. That’s what you are trying to find out.
• If you are at the mall, walk by a jewelry store window and see what
she gravitates to. Women are subtle, so don’t assume the first
thing she looks at is IT. She may be hesitant because she doesn’t
want you to think she’s being pushy or greedy. This is
complicated and it is going to take some time to ferret out the truth.
• Try not to focus too much initially on the sizes of stones. The size
is ultimately pretty important, but that is only part of the equation.
You can resolve that detail later. Besides, unless you have an
unlimited budget (you don’t), it will be impossible to afford a
diamond as big as she REALLY wants.
• Through your subtle questioning, you will need to find out her
preferences on: color of gold (yellow or white) or platinum (more
expensive), setting (solitaire is typical, but there are others), type
of stone (probably a diamond, but maybe a colored stone like an
emerald), and cut of stone (there are many).
• OK, somehow you have used all your wits to collect the needed
information about the type of ring. Great. Now it’s time to take a
deep breath and look at prices of engagement rings. How could
something that small cost so much? Supply and demand, buddy.
They have the supply and you have the demand. It is going to
cost you so you need to calculate how much you can afford.
• Now you are ready to buy the ring, right? Oh, my gosh, I don’t
know her ring size! You FORGOT to find that out? Of course you
did. You were trying to be subtle. I know your next question:
Can’t I just buy a ring and get it sized afterwards? No. It needs to
fit so she can wear it when you give it to her. She will not want to
take it off, so it must fit.
• So, you must find out what size of her ring finger (the finger next to
her pinky on her LEFT hand). This seems impossible to find out
without totally giving away the game, doesn’t it? Well, it’s not.
There are a couple of ways to do this. One way is to get her to try
on a few rings when you are in that jewelry store. She might
mention her size or the jeweler might measure her finger. If that
happens, REMEMBER the size! Write it down.
• Another way, if you are willing to engage in a small conspiracy is
to talk to one of her close friends. One of her friends will know or
will be able to find out surreptitiously. There is a 100% chance
that your fiance’ to be knows her ring size. Her friend and your
partner in crime has to be willing to do this on the sly if you want it
to remain a secret. Keep in mind, women LOVE to be part of this
kind of thing (back to the romantic fantasy world they live in).
• Another way, if you know and trust her parents (and plan to talk to
them in advance) is to ask her mom or dad. They may know or
can find out. Once again, they have to be willing and able to keep
the secret.
• Yet another way would be to somehow measure the ring she
wears on that finger. Some girls wear a high school ring. Maybe
you could somehow get it briefly and have it sized.
• However you find out the ring size, it needs to fit when you present
it to her.
• One of the scariest things that will happen when you are engaged
is going to look at china, crystal stemware, and silverware.
Chances are your fiancé’ will use this as a compatibility test.
There is little to no chance that you’ll even have an opinion on
china patterns. You probably aren’t going to be able to get out of
going, so the best advice I can give you is to tell her that you don’t
know much about such things so you’d like her to teach you all
about it. DO NOT say, “I don’t care what china pattern we pick,
we’re never going to use it anyway.”
• There are a lot of things that you never thought of that you will
“need” to have when you get married. Remember, although you
 have lived like a pig as a single guy, your fiancé’ has no intention
of keeping that same lifestyle when you are married.
• She will want to pick the date for the wedding almost immediately
after you get engaged. She might even want to do it the day you
get engaged. If not, it will be the next day and will involve all kinds
of factors that you would NEVER have thought of. The setting of
THE DATE will bring home the reality of what you’ve just done.
You’ll get over it.
• Wedding showers are great as long as you don’t have to go. If
you have to go and are the only guy there, it will be miserable. If
you can muster all your strength and actually be charming during
the shower, all the women will think you are mister right, even if
you are actually a total loser.
• When your fiancé’ goes to a lingerie shower, you’ll be excited
because you’ll think that finally there’s a shower aimed at YOU. It
won’t be. Her friends won’t give her push-up bras and thongs,
except as a joke. They’ll mostly give her long robes and
nightgowns that are more comfortable than sexy.
• It won’t be appropriate for you to say, right after the lingerie
shower, “Why do you need all that stuff anyway? It’s just going to
get torn up the first night.” Really. Ask me how I know.
• No matter how much of a tomboy or athlete your fiancé’ is, she’ll
get real feminine and girly when it comes to the engagement and
wedding. That may be shocking at first, but always remember this
critical fact: She is a girl.
• If you find out your fiancé’ hasn’t been to a dentist for years, even
if her teeth LOOK perfectly fine, your first year of marriage might
be expensive. Single girls can save up a lot of potential dental
work. Ask me how I know.
• One other thing: Marry a real woman, not a supermodel or pop
star, even if you get the chance to. What does “real” mean?
There’s no absolute definition, I guess, but a real woman is more
than a pretty face and body. She is concerned about her looks,
but can also get grungy now and then. She has a personality and
a brain. She has class and makes you feel like you have to act a
little bit better when you are around her. She genuinely cares
about other people. She knows what it means to be a lady and is
one. She knows how to laugh. She is a giver and a caretaker.
She can receive a gift or compliment graciously. I could go on and
on, but, hopefully, you get the picture.
Some Thoughts on Selecting a Wife
Many of the comments listed below are found in other parts of this
book, but since selecting a wife is such a critical decision, I thought it
made sense to give you one list to work from.

• Remember: Attractive women need love, too. Aim high.

• Take a hard look at her mom and try to imagine being married to
her. Admittedly, not all girls are just like their moms, in fact, most
of them are quite different from their mothers. But, many of the
subtle traits of her mom (and dad) will manifest themselves in a girl
when she is married, particularly when she has kids.
• No matter how perfect her body is now, it will change when she
has kids. Another reason to check out her genetic predispositions
(ie, look at her mom’s body).
• If she is a nagging and complaining type (or even if her mother is),
you’re better off looking elsewhere.
• Optimism is a very good trait in a wife. She should smile and
laugh a lot. It’s even better if she smiles every time she sees you.
• No matter how much you LOVE her, if you don’t LIKE her, then
LOSE her.
• She doesn’t have to be a gourmet chef, but it’s awfully nice if she
knows how to cook and even better if she enjoys cooking.
• Nearly all girls love babies. That doesn’t mean they will all be
good mothers. Try to imagine her with your baby. I know it’s hard
since you probably can’t imagine being a dad, but try.
• Patience, particularly with you, is an important virtue.
• As a guy, you are almost certainly immature and selfish. That’s
pretty typical. Some girls are like that, too. Find one that’s more
mature and unselfish than you are (it shouldn’t be that hard).
• If she’s so concerned with her looks that she can’t get out and get
sweaty now and then, she’s probably not going to be that much
fun.
• It never hurts for your wife to look good in a pair of tight blue jeans.
• You need to see her without makeup, in a ratty t-shirt and sweats,
and when she’s sick. If you still love her afterwards, that’s a good
sign.
• If she “keeps score” of everything including things you didn’t even
know you did, that’s a bad sign.
 Chapter Twelve

If You Must Break It Off

There is probably a 50/50 chance that the first girl you get engaged to
is actually not someone you should marry. Hopefully, you will try to
figure that out before you ask a woman to marry you. Hopefully, you
will end the relationship that you know is doomed instead of allowing
yourself to succumb to the gravitational pull of engagement and
marriage that women naturally generate. If you do succumb and get
engaged, you may realize that the engagement is a mistake. It will
be incumbent on you to bring it to end as soon as possible.

• Breaking an engagement is painful. Everything about it is ugly,

except that, if you were about to marry the wrong girl, you did
escape. It will leave a mark, however.
• There is no good way to break an engagement, but like pulling off
a bandage, the sooner and faster you do it, the better.
• That doesn’t mean you should break up by phone or email. That’s
pretty classless and should only be used as a last resort if you
know that you will not follow through doing it in person. Try to do
the manly thing and do it in person.
• It will almost certainly be a miserable experience, so don’t expect
to feel noble for stepping up and breaking it off in person.
• I hesitate to say this, but there’s a slight chance that she has
reached the same conclusion—ie, that you are wrong for her. At
first, you may be hurt by that since it never occurred to you that
you might not be perfect for her, but you should quickly get over
that. You should realize that love has dealt you a winning hand
this time.
• You will probably regret the breakup immediately afterwards—
perhaps for a day or two. You will get over it.
• If you wait a long time, say a year, and still regret breaking off the
engagement, then there is something wrong with you. Don’t even
think about re-engaging with her. You have been down this road
before and so has she. There’s a 99.99% chance it’s still the
wrong thing to do.
• Don’t worry about all the wedding plans you will screw up by
breaking the engagement. One of the great things about being a
guy is that you have invested almost no time in those wedding
plans, so it’s someone else’s problem.
• That someone else (your former fiance’) will hate you. Probably
for a long time. As terrible as that sounds, you have to remember:
you are no longer going to marry her, so why do you care? Like
those elaborate wedding plans, it’s not your problem.
• Her parents will hate you, too, although her dad will only hate you
as long as his little princess is upset. Deep down he’ll be relieved
because he never liked you much anyway.
• Among the more practical things to worry about when you break
the engagement is whether you’ll get the ring back. Trust me, you
want to get it back. If she keeps it, she’ll just melt it down and
make it into something else. It will mean absolutely NOTHING to
her. Try to get it back.
• Just in case you were wondering, you can’t just “return” an
engagement ring. If you are lucky, the jeweler will take it back and
give you a credit.
• Unfortunately, when you’ve just broken an engagement, a big
credit at a jewelry store is not at all what you need.
• Also, making payments on a ring you no longer even have is not
very fun. Maybe you’ll think a little harder before asking the next
girl to marry you, eh?
• When you are trying to figure out what to do with that big jewelry
store credit, remember that your mom might appreciate a gift from
you. She’s the one woman that will always love you and she
deserves something nice after all the thoughtless things you did
when you were a teenager.
• One other thing: Within a month, maybe as little as a couple of
days, after you’ve broken the engagement, you will be over her.
You will be single and really happy about it. Chances are you will
have already gone out with two or three other girls. You’ll think
she is over it, too. No matter how she acts, she won’t be over it
completely. It’ll have just sunk in for her that her big fantasy
wedding isn’t going to happen. That will take a while for her to get
over.
• During that happy period, there’s a chance that you will get a little
sentimental about the girl you broke up with. You’ll think it would
 be appropriate to do “something nice” like taking her flowers to let
her know there are no hard feelings. Bad idea.
• When you bring her those flowers anyway, she’ll probably act
really cool. You’ll think I’m wrong and feel pretty good about
yourself. You’ll find out later that as soon as you left, she walked
straight to the kitchen and put those (expletive deleted) flowers
directly down the garbage disposal.
 Chapter Thirteen

The Wedding

This may come as a big surprise to most single men, but if you ask a
girl to marry you, she will expect you to ACTUALLY HAVE A
WEDDING and then be married to her. Shocking, isn’t it? Women
are funny like that.

• The wedding is entirely about her (seeing a pattern here?). You

are a prop at the wedding. Resistance is futile, so just accept it.
• If there were a way to have the wedding without the groom
present, they probably would have done it by now. Frankly, it
would be easier for you if they did, but that won’t happen, so don’t
even get your hopes up. Unfortunately, it’s part of her fantasy for
the groom to be there. It’s a requirement. Don’t even think about
trying to escape it. It’s too late.
• Her parents typically pay for the wedding. Any wedding is
extraordinarily expensive. Even if her parents are insanely rich,
they are still spending a LOT of money. The key is: they are
spending it because it is THEIR DAUGHTER getting married.
Their princess.
• As the groom, you happen to be a beneficiary of her parent’s
largesse. You may be tempted to believe you are somehow
worthy of that. Don’t believe it.
• You need to recognize that they aren’t spending the money
because of you. It’s totally because of her that they are doing all
this. They believe you are not worthy of her, but have accepted
you because she loves you. That’s the ONLY reason they even
tolerate you.
• Unless you are a doctor, but then you aren’t a doctor, are you?
• You may also be tempted to think that if she’s a princess, you
would be a prince. Come on, you know you aren’t a prince,
although you are going to have to act like one to maintain the
fantasy.
• Frankly, you probably aren’t worthy of her. That means you are
marrying up and that’s a good thing. For you, anyway.
• It would be a good idea for you to tell her parents thank you for the
wedding and letting you marry their daughter. More than once.
• Don’t screw up the wedding by doing something funny during the
service to entertain your friends. You’ll have plenty of other
opportunities to entertain your friends in the future, without
humiliating the one woman that has agreed to tolerate you for the
rest of her life.
• Just keep reminding yourself that the wedding is the culmination of
an elaborate fairy tale fantasy that your fiance’ has thought about
all of her life.
• As a man, you cannot imagine the extraordinary detail of her
wedding fantasy. As I previously indicated, you will inevitably
screw up the fantasy along the way. Try your hardest to do the
right things on the wedding day.
• Getting the wedding right will require you to actually find out what
her expectations are. This will be scary for you, but you should do
it anyway.
• It’s very unlikely to happen, but it’s possible your fiancé’ will want
an “inexpensive” wedding. Don’t get your hopes up. She may
actually mean it at the time she says it, but “inexpensive” means
something entirely different to her than it does to you.
• As a practical matter, “an inexpensive wedding” just means the
cost will start at a large expense (that she will insist is small and
you will have to pretend to believe) and grow to a really large
expense in increments.
• You will need to muster the self-discipline to praise her for “saving
money” and “keeping the cost of the wedding under control” even
though neither of those things is even remotely accurate.
• This will be the first of many “alternate truths” you will have to
acknowledge throughout your marriage, so look at it as practice.
• Many a bride-to-be (or her mom) will hire a bossy woman to plan
the wedding and reception. That woman will yell at all your friends
who are horsing around during the rehearsal and it may result in a
minor scene. In the unlikely event that you have any influence on
this hiring decision, try to get someone that’s nice and likes you.
• All the women at a wedding are thinking about how the bride
looks, hoping the ceremony is sweet, noticing the decorations, and
reliving or anticipating their own wedding.
• All the men at a wedding are thinking is that the groom is going to
have sex with the bride that night.
• The bride’s father is also thinking this and is extremely
uncomfortable with the idea.
• Brides seem to pick bridesmaids that are less attractive than they
are most of the time. I’m not convinced they do this on purpose,
but it does have the effect of making the bride look more attractive
by comparison.
• Although it won’t be on your mind on the wedding day, you should
remember that your friends are groomsmen only as a favor to you.
They would much rather be anywhere else than in a tuxedo at a
wedding.
• The one fantasy every guy shares is being paired up with a hot
bridesmaid. The hot single bridesmaid is wasted on a married
groomsman, however, so try to pair her with your single friend. It’s
the least you can do.
• It will be tempting to really lay on a big, long, deep, bend-her-over-
backwards kiss when the minister says, “You may kiss the bride”.
Don’t do that. It suggests you are insecure about the whole thing
or trying to show off.
• Look your new bride in the eye briefly, smile and give her a nice,
simple kiss on the lips. No tongue. That’s much classier.
• Remember: 1)The wedding is about HER and 2) All the guys and
most of the girls, including your bride, realize you’re going to “finish
the job” later that night. There’s no need pull out all the stops in
the front of the church.
• When you begin to get dressed in the rented tuxedo that someone
picked up for you because the wedding is out of town and you
discover that you have two left tuxedo shoes and the only other
dress shoes you brought don’t match the tuxedo, hopefully you’ll
remember that your dad wears the same size shoes as you.
Hopefully, his shoes will be an acceptable color.
• Most importantly, your wife-to-be won’t have a nervous breakdown
because you are wearing your dad’s dress shoes instead of
tuxedo shoes. If that’s the case, you are about to marry a
wonderful woman.
• If your soon-to-be bride is the type of woman that does care about
tuxedo shoes and is prone to have a nervous breakdown over the
shoe problem, it’s probably in your best interest to NOT tell her
about it.
• If your bride notices your shoes at some point, perhaps late in the
wedding process, hopefully she’ll forget about it or maybe even not
care after all.
• If she doesn’t forget about the shoes and gets REALLY upset, you
can be sure that it will be your fault, even though it really wasn’t.
You’ll have to apologize for RUINING the wedding.
• Unfortunately, you’ll already be married to her at that point and it’ll
be too late to break the engagement.
 Chapter Fourteen
The Honeymoon

The honeymoon refers to both an event and a period of time. The

event typically follows the wedding. Traditionally, the new couple
goes away on a vacation. I’m not aware of the origin of this tradition,
but it presumably was intended to allow the bride and groom to get
away from the people they know for a short time so they could rest
from the wedding (trust me, you will both need it) and re-enter society
as a married couple a few days later. Transitions like that are
important, but it will take a lot longer than that for you to truly feel like
a married couple.

The period of time meaning of “honeymoon” refers to the blissful, this-

is-the-perfect-person-for-me time that follows the wedding. In theory,
this period can last forever and most newlyweds think that it will,
regardless of all the evidence to the contrary they have been exposed
to. Inevitably, one or both newlyweds will become disillusioned with
the other. That may be precipitated by an argument or discovery of
some previously undetected flaw or boredom. The end of the
honeymoon is not deadly to the relationship—it’s simply the end of
being newlyweds and the beginning of being ordinary married people.
Fantasy expectations notwithstanding, the honeymoon is generally
considered to be over after one year of marriage, assuming the new
couple stays married that long.

• The longest wait of your life will be while your wife is getting ready
in the bathroom on the first night of your honeymoon.
• You have probably thought something like, “the wedding was her
fantasy and the honeymoon is my fantasy”. It may have been your
fantasy, but you need to cool your jets for one more night.
• No matter how long and anxiously you’ve waited for the
honeymoon night with your new wife; you’d better make the first
night purely about her.
• That’s pretty annoying, isn’t it? Get over it.
• Before you read the rest of this chapter, skip down to Chapter 18
and read it in its entirety. Then come back to this chapter.
• Some things to think about (recognizing that 99.99% of your brain
cells will preoccupied with sex on your honeymoon night): 1) She
is exhausted from the wedding; 2) She is nervous about how this
married sex thing is going to work; 3) She is terrified of not being
beautiful when she comes out of the bathroom and/or doing
something wrong in bed; and 4) She will assume EVERY single
thing that happens in the next 24 hours is an indicator of how you
feel about her and marriage to her.
• Another way to look at it is that she’s very likely on the verge of an
emotional breakdown.
• Think about this: You want to have sex with your wife more than
just this one time. Right? In fact, you probably want to have sex
frequently. If that’s the case and I know it is, believe me: The
wedding night sex act is not about you.
• Stop. Repeat to yourself at least one thousand times, “wedding
night sex is not about me.”
• First, ask yourself: Can I control my desire for totally unrestrained,
hot marital sex for just ONE MORE day? Can I keep in mind that
it’s still the wedding day and, therefore, still about HER? Can I do
everything in my power to not put huge pressure on my new wife
this first night of marriage? I can’t tell you how important it is to
answer “yes” to these questions and then follow through.
• Chances are you will have “sex” that first night, although there is a
possibility that she will fall asleep before you do anything.
• If she falls asleep, snuggle up next to her and don’t wake her.
• Set very low expectations for your own pleasure that first night.
Relax her, maybe with a shoulder or foot massage.
• Tell her that you know she’s tired and stressed from the wedding,
so it’s OK if she’s not ready for anything really complicated.
• If it looks like some time of sexual congress is going to occur, go
VERY slow. Whisper in her ear that she is beautiful or that you
love her every few seconds.
• If she has led a sheltered life, she may be very shocked at your
naked body, particularly your “manhood”. This is not the time to
be real blatant about it.
• If you can start by making out, do it, but don’t let yourself get out of
control. Do not give in and just “take her”.
• Under no circumstances should you criticize anything about her.
• You’re going to have a lifetime of marriage to learn how to fool
around with your wife under much more comfortable
circumstances. If you mess this one up, you’ll be trying to get
back on track for a long time.
• I heard about a guy that got married (this was not me) years ago.
When his wife came to bed the first night, he tore her clothes off
and went for it immediately. No foreplay, not pillow talk, no
nothing. Just a few quick minutes till he was done. It was the
proverbial “wham, bam, thank you ma’am”. Afterwards, he heard
her crying and saying “I can’t please you”. Don’t be that guy.
• OK, I’m going to spell it out for you: Your new wife will form her
opinion of married sex based on that first time on your
honeymoon. Here’s the important part: YOU’LL WANT HER TO
LIKE HAVING SEX WITH YOU.
• So, I’ll say it again: Go slow and be gentle. If it hurts her, slow
down or stop. Don’t get impatient or angry.
• You may be tempted to go someplace with a lot to do for your
honeymoon, like Disney. It really depends on you and you wife-to-
be, but you may want to consider going somewhere that you can
just relax and be together. Think of how tired you both will be from
the wedding. Going somewhere that you don’t feel any obligation
to do anything might be just the ticket. You can always go to those
other places later.
• A newly married woman will proudly wear a “just married” t-shirt on
the honeymoon. Hopefully, you won’t have to wear one.

Fun Experiments for Chapter Fourteen

1. While sitting in the airport in Hawaii, Miami, or some other classic

“honeymoon destination” while on a business trip (hey, some
people travel to places other than Cleveland and Des Moines),
check out all the young couples on vacation. Using your powers of
observation and the knowledge you’ve gleaned from this book, try
to identify which couples are on their honeymoon. Record as
many characteristics of the honeymooners as you can. How are
they dressed? What is their mood: do they seem happy, nervous,
preoccupied, etc? How do they look at and touch each other?
How are the really attractive couples different from the dorky
couples (assuming any of them go to such a cool place)?
2. In conjunction with step #1, note the characteristics of the non-
honeymooning couples. Try to imagine what they were like on
their honeymoons. It’s hard to see them as newlyweds now, isn’t
it?
3. Review your notes from steps #1 and #2. What have you learned?
Ask yourself these questions:
a. How important is it to have a hot wife on your
honeymoon?
b. Is it still worth it if she spends most of the time with you
talking to someone else on her cell phone and texting her
friends?
c. Could you have as much fun on your honeymoon if your
wife was someone you enjoyed being with all the time,
not just in bed?
d. Would it matter all that much if she was cute, but not
smoking hot?
e. Why are there so few smoking hot wives after being
married for a few years?
 Chapter Fifteen
Married Life

Another big shock that follows the wedding and honeymoon is that
you ARE ACTUALLY MARRIED. For the rest of your life. Let that
sink in. It’ll take a while to get used to it. You are not a person
anymore. You are half of a couple. Thankfully, there are a lot of
guys already in that situation. In fact, you will realize that just about
everyone is married and it really is not the novelty that it seems to be
at first.

• Regardless whose house it was before the marriage, afterwards it

is HER house. You get to live in her house. Do not screw it up.
• At this point, you might want to think about the possible origins of
the phrase “I’m in the doghouse”. Got it?
• If she moved into your house after the wedding, chances are good
that the house will be sold and she’ll pick out a new house within a
year that will REALLY be her house.
• The hardest thing to get used to when you first get married is
having someone in your space. No matter how close you were
beforehand, it’s different when you are married and are sharing a
home. You have to figure out how to tell each other what you are
doing, where you are going, who carries the checkbook, who pays
bills, etc. The sooner you accept that you need to work out all
those things cooperatively, the better you’ll do.
• A woman takes up a lot more space in a home than you do.
• After you are married and you want to go on a date, it’ll be strange
at first when you both are getting ready in the same place and you
don’t arrive to pick her up. You will be expected to compensate for
that lack of transition time somehow to make it seem like a “date”
to her.
• You wife thinks of every other girl you dated before you met her as
big mistakes that you made and should apologize for. There are
lots of things like that.
• Women have an innate need to make their husbands better. This
can be annoying and sometimes painful.
• One of the main reasons a woman marries a man is to change
him. You are HER project and she is the coach. As long as she
sees some progress in fixing you, however small, she will probably
stay around to work on you.
• If you succeed in satisfying her somehow, she’ll raise the bar for
next time.
• She WILL change you no matter how much you fight it. She will
also constantly find new things about you that need changing.
• I suspect the real reason some men go bald is all the polishing and
scrubbing their wives do on them.
• Sweetness is a trait that goes a long way in a woman you marry.
Frequent nagging, not so much.
• When you first get married, all your single friends will say you are
“whipped”. Actually, there’s usually another word beginning with
“p” attached to “whipped”, but either way it means the same thing.
They’ll be right and you will feel bad about it, but if your wife is
really good looking, your friends will still be jealous.
• Having a woman hate you is, believe it or not, better than having
her not care about you at all. You have a fighting chance at
turning hate back into love, but almost zero chance of turning
ambivalence to love.
• Wives like to talk about their husbands. Try your best to give her
something good to say about you. If you do that regularly, all the
other wives will be in awe of you no matter how dorky you look or
how klutzy you are.
• Women expect you to fix things that break, except, and this is very
important, when they are telling you about an emotional problem
(this happens a lot) in which case they DON”T WANT YOU TO FIX
IT, THEY JUST WANT YOU TO LISTEN! Generally, the existence
of tears is a clue that you should start listening and stop offering
solutions, no matter how obvious the solution is to you. A simple
way to listen is to just say, “how does that make you feel?”
• Women like to watch TV shows and movies about relationships,
especially complex and ultimately doomed relationships. They like
it a lot, probably because it makes them cry and feel slightly better
about the sorry excuse for a husband that you’ve turned out to be.
You’ll have to suffer through some of those shows and movies.
Suck it up and do it without whining. She’ll know you hate it and
will appreciate you doing it.
• All men should be required to swap wives with someone else
temporarily so they can see that the other guy actually has it worse
than he does. The amazing thing is, both men would feel sorry for
the other guy.
• The saying “No matter how beautiful a woman is, there's at least
one guy that's tired of her” is basically true, except for my wife,
who gets more beautiful and exciting every day. Whew, that was
close!
• Right after you are married and you happen to meet a Dallas
Cowboy Cheerleader somewhere and she gives you a signed
picture (for a friend that asked you to get it from her—REALLY)
and it turns out she put a nice note to you in the envelope and you
think it would be HILARIOUS to tell your friends the whole story,
including the fact that the note said she “hopes your little friend
likes the picture” and how AWESOME she looks, at a party with
your new wife sitting there stewing. It might be hilarious, but it
won’t be when you get home.
• If your wife ever says in a loud voice, “YOU NEED TO REALIZE
THAT I WILL NEVER BE A COWBOY CHEERLEADER” the
correct response would NOT be “I knew that a long time ago”. If
there is a correct response, it probably involves the words “so
sorry” and a piece of jewelry.
• Once you are married, you will discover that the GREATEST
INVENTION EVER is Olympic Women’s Beach Volleyball. Why?
Because you can watch athletic women standing and jumping in
bikinis for hours and if your wife walks in the room, all you have to
say is, “Hey, I’m just watching the Olympics!”
• The one problem with the GREATEST INVENTION EVER is that
the Summer Olympics only happen every four years. Bummer.
• This will be hard to believe: Your mom is actually a real woman to
your dad. Although she is a reliable, thoughtful and loving mom to
you, she has all the traits and complexities of a woman. Really.
She hides most of that from you, but your dad gets the full
package, good and bad. If he seems pretty happy, then he lucked
out.
• When you are married, you have to tell your wife you love her
every single day. You HAVE to, even when you don’t feel it. She
expects unconditional (look up the word) love from you.
• When you walk into your home from work, give your wife a hug
and kiss, but also make it point to pat and/or squeeze her butt
 (unless she tells you she HATES it). Do it gently and by all means
do it in front of the children.
• You can act your way into feeling something. Act like you love
your wife more than anyone else in the world even if you don’t feel
it.
• You will know your wife better than anyone else in the world.
NEVER use that knowledge to embarrass her in front of other
people. Even if you think it’s the funniest thing you’ll ever say in
your life, don’t do it.
• Women like to change their husbands and make them better. If
you will work hard to exceed her expectations of you and treat her
like a queen, she won’t try to change you as much.
• As impossible as it seems, you will get used to being married.
• Women are soft, caring and nice most of the time. One day you’ll
find out that they are also much stronger and tougher than you will
ever be. You’ll be in awe.
• When you are a grown married man, one day you’ll look at a cute
girl walking by and then realize it is one of your daughter’s best
friends that you’ve known since birth. You will feel old and like a
slimeball all at once. As you might imagine, it is not a good
feeling.
• You may end up going to a marriage counselor at some point.
Don’t be ashamed, but if the counselor is one of those jackasses
that starts by blaming everything on you, the male, you’re probably
not going to enjoy the process. You probably sense that there’s a
story here and you’d be correct. It will poison the counseling, at
least it did for me. It’s probably ok for you to suggest a different
counselor.
• Your wife will never fully accept that men are very simple. She
won’t believe, even though it is absolutely true, that there are just
three things needed to make a man happy: show up naked, bring
food, and stop talking.
• After a while, a married woman will realize that men are basically
good for nothing more than physical tasks like taking out the trash,
picking up heavy things, mowing the lawn, and getting her
pregnant. She may also realize that she can hire out those things
out pretty easily. I know it’s hard, but it would behoove you to give
her a few other reasons keep you around.
• Your wife will love to use you as an errand boy. If she sends you
to the grocery store, there are some basic rules you need to know:
 • Before you leave the house, make sure you know what each
item actually is. You may have to ask her to explain things.
• The largest can of something is not necessarily the size she
wants. Get her to be specific.
• Be sure to get all the items on the list.
• She will probably care more about brands than you will.
• Don’t substitute something “just as good” for what she
specifically asked for. For example, “Cheese Nips” are NOT
the same thing as “Cheez-It” crackers. I’m sure of this.
• If you have preferences on things like ketchup (Heinz vs.
Hunts), you should tell her, but don’t make it into a huge deal or
you’ll hear about it later.
• Don’t be surprised if her grocery list is not in a sequential order
such that your path through the supermarket is the absolutely
most efficient one possible. That’s not how women make
grocery lists.
• Even if you go to the store often, you probably will have trouble
finding things. Ask someone.
• Your wife knows you are frequently going to do idiotic things and is
sure that only really smart thing you ever did was to marry her.
• She likes it when you say you don’t deserve a woman like her. It’s
probably true, so try hard to deserve her at least a little bit.
• Everyone else’s marriage seems perfect compared to yours.
That’s only because you have no idea how many problems they
have. You can learn from other people’s marriage successes and
failures, but don’t be jealous. You probably have it a LOT better
than they do.
• Try to remember that just because you are fixated on sex and see
a phallic or other sexual context to nearly everything, it doesn’t
mean your wife does. She gets tired of that and thinks it’s juvenile.
• It’s probably worth mentioning what I’ll call the Low Expectations
Strategy for dealing with your wife. It is highly risky and requires
innate skills, no fear of slow painful death, and a lifelong
commitment. This is something you can’t teach—you either have
it or you don’t. The Low Expectations Strategy is basically this:
consistently treat your wife like dirt and never willingly or knowingly
accommodate ANY of her womanly expectations. It is almost as if
you are consciously NOT meeting those needs. Under this Low
Expectations Strategy you cannot show weakness or any
 sensitivity to her whining or nagging. Passive-aggressive behavior
(i.e., ignoring her) is a key element. If this strategy is
“successfully” employed FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE
RELATIONSHIP and you show NO WEAKNESS ever, the theory
is you will have lowered her expectations of you to the point that
ANY remotely considerate thing you do (by definition it will be a
rare occasion) will be heavily rewarded and praised. In the
meantime, you will have to tolerate constant nagging and
complaining, but you will have the satisfaction of not having “given
in”. You also have the very real risk that your wife will get fed up
with and either leave you or smother you with a pillow. In spite of
those risks, the thought of totally rejecting everything your wife
demands may occasionally be quite appealing. Firstly, you cannot
implement this after the relationship has begun. More importantly,
very few men have the Olympic-class skills and focused mindset
to pull off this strategy. In all my years, I’ve only met one guy that
has attempted it and his success is arguably spotty. I recommend
you consider it a theoretical option.
• Given how much couples make out when they are dating, you
would think that they would make out all the time when they are
married, but they don’t.
• Never hit you wife. It’s a very bad thing to do and it will never
solve anything.
• Women have a thing about the toilet seat being left down. They
consider it a common courtesy for a man to put it down since a
woman sits on a toilet every time she uses it. Men think they are
showing courtesy, if they think about it at all, by lifting the seat
since it prevents it getting wet. When they forget to put it back
down and get in trouble with their wife, they are baffled. The
wrong thing to say to your wife is “Why don’t you have to leave it
up for me?” or “So you can’t put the seat down yourself?” Women
expect you to accommodate them.
• I have heard that most women “hover” (ie, don’t actually touch)
over the seat of a public toilet and, rather than touch the handle,
they kick it to flush. This results in frequent replacement of the
valves and handles. Surely plumbers love women for this.
• I’m sure 99% of civilized women have NO IDEA what the men’s
room is like at a typical stadium—the long concrete urinal trough
with rusty pipes dribbling water and nasty drains filled with
cigarette butts and other speakable things—that we men use with
 no thought whatsoever other than getting back to the game. I’ve
often wondered what those women would think of us men if they
knew. Probably better to leave that one alone.
• If it were solely up to most husbands, there would be very few
pictures of the children and absolutely zero posed family portraits.
The fact that no family documentation was being maintained would
not even occur to the husband until after the kids graduated from
college. He would feel slight disappointment and then think, “hey,
nobody’s perfect.” Fortunately, wives are ferociously insistent
about photography. Just acquiesce when she demands a photo.
You have no chance of changing her mind and will eventually
appreciate the photos.
• Women aren’t always subtle. When your wife’s first purchase after
the honeymoon is a wooden rolling pin, there might be a not-so-
subtle message for you. Ask me how I know.
• Most wives will not hesitate to call their husband at any time or
place, including during work and once-in-a-lifetime sporting events.
It would be in your best interest to actually have an adult
conversation with your wife about communication “rules” for the
two of you. Listen particularly well to the rules that she suggests.
Understand that the rules that you suggest will in fact be subject to
override at any time for any reason.
• A few wives are uncomfortable calling their husbands at work. In
that case, you should probably contact her now and then to let her
know you are thinking about her. Texting a simple message like,
“I’m thinking about you” is particularly effective.
• If it’s sometimes a problem for you to receive phone calls at work,
try to work out a code with your wife so you can let her know it’s a
bad time to talk.
• If your wife calls you and is really upset, you need to find a way to
listen to her right then. This is your wife. Don’t make her feel that
you only care about her when you want something.
• Try to marry your trophy wife the first time around. It’s much
cheaper and less painful that way.
• After you’ve been married a while, it’s fun to refer to your wife as
“your hot trophy wife”. That’s fine, but try to avoid adding “but I’m
not sure WHAT the trophy was for”.
• Just remember: Eventually, your children will grow up and have
families of their own. Then, it’ll be you and your wife again. Think
about that when you pick your wife and then do your best to
develop a good relationship with her before that happens.
 Chapter Sixteen
Simple Techniques for Reducing the Frequency of
Marital Arguments

No matter what well-meaning people may say, arguments with your

wife are not necessary. You will almost certainly have disagreements
now and then. Those disagreements will inevitably result in
arguments now and then, especially if one or both of you is tired. It is
possible, however, to avoid most arguments and still resolve
problems and disagreements. It is in the best interest of your long-
term relationship to find a nice way to solve problems. The sooner
you both get a handle on that, the better. By the way, I don’t do all
these things all the time.

• Learn the terms “yes, dear” and “I’m sorry”. Then learn how to say
them in an appropriately humble way. These are critical skills and,
if all else fails, resort to saying one or both.
• Remember: You never really win a fight with your wife.
• Every man needs to learn to properly “state the obvious” about his
expectations of marriage.
• The reason you need to do this is that what is obvious to you is
almost certainly NOT obvious to her. The inverse is also true.
What your wife thinks is obvious is NOT obvious to you. A woman
simply doesn’t think or hear or see things the way a man does. At
all. Even though she is also of the same species, she could not be
more different.
• Need some examples of stating the obvious? Here are a few:
• Husband tells wife that when he comes home from work he
needs about ten minutes to shift gears, he’ll be more able to
listen to the (onslaught of) IMPORTANT INFORMATION about
her day she (desperately) wants to share with him.
• Husband tells wife that sex with her is a stress-reliever for him.
• Wife tells husband that she wants him to: look her in the eye
when she talks to him, take out the trash without being asked,
call her during the day, tell her thank you for fixing dinner,
frequently mention how beautiful she is, constantly tell her he
loves her, to share his feelings, really listen to her when she
 talks, to not drive so fast because it scares her... If you get her
started, there will be a long list of things that are BLATANTLY
OBVIOUS to her, so you should write it down and ask her to
repeat or explain things, if necessary. Note: you can find out
many of these things ahead of time from this and other easily
accessible books. You’ll be way ahead of the game if you do.
• This stating-the-obvious technique is useful in all aspects of
dealing with your wife. Like everything else with women, HOW
you do it is of critical importance. Be kind and reassure her that
you love her and the relationship is secure.
• Need a conversation starter? Try this: tell her you really want to
please her, but as a dumb guy, you will need her to spell things out
to you. You’ll have to tell her this a lot, sometimes after you have
screwed up (saying “I’m sorry” is an appropriate start to this
conversation).
• Do not think that this gives you license to say something hurtful,
mean or critical to your wife. This is about stating your
expectations of marriage, not critiquing her.
• It sounds easy, but even after years of marriage, both sexes
frequently forget that the other sex sees, hears and thinks
differently.
• One critical factor in stating and listening to the “obvious” is to do it
in a civil and non-confrontational way. You have to listen and you
can’t make an immediate value judgment on what she says.
Hopefully, she’ll do the same for you. This takes skill and practice.
• Try to do nice things for your wife without being asked. Examples
would include: bringing her a candy bar that she likes (if she’s not
on a diet), emptying the trash, folding some clothes, putting dishes
in the dishwasher, putting the seat down, replacing the toilet paper
roll or taking the kids somewhere on Saturday morning. Don’t
expect anything in return or make a big production of it. If she
asks you about it, just tell her you thought of her or just wanted to
give her a break. Little things add up.
• Never tell your wife she looks fat, old, not sexy or unattractive.
Don’t point out that she doesn’t look good in a particular outfit.
She will remember negative comments from you about her looks
FOREVER. Feel free to lie about how good she looks.
• Never EVER accidentally call your wife by another woman’s name.
Especially if that name is someone you dated before her.
• Recognize that she will remember EVERYTHING you say,
especially if there is emotion attached to the words. It should be
obvious to men, but it’s not: You can’t “unsay” something once the
words are out of your mouth. It’s always better to hold your tongue
than to lash out, even if she really wants you to talk.
• When you first are married, you’ll find yourself talking about body
parts and functions quite a bit. Men tend to use slang words
exclusively for these things, while women, being much classier,
use more formal terms along with the “nicer” slang words. You’ll
do much better with your new wife if you learn to use the words
she uses, particularly when you talk to her.
• Never tell your wife that she should learn to cook like your mom.
Just take my word for it.
• Men are wired to look at attractive women. Your wife knows that
in her heart, but you will do yourself a favor to not let her catch you
doing it. You won’t always get points for not looking, but you will
definitely lose points for getting caught.
• It’s generally not a good idea as you pass a Hooters restaurant, to
say, “The last time I ate there, the food wasn’t good”.
• On your way home from work, especially when your wife is
pregnant or home with the new baby, call her to see if she needs
something.
• When you go out on a business dinner at a nice restaurant, don’t
stay out too late and, if possible, bring home a dessert for your
wife.
• Don’t EVER tell her to shut up. Unlike you, women need to talk
through their feelings, so telling her to shut up totally invalidates
her emotions. Remember: emotions are a part of everything for a
woman.
• If you get in an argument, stick to the facts that you are arguing
about. Don’t bring up a laundry list of things she does that bother
you. It usually doesn’t hurt to say, “Honey, even though we are
arguing right now, I want you to know I love you and I am glad to
be married to you.”
• Tell her you love her every day, even if you don’t feel like it.
• Before you are married for very long, you will somehow decide
which side of the bed you and your wife will sleep on and that will
be the way you sleep.
• It’s worth it to spend a lot of money on a good mattress. Feeling
good when you get in and out of bed helps reduce grumpiness.
• Being married, you will be exposed to all your wife’s habits,
weaknesses, and tendencies. Just remember, she is likewise
being exposed to what an immature, selfish, knucklehead you are
at the same time.
• You will be tempted to compare your wife unfavorably to certain
other women, many of whom will be beautiful, ironically. Those
other women will appear to have none of her annoying habits,
weaknesses and tendencies. The fact is: those other women DO
have annoying habits, weaknesses and tendencies—probably
much worse than your wife—you just don’t happen to know what
they are. No matter what, don’t EVER openly compare your wife’s
flaws with another women.
• More than just about anything else, your wife wants security. Do
your best to understand what that means to her and provide it.
• As much as your wife likes security, she will get annoyed when
you are preoccupied with work all the time.
• That’s because, while financial security is part of what she wants,
the main thing she wants is a secure relationship with you.
• Resist the urge to look at your Blackberry while you are talking to
your wife.
• You need to try to listen to the words you wife says. This is hard.
• The longer you are married, the more your ears will lose sensitivity
to the precise frequency of your wife’s voice. It’s especially difficult
to hear if she talks fast.
• Sometimes it helps to repeat back to her what she just said. It
makes you look like a moron, but at least you have a chance of
getting a point for trying.
• Your wife will always feel the need to talk to you when you are
reading, watching TV, or otherwise deeply occupied. This often
seems to be a test to see if you care about her more than
whatever it is you are doing.
• That being said, I don’t really know why women do this. If you can
muster it, try to ignore what you are doing (if only there was Tivo
for everything) and give her your full attention. This is virtually
impossible (unless she is wearing lingerie and asking you to come
back to the bedroom with her, but before you get excited you
 should know that won’t happen very often) so you’ll have to act like
you are hanging on her every word.
• How do you act like you are hanging on every word? I’m not good
at it, but here’s what I strive for: Try to smile up at her no matter
how annoyed you are. Look her in the eyes, if possible. As hard
as this may be to do, it may require turning off the TV, putting the
book down, getting out from under the car, etc. You may want to
stand up and put your hand on her shoulder.
• I find doing this to be really difficult. For me it’s on the order of
running a marathon. Without training. In dress shoes.
• One other thing to remember: she WILL give you something to do
in this conversation. That’s unavoidable. The point of listening is
avoid her wrath and, maybe, to earn sexual favors.
• Don’t count on the sexual favors.
• Men like to be prepared—it’s the first rule you learn as a Boy
Scout, right? You like being married, so you might think it’s a good
idea to scope out one or two other women just in case something
happens to your wife. One sure way to start a fight is to tell her
that you’ve identified the perfect “back up wife”. Never say that.
• Talking about your ex-girlfriend or former fiance’ is fraught with
danger. Your wife is probably very interested in knowing about her
—what did you like about her, why did you break up, do you ever
think about her, etc. Don’t fall into the trap of telling her.
• Consistently saying “I don’t remember anything about her now”
might work. Bottom line: the less you say about former girlfriends,
the better, especially if any of them were great looking.
• Your wife hates it when you spit or urinate during a shower.
Women notice stuff like that even when you think they don’t.
• Your wife will want to take pictures all the time, especially when
you have children. It will invariably annoy you at the time, since
you want to DO something, not stop DOING something to take a
picture. Much later in life you will be glad to have so many
pictures, so just put up with it. This is a good example of how
women are more responsible and mature than men.
• You can get in big trouble with your wife even if you do nothing
wrong. You may wonder how this can happen. Here’s a real life
example: You are leaving a nice restaurant with your wife after a
romantic dinner. As you get to the door, there’s a beautiful tipsy
young woman in a miniskirt who works at your office sitting there
with friends. She sees you and shouts your name. Then she hugs
 you without acknowledging your wife. Up to this point, you have
done nothing wrong, but your wife is royally pissed off. At you.
Why? Let’s break this down from the perspective of your wife:
•
• Fact: She is beautiful and young.
What this means to your wife: She is tough competition for a
married woman

• Fact: She is wearing a miniskirt.

What this means to your wife: She is a slut. Every woman at
my husband’s company must be a slut. How can he work
there?

• Fact: She is a little tipsy.

What this means to your wife: She is a drunken slut.

• Fact: She knows your name.

What this means to your wife: This slut knows my husband,
possibly in the Biblical sense.

• Fact: She hugged you.

What this means to your wife: That skinny little drunken slut
with the obviously fake books who shares an office with my
husband and apparently already knows him quite intimately
now plans to finish undressing and have sex with him in front of
ALL THESE PEOPLE RIGHT NOW.

• Fact: You froze for two seconds.

What this means to your wife: Now I know that my husband is
embarrassed to claim me as his wife, even though I carried his
babies and waited on him hand and foot for all these years.
Obviously, he would rather have a teeny-tiny little drunken slut
with fake boobs as his hooker-girlfriend.

Time elapsed: Five seconds

• Your wife’s final conclusion: How can he treat me like this?

How will I take care of the children without a husband? Well,
he is going to get a piece of my mind on the way home. He’s
 going to have to step up and start paying attention to me or he’s
in BIG trouble.

• Your thoughts: Wow, she’s cute, better look away. Don’t want
to get caught checking THAT out—tonight’s been a good night
and I will definitely get lucky when we...whoa, she’s …
HUGGING ME! Man, are those…wait-wait-wait this is a not-
good situation. Okay, think! What do I do now? Uh-oh, wifey
is already steaming. I’m doomed, now. Nothing I can do but
start apologizing. Which couch did I sleep on last time? But,
hey, at least I got a hug from that hot babe. How do I know
her? Oh, wait, wifey is saying something…

• So, what should you do when something like this happens to you
(and it will)? There’s no perfect solution, but you could do
something chivalrous like this: As you tear yourself away from her
incredible, sexy body (which may be the most difficult thing you
have ever attempted), you say to her in a firm, confident voice, “I
don’t remember your name, but I’d very much like to introduce you
and your young, immature friends to my gorgeous and sexy wife,
(wife’s name), who meets all my needs in the most spectacular
ways. We’ve just been on a romantic date together and I can’t
wait to go home to be with her and the kids where I’m so happy
and ultimately fulfilled.”
• What you probably will do is sheepishly walk out of the restaurant
with your wife peppering you with questions about how you know
her SO well, why you LET HER hug you like that, etc. while you
ineffectively try to defend yourself. From then on, when your wife
is annoyed at you, she’ll ask about “that girl” at work.
 Chapter Seventeen
Simple Techniques for Avoiding an Affair

I’m a big believer in the idea that marriage is for life and it is against
the rules to cheat on your spouse. Cheating can be a lot of things,
but it ultimately involves a intimate physical relationship with
someone other than your spouse. I suppose one might feel cheated
on even if their spouse had never actually had a physical relationship
with someone else—perhaps an ongoing flirtatious, amorous
relationship that never gets consummated—but, frankly, most affairs
end up with physical consummation. It’s what people in love (or
people in lust) usually want to do. Love and lust are powerful, so it’s
not always easy, particularly when the marriage isn’t altogether
satisfactory. The point is to keep as far from an affair as possible
when you are married and try to get your marriage back on track.

• You first must decide that you will not have an affair under any
circumstances.
• Although you probably were not really paying attention during the
wedding (you were thinking about how uncomfortable you were in
the tuxedo, how good she looked in her wedding dress, and how
much you wanted to have sex with her that night—I know, I did,
too), but during that ceremony you did actually MAKE A
PROMISE. You actually made several, but the pertinent one is
that you will stick with your new wife through thick and thin,
sickness and health, blah, blah, blah, and, here’s the important
part: TILL DEATH DO YOU PART. In case you had not really
thought about it, that means you are married for life. You made
the big COMMITMENT, buddy. You need to keep your promise.
• You probably intend to keep that promise, too, but let me tell you
that it may not always be easy. Things happen that may make her
less attractive than she was in that wedding dress or in the lingerie
on the honeymoon night. You have to play through the pain now
and then.
• You also have to have a plan. Whether you are savvy enough to
know that affairs do happen all time or not, you need to develop a
strategy to AVOID an affair at all costs.
• Affairs happen for a lot of reasons. I will not try to catalog them,
but you might want to ask some people that have either had affairs
or know about them to tell you what happened and why.
• No matter what you might rationalize, an affair did not “just
happen”. You and the other woman chose to do whatever you did.
• One basic fact to understand is that you do not have to be looking
for an affair to be pulled into one. In fact, if you are a happily
married man, you may be more at risk. Why? Because women
are hopeless romantics and when a lonely single (or married)
woman sees a happily married man, she might just imagine that
you, of all people, could be happily married to HER. She might
want what you have. She might be interested in getting that ball
rolling right now and, being a woman, has a pretty good idea of
how to use the tools at her disposal to start that process. She
knows that, while she may be thinking long-term happiness, your
brain is focused on immediate gratification (i.e., sex) and she will
use that to get what she wants. If you do not have a strategy, you
could get in trouble pretty quick. I will not say that it could happen
“before you know it” because you WILL know it when clothes start
coming off, but it may be too late to put on the brakes.
• Yes, I know that picking up a married man in a bar is not a very
good strategy for finding long-term happiness. In that situation,
NEITHER of you is doing the logical or smart thing.
• “It just happened” is not a good excuse and it will NOT make an
affair go away or be okay. It did NOT “just happen”. What
happened was you did not have or follow your plan.
• Your plan needs to include a list of places to avoid, particularly
while you are by yourself. For example, going to a bar alone and
spending the evening there can be dangerous. Alcohol reduces
your inhibitions and women on the prowl often hang out in bars
looking for guys. I know that sounds too good to be true if you are
single, but we are talking about when you are married.
• Your plan should also include things to say to establish that you
are married and not available. Talking favorably about your wife
and your kids in conversations with women is a good way to set
the standards early. Complaining about how your wife “doesn’t
listen to me” is NOT a good plan.
• Do not troll the Internet for women looking for men and things like
that. It may seem sort of disconnected and innocent, but you
could find yourself inching towards disaster.
• Your plan should also have some sound nuggets of wisdom and
common sense that you can use to keep yourself grounded.
These are sayings that perhaps shock you into remembering there
are things more important than getting laid right now. Here are a
few:
• I made a promise to my wife and I plan to keep it.
• It would be hard to face my wife, my friends, my parents, or my
fill-in-the-blanks, with the news that I had an affair.
• How will I explain to my son and/or daughter that it was more
important to find a woman to give me a b***job than it was to be
loyal to their mother.
• A divorce would result in fill-in-the-blanks.
• When my wife finds out about my affair, she would never trust
me.
• I like my happy home.
• Any woman that would have an affair with me would probably
cheat on me later on.
• Always remember that there is a big difference between lust and
love, even though they feel a lot a like sometimes. The old saying
that, “while money can’t buy you love, it can buy you a reasonable
facsimile thereof” is true, but you really don’t want to trade the real
thing for a facsimile.
• The point of your plan is to enable you to AVOID the potential
affair and to ESCAPE if you find yourself in the danger zone.
• As crazy as it might seem, if you are in a really tough spot for
whatever reason and you are not sure you can get away, before
you take the irreversible step, use all willpower you can muster
and call your wife. Tell her you are in trouble and you need her to
help you. If you cannot muster the willpower or cannot reach your
wife, then your plan should always have a friend you can call that
will help you do the right thing.
• One reason you may be tempted is that other women often seem
more attractive than your wife. There are a couple of reasons why
you might feel that way. First, you see your wife at her worst all
the time: crawling out of bed in the morning, when she’s sick,
when she’s been working in the yard, when she’s a little bloated,
etc. You know all her flaws and imperfections. Other women are
more or less at their best when you see them at work, at a
restaurant, at a store, etc. You do not see all their flaws and all
 the work that it took to cover them up. It’s very easy to put a
template of perfection on that other woman such that your wife
pales by comparison. If it helps, try to imagine that other woman
without makeup or throwing up or nagging you or whatever else
you can think of to remind yourself that she is a real person, not a
perfect template of a woman.
• You may actually get to know another woman pretty well through
work or church sometime after you are married. It’s possible that
you might decide that she IS a much more perfect woman for you
than your wife. Think about this BEFORE you get married so that
you pick the very best partner for life that you can find. Once
you’ve done that, then it’s too late to find another woman. You are
done looking—you made the commitment. Make it your goal to
make your marriage better.
• What do you do if you have cheated? First, stop. Now. Forever.
What to do next is much more complicated. I tend to think that no
matter how much you want to confess to her, you should probably
keep it a secret. She is not responsible for your affair and should
not be punished for it. You may want to find some other
trustworthy counselor that can help you change your ways and
deal with the guilt.
 Chapter Eighteen
Marital Intimacy

This is the part of marriage that guys are interested in (ie, “sex” for
those guys that recoil from words like “intimacy”). Women,
particularly single ones, appear to be interested in sex, but not nearly
as much as men. Even newly married women seem to be quite
interested in it. Eventually, it leads to pregnancy, which leads to
children, which pretty much seems to, if not eliminate the woman’s
interest in sex, at least mitigate it. That comes as quite a shock to
most men.

But, let’s not be so negative. Let’s discuss what those intimate

moments, however rare at times, may entail. Please understand that
I am not going to give any guidance to anyone on techniques and
positions. In the first place, I’m ill-equipped to do that. More
importantly, there are plenty of books and DVDs that provide
excellent advice.

• They say that, for women, eating chocolate makes them feel the
same sensation as being in love. That probably explains a lot in
marriage.
• Giving your wife chocolate will not guarantee sex, but it improves
your chances. It would not be a bad idea to swing by the
convenience store to get your wife a Hershey bar now and then.
• Now and then, buy her some high quality chocolate. Even better,
do it sometime other than Valentine’s Day.
• There’s always one guy at work that says his wife demands sex
every night. That may in fact be true. Chances are very good that
guy won’t be you.
• A woman can live without sex. Easily. A man might be able to,
but now that you’ve worked so hard to get it, do you really want to
find out what it’s like to live without it again?
• As a married man, you will wonder how it is possible that a woman
can have multiple orgasms, in fact shockingly intense back-arching
orgasms that you as a man would give anything to experience just
once, yet she doesn’t demand sex all the time.
• No one seems to be able to answer this question authoritatively,
but I do have my working explanation: A woman enjoys sex in the
same way that a man enjoys a backrub. A backrub can be very
pleasurable, in fact, it almost always is, but it isn’t something you
spend every waking moment trying to get. As hard as it is to
believe, a woman seems to approach sex the same way.
• It may come as a surprise to you that, unlike on TV and in movies,
real “intimate relations” with a woman happen in real time and in
three dimensions. There won’t be any spontaneous music starting
up at key moments and you will both experience the full
complement of inputs for the five senses—both good and bad.
This seems obvious, but if your only exposure to such things has
been “virtual” then one or both of you may be shocked by
unexpected “sensory inputs”. A simple solution is to think and talk
about such things ahead of time.
• Good married sex doesn’t just happen. It particularly doesn’t just
happen for the woman.
• At some point in your marriage, you may think it’s a good idea to
try to manipulate your wife by holding out on sex. This will not
work. Trust me, she can hold out a lot longer than you can.
• Leering at your wife and turning everything into something sexual
seems normal because YOU think about sex all the time. Your
wife does NOT think about sex all the time and she thinks you are
a pervert when you do that leering thing. Women are not attracted
to perverts, so, as a practical matter, this means you will have to
try to pretend you are a mature adult most of the time you are
around your wife.
• When you first get married, you will want sex so often that every
time you and your wife kiss or hug, you’ll want it to lead to sex. In
the first year or so, it might actually lead to sex every time. After
that, chances are good she’ll just be annoyed that “all you ever
think about is SEX!” You’ll be tempted to say “well, DUH!” But
instead you should pretend to be a grown up and find a way to kiss
and hug her frequently without suggesting it lead elsewhere. As
difficult as it may be, you might even say “I just wanted to kiss you
—I’m not after anything more.” You’ll be lying, of course, but that’s
OK. Ironically, your being affectionate without wanting more will
make her more inclined to have sex. Not always, but sometimes.
I told you women are complicated.
• One way to be affectionate is non-sexual touching. Try rubbing
her feet without being asked. Be gentle and ask her what feels
good. (If she doesn’t like it, don’t get your feelings hurt. Just
stop.)
• Another way to be affectionate is to do little things around the
house without being asked. You probably won’t want to do these
things, but do them anyway without expecting any thanks: empty
a trash can if it’s full, replace the toilet paper roll when it’s empty,
put dishes in the dishwasher, sweep the kitchen, get the mail, etc.
• The old saying “Women need a reason for sex, but men just need
a place” is true. I would add that men aren’t picky about the place,
either.
• Your wife will never view sex the same way you do. She might try
to get inside your head and understand your view of sex, but it’s
not likely because there are about one million things more
important to her. You, on the other hand, should try to understand
her attitude towards sex. The more you can accommodate her,
the better.
• Your wife will think of sex as something she does for you—her gift
to you. You probably will think the same thing. That’s OK, but go
out of your way every time to FIRST make it good for her anyway.
• Some women will say they want sex as much as men do. They
will be wrong. As Mignon McLaughlin said, “ Nymphomaniac: a
woman as obsessed with sex as the average man.”
Nymphomaniacs are very rare (and usually crazy).
• During foreplay, the most important organs in your body are your
ears, followed closely by your other sensory organs. Listen to your
wife. When you do something, does she breathe harder? Does
she sigh? Does she relax or tense up? Do her cheeks flush? If
you work at it, you can learn to read your wife’s body.
• Sex is at least 99% mental for a woman.
• Read that last sentence over and over until you believe it.
• Sex is mental for a man, too, but in a different way. No matter how
many times he sees his wife without clothes on, there’s something
very exciting about seeing her undress.
• Although sex is very mental for a woman, don’t take that to mean
that her body isn’t sexual. Her body just doesn’t get turned on to
sex until her mind is turned on.
• Men basically have one erogenous zone. I think almost every part
of a woman’s body is an erogenous zone. Certainly, the obvious
places are, but don’t start there. Her ears, the skin on her neck
and belly, the back of her knees, the space between her shoulder
blades, and the list goes on. Your job is to find those places and
then learn to play her like a violin.
• As you learn to play her body, realize that sometimes the thing that
worked last time might not do it for her this time. Be flexible and
creative, but mostly remember that foreplay is all about making her
happy. That shouldn’t be a problem anyway since all you’ve
thought about since you were thirteen was running your hands and
mouth all over a woman’s body, right? Just take your time and
listen to how she responds.
• Bringing your wife to orgasm is really great. A woman’s orgasm is
a full-body thing that will usually get you really ramped up for your
turn.
• If you take care of her first, she’ll almost always be happy to take
care of you next.
• When you get married, you may notice the need to talk with your
wife about your private body parts. You presumably know all the
names of the key parts of the male and female body, but you may
realize you haven’t actually spoken those words out loud before.
This may make one or both of you uncomfortable for a little while,
but if you think about it, it will be one of the more entertaining
problems to “work on” in your marriage.
• One of the challenges in talking about private body parts is
whether to use the technical or slang terms. My advice would be
to follow your wife’s lead on this since she probably has a lot more
class than you and you don’t want to risk offending her by using a
slang term that she thinks is derogatory.
• Using technical terms for body parts feels clinical and cold at first,
but if it gets you laid, do it.
• Women can have the most amazing orgasms and then not
remember anything about it the next time. Most of the time, they’ll
say, “That was so different”. How many different kinds of orgasms
are there, anyway? I don’t know if that is good or bad, but it’s
really weird.
• If men could have multiple orgasms like women, we would never
do anything else.
• When you first get married, you’ll probably have sex very
frequently, sometimes more than once a day. Enjoy it while it
lasts.
• When your wife has a baby, that frequent sex will slow down a lot.
She’ll blame it one the baby making her tired, but it’s really
because her need to be needed is being met by the baby AND
she’s tired AND you’re not her only focus for love anymore. Get
used to it.
• If one of the babies has frequent ear infections and she has to get
up a lot for the first year of the baby’s life, sex will slow down to a
halt. You won’t like that. Don’t try using guilt. The occasional
“day off for mom” with a trip to the spa will work wonders, but only
temporarily.
• If you come home from a long business trip and you wife has been
with a baby with an ear infection for the whole time, chances are
good she won’t be all that interested in having sex that night. Her
one desire will be to hand the baby to you and go to bed. Alone.
• If you decide to persist and ask your exhausted wife for an
estimate on when you’ll have sex, don’t be surprised if the answer
is, “A year from now. Maybe.” Ask me how I know.
• After the first pregnancy your wife will associate sex with making
babies. You probably associate sex with, well, having sex. When
she wants to get pregnant, that will result in lots of sex, at least
until she gets pregnant. At that point, you are simply a revenue
provider. When she doesn’t want to get pregnant, well, I think you
can figure out what that means for you.
• When your wife says, “I need to take a rain check tonight” after
your proposal of hot marital sex, you should probably just say,
“OK”.
• Understand: there is no such thing as a rain check for sex. You
either get it today or you don’t.
• Every now and then, if you haven’t made her mad that day, you
can mention the “rain check” she gave you. Sometimes it works.
• When you come home late and your wife is already in bed, you
may slip into bed and begin moving your hands around on her
body. If she says, “What are you doing?” what she really means
is, “Stop, I’m going to sleep.” Quickly finish copping a feel and go
to sleep.
• You will be tempted to make rash promises now and then in order
to get in good with your wife and maybe get some action. A rash
 promise might be something like, “We can start trying to get
pregnant in a year” because a year seems like a long time or “You
know, after we finish having babies, I don’t want you to keep taking
birth control pills, so I’ll just get a vasectomy” because you can’t
even imagine HAVING a baby, much less FINISHING. Besides,
you will forget making that promise, because YOU DIDN’T MEAN
IT—you just want to get laid TONIGHT. Your wife will carve those
rash promises in stone and trot them out at an appropriate time.
Also, she knows you don’t mean it so you probably won’t get laid
tonight anyway.
• If your wife implies that you getting a vasectomy will result in more
sex, she may mean it, but it won’t quite work out the way you are
thinking.
• Vasectomies are not fun. Especially if you have to get it done a
second time because the first one “didn’t work”.
• Second vasectomies are free. I guess you’d call it warranty work.
They are less fun the second time because you know what’s
coming your way.
• You might as well ask your wife for sex every night. The worst that
can happen is she’ll say no. If you don’t ask, you KNOW the
answer is no. You never know when she might take mercy on
you.
• Never turn down sex from your wife if she wants to do it, no matter
how tired, stressed, uninterested you are. She might think
something is wrong with her and you could spend months trying to
convince her otherwise.
• Actually sleeping in a bed with a woman is hard at first. Women
take up a lot of space in a bed and it’s hard to get used to it. Once
you do, it’s great.
• No matter what you’ve seen on TV and in movies, you cannot
sleep all night and wake up with her head on your chest and arms
wrapped around you.
• Men need sex like flowers need rain. Women apparently need sex
like flowers need reading glasses.
• If there were no moral restrictions, men could probably have a
physical and even emotional relationship with several women at
one time, just like in the Old Testament. Trust me, your wife will
not approve of this.
• Women really do have a biological clock. If you listen carefully
around a never-married woman who is over 30, you can just hear
the ticking.
• Men fantasize about a lot of “exotic” sexual activities and assume
that it will be “anything goes” when they get married. Married
women typically aren’t willing to broaden their horizons all that
much. In fact, the horizons tend to get a lot narrower the longer
you are married. Maybe you should try to push the limits early on
before she completely defines what is “normal” and what is
“gross”.
• The really smart women realize that they have certain “real estate”
that men desperately want and that the woman has 100% control
over. Once they fully realize the implications of that (and there are
many) and how to apply that knowledge, they can pretty much get
a man to do anything.
• When you get right down to it, most men couldn’t tell you a reason
why they so desperately want access to that “real estate”. It must
be hardwired in (probably through testosterone) because it’s about
the most intense thing there is.
• Imagine a world where your smoking hot wife meets you at the
door wrapped in cellophane and looking for love. Got that image?
Good. Keep it in your mind because you won’t ever actually live in
that world.
• When you think about cheating on your wife, just remember that
chances are pretty good that your wife could kill you in your sleep
and get away with it. Even if she didn’t get away with it, you’d still
be dead.
• If you find out your wife is cheating on you with the pool boy, try to
meet him and ask him what his secret is. It might be worth sharing
her if you can use the knowledge to get more action for yourself.
Just a thought.
• A lot of men find they have to recalibrate their fantasies when they
get married.
• Married sex is not free. Since you want it much more than she
does, you’ll have to earn it most of the time and sometimes you’ll
even have to pay for it. The price varies, but generally you’ll find a
way to come up with the price.

Fun Experiments for Chapter Eighteen

1. During foreplay with your wife say, “hurry up and have an orgasm
so we can get to the good stuff.” Observe her response. Mark the
date on a calendar so you can determine the length of time until
your next sexual activity with her.
2. Go to your favorite bookstore. Pick any book on secrets for
improving your sex life. Read it and try to find a “secret” you didn’t
already know. In fact, try to find ANY substantive suggestions
other than “improve your communication”.
 Chapter Nineteen
Pregnancy and Delivery

As previously noted, those intimate relations that you are so focused

on having with your wife have a nasty habit of causing her to get
pregnant (ie, she’s going to have a baby in about nine months—
yikes!). Even if one of you is using “protection” to prevent pregnancy,
eventually your wife is going to hear her biological clock ticking and
more or less demand that it’s time to have a family. In my opinion,
this is the beginning of real marriage. As terrifying as it may seem, it
really is pretty incredible if you decide to invest yourself in the whole
thing.

• The pregnancy is all about her. Frankly, your starring role was
over when you got her this way. She’s the one that has to carry
and deliver the baby. As much as I hate to admit it, she has a
point about that.
• Your wife will appear to be insatiable for sex when she is ready to
get pregnant. You will really like this, although you will also be
somewhat shocked at how demanding and assertive she can be
all of a sudden. You probably won’t notice at first that she only
seems to get this way for the short period of time each month
when she’s ovulating (ie, her body is producing an egg that can
make a baby). Women are really keen on stuff like this.
• Pay attention to every detail of the intimate activities when you are
trying to get her pregnant. Chances are good that’s the closest
you will get to doing that for a long time.
• This is particularly pertinent if you and your wife are the typical
fertile young people and your wife gets knocked up in the first
month. Her demands for sex will drop off rapidly (ie, stop entirely)
as soon as she knows she is pregnant.
• You probably won’t be successful in convincing her that sex won’t
“hurt the baby”. Let’s face it, she knows that you don’t know
ANYTHING about pregnancy. You didn’t even know what
“ovulating” meant, after all. Paying attention in biology class might
have been a good idea, but it’s too late now.
• All women gain weight when they are pregnant. Just in case you
aren’t aware of it, there is a baby growing inside a pregnant
woman and, as you probably have noticed, babies are not made of
helium or balsa wood.
• SOME women lose the weight soon after delivery, but most do not.
• Women that don’t lose the weight soon after delivery secretly (or
not) despise the women that do. The women that do lose weight,
secretly (or perhaps not so secretly) feel superior to the women
that don’t.
• If you are lucky, your wife will be one of the ones that lose the
weight. Before you get your hopes up, ask yourself, “Have I EVER
been lucky before?” I didn’t think so.
• Find a way to tell your pregnant and post-pregnant wife she’s
beautiful and act like it’s true even if it’s the hardest thing you’ve
ever done. She’ll get back to being beautiful much quicker if she
thinks you believe it. Plus, you may come to believe it and that’s a
good thing, too.
• Pregnancy and delivery changes a woman’s body forever. It’s not
surprising really when you think about how big a baby actually is
and what happens to it during delivery. It’s difficult to predict
exactly how a particular woman’s body will change, but generally,
certain things lower down get wider if you take my meaning.
• If there is something about her figure that you can’t accept any
changes to, you may have a problem when she gets pregnant. If
you are married, you are just going to have to get over it.
• There is only so much that a diet, a treadmill and a roomful of gym
equipment can do for a woman’s body after she has a baby. Don’t
expect miracles.
• You’ll probably gain some weight while she’s pregnant. It’s called
sympathetic weight gain or something like that, but it’s mostly
because you eventually start coming home home every night
instead of jogging and bike riding with your buddies now that your
wife is PREGNANT WITH YOUR BABY, you selfish jerk.
• You’ll probably find it pretty easy to lose the weight. Don’t bring up
how easy it is for you to lose weight when she is trying to lose
weight.
• When your wife is pregnant with your child, no matter how different
she may look and act, she is at her most feminine state. It has
nothing to do with you really, but consider yourself blessed to be in
her presence during that time.
• When a woman is pregnant, she is at her most vulnerable. She
has massive doses of hormones flowing through her body, making
her moody and tired. She feels fat and her body changes every
day. There is another human being, your child, inside her body.
No matter what she does, you must adore her and protect her
during this time.
• Your wife will expect you to be with her during labor up to the birth
of your children. This is a REALLY big deal to her. You’ll be
expected to take her to the hospital and sit by her side the entire
time. This may be challenging for you because 1) it’s hard to
predict when labor is going to start and end; 2) the labor can take
hours and (for you) will probably be exceptionally boring; and 3)
you probably have other responsibilities and interests that are
important to you.
• Although it will take a lot of willpower and self-control, you should
do your best to focus 100% of your attention on your wife during
this event and do everything possible to be in-town and available
whenever labor starts.
• Your wife is going to want you to go to a Lamaze or “birthing”
class. Chances are that you will have zero interest in this. If she
makes you go anyway, you’ll be tempted to make a joke of
everything because you’ll be very embarrassed when they make
you do the same ridiculous things that your pregnant wife is doing
—stuff like breathing in a pattern, weird yoga moves, etc. The
idea is that you should feel what she is feeling and participate in
the process. Women think this is really important. If you can find
a way to just act interested and play through it without making a
scene, your wife will appreciate it. You still won’t get laid because
she’ll still be eight months pregnant, but you’ll probably avoid an
argument or an hour of hysterical crying.
• Don’t be too shocked if your sweet and innocent wife has a
(hopefully) temporary change in personality during labor and
delivery. She may become “less appreciative” of some of the
things you habitually do and say. To prepare yourself for this
personality change, you may want to watch that part of The
Exorcist where Linda Blair’s head spins around and the devil’s
guttural voice emanates from her lips. For example, your wife
might croak out something entirely out of character like “I wish
YOU could feel this!” or “You DID this to me, you b**tard!”
• There’s no proper verbal response for you to make when your wife
becomes possessed by a demon and says something mean to you
during labor. She is not responsible for anything she says during
this time and may later deny saying it. You would be best served
to ignore her demonic comments and try to pat her forehead with a
damp cloth or hold her hand.
• This shocking experience will instill a deep-seated nugget of fear
in the back of your mind that one day she might inexplicably
become possessed again and be in a better position of actually
hurting you, perhaps while you’re sleeping. Scary, huh? Welcome
to real marriage.
• Let’s face it; labor is scary to a woman, especially the first time.
Remember, there’s a several pound baby with a head the size of a
grapefruit trying to squirm its way out of her belly. Maybe her body
was designed to allow that, but come on, that can’t really be fun,
can it? You know you couldn’t handle it.
• She knows you couldn’t handle it either, by the way.
• However “natural” having a baby may be and however excited you
both are about being parents, it’s probably terrifying to have her
body taken over by a process she can’t control. It’s a little like the
whole wedding ceremony was for you—being controlled by outside
forces and being made to do things that are really uncomfortable.
• During the delivery, you are a prop. This is not about you.
• You will feel utterly helpless during the labor and birth process.
You won’t like this.
• You must make every effort to pay attention to your wife, be
supportive, put up with her frustration (it’s not a good time to get
into an argument) with the pain, and generally not think about
yourself. You’ll feel uncomfortable because you can’t DO anything
to help her or take away the pain. It’s hard to do this right so you
should think about it ahead of time.
• When your wife is in labor with your first child and she is freaking
out because they’ve induced labor, but haven’t given her the
epidural (i.e., spinal anesthesia to block the pain) and the doctor
says “it’ll be hours” before the baby comes, it probably won’t be a
good idea to leave the hospital to “run errands”, particularly if this
is before cell phones and pagers.
• When you do decide to run errands anyway, it won’t be a good
idea to tell your wife that you went jogging, took a shower home,
and stopped to eat a hamburger on the way back during your
 absence. It would be even worse to tell her this when you look up
from the book or magazine you are calmly reading while she is
writhing in pain.
• Do not be like me. Take lots of pictures and video of the baby and
your wife. Your wife is going to want to see it after the fact since
she’s going to be a little busy during the delivery process.
• Do use common sense in where you aim the camera and what is
in the background when you take the picture. Your wife is
probably not going to want the more private areas of her body
displayed on a poster or on the Internet.
• If she does want her private areas displayed on the Internet, you
may have married the wrong girl.
• You’ll think it’ll really be sexy and exciting to watch a woman nurse
a baby. There is nothing LESS sexy a woman can do with that
part of her body.
• It is rather cool, though, that her body can make food for the baby.
The baby will really like it. Within no time, you’ll be jealous of the
little rascal.
• After you bring the baby home, you will go back to work. Being a
man, your natural instinct will be to return to your routine. You will
want to walk in the house and begin talking about your day, just
like every other day. Before you do that, stop to think about your
wife’s day. She has spent the day totally wrapped up in the new
baby and it will break her heart if you forget about the new baby.
First thing when you walk in, you MUST ask how she and the baby
spent the day. Be prepared to listen to a minute-by-minute recap
of the day, including diaper changes, naps, feedings, etc.
• There is nothing fiercer than a mother whose child is threatened.
Never, ever be the one doing the threatening.
• Show great respect for single mothers. Few men could pull off
what a single mom does.
• Being a mother is a 24/7 job. Men often forget that mom can’t
“clock out” whenever she wants to. That’s a bad thing to forget.
• If your wife is in labor for a long time and is uncomfortable
because they can’t get the anesthesia right, it would probably NOT
be a good idea to leave the hospital, go jogging, stop to eat a
leisurely lunch at Wendy’s and then come back with a book to read
a few hours later.
• No matter how much she begged you to get her pregnant and how
excited she has been about having a baby, when she’s actually in
labor, YOU DID THIS TO HER, YOU JERK!
• Although it seems like some strange animal behavior, your wife
will really get the nesting urge late in her pregnancy.
• As horrible as it may be, you will have to change the baby’s
diapers now and then. It’s tolerable if it’s your baby because,
although you are a man, you do have some basic concerns for
your own child. Changing the diapers of other babies will be truly
disgusting for most men.
• Common sense would tell you that no matter how angry you might
get at your very pregnant wife during an argument following lunch,
it would still not be appropriate to say “ok” and pull over when she
says, “If you feel that way, let me out”. At least one guy I know
would defy common sense in that situation and let his wife walk
the half-mile back to work. In August. In Texas. If there were an
Olympics for insensitivity, this would win the gold medal. I’m proud
to know such a man.
• Carrying and delivering a baby is pretty painful. After a woman
has done it once or twice, she realizes what real pain is and has
precious little sympathy for your aches and pains. You’ll know
your whining has really upset her if she tells you “Oh, get over it,
you p*ssy!”
• By the way, I’ve never quite figured out how to take it when a
woman calls me a “p*ssy”. I mean, is that an insult or a
compliment?
• This is really cool: A woman’s breasts can actually make milk.
Really. That a baby can drink. Without even trying.
• When a woman is pregnant and after the baby is born, her breasts
will be enlarged. You will like this, but she will inevitably say,
“those are for the baby, not you”. At this point, you will realize that
you are competing with a newborn.

Fun Experiments for Chapter Nineteen

1. There will probably only be a couple of opportunities to do this, so
be prepared. When your pregnant wife starts serious labor pains
and asks you to take her to hospital say, “Buck up, sister! Don’t be
a wuss, drive yourself!” Closely monitor her response. Note: This
might be a good time to wear that cup you kept from school.
2. Every time your pregnant wife complains about how tired and achy
she is, immediately say, “Now you know how I feel when I get
home from work every day.” Notice how much more energy she
suddenly has.
3. If your new baby is a boy, lean down close when you pull off his
diaper. You’d think that a baby that just soaked his diaper
wouldn’t have any urine left, wouldn’t you? Surprise!
4. If you aren’t sure whether your wife is a “cryer” or a “hitter” (she
might be both), here’s a great way to find out. At about eight
months into the pregnancy, try one of these on her and observe
her reaction:
a. In a way, having you pregnant is good. It lets me see what
you’d look like if you got fat. Now that you ARE fat, I can tell
you for sure that I like you better thin, so be sure to lose the
weight when you’re done.
b. I saw these really cute girls at the gym today. Not that you
aren’t cute, of course, but you’re just “pregnant cute” right
now. These girls were HOT!
5. Instead of #3, you can try this: Stop your very pregnant wife in the
hallway or in the kitchen. Put your hands on her shoulders. Lean
back a little and look into her eyes for several seconds without
saying anything. Then, no matter how uncomfortable it feels, tell
her that she is the most precious, beautiful woman in the world,
and that you love her more now than ever. Observe her reaction.
 Chapter Twenty
The Woman’s Body

We’ve already discussed marital intimacy, so this chapter is really

more about her physical body itself, instead of what you might want to
do with it. A woman’s body is a miracle. It’s very different from your
body.

OVERVIEW
• Just like everything else about her, a woman’s body is much more
complicated than a man’s.
• A woman’s body is the single most wondrous thing in the universe.
Even the “imperfections” can be good. Even with all the
complications and frailties, it is still a wondrous thing.

HER GREATEST ASSET

• The single most wondrous part of a woman’s body and, therefore,
the ultimate wondrous thing in the universe the perfect rear end,
ie, “bottom”. There’s another more crass word (the “A” word) for a
perfectly shaped woman’s rear end and in fact, I would argue that
word is actually a term of appreciation and awe. That being said,
I’ll use nice words like “rear end” and “bottom” to avoid offending
anyone.
• You may wish to argue that point. If so, feel free to write your own
book. I promise to read it. Perhaps you think it would be perfect
pair of breasts. Now I freely admit that perfect breasts come in a
VERY close second place to the perfect female rear end, but the
rear end is better.
• I think I can prove my point with this test. Using your imagination,
go to the most breathtaking place you can imagine, perhaps the
Grand Canyon or Pike’s Peak. You and some college buddies are
standing there in awe of the spectacular scenery when a girl with a
terrific bottom in a pair of tight Levi’s walks by. You can’t see her
face or chest, just the rear view. Do you look at the Grand Canyon
or the girl? I rest my case.
• One more thing on that topic: Levi Strauss invented blue jeans in
the nineteenth century to be rugged trousers for gold miners and
 cowboys. That was a pretty good idea, but we all know that blue
jeans didn’t find their real purpose until some smoking hot girl with
a fabulous rear end slipped on a pair of tight jeans.
• At that point, Levis reached their ultimate expression, and in my
opinion, became one of the GREATEST INVENTIONS EVER.
• There are a few other things that are high on my list of
GREATEST INVENTIONS EVER. That would include the bikini, of
course (starting to see a pattern here?), along with cheddar
cheese (hey, I like it—a lot), and Women’s Olympic Beach
Volleyball.
• Why Women’s Olympic Beach Volleyball? I’m surprised you have
to ask, but where else can a married man watch athletic women in
tiny swimsuits…without getting in trouble with their wives? If your
wife says something, you can always say, “Oh this? I’m just
watching the Olympics.”
• Women’s Olympic Gymnastics would be the same, except the girls
are under-aged, so you feel vaguely nervous the whole time.
• One other thing on this subject: a woman’s rear end rarely gets
any SMALLER. Let me allow that fact to sink in.
• Now, take a careful look at your potential wife’s rear end. That
butt is as SMALL right now as it will ever be. Sobering thought,
eh?
• One final suggestion on rear ends: start small, perhaps a little
smaller than your optimum. Don’t worry, she’ll grow into her full
bottom with a little time (and a few children).

PREDICTABLE COMPLICATIONS
• At about twelve or thirteen, boys get hair in new places and find a
fun new use for the, um, gadget between their legs. It’s kind of
gradual and although a little surprising, none of it is traumatic.
• At the same age, girls discover that their insides basically fall apart
EVERY MONTH from now on (at least till they reach menopause
which brings new surprises, as noted below). This falling apart is
called Menstruation or a Period.
• As you would imagine, it’s not all that much fun to have your
insides fall apart. Not only does a girl have to manage her way
through this repeating torment, but also she is expected to act as
though it were not happening. Amazingly they get used to it and
most of the time, guys have no idea.
• To add insult to injury, the week before her insides fall apart, she
swells up such that her clothes don’t fit properly and she feels
grumpier than usual. This is called Pre Menstrual Syndrome or
“PMS”.
• Some women seem to have PMS a lot more than one week a
month. I’m not naming any names, but they know who they are.
• Don’t tease a girl about having PMS or her period. It may seem
funny to you, but even though a woman gets used to this process
every month, she’s not the least bit interested in having you bring it
up.
• When a girl begins to have her monthly cycle, she is able to get
pregnant. Those two things are connected somehow. Just
because she CAN get pregnant, don’t think it would be fun for you
to MAKE her pregnant. Making babies is a big deal and should be
part of marriage, not dating.
• About the same time as all this is happening, other parts of her
body begin to change. A little girl starts to look very different from
a little boy. This is a good thing, because it is what makes her look
like a young woman, instead of a little boy with long hair; however,
these changes are uncomfortable for a girl at times. She is
expected to cover up these newly developed parts with special
undergarments that both hide and accentuate them at the same
time.
• At a certain point in middle age, a woman’s regular period goes
haywire and eventually stops. As noted above, this is called
menopause. It’s different for each woman, but it’s like her
emotions and her thought processes have been thrown into a
dryer set on tumble. She has lots of unpredictable ups and downs
due to hormones that don’t seem to operate on the right schedule
anymore. She may complain or sleep a lot. She’ll deny that it’s
menopause because that will make her feel old. Eventually, she’ll
get through it and will hopefully be back to her normal self.
• To further complicate this whole menopause thing, before a
woman actually starts menopause, she has some kind of pre-
menopause. Of course, they don’t call it “pre-menopause”. That
would be too easy, so it’s “perimenopause”.
• Don’t ask me what perimenopause is. I just include it in the whole
“a woman’s body is complicated” category.

TOUGHER THAN YOU THINK

• Women may have skinny arms and not look very strong, but they
can carry a fifteen-pound baby around all day. Try carrying a baby
around for several hours. Oh, and do it without whining.
• If you still don’t believe her skinny arms are strong, do something
stupid so that she will punch you in the shoulder or the gut.
• A woman can grow a baby inside her body and even when it gets
really big and wiggles a lot and she is incredibly tired, she may still
be nice to you. We men, on the other hand, start whining and
acting grumpy when we get a headache.
• A woman’s body is so much more sophisticated than a man’s that
one doctor can’t even figure it out. Women have to have TWO
kinds of primary care physicians.
• No matter how much you hate going to the doctor for a physical
exam, just remember that it’s a lot worse for a woman.

OTHER WONDERFUL THINGS

• No matter how funny you think it might be to say, “are those real”
to a woman with a large bust, it probably won’t be. In the first
place, she is not obsessed with breasts the way you are, so you
will sound pretty ignorant and will make it clear what a pervert you
are. As previously noted, women don’t like perverts. In the
second place, if they are “real”, she’ll be offended.
• If a woman has had breast augmentation, chances are you will find
out eventually. Either she will tell you or someone that saw her
before and after will tell you. Then you will know, but what will you
do with that information?
• Women recognize on some level that guys are obsessed with
breasts, but most of them think it’s kind of strange because
breasts are just body parts to them.
• At least once in your life, you will want to buy some sexy clothes
for your wife at Victoria’s Secret. It won’t be effective to walk in the
store with a catalog and just point at things you like. Making
grunting sounds while you point won’t help. The attractive
salesgirls will wait patiently for you to tell them what you want.
They like to do this because it makes you uncomfortable and
therefore easier to sell to.
• If you find it necessary to go to Victoria’s Secret anyway, my
suggestion is: Get a catalog. En route to the store, while you are
alone in your car, read the product descriptions OUT LOUD.
 Practice “push up bra” and “thong panties” until you can say them
without stammering.
• Just in case you were wondering—that fantasy about the hot
salesgirls at Victoria’s Secret modeling the clothes to help you
make your selection—NOT GOING TO HAPPEN, DUDE.

Fun Experiments for Chapter Twenty

1. Go to a mall or other place where there are lots of attractive
women. Spend several hours carefully observe their bodies as
they walk by and note which features are most appealing to you.
Try to be stealthy. Count how many times you thought, “that is the
most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life!” Do you now
agree that a well-turned female *ss is the most perfect object in the
universe? Even if you don’t, was this the GREATEST DAY OF
YOUR LIFE?
2. Study a nursing bra sometime. If Bill Gates devoted his entire
fortune, would it be possible to design a less sexy bra?
 Chapter Twenty-One
Special Occasions and Gifts

At various times during your life, particularly as a married man, you

will be expected to recognize special occasions. This will often
require dressing up and gift giving. These occasions are remarkably
important to women. Most men would prefer to do something else
and will be tempted to ignore the special occasion altogether. This is
not a good way to remain in the good graces of the woman in your
life.

• Women remember dates much better than men. They mostly

realize that, but it doesn’t translate into much in the way of
tolerance when you forget something.
• It will be in your best interest to remember key dates like her
birthday, Valentines Day, and your wedding anniversary. It
doesn’t stop there, though. A woman will automatically catalog
numerous other must-celebrate events throughout your
relationship. Some examples:
• Your first date
• Your first kiss
• Your engagement
• Her parents’ anniversary
• Your parents’ anniversary (if she likes your mother)
• Every relative’s birthday
• That time the two of you…
• One other note: While annual celebrations are most common,
there are sometimes other intervals that must be respected,
particularly early in the relationship. For example, once your
dating relationship gets serious, you may be recognizing monthly
anniversaries of your first date or kiss.
• There are also things that she will insist on celebrating for no
apparent reason.
• For a man, keeping up with all of these events is difficult. How do
you do it? First, you have to realize it is impossible. You’ll never
get them all and will definitely have to rely on her to designate
many events as worthy of celebration.
• That doesn’t get you off the hook, though. You have to actually
pay attention to the things that seem to matter to her. As
ridiculous as that may sound, you simply have to. For example, if
you observe that she’s big on “the first time we…” events for the
two of you, you should TAKE NOTE of some of them. You may
have to use a calendar.
• If you forget to recognize a critical event, abjectly apologize and try
to make it up to her. Never tell her it’s stupid to celebrate all these
things. You don’t call the shots on this topic.
• At a minimum, celebrating an occasion requires some kind of
sappy message from you. That often requires a card. Note the
term “card”. An email will NEVER take the place of a card. In
certain situations, an email can supplement a card.
• Making a card for her can score major points. This requires effort
on the card itself and the message. The more genuine and
sincere the message, the better.
• This is not original with me, but it’s a good exercise that illustrates
a key difference in men and women. On Valentine’s Day, go to a
store like Target and watch people buying cards. Men will typically
grab the first card they see under the “wife” or “girlfriend” category
without reading the message (NOTE: This is fraught with danger).
Women will look at card after card (and go to store after store, if
necessary) until they find one with the perfect message. This
behavior extends to when they receive the card. The man will tear
open the envelope, glance at the card, quickly read what she
wrote, and say “that’s nice.” The woman will carefully look at the
card, read every word, start crying because of what it says, and
put the card somewhere she can look at it and re-read it for
several days.
• A moral of this story: Most importantly, don’t ask your wife or
girlfriend to buy a valentines card that she likes so you can sign it.
As annoying as it may be to you, you must go to a store, spend at
least five minutes looking for a card that says something sweet
and has a nice picture, and then hand write something sappy
(NOTE: See the end of this chapter). Put “I love you” after your
message and your name under it. Make sure you give it to her on
Valentines Day. Yes, you have to.
• When you date a girl, she will probably give you a gift at some
point. It may be something she would like to get, but you will have
no idea what to do with, such as a stuffed animal, a sappy card, or
 flowers. You’d better act like you like it. If she takes you to a
ballgame or wants to go to gym, consider marrying her.
• Whether the gift is big or little, you only get one point. All points
expire at midnight and one screw-up wipes out all your points. Try
to score a point every chance you get. Every chance you get,
cash in your points.
• There is no such thing as a diamond that’s too big, unless another
woman gets it. Then it’s “gaudy”.
• Whatever gift you give a woman raises the bar for the next gift.
Start small and go up in small increments if possible.
• The less useful and practical an item is, the more likely a woman
will value it as a gift. There is nothing more useless and
impractical than a diamond. Case closed.
• No matter what anyone says, a cubic zirconium is not “just as
pretty” to a woman as a diamond. Even if she doesn’t know about
the CZ that you put in the ring and she thinks it’s a diamond and
you think you got away with it, eventually she’ll find out and you’ll
pay for it for the rest of your miserable life. Just remember:
women take their jewelry to be cleaned at jewelers who make their
money selling diamonds, not CZs.
• No matter how much she wants a Dyson vacuum cleaner, it won’t
be romantic, but you better get it for her.
• Women generally love surprises.
• Women generally like to make holidays into a big deal. They
cherish occasions and want things to be special. This is VERY
important to them. This will probably generate more work for you
at times, but it’s a big part of being married so get over it.
• Find a way to truly enjoy the things your wife does for you and
thank her for it. She wants to bring you pleasure through a
comfortable home, food, etc. Even if she’s not good at some of
those things, find a way to enjoy everything you can.
• It is very important to your girlfriend or wife that you show her that
you think about her and not just on special occasions. She needs
you to demonstrate that you need her all the time so the more you
get in the habit of doing it, the better. It doesn’t have to be
anything big or expensive.
• Many women actually know the full names of different kinds of
flowers, such as chrysanthemums, bromeliads, etc. To most men,
they are all just “flowers”.
Rules and Examples of Writing Something Sappy

• It will mean more to her if you write something that you thought up.
You really should try to be original. Even if it sounds stupid to you,
if it sounds heartfelt, she will probably like it. I know it’s hard, but
you need to master this.
• Don’t use blatantly sexual innuendo in your message. Remember
that women don’t directly connect romance with sex like a man
does.
• Resist the urge to be sarcastic or insulting.
• Be positive and upbeat.
• She will recognize if you’ve simply copied something that someone
else wrote, particularly if it has words like “thee” or “thou” because
she knows that you aren’t that smart. That said, it’s still better to
copy something than just signing your name. Just acknowledge
that you didn’t write it.
• For example, find a romantic poem somewhere and copy a short
portion (no more than four or five lines). Shakespeare is good.
Precede the verse with something along the lines of “I found this
verse and it made me think of our relationship.”
• Don’t buy the same card or write the same message every
Valentines Day. She will remember.
• Avoid making new commitments in a card. This includes the
message already in the card. It pays to read the card. Otherwise
you may find yourself engaged or on the hook for something you
never intended.
• Making a list can be good. Tell her the top ten things you love
about her. Not all of them can be body parts.
• Here are some good phrases to use in a serious relationship:
o “You are the best thing that ever happened to me”
o “I love spending time with you”
o “I don’t deserve you, but I’m grateful you love me”
o “You are everything I ever dreamed of in a wife and more”
(fiance’ or wife only)
o “Being with you is the best part of my life”
o “You make my life complete”
o “I love you more every day”
o “You are the most precious thing in my life”
 o “Thank you for saying ‘yes’ to me” (fiance’ or wife only)
o “Sometimes when I look into your (insert her eye color
here—make sure you get it right!) eyes, I feel like you can
see into my soul”
• You may be asking if the things you write have to be technically
true. Good question. It would help. Let’s just say that they need
to “feel true” (ie, convince yourself) and believable (by her). Hey,
we’re talking about FEELINGS here, not tangible things.
• On the other hand, don’t feel you should be TOO honest.
• As long as we’re at it, here are some phrases NOT to use:
o “If your (body part) was a little (size reference), I’d find
you even more attractive. How about some plastic
surgery?”
o “Thank goodness your dad is rich, otherwise I’d have to
find someone better looking”
o “I love you more when you are naked”
o “You are so pretty when you stop talking”
o “Sex is so much better now that you’ve lost weight”
o “I hope you like this card. It cost over two dollars.”
o “This card has a picture of flowers. Surely that’s enough.”
o “Since you are on a diet again, I didn’t get you any candy”
o “The cute girl at Target (insert her name) said you would
like this card”
o “I liked this card so much I got one just like it for my hot
secretary”
o “Maybe this year you’ll like the card and won’t hold out on
me again”
o “Remember: You said no gifts for Valentines Day this
year”
o “I counting on this card to make up for how mad you got
last week when I (insert insensitive act)”
o “Since you’ve been using that vitamin E cream, those little
wrinkles around your eyes and mouth look better”
o “I kinda like the dark roots with your blonde hair right now”
o “Your big butt makes you look like you have a waist”
o “No matter what people say, I don’t think you have hairy
forearms”
 o “Once you get some makeup on, you’re pretty darn good
looking most days”
o “Most people I talk to say you aren’t that fat after all”
o “Keep your chin up, you’ll lose that baby weight some
day”
o “When I take my contacts out, you’re even more sexy!”
o “I don’t need a woman that looks as good as Jennifer
Aniston anyway”
o “You’re cooking is even getting better”
• Hopefully, you can see the difference.

A Brief Overview of Key Occasions and Holidays

• Her Birthday—No matter what she says, it is a big deal. There’s a
direct correlation (in her mind) between big a fuss you make and
how much you love her.
• Your Birthday—You probably think this day is about you. It’s really
about how you respond to what she does to celebrate your
birthday. She will work really hard to please you and you would do
well to appreciate it. If you don’t, you will hurt her feelings.
• Valentine’s Day—Very important. You must get her a card and
flowers and/or candy. A date to a romantic place (think
candlelight) is pretty important.
• Mother’s Day—Important once you have kids. You need to work
with the kids to make it special for her. Also, she will watch how
you treat your own mother, so you need to send your mom a card,
too. If you’re nice, she’ll buy the card for you and let you sign it.
• Father’s Day—See “Your Birthday” above.
• Memorial Day—You get the day off and are probably looking
forward to a three-day weekend at home. She probably has other
plans for you.
• Independence Day—See “Memorial Day” above.
• Thanksgiving—Her unspoken expectation is that somehow the
dysfunctional extended family will behave exactly like a Norman
Rockwell painting. That will not happen, so she will be
disappointed and it will be your fault.
• Christmas—Similar to Thanksgiving, except that gifts are involved
and you will likely forget to buy anything for her until the last
moment. Also, she will expect you to surprise her, but with
something that is exactly perfect. Since you have no idea how to
 translate her complex tastes and the ever-changing fashions into a
purchase, gift giving is fraught with danger.
• New Year’s—She expects this to be romantic just like an old black
and white Cary Grant movie where he wears a tuxedo, she wears
a long gown and you spend the night dancing, laughing, drinking
champagne and blowing horns while confetti and streamers fall on
your head. In fact, you will probably be eating Fritos and bean dip
at a friend’s house waiting on the ball to drop so you can go home
and go to sleep.
 Chapter Twenty-Two
Women and Mechanical Things

Women generally do not have the same fascination with mechanical

things that men do. From early childhood, boys play with cars and
trains, while girls play with dolls and tea sets. There are exceptions
to this, but it is generally true. It’s not that women don’t understand
complicated things, but just that they are not interested all that much.

• One of a woman’s greatest fears is being stranded because of a

car problem. Women also hate to put gas in a car (something to
do with breaking fingernails and the smell of gasoline). Women do
not recognize the obvious disconnect between these two things
and will run out of gas as a result.
• If your wife runs out of gas, it will be your fault. It doesn’t really
matter that the gauge is clearly reading empty and a bright light is
beaming on the instrument panel. There may even be an audible
warning tone or voice saying “low on fuel”.
• If your wife runs out of gas, this will be one of the rare occasions
where she wants you to listen AND to fix the problem. You will
need to fix the problem NOW so she won’t be stranded.
• Under NO CIRCUMSTANCES should you blame your wife for
running out of gas. Also, don’t bring up the fact that unmarried
women seem perfectly capable of filling up their cars with gas.
• In some cars, running out of gas will cause expensive damage to
fuel pumps and other components (ask me how I know).
• Make your life easier by filling her car with gas EVERY time you
think about it. Go to the garage and check it every day, even if
you filled it up yesterday. Women burn a LOT of gasoline, even if
they don’t use the car. It’s a mystery, but you should accept it.
• Auto maintenance is your job. Check the oil and look at the
dashboard of her car for warning lights frequently. Amazingly,
women will drive a car with the oil light or check engine light on for
days. They briefly wonder about it, but won’t do anything about it
as long as the car still functions. This is shocking, I know. As you
can imagine, it will be your fault if something goes wrong. God
help you if she is stranded.
• A small percentage of women actually appreciate interesting cars
and prefer to drive them instead of minivans or mundane sedans.
• Things will break when you go out of town. Your wife may choose
to get it fixed or replaced without consulting you, particularly if you
are unreachable (being unreachable by her is always bad, but may
be unavoidable now and then). Inevitably, she will choose the
option that is exactly the opposite of what you would have chosen.
• For example, imagine her telling this story to her girlfriends. The
car would not start. She was alone and her cellphone in her other
purse. This means she was STRANDED. Not a good thing. She
had to walk back into the manicure place and use their phone to
call a tow truck. Then she had to ride IN THE TRUCK with the
filthy driver to some dirty, greasy garage somewhere. She had
wait FOR HOURS while they installed a battery. She is angry at
you that you allowed this to happen to her.
• The rest of the story is that she left the headlights on and simply
ran down the battery. She used a credit card to purchase a very
costly Diehard Platinum replacement battery with a five-year
warranty even though the two of you are planning to trade in the
car in a couple of weeks.
• Of course, being a guy, you would have simply used the jumper
cables in the trunk (popping the hood of the old car next to you to
use their battery), driven to an auto parts store, and got the battery
recharged. If they proved to you that the battery was bad, you
would have bought the cheapest no-name battery you could find.
• At this moment you will be inclined to explain to her about using
jumper cables, getting the battery charged and buying a cheap
battery when you are about to sell the car, particularly since you
know that all the batteries are just about the same. WRONG. This
is about her, not the battery. She was stranded and you should
feel bad about that.
• The point is: it’s always a bad idea to use her emergency
decision-making as “opportunity to teach her about this subject so
she can make a better decision next time.” Don’t do that. Simply
apologize for making her handle your problem.
• I know, you think it’s not YOUR fault that she had the problem
while you were not there, but it really IS your fault because she
thinks it is. That’s the key thing to understand.
• If you can muster the strength, you should actually praise her for
handling it the way she did.
• The same things apply when she hits a curb and puts holes in one
or two brand new tires (she wasn’t looking). Or when she tries to
drive into the garage with two bicycles on the new roof rack (she
forgot about the bikes she just picked up). Or when she opened
her door and put a dent into your new sports car. She may be
embarrassed or sorry for the damage, but it is simply your problem
to fix and that’s all there is to it. No need for “lessons learned” or
“what things cost” speeches by you. Not if you want to have sex
anytime soon.
• When a woman gets married or even gets engaged, she evidently
loses the ability to read a road map. Amazingly, most single
women seem to be perfectly capable of reading maps and
navigating. No one knows what prevents this from carrying over
into marriage.
• The talking electronic navigation system for cars was developed
for married women.
• A woman can fold a fitted sheet perfectly, but cannot fold a road
map. The opposite is true of men. This is a great mystery.
• Compass directions (North, South, East and West) mean
absolutely nothing to a married woman.
• When a woman gives driving directions, they will be based on
shopping locations and places where she had lunch with
someone. Rarely will the directions include street names.
• Giving a woman complicated directions over the phone is really
hard.
• It’s impossible to explain to your wife over the phone how to create
a PowerPoint presentation when she has never used PowerPoint.
• It’s even more impossible to explain if it turns out your wife is
actually trying to use Corel Presentations (similar to PowerPoint,
but slightly different menu commands) and you have only used
Microsoft PowerPoint.
• Women have incredibly complicated ways of washing and drying
certain articles of clothing. Unless you work at a dry cleaner, don’t
attempt to wash her clothes on your own.
• Women actually hate it when you drive fast.
• There is nothing more dangerous than a woman talking on a cell
phone and driving a car. Especially if she’s driving a minivan.
• Women don’t usually get what sports cars and muscle cars are all
about. You are going to have to build up a lot of points in your
 “love bank” in most cases if you want to spend “our money” on an
expensive car for yourself.
• If a female friend happens to tell your wife “when a man turns forty,
he wants a sports car, motorcycle, speed boat, or a new woman,
so you’d better let him pick one of the first three”, your wife will get
the message a lot better than if you said that exact thing. If this
happens unbeknownst to you right before you turn forty and
mention to your wife you want a sports car, you’ll be shocked
when your wife says “OK”.
• A woman can comfortably operate a kitchen full of appliances with
the electrical demand and operating complexity of a cyclotron, but,
as previously noted, she cannot be expected to even notice that
the “check engine” light has been blinking on her dashboard for
two days, much less diagnose the reason why.
• Although a man cannot hear a baby cry in the middle of the night
in the same bedroom or “that sound in the attic” that scared his
wife RIGHT NOW—CAN’T YOU HEAR IT??, he can hear the
slightest new “noise” emanating from the engine in his car.
• When a man without thinking says to a female co-worker, “Hey,
can I plug my laptop into your docking station” none of the women
in the room will think anything of it, but all the grown men in the
room will look at each other and laugh like a bunch of teenage
boys.
 Chapter Twenty-Three
The Garage and Storage Space

Women use a lot more space than a man. They use it for clothes,
pictures, books, appliances, china, you name it. Basically, your wife
will gradually take up all the space originally allotted to her and much
of the space allotted to you. If there’s extra space that is going
unused, she will find a way to fill it up.

• You may be under the impression that since you are responsible
for maintaining the cars and the cars stay in the garage, you are
therefore the “owner” of the garage and control how the space in
the garage is used. Actually, your wife is allowing you to use the
garage and reserves the right to utilize garage space whenever
and however she pleases.
• If you clear off a flat workspace in the garage, chances are good
that your wife will put something on it.
• No matter how much storage space you have, it won’t be enough
for your wife.
• If your wife reads the book “Simplify Your Life”, she will begin a
relentless clearing out process to eliminate all the “clutter” at the
house. She will inevitably throw away something(s) of significant
value to you in her frenzy. Hopefully, it won’t be a baseball signed
by Babe Ruth or your high school letter jacket.
• The purging process will definitely will include any old love letters
and pictures from your high school sweethearts (if she finds them).
She will probably do this while you are out of town so there will be
no chance for you to recover it.
• You will be astounded at your wife’s intensity in this de-cluttering
process. You will be amazed at how much she throws away. You
will also be amazed at how angry she gets at you for accumulating
so much clutter.
• Don’t bother to point out how much of the clutter belongs to her or
how much space you’d gain by getting rid of all the shoes she
never wears.
• About the time you begin to think about how you like the less
cluttered house and what you’ll do with the extra room in the
 garage, she will exit this stage and begin a lengthy re-decorating
project that will ultimately fill all the empty space.

Fun Experiments for Chapter Twenty-three

1. Walk into the garage and locate something of yours that is stored
on a shelf about eye level. Move it to another place and leave that
spot open. Start your stopwatch and time how long it takes your
wife to fill that spot.
2. Look at the item your wife put in the empty spot. Have you ever
seen this item before? Do you even know what it is for?
 Chapter Twenty-Four
Your Duties and Responsibilities as a Husband

As a husband, you will be expected to do a number of things. A lot of

those things can be identified in other sections of this book, but I find
it helpful to have a list.

If you are lucky, your wife will tell you a few of these things before you
fail to do them and get in big trouble with her. Generally she expects
you to already know these things. Some of you duties will be things
you have never even thought about. Many will be things you do not
really want to do. You must do them anyway, if you hope to have a
chance at a happy wife and the good things that can bring you.

• My first and most basic rule: If you consistently seek out things
she wants to be done and just do them without being asked or
complaining, you will find that your wife is much easier to live with.
• Killing insects and spiders will be your job. Your call to action may
be your wife screaming “kill it, kill it!” while standing on a stool that
has materialized out of nowhere.
• It will not help your chances for sexual favors if you dangle the
creature in front of her or threaten to throw it in her hair,
particularly if it’s still alive. You must kill it quickly and efficiently.
• Women also hate rodents. All small rodents, including gerbils,
hamsters, mice and actual rats fall into the generic “rat” category.
Those “rats” are considered “nasty” and “germ-laden” even if they
are laboratory rats that are as pure as the driven snow.
• Your wife MAY not consider larger rodent-like animals, such as
squirrels, ferrets, weasels, and rabbits, “rats” unless they infest
your home. Outside the home, those larger animals are generally
considered “part of nature” and are either “cute” or simply ignored.
To the extent that your wife identifies any animal as a “rat” you will
be expected to efficiently locate and eradicate the entire
population. For a large radius. She will not want to know any
details other than confirmation of your success.
• Women respect a man’s ability to kill vermin. At the same time,
women are basically compassionate and nature-appreciating, so
killing vermin still makes them feel, at least a little bit, that you are
an uncivilized caveman.
• This is not necessarily a bad thing as it enables them to justify
letting you go on hunting and fishing trips.
• Men are expected to take out the trash. In the mind of a woman,
this is a core function of a man.
• As previously mentioned, car maintenance will be your job.
• You will be expected to lift heavy objects when asked.
• Periodically, you will have to move a lot of the furniture around at
her direction. For no apparent reason.
• Certain duties, like yard work and paying bills, may be something
she does, but it won’t be because you think she should do it. It will
be because she likes doing it.
• You will be expected to confront and resolve scary situations, such
as the aforementioned vermin but also possible intruders in your
house.
• You will have to tell her you love her and that you think she is
beautiful. You should do this frequently.
• You should help her carry in groceries when she returns from
shopping.
• You should always open the door for your wife.
• You should offer your jacket to her if she is cold. Women get cold
a lot more often than men.
• You will need to go get the car and pick her up if it’s raining or
cold. You should warm up her car on cold days, if possible.
• You will probably have to tolerate your wife’s ice cold feet in bed.
Your job will be warm up cold parts. Although initially
uncomfortable, you should approach this as an opportunity.
• Keep in mind that other parts of her are much warmer.
• You will need to change diapers and feed the children now and
then.
• Your wife will probably expect you to handle purchases of
automobiles.
• Even if you both work, you are probably the primary breadwinner
in her mind. Remember that, if she has a baby, there will be a
period when she can’t go to work. This is not a good time to quit
your job or make a large, frivolous purchase for yourself.
• Make a constant effort to demonstrate you are responsible and
reliable as a provider.
• When she is upset, you will be expected to listen and be
sympathetic. It’s usually appropriate to ask her how she feels
about the situation.
• Most of the time she does not want you to offer her a solution,
even though you will have one or more excellent solutions after the
first minute.
• Chances are that she will ask for a solution if she wants one.

Fun Experiments for Chapter Twenty-four

1. When your wife is upset about something, let her start telling you
about it. Once you get the gist of it, but long before she is finished,
interrupt her with the most obvious solution. Count the seconds
before she says, “I just want you to listen to me, not fix it.”
2. Next time you notice your wife acting like she is feeling chilly, pull
her close to you or take her icy hands in yours without being
asked. If you have a jacket, take it off and give it to her. Count the
seconds till she smiles at you.
3. When your wife comes in all sweaty from the gym or working in the
yard, try saying each of the following and note how she responds
in each instance:
• “Wow, what a mess! Why don’t you take a shower and get
some makeup on?”
• “Wow, you look beautiful without even trying!”
 Chapter Twenty-Five
The Five Senses

Although men and women have the same five senses, each sex
perceives things quite differently. As a general rule, both sexes have
comparable capabilities in the five senses, but there are differences
in what they sense. Men and women are both quite observant of the
things that interest them, but tend to not see those things that don’t
interest them. For example, women notice what other women are
wearing, while men notice what type of car they drive. The
differences between men and women in the five senses are real, but
not as consistent within each sex, so it’s easy to think of lots of
exceptions to each rule.

• Seeing. Women see non-verbal communication very well and

notice evidence of emotion in others. They notice clothing,
jewelry, how things are decorated, color combinations, shoes, hair,
etc. Women notice a person’s eyes and smile. They tend to focus
on and remember detail of such things. Women notice children
and babies more than men do. Men see angles, the overall
setting, glaring mismatches, blonde hair, cleavage, and attractive
women in general. Men notice a person’s overall body and their
appearance as a whole. Men tend to look for a path in or out of
where they are.
• Hearing. Women listen for details related to relationships and
emotion. Women tend to listen closer to their husbands than men
do to their wives. Men listen to mechanical things and details
related to process. Women will tend to like music that is more
mood-sensitive than men do.
• Smelling. Women enjoy smells that evoke moods and memories.
That’s why they burn scented candles, I guess. Women are very
sensitive to smell when it comes to a man. Although every woman
will deny it, tests indicate that women are actually attracted by the
scent of a man’s sweat. My recommendation is that you not test
the limits of that. Being clean and having clean clothes will go a
long way with a woman. Men enjoy smells that relate to physical
pleasures such as eating, being outdoors, etc. They can tolerate
 unpleasant natural smells such as manure if associated with
pleasant outdoor activities such as horse riding. A man is greatly
affected by a woman with a well chosen, but lightly applied
perfume. Heavy perfume is annoying.
• Tasting. Women love the taste of chocolate. They love to savor
tastes like coffee, wine, French bread, etc. Women tend to enjoy
the blending of spices. Men like the taste of meat and salt. Some
men need extreme spiciness to enjoy food, such as hot wings.
Men like strong-flavored drinks like coffee and wine, too, but tend
to do less savoring and more gulping.
• Touching. A woman’s body has many areas sensitive to touch.
Women are very conscious of textures and prefer very fine fabrics
like silk against their skin. In fact, her entire body is an erogenous
zone. Men lean towards rougher or plainer fabrics such as cotton
and wool. A man’s erogenous zone is very specific and defined.
 Chapter Twenty-Six
Food and Drink

Women and men approach eating and drinking differently. Both

require nourishment and experience pleasure from food, but men
tend to approach food from a volume standpoint—ie, taste is
important, but getting enough food is critical. Men take pride in
“pigging out” for no particularly other than the opportunity arose.
Women often take pride in how little they eat. This doesn’t mean they
don’t sometimes eat a lot, but rather that they do it more
surreptitiously.

• Most women eat less food than a typical man. Certain women,
including some teenage girls during growth spurts and athletes,
can eat surprising amounts of food now and then. It’s almost
never a good idea to point that out, however.
• No matter how much you may dislike someone else eating off your
plate and drinking from your glass, you wife will probably want to
do it. You should let her and not make a fuss about it.
• Some women have the annoying habit of ordering little or nothing
and then stealing food from your plate. French fries and desserts
are frequently subject to this behavior. Some women will also
“nibble” on pan of brownies or cookies by breaking off little pieces
at a time. I think that those women have convinced themselves
that the calories “don’t count” if they don’t order the food
themselves or never consume a full portion. It is generally futile
or, worse yet, counterproductive to tell them to not do this. Making
a point of it is a good way to get them to say the dreaded “you
think I’m FAT” or something like that. That’s bad. If you are
worried about her stealing food from your plate, then try to
anticipate this behavior and order extra food (e.g., an extra order
for fries, an appetizer, two desserts) so you’ll have enough for both
of you. Try to do this without being obvious that you are ordering
for her, but if she asks about it, tell her you couldn’t make up your
mind or you wanted to SHARE it with her. Women like sharing.
It’s romantic.
• Never comment on how much or little a woman is eating.
Consider it a forbidden topic.
• When you are taking a woman out for a date, you should have
already picked the restaurant in advance. Think about what she
likes, what kind of diet she is on, etc before making your selection.
Do not show up and say, “What do you want to do?”
• If in a more casual, non-date situation, you ask your girlfriend or
wife what kind of food she’d like to eat and she says, “I don’t care”,
you shouldn’t understand that to mean that she doesn’t care what
the two of you eat. I know, she SAID she didn’t care. It’s NOT
what she SAYS, it’s what she MEANS, stupid! What she means is
that she either hasn’t decided yet or wants you to figure it out by
suggesting things until she hears something she likes. Either way,
it does NOT mean that you can say, “OK, since you don’t care
we’ll just go to Hooters”. She does care and Hooters was never
an option.
• When your wife or girlfriend asks you what kind of food you want
(or any other question), YOU should never say, “I don’t care” or “it
doesn’t matter”. When you answer that way, what she hears (at
least a little bit) is “I don’t care about you” or “You don’t matter”. I
know, it isn’t logical. Don’t fight it. Learn from my mistakes,
grasshopper. A better answer would be something like “as long as
I’m with you, I’ll be happy with whatever we choose”.
• If you choose the restaurant and it’s not what she wanted to eat,
she may not tell you right away. She may think YOU really like it
and won’t want to spoil it for you. In fact, she may give off all the
indications that it was a PERFECT choice. It will still be your fault
for not knowing that she doesn’t like that restaurant or didn’t want
that kind of food that night. You’ll never avoid making these
mistakes, but you can improve your odds by talking to her at other
times about what she likes and doesn’t like.
• Most women like variety and even surprises. Those things
indicate you thought about her when you picked the restaurant.
Just don’t push it too far, particularly if she’s a picky eater. You
may want to work up to sushi or Indian food, for example.

Fun Experiments for Chapter Twenty-six

1. When you go to a restaurant and your wife decides to try
something different that you know she probably won’t like, try
these two different approaches:
• When the food is brought to the table to say in a loud voice,
“Listen, you ordered it, so you’re going to have to eat it, whether
you like it or not.”
• Without being prompted, order (as your meal) something you
know she does like. Even if you want something else. When
the food comes, ask her how it is. If she doesn’t like it, offer to
swap with her. Even if you don’t like what she ordered.
In each case, measure the amount of time that elapses before you
have sex again. Note your conclusions for future reference.
2. Here are two more options to try at a restaurant. Measure the
results in the same way.
• When your wife is almost finished eating a meal that she clearly
found delicious say, “Hey, let me have the rest of that!”
• Offer her the last two or three bites of your meal (you’ll survive
without those last bites).
 Chapter Twenty-Seven
Time

Women and men perceive time differently. Men, being linear

creatures, generally are in more of a hurry to get the thing done and
move on to the next thing. Women tend to linger over things. When
they say things like, “I’ll be ready in five minutes” she doesn’t
technically mean five (5) literal minutes. It’s a flexible period of time.
If you don’t believe me, time her.

• Women don’t like to be early to anything once you are married.

You will be a lot less tense if you realize that early on.
• Your wife will wait till time to go before doing one last thing to her
makeup. This ensures you will always leave late.
• Most women actually enjoy the process of getting ready and will
draw it out. Men get ready in order to do the thing they are getting
ready for. If they could do it without changing their clothes or
taking a shower, they would.
• You will try to trick your wife or girlfriend by telling her you have to
be somewhere earlier than you really do. This may work once, but
she will catch on (because you will arrive at the event on time) and
will outmaneuver you the next time.
• Rushing your wife will not actually result in her getting ready any
quicker.
• If you make your wife mad by hurrying her, you will find out what
slow really is.
• There are certain situations with a woman where you will be aware
of time passing at an excruciatingly slow pace. Some examples:
o When you go out with a girl for the first time and try to
make conversation and it isn’t going well.
o When you break up with a girl or she breaks up with you,
but you still have to drive her home.
o As previously mentioned, when your new wife is getting
ready for bed on your wedding night.
o When she is getting ready for a formal event, especially if
she is unsure what she is going to wear.
o When you are forced to go shopping for clothes with her.
 o When you are forced to spend an evening doing
something she feels is “romantic” but that you have
absolutely no interest in.
o When you are in a hurry to leave and she is “just going to
talk to…for a minute…” Note: It will always take more
than one minute. Also, the second on your watch will
actually move at the pace of the minute hand.
o When you are in a hurry and ask her a simple yes/no
question and her natural response to your anxiety is to tell
you a long, extremely detailed story about some
interaction between people that seems totally unrelated to
the question, but is really important to her.
o When it’s been a while since you and your wife have been
intimate and for some dumb reason you have decided to
wait on her to suggest it.
• There are certain situations with a woman where you will become
totally unaware of the passing of time. Some examples:
o When you are on a date with a beautiful woman and
everything is going great, it will be over much quicker than
you want it to.
o When a beautiful woman unexpectedly kisses you, time
will stop.
o Once in a while, you will look into a woman’s eyes and
will become totally lost for an instant, but it will seem
much longer. Wait a day or two before making any major
decisions, particularly if the woman is not your wife.
o Sometimes during intimate encounters with your wife, you
will lose awareness of time.
o When you are happily married and have great children,
you will suddenly look up and it will be your twentieth
wedding anniversary and your daughter will be a senior in
high school.
• Believe it or not, there are certain situations where a woman will
actually be in a much bigger hurry than you are. Some examples:
o You are at the car, motorcycle or boat show that you have
waited for all year and she is bored.
o When you get a big bonus at work and she wants to
spend it.
 o When her car breaks down, you won’t be able to get there
fast enough.
o When she senses her biological clock ticking and wants
to get pregnant—NOW!
o You are on a long car trip and she has to go to the
bathroom.

Fun Experiments for Chapter Twenty-seven

1. When your wife is getting ready for something formal, stand by her
chair and say “C’mon, let’s go” every fifteen seconds. Note
whether she speeds up or slows down.
2. Assuming you survive experiment one and there is a next time,
walk into the room where she’s getting dressed. Smile and ask
her if there’s anything you can do for her right now. If she tells you
something, go do it. Note how much more attention she pays to
you for the rest of the evening.
3. Even if you are running late, if your wife is wearing a new dress for
the first time, step back so you can take a good look. Ask her to
spin around for you. Nod your head and say, “That dress looks
fantastic on you.” Don’t count on it, but also don’t be surprised if
she takes you back to the bedroom right then. Trust me, it’s okay
to be late if she initiates spur of the moment sex.
 Chapter Twenty-Eight
Traveling with a Woman

Going on a trip with a woman is not like going with one of your guy
friends. It is much more complicated. With few exceptions, women
tend to pack a lot more clothes and other stuff. That doesn’t mean
she won’t forget something, by the way. The concept of packing light
so you can carry your bag on an airplane to avoid baggage claim is
pretty much unthinkable to her. Some businesswomen will pack in a
carry on, but not when they travel with their husbands. A woman
would rather wait at baggage claim that leave an extra pair of shoes
behind.

• Remember that a woman’s expectations for any particular trip are

almost certainly different from yours. Chances are you will forget
that and make the wrong assumption that she wants to do
EXACTLY the same thing as you.
• Travel is one area where stating and asking the obvious can really
pay off. Wouldn’t you rather know ahead of time what she expects
from the trip? Even if you don’t like it, you won’t be surprised
when you have to do it.
• Men are typically focused on reaching the destination as quickly as
possible and want to minimize delays and distractions. Women
are more apt to want to do things along the way such as stop to
look at things, stop to shop, stop to use the bathroom, and stop to
take pictures. The potential for conflict is obvious.
• On a car trip, offer to stop every hour or so unless she is sleeping.
In that case, offer to stop as soon as she wakes up.
• Women often realize they need to stop for a restroom break right
when you pass a sign saying “No exits for 47 miles.”
• One exception to frequent stopping can be when you have small
children on the trip. If the children are quiet or sleeping, neither of
you will want to stop or do anything to disturb them. If the children
are miserable and crying, both of you will want to stop the car or
perhaps even drive it off a cliff. Even though you and your wife
may be entirely united in this, the tension associated with it can
 still be the basis for enormous conflict. Don’t take your frustration
out on your wife.
• Women carry a lot more clothes on a trip than a man does.
• A woman and small children carry enough clothes and other things
to fill a cargo container. It will be your job to fit it all into the car.
• Women feel the need for multiple outfits each day because you
never know what the weather will be like, plus everyone else might
be dressed more casually or dressy than we thought so we’ll have
to change and a lot of other reasons.
• Each outfit has to match in ways that are too complex for a man to
understand.
• No item from one outfit can be used with another outfit.
• A different set of shoes is required for each outfit.
• There are certain fabrics, colors and styles that are uniquely
appropriate for this trip.
• If she forgets something it will be critical and you’ll have to buy a
replacement on the trip.
• You will never be able to pack her clothes for a trip. Even if you
have a PhD in women’s clothing, you would never come close to
getting it right.
• If it’s a driving trip and you have a small sports car, you are going
to have to be very innovative in packing the car. Taking geometry
and working for a moving company in college helps slightly.
Getting really annoyed with your wife for taking so much stuff does
not help.
• Some men insist their wives pack their clothes, too. If you travel
very often, you ought to figure out how to pack your own clothes.
• Women take up a lot of space in a hotel room.
• Don’t be surprised if you and your wife end up reversing the side
of the bed you sleep on when you are in a hotel.
• If you travel all the time on business and your wife rarely travels,
she will find it a lot more exciting to stay at a hotel than you do.
You may have to pretend it’s fun.
• If you travel all the time, going on a cruise will be like being locked
in a floating hotel with really small rooms.
• If you travel all the time, it’ll be tempting to show off how much
you’ve “been there, done that”, but that will spoil the fun for her, so
don’t do it.
• She will take even longer to get ready in a hotel room than she
does at home. Build time in your schedule for this so you don’t get
all huffy with her.
• Knowing that she is going to monopolize the bathroom getting
ready, try to take care of your showering and other bathroom
needs by getting up early. Don’t pound on the bathroom door.
• There probably won’t be a comfortable place in the hotel room for
you to sit and wait for her. A good way to burn time and score
points is to go to the lobby (or a nearby Starbucks) and get her a
coffee and Danish. Be sure to bring sugar or whatever she puts in
it.
• Inadvertently showing your wife that you are evidently quite
familiar with the process for ordering dirty movies on a hotel room
TV is a dumb idea. It will have the subsequent effect of making
your wife angry with you when you get ready to leave on your next
business trip.
• Try to take your wife on a business dinner or business trip
sometime, but don’t keep saying you are doing it so she’ll see how
UN-glamorous it is. Just let her enjoy it.
• If your wife accompanies you on a business trip, even if you are
really busy, try to take time to do something fun with her, even just
for a few minutes.
• When you travel on business, find something she likes and bring it
to her to let her know you thought of her on the trip. Even if it’s
just some candy.
• When you are packing the car for a trip, you’ll be in a hurry and
your wife will be dragging her feet. That’ll probably annoy you.
She’ll (eventually) have her bags packed, but will still be putting on
her makeup or something. You’ll want to take her bags out to the
car, but she’ll have ONE MORE THING that has go in each bag,
so you won’t be able to.
• Your wife will never understand why not being ready to go on time
is so annoying to you. The only explanation I have for their
frequent tardiness is that perhaps women enjoy the process of
getting ready for something where men do not. The more cynical
explanation is that they like to make men wait on them. Marriage
is a lot easier if you choose the less cynical option.
 Chapter Twenty-Nine
The Bed and Breakfast
Bed and breakfast lodging is very common in Europe. The B&B in
Europe is often a relatively inexpensive alternative to a large hotel
and, in smaller towns, may be the only option other than camping. It
is operated much like a hotel, but is more quaint. In the US, the B&B
is intended to emulate the European B&B, but it is usually an old
house that has been inexpertly converted into a “hotel”. If you are
used to staying at hotels and motels, the US version may not meet
your expectations. Be prepared to deal with it.

• Women think staying in a bed and breakfast will be romantic.

What she means by “romantic” is that you’ll be forced to sleep,
bathe and eat like people living in Victorian times.
• If you’d like to know what it was like to live in Victorian times, read
a Charles Dickens novel or better yet, think of living without most
of the things that were invented after 1900.
• A bed and breakfast is a what results when retired people who are
not trained innkeepers, have never stayed in a real hotel, have
never produced a business plan, and are old enough that the
husband’s testosterone production is non-existent. Some of them
have saved a small amount of money. This leads the couple to
think:
o We are great hosts!
o We love meeting new people!
o Having people stay in our home will be fantastic!
o Fixing up an old house into a bed and breakfast would be
fun!
o One of us cooks a mean breakfast!
o It can’t be hard to run a bed and breakfast!
o We can make money doing this!
• None of those things is actually true.
• The retired couple will run out of money before doing everything
they originally intended to do to the house when the bed and
breakfast was still a dream. They will create a false veneer to hide
these shortcomings, but most of them will be apparent to you
 within minutes of arrival. Your wife will be so enthralled with the
quaintness of the place that she won’t notice.
• Apparently there are no standards for hygiene and safety that
apply to bed and breakfasts. Pointing out such things to your wife
will not be helpful.
• The towels at a bed and breakfast are very small and thin. Your
wife will use all of them before you have a chance to.
• Toilet paper is not very effective for drying off after a shower.
• If you get the opportunity for sex the first night, however, take it. It
may be the last chance you have sex for a long time once you
start complaining about the bed and breakfast.
• There are reasons why people invented light bulbs, safe electrical
wiring, carpets, central heat and air, reliable plumbing, thick
towels, beds that don’t squeak, etc. Staying in a bed and
breakfast will enable you to identify many of those reasons.
• The actual breakfast at a bed and breakfast will not be “hearty”
and may be quite unusual. Don’t be surprised if you are forced to
eat a baked grapefruit or a very odd-tasting quiche. You’ll be
expected to eat it so you don’t offend the retired couple that runs
the B&B and hovers over you during breakfast.
• Don’t bother to write anything truthful in the B&B’s guestbook.
Your wife will read it and get mad at you for offending the retired
couple.
 Chapter Thirty
Ladies and Gentlemen

The concept of being a “lady” or a “gentleman” has faded

tremendously in the last hundred years, particularly since the sixties.
That does not mean that many women do not appreciate being
treated as a lady. Most women rightly expect you to treat them like a
lady and to generally act like a gentleman, even if it goes against all
your natural inclinations.

•It’s always the right thing to do to open a door for a woman, even if
she doesn’t seem to appreciate it.
• Be prepared to offer your jacket or sweater to a woman if the room
is cold or there is a draft. It pays to think ahead about the situation
you might be in that day when you are dressing and wear
something that you can offer. Remember that it’s OK for a woman
to wear a man’s jacket or sweater as a wrap even though it would
be ridiculous for a man to do the same with a woman’s item.
• Being heroic is generally appropriate for a man; however, keep in
mind that women today are often worried about stalkers and
muggers around every corner. Plus, with cell phones, getting help
is less difficult than it used to be. Consequently, be very careful
when you stop your car to help a woman with a flat tire or engine
trouble that you ASK if she wants you help. Don’t be pushy or
demanding.
 Chapter Thirty-One
Other Strange Behaviors

Women are different from men and very complicated. As a result,

they frequently behave in ways that are utterly strange and illogical to
men, but seem perfectly normal to other women.

• Women will almost always take another woman with them to the
restroom, even if they don’t know each other very well. Men never
do this.
• Boy Scouts are mostly focused on individual accomplishments.
Girl Scouts focus on group goals. I’m sure that means something
important, but I don’t know what it is.
• Perhaps because of the way a woman’s body works each month,
women seem to be much more comfortable with repetitive tasks.
Men always want to do something new.
• Girls and, sometimes even grown women, will have pajama parties
now and then. Although this sounds like a man’s fantasy, with
topless pillow fights in slow motion, these parties are nothing like
that.
• I believe that all women secretly want, at least a little, to be a
blonde movie star.
• Women seem to particularly like horses. There are some aspects
of this that make men vaguely nervous.
• Women actually like other people’s children, even toddlers, and
will go out of their way to talk to and hold those children.
• A woman will change a baby’s diaper. Without coercion.
• If you want to learn something about women, travel in a car for
several hours with three or four old ladies.
• Teenage girls are obsessed with clothing, makeup, popularity,
gossip, their looks, and boys. Much of this continues more or less
unabated into adulthood.
• Teenage boys are obsessed with girls, vengeance and retribution,
primarily because of the massive influx of testosterone, and
envision growing up and being a soldier or police officer so that
they can execute justice. This eventually fades away to just
watching action movies and sports.
• Women have an innate ability to get even, especially with a man
that wronged them. They can exhibit a degree of patience in
waiting for the right moment that is unthinkable to a man.
• There are various sounds that a woman can make that will really
turn you on. Sometimes a little squeal or sigh is all it takes. Some
of those sounds will get old after a while.
• There are certain women whose voice tone or laugh is really odd.
That might seem cute or interesting at first, but when it gets old,
and it will, you’ll hate it.
 Chapter Thirty-Two
Communication

Women are obsessed with communication, much more than men are.
Women listen and talk continuously. They have an insatiable need to
know about things, particularly involved relationships between
people.

• Women like to talk. They need to talk. They will always talk more
than you. When you are married and come home from work each
day, your wife will tell you so much information in the first ten
minutes that your head will spin. It’s what I call “the daily data
dump”. Your mind will wander during all this talking and you’ll
begin to ask yourself “will she even stop to take a breath?”
• The scary part is that somewhere in all that talking is a key date or
fact that you will be expected to remember and when you don’t,
she’ll be mad at you.
• When your wife starts talking like that, eventually without realizing
it, you will begin repeating the phase “what does she need me to
do” over and over again in your head. If you are lucky, your wife
will figure this out and tell you one thing at a time and give you
time to write down your action items. If you are really lucky, she’ll
write them down for you, but you will still have to listen to all the
talking.
• Women change their minds a lot. They are sort of aware they
have this trait, but they think it’s perfectly normal and really don’t
understand why it is annoying to men.
• Even though it is very difficult to imagine beforehand, after you are
married for a while, you will be comfortable saying “I love you” to
her in public and having pet names for each other like “dear” and
“honey”. She will be comfortable with it immediately and you’ll
have to just play through it for a while.
• Women get a sick satisfaction from making men do unmanly
things for them like saying, “I love you, dear” in front of their
friends. Sometimes they’ll insist that you talk back to them in baby
talk. This will cause you acute embarrassment and endless
 teasing, but you WILL do it or pay the consequences. Eventually,
you’ll take comfort in the fact that ALL married men do this.
• Saying, “I love you and miss you” in a cold and distracted-
sounding voice while you are calling her from overseas will NOT
be acceptable and you WILL hear about it. Ask me how I know.
• She wants you to be manly and strong, but will be mad at you for
not being sensitive. You may have noticed that being manly and
strong is generally not consistent with being sensitive.
• She wants you to talk to her about your feelings, but won't stop
talking long enough to let you talk about anything. When you get
in the car together and you are ready to ACTUALLY LISTEN, she'll
read a book or go inexplicably silent.
• After you are married for a while, your wife's particular voice tone
will become almost impossible for you to hear without
concentrating. You won’t try to ignore her, but will actually not
hear her.
• If you are reading a book, watching a thrilling game or otherwise
preoccupied, your wife will feel a need to tell you something.
• Never tell your wife that the thing you hate the most is
interruptions.
• When you use the words “I hate” about anything, no matter how
unrelated to your wife it may be, she thinks at least a little bit that
you are talking about her.
• You will do some incredibly stupid and hurtful things to your wife,
most of the time because you are a guy and can’t be expected to
do any better. That doesn’t make it ok, of course, but I guess it
makes it inevitable. Some of those terrible things you did to her
will eventually be funny stories. Your wife will decide when they
have BECOME funny. Until that time, those terrible things will
remain incredibly stupid and hurtful. It will do you no good to bring
them up.
• It’s a whole lot better to make her laugh by making fun of yourself
than making fun of her.
• Women can talk to each other across a room just by moving their
mouths. When they do it to men, they are astounded that the man
can’t understand them.
• Women take a long time to tell a story. You’ll be tempted often to
ask her to get to the point. That’s a bad idea. In the first place,
there may not be a point. In the second place, she likes to talk so
for her telling the story IS the point.
• Women tend to want men to read their minds. This, of course, is
utterly impossible since a man can’t even comprehend how a
woman thinks, much less what she is thinking at a particular
moment. Although she may not like it, because it “spoils the
surprise”, you should constantly ask your girlfriend or wife what
she wants you to do for her, what’s important to her, etc. At first,
this may be hard, but eventually she will see that by ACTUALLY
TELLING YOU WHAT SHE WANTS, you will do it.
• Women like to talk on the phone. For hours. Occasionally, you
learn something interesting, if trivial, by overhearing her side of the
conversation, but most of the time it will drive you crazy.
• Once in a while, you should “confide” something good about your
wife to your wife’s best friend, but it has to be something along the
lines of “she’s so much more than I ever expected to find in a
wife…I don’t deserve her…I think about her all day, but don’t know
how to tell her…I know I don’t communicate feelings well…” If you
can choke up a little—whoa! The timing has to be right so that it
doesn’t seem totally contrived. Her friend will immediately tell your
wife what you said to the letter and also will describe your facial
expressions, etc. If you pull this off effectively, you are virtually
guaranteed to get thrown into bed and taken by your wife.
 Chapter Thirty-Three
Emotion

As a male, you are probably very uncomfortable with extreme

emotion. If your feelings cannot be expressed by high fiving another
guy (happiness) or pounding the table (frustration), you are probably
trying to find a way to suppress them. A woman is much more in
touch with her emotions and seems to relish all of her emotions.
That’s not to suggest she likes being hurt or angry, but rather that she
wants to fully experience every aspect of those feelings. She isn’t
embarrassed or uncomfortable about having emotions. She thinks
feelings are normal.

• Women cry. Frequently. Accept it the way you accept the sun
rising, clouds in the sky, etc. It’s apparently a release for women.
I guess it does for a woman what punching something does for a
man.
• Tears resulting from romantic acts by you are good no matter how
strange and uncomfortable it makes you feel, but don’t screw it up
by making fun of her.
• Tears resulting from nothing whatsoever are usually OK.
• Crying as a result of something mean or stupid you did or did not
do is REALLY BAD.
• Women like to cry together, often for no reason other than they like
to do it. Let them.
• If your wife (or any other woman) apologizes to you for crying, just
say, “Hey, you’re a woman. Women cry. That doesn’t bother me.”
That’s a lot better than saying, “What are you crying for, you big
baby?”
• Women get mad now and then. The now times are much worse.
Sometimes when your wife gets angry with you, you will find her
really cute and she’ll see that on your face. She will really hate
that.
• Your wife is much more sensitive to emotion than you are. It’s like
a whole extra sense that she has and you don’t. Let me put it this
way: women have super-sensitive e-motion detectors.
• Women will read emotion into every act and facial expression,
even when you are utterly unemotional or just preoccupied with
the football game that just started.
• Thus, acting dull and emotionless is not an effective strategy in
dealing with your wife.
• You are going to have to make an effort to project positive
emotions to your wife as much as possible. You need to figure out
how to do this, but here are a couple of tips: smile when you see
her, never walk past her without (gently) touching her, and say “I
love you” when you can’t think of anything else.
• Your wife will also transfer your emotions about other things to
herself. When you hit your thumb with a hammer, she’ll feel
sympathy (unless she’s mad at you), but will also intuitively think
your anger is somehow directed at her. If you come home
complaining about work all the time, she’ll register some of that
emotion as directed at her.
• This doesn’t mean that you can’t share your feelings with your
wife. By all means, share your feelings. She wants that.
Desperately. But, share the GOOD feelings more than the
negative ones.
• Think of it this way: women are fascinated with emotions. They
collect emotions the way you probably collected baseball cards.
• When there’s no strong emotion around, some women will stir
something up. That can be good or bad.
• Other women get their emotional fix by watching a soap opera.
Soap operas are like a salad bar of emotions for women.
• Women typically communicate in terms of feelings. Men typically
communicate in terms of action. Neither one is right, just different.
That said, you need to learn to interpret the feelings part of the
communication. That may require you to ask, “How do you feel
about that?” That’s better than, “What do you want to do about it?”
The feeling part is usually more central to a woman’s way of
thinking.
• Problems arise when translating feeling language to action
language and vice versa. Learn to listen and ask questions.
• Women feel things much longer than men do. When a couple has
an argument, chances are the man will be more or less over the
emotion of it within a few hours. The women will nurture and dwell
on that emotion for a long time.
• You have to find a way to feed her good emotions to nurture in
place of those inevitable negative emotions. This is really hard for
a man because you’ve already forgotten about the negative. My
advice is to get in the habit of doing little nice things for your wife
all the time. Every time you do something nice for her, it gives her
a warm fuzzy feeling that she can hold onto. It’s not that hard and,
by the way, she’s worth it.
 Chapter Thirty-Four
There Are Certain Types of Women to Avoid

Some women are not good for you. That does not mean that you will
not be attracted to them. Sometimes you will be attracted simply
because of physical attributes. Sometimes you will not even be able
to explain why you are attracted to a woman. The key is to identify
avoid certain types of women—the ones that will cause you serious
problems.

• I would say you should avoid cheerleaders, but you’re going to

have work through that on your own. Nothing I say will keep you
from craving a cheerleader, but one day you too will acknowledge
that a cheerleader is not the ideal woman for you.
• Some women seem to be drawn to jerks and “bad boy” types.
No matter how attractive that kind of woman may be, you are NOT
a bad boy and you absolutely do not want to get involved with her.
• Never go out with flight attendants.
• When you do decide to go out with a flight attendant anyway
because she’s really good looking and she tells you that you need
to do more “crazy things” because you are too serious, just laugh,
take her home and don’t EVER ask her out again.
• When you do ask the flight attendant out again because she’s
really good looking and that made you temporarily forget what a
drag it was the first time and you remember all of that from the first
minute she gets in the car, this time, I mean it, DON”T ask her out
again.
• When you ask the flight attendant out a third time because she’s
still really good looking and you haven’t seen her for a few weeks
because she’s been traveling and you feel your life force being
drained out of your body during every moment you spend with her,
hopefully you’ll finalize realize what I’ve been saying about dating
flight attendants is true.
• When your best friend decides to marry that flight attendant a few
years later and tells you that “she has really changed”, he’ll be
wrong and it will end very badly. You’ll want to say something
about your experience with her, but then you’ll realize that he
 already knows all that and thinks it’ll be different with him, mainly
because she is STILL really good looking. He’ll still be your friend
through it all and you’ll find out all about the living hell that he
experienced and you would have experienced if you hadn’t
stopped after the third date. You’re still stupid, but at least you are
luckier than your best friend.
• It might seem like a good idea (in your twisted, sex-obsessed
mind) to date a girl that is a gymnast or ballet dancer, but it really
won’t be that great. Especially, if you have to look at the pictures
of her doing “interpretive dance” with some guys that may be gay,
but are apparently much stronger than you.
• Women with lots of body piercings, other than one set of
earrings, and tattoos should scare you. I know there’s something
exotic about all that, but just remember God made a woman’s
body and did a pretty much perfect job. If she feels the need to
permanently disfigure it, she’s probably a psycho.
• When you meet a girl in college and think she might be wife
material, as early as possible try to meet or at least see a recent
picture of her mom. If her mom is overweight, your girl is what is
known as a Potential Weight Gainer (PWG) and this is bad for
reasons that will become apparent below. Many girls know this
and will go to great lengths to ensure you do NOT meet their mom.
You and your male friends should have an agreement that you will
share any knowledge of PWG status with each other.
• Psycho women often disguise themselves as ordinary women.
• Some women will never be happy. If she’s not happy now, being
married to you won’t make her happy either. Run; don’t walk,
away from her.
• Those incredibly gorgeous models and actress you see on TV, the
movies, and magazines are fake as all get out. They sure are.
Yes, sirree. Keep telling yourself that.
• If the girl you are interested in REALLY looks forward to the next
issues of Cosmopolitan and Vogue, you may want to look
elsewhere.
• If the girl you are interested in works at night and always has lots
of one-dollar bills that have been folded lengthwise, you are
probably chasing the wrong kind of girl.
• If a girl reminds you a LOT of Martha Stewart, even if you think
Martha Stewart is strangely hot, she’s probably not the one for
you.
• If she REALLY likes poodles, keep looking.
• There are two kinds of women that come from Tennessee:
southern belles and hillbillies. Southern belles are very sweet to
your face, but will rip you to shreds behind your back. Hillbillies
have absolutely no filter on anything they say to you, good or bad.
If your wife is from Texas, she won’t like either type of woman.
• If a girl wants to argue with you all the time, introduce her to one of
your friends and get away from her.
• If you meet a really attractive woman that is dead set on becoming
a movie star or recording artist, get her autograph and move on.
Regardless of how nice she may seem, a person (man or woman)
has to be utterly self-absorbed to survive and possibly flourish in
that rat race. At most, you will be a tool to help her career. You
don’t want to be a tool.
• If a girl REALLY like guys with lots of tattoos, let her find one.
• If a grown woman likes those lollipops that look like a pacifier,
she’s probably a little crazy.
• If you find out that a girl you went out with one time has been
going through your trash looking for evidence you cheated on her,
you may have a problem. Asking her out again won’t be the
solution.
• Under no circumstances should you ever become intimate with a
prostitute. Firstly, it’s immoral, so that should be reason enough,
but if you find yourself tempted anyway, here are some other
reasons to forego the pleasures of a hired hand, as it were.
o Sexually transmitted diseases are bad news and
are not limited to the familiar handful of infections easily
cured by penicillin. Some can be transmitted even WITH
a condom. There are many STDs that are not easily
detectible, particularly in men. Some of those can cause
cancer in your wife when you get back home and try to
keep your secret.
o Crabs.
o She’s faking everything. For her, sex is 110% about
the money, buddy. If you have any pride at all, you
should want your lover to appreciate what you bring to
her.
o Even if you get past the faking thing, you need to
remember that you won’t be the first spelunker to explore
 this cave or, if you prefer, you won’t be the first mountain
climber to reach that peak. She does this for a living and
there have been a lot of passengers on this train. That’s
not a good thing.
• If you’ve ever wanted to find out what hell is really like, marry a
psycho woman. A much easier and less painful way is to let one
of your friends that married one tell you all about it.
• After you have dated a lot of women, you will look back one day
and wonder if one or two of them might have actually had “666”
tattooed to their forehead. Just hope none of those women decide
to track you down one night and get even.
• If you decide to have a bench press contest at the gym and a
particular girl can bench more than you, you either need to work
out more or that girl is WAY too tough for you. You’ll never live it
down if you marry her and your friends find out.
• If you are attracted to a woman and you find out she’s a smoker,
move on to the next girl. If she’s still smoking, her mouth will taste
like an ashtray when you kiss her. More importantly, smoking is a
terrible habit that slowly destroys your body and it’s very hard to
stop. Even if she does stop, for the rest of her life, some part of
her brain will be thinking about a cigarette. That’s a part of her
brain that should be thinking about you or your kids or something
else important. You don’t need that.
• Sometimes a girl is known as a “tease”. What this means is that
she gets satisfaction out of stringing one or more guys along,
leading them to believe that she is interested in them. She likes
the attention and control that comes from having guys infatuated
with her, but won’t commit to an actual relationship. Sometimes
these girls are the same ones that go for the “bad boys” because
those guys seem confident and don’t fall for her charms as much.
It’s ironic because in many ways, the bad boy is the male
equivalent of the female tease. Many girls grow out of this when
they mature, but if you see a lot of this manipulative behavior in a
girl, move on.
 Chapter Thirty-Five
Nagging

When a woman constantly pesters you about something in a negative

way, particularly if it’s something you can’t change, it’s referred to as
“nagging”. Nagging is a terrible thing, much worse than it may seem
from a distance.

• It is terribly defeating to a man to be married to a nagging wife.

Many otherwise perfect-seeming girls are capable of becoming a
persistent nag. You will want to identify this tendency far in
advance and be ruthless in eliminating the girls with high nag
potential from your dating scene.
• The typical nag is relentless in her nagging. It is like a dripping
faucet, except much more annoying.
• Once a woman has established a nagging behavior, it becomes
habitual and automatic.
• Many things may contribute to high nag potential in a particular
woman. Without getting into a nature vs. nurture argument, some
women just have nag potential in their DNA. Now, you could also
make the case that girl probably observed nagging at home.
Either way, if you are serious about a girl, you’ll want to spend
some time around her mom and dad. If her mom nags her dad,
that’s a bad sign. You can figure out later if it was in her DNA or
she was just emulating her mom, but hopefully, you’ll get to do that
when she’s married to someone else.
• Other contributing factors to high nag potential are: an
overwhelming need to be in control, a desire to change each man
in her life, general unhappy or angry outlook on life, and an
inability to be satisfied with the status quo.
• Another strong indicator of high nag potential is if the girl has
been spoiled. It doesn’t matter if she has rich or poor parents, but
just whether they give her everything she wanted and she raises
the bar each time she gets something. Sometimes spoiled women
show little respect for their own belongings and the really bad ones
act out by stealing other people’s things. The spoiled girl will
never be satisfied and that will likely lead her to nagging, along
with other bad things.
• If the girl is “bossy” all the time, that may indicate high nag
potential.
• One good reason to date a girl for an extended period before
jumping into marriage is to give her a chance to demonstrate how
much nag potential she has. If she nags you when you are dating,
she’ll dial it up even more when you are married. Be ruthless.
Even if she is really good looking.
• Certainly, inconsiderate behavior on your part can bring on
nagging at a particular moment, but that doesn’t make the nagging
behavior your fault. Nagging is how she chooses to deal with you
and it ultimately shows a lack of respect. There are other ways to
deal with you when you are inconsiderate so there’s no excuse for
being a nag.
• If you carefully check out your wife-to-be and believe you have
found the perfect, low nag potential woman, you still need to
establish a nag-free environment in your relationship. This is
critical because almost any woman can slip into that dreaded
behavior if the circumstances are right. Some suggestions to help
do that early in the relationship:
o Tell her that while you love her madly and want to
please her, you don’t have a crystal ball so you can’t
read her mind. Say this very nicely. Tell her you’d like
her to explain to you what she wants and then, if
necessary, remind you if you forget.
o Tell her you don’t want her to nag you about things.
Try to explain the difference between nagging and
reminding.
o Don’t use passive-aggressive behavior when she asks
you to do something. That encourages nagging in a
woman.
o Ask her to tell you how important something is to her
and if it’s really important, try to do it or at least, tell her
that you won’t be able to do it right away.
o Don’t nag her about things.
 Chapter Thirty-Six
Shopping

Women like to shop. Most men do not, certainly not to the extent
women do. You are going to have get used to this if you hope to
have any ongoing relationships with women.

• Most women like to look at and touch everything. It does not have
to be her size or even something she is looking for. Sometimes
she is just gathering information. I think it’s more about thrill of the
chase than actually finding something.
• Don’t assume that the thrill of the chase means women won’t
spend money shopping.
• Some women get so excited about something they find while they
are shopping that they’ll buy exactly the same thing a second time
without realizing it.
• Some women will insist you shop with them. You will hate it
because you think shopping is about going into a store to get a
thing and leaving. It’s nothing like that for her.
• Whining about why she looks at so many clothes during a
shopping adventure, including clothes that aren’t even her size,
and complaining about how long it takes, will do no good at all and
you’ll hear about it later.
• Eventually, after you are married, she’ll stop taking you shopping
for clothes.
• You’ll know you are well and truly married when your Friday night
plans are going to Target.
• As impossible as it seems, you wife actually understands the logic
behind what food items are located on each aisle at the grocery
store.
• Grocery shopping with your wife can actually be fun and, strangely
may lead to a romantic encounter later that evening. Don’t push it,
though.
• Remember that most women consider watching sports with you
much the way you look at going shopping with her.
• No matter what they say to the contrary, all women are addicted to
shoes.
 Chapter Thirty-Seven
Money

Money is often the source of conflict within male-female relationships.

It is impossible to live or function without money, but sometimes you
will wish you could to avoid all the arguments. Finding a way to get
on the same page about money with the women in your life is well
worth the effort, but it won’t be easy.

• As a married man, the salary you receive for working, along with
any bonuses, stock options, etc will be “our money”.
• The salary she receives for working will be “her money”.
• You may get an allowance from “our money”. The rest of “our
money” will generally become “her money”.
• If your wife learns that you have been secretly skimming some of
“our money” into a separate account to purchase expensive “toys”
(e.g., guns, sports equipment, video games, sports cars) for
yourself, you will be in BIG trouble.
• If you can convince her that the secret account is solely destined
to buy something expensive for her, you may escape total denial
of sexual favors, but you will have to spend all the money on “that
gift” for her or, more likely, turn over all of the money immediately
for her to go shopping with. She will still not trust you.
• To many women, a checkbook is like being able to print your own
money. They don’t concern themselves with the small matter of
what the bank balance might be. Any women like this that you
meet should probably be added to your personal “women to avoid”
list.
• How hard could it be for her to just WRITE down the checks in the
checkbook? Apparently very hard.
 Chapter Thirty-Eight
Style, Grooming and Appearance

Everything about her appearance is important to a woman. Each

woman has an ever-evolving style. You may think this is in an effort
to get a man. You would be wrong. It is part of an elaborate
collaboration and competition process that women have with each
other. Other than a few very wealthy designers, no one, including the
average woman, begins to understand this process, but they all
participate in it.

• Most women will never understand why a man thinks a woman is

sexy in a t-shirt and sweatpants.
• Women’s fashion changes every season. Notice I didn’t say
“changes BACK”. It does not change BACK to what they wore last
spring. The fashion changes to something different. There are all
new fashions for this Spring so you can be sure last Spring’s
clothes aren’t right anymore.
• From the perspective of a man, the difference between the fashion
for last spring and this spring will be minor (i.e., nonexistent). The
differences are “nuanced”. To a woman, the differences are so
major that she CANNOT BE SEEN in last year’s fashion.
• To answer the questions you are about to raise: Yes, there are
women that don’t really care about the current fashion and will not
feel compelled to buy new clothes all the time. No, you won’t be
married to one of those women.
• If you buy your wife or girlfriend clothes, which I don’t recommend,
and you aren’t sure of the size, buy something that you are SURE
is too small for them. Tell her you thought that was her size
because she seems “so tiny”. Even this can backfire since it may
“make them feel fat” when they can’t wear it.
• When a woman thinks she’s “a little fat”, most guys would think
she’s “just right” or even “too skinny”. That said, there still are a lot
of (real) fat women out there.
• There is such a thing as a “little miracle” (i.e., the woman that
weighs less than 110 lbs, but has an all-natural figure to die for).
There’s no harm in dating or marrying a little miracle.
• There is NO GOOD WAY to tell a woman that you think she is
overweight. Giving her a membership to a gym for her birthday
WILL send a message, but not the one you think.
• The best answer to the dreaded question “Does this dress make
me look fat?” is not “No, YOU make it look fat”, but rather “You
look beautiful”. She’ll appreciate the dishonesty in this one
instance.
• If your wife asks you what you think about her getting plastic
surgery, you must IMMEDIATELY tell her that you don’t want her
to change anything. Chances are very high that the plastic
surgery she has in mind is NOT what you have in mind.
• Under no circumstances should you reach into your wallet for a
dog-eared list of plastic surgery ideas. If you have such a list, I
strongly suggest you destroy it now. NEVER show it to her.
• No matter how often you tell a woman she is beautiful, she still
needs to hear it more.
• When she’s wearing a sundress and you hate sundresses, don’t
tell her that you hate sundresses. Ask me how I know.
• Women come in all shapes and sizes. Believe it or not, her looks
are NOT the most important thing, especially when you are
married. However, since you are a guy after all, and looks DO
matter, you should consider her long-term appearance prospects
before you marry her. It’s pretty nice to look across the table at a
beautiful woman, particularly when you’ve been married to her a
long time.
• Some girls hit their prime, as far as looks are concerned, in their
teens. Other women have classic features that will age well.
Don’t saddle yourself with a wife that’s already on the downhill
slope.
• Marry a girl that is physically attractive and that knows how to take
care of herself. Like a car, routine maintenance is really important
for a woman’s body. Unfortunately, she will be responsible for
doing that maintenance. You can’t drop her off at a salon every
3000 miles.
• There’s no guarantee, but the condition of her mom’s body is one
of the few indicators of what she might look like in 30 years or so.
Find a way to check out her mom well in advance.
• Another indicator is when she has thin ankles.
• Women dress up to impress other women, not men. You are a
beneficiary of this natural competition between women, so be glad
for it.
• Women will wear the most uncomfortable and ridiculous things to
accentuate their looks. Can you imagine walking around in high-
heeled shoes? It’s weird, but wonderful, too.
• Most women can tell you what every other woman at a party was
wearing.
• It’s no big deal if two men show up somewhere wearing the same
outfit. They might not even notice or, if they did, they would
genuinely compliment the other guy on his taste in a suit. Women
are horrified if they see another woman wearing the same outfit.
How it doesn’t happen all the time, I have no idea, but it doesn’t.
• There is no question that men are very interested in women’s
bodies. Just know that women also know this and are very
innovative at modifying their figures. It’s up to you to figure out
what is real and what is not.
• Some women will wear unbelievably revealing outfits to the gym or
to the pool, but will act offended when you look at them.
• Women spend amazing amounts of time and money on finger and
toe nail appearance. In spite of this, all women think their feet are
ugly.
• Women love to pamper themselves.
• Thongs and high-heeled shoes cannot be comfortable, but thank
goodness women tolerate them.
• Girls, especially in junior high and high school, like to groom each
other. They will brush each other’s hair; paint each other’s nails,
etc. Guys never do this kind of thing at any age.
• Women generally want to wear their hair shorter than their
boyfriend or husband wants them to wear it.
• Women are never satisfied (I could stop the sentence right there,
but won’t) with their hair. If a woman has curly hair then she will
straighten it. If she has straight hair, she will curl it. If she cuts her
long hair off, she’ll wish she had left it long. All women, whether
they admit it or not, sometimes wish they had blonde hair.
• No matter what you see on TV and movies, women generally
prefer men to be clean-shaven and to have hair shorter than theirs
is.
• Women don’t like back hair.
• Almost all old women will have jiggly skin on the back of their
arms. If a woman has this condition before she turns 30, that’s not
so good.
• Women don’t usually care too much if their husbands lose their
hair, as long as they don’t resort to a comb over.
• Most women will change their style over time.
• Men will watch almost any show on TV if it has an attractive
woman wearing a low-cut blouse or a miniskirt showing some
thigh.
• Men never tire of looking at cleavage.
• Women can wear men’s clothing and it’s OK. Men should never
wear women’s clothing. It is gay or at least really stupid. The one
exception for women is if they always wear flannel shirts, men’s
jeans, and hiking boots, plus have really short hair, in which case
they are probably lesbians.
• The attractive female will always be a magnet for a man’s eyes
and attention. You can use this as a motivational tool for yourself
to accomplish important goals. For example, at your gym select a
treadmill that is positioned directly behind another treadmill (or
stair climber, sky machine, etc) that is being used by a woman with
a fantastic J-Lo rear end. Ideally, she will have just started her
workout so you’ll have maximum time available. By simply
focusing on the woman’s behind, you can get a great workout with
minimal awareness of fatigue. In extreme cases, men have
utilized this strategy to run a full marathon WITHOUT PRIOR
TRAINING.
• Even when a woman is not particularly attractive or well endowed,
if she leans over in a revealing way, all the guys will glance down
her blouse.
• Some men, particularly those familiar with auto racing, find terms
like “competition rear end”, “headlights”, “new front clip”, “active
suspension”, “whale tail”, “big trunk”, “racing chassis”, “impact
bumpers”, “high performance”, “convertible top”, etc useful in
describing certain aspects of female anatomy. Women do not fully
appreciate the application of such automotive terminology to their
bodies.
• There are few things more captivating of a man’s attention than a
woman in a tight sweater and short skirt.
• It is said that a woman wearing only fishnet stocking is actually
more naked than a woman wearing nothing. Most guys would be
willing to participate in a lengthy study to find out once and for all.
• You should never look better than the woman you are with. She
should be the center of attention.
• Tight leather pants on the right woman are a very good thing.
• Silk fabrics were clearly designed by a man for women to wear.
That guy was a genius.
• Here’s an interesting test for you: Imagine you are transported
back to a time before the invention of deodorant and toothpaste
and you meet a fantastically beautiful woman. Unfortunately, her
armpits smell like hockey pads at the end of the season and her
breath is like a dead animal. Could get over it?
• Even old ladies are vain about their looks.
• One of the greatest positions for an attractive woman is holding a
softball bat at home plate and waiting on a pitch. It pretty much
accentuates all that is good about her physique. Seeing a woman
swinging a golf club is similarly pleasurable.
• Women change their hair now and then. Some change the color,
length, cut, etc all the time. Some almost never change their hair.
Chances are, if you like it a particular way, she’ll change it to
something else. If you like it the way it is and she asks you how
you’d like her to change it, you’ll be tempted to say, “don’t change
it” to which she’ll say, “but, I’m going to change it”. It’s better to
say “I’ll think you’re beautiful no matter how you have your hair”
than “I don’t want you to change it so if you’re going to, then do
what ever you like because it won’t be what I want”.
• If your wife has some gray in her hair and wants to color it, let her.
Just because gray doesn’t bother you, it doesn’t mean that she
doesn’t care about it. Look at it this way: the fact that it bothers
her means she CARES how she looks. How she looks
DEFINITELY matters to you, so you should be supportive when
she feels the need to color out her gray hair or something like that.
• You will care much more about how your wife looks throughout
your marriage than she cares about how you look. This is not a
free pass to let yourself go, however. When you get older and
start growing long hairs in your ears and on your back, do her a
favor and groom yourself.
• In my opinion, a man’s hair should not be prettier than his wife’s
hair.
• Don’t resort to a comb-over if you start balding. She’ll still love you
if you are bald and will appreciate the fact that you don’t do the
comb over thing.
• If your wife is treated for cancer and loses her hair, you should
shave your head until her hair grows back.
• Women go to great lengths to hide panty lines. Men go to great
lengths to see panty lines.
• Most men and women don’t really mind when men show their age
with wrinkles, a little extra weight, graying hair and male pattern
balding. Most of the time people think it adds “character” to the
man. Those rules don’t apply to women. However unfair, women
are expected to hide aging wherever and however possible.
• It’s been said that any woman can be beautiful when she is old.
This is because an older woman’s beauty is less about a perfect
face and more about her figure and attitude. It’s not always easy
to predict what a woman will look like when she’s old, but you
might try to mentally add about forty years to your girlfriend to see
how she’ll hold up.
• As a man, you know intuitively that you will never be comfortable
wearing a dress, even if you move to Scotland where men still
wear kilts on special occasions. This discomfort certainly has to
do with culture, but it ultimately reveals your deep-seated fear of
leaving your precious “manhood” unsecured. On the other hand,
women ARE comfortable wearing dresses although they have an
even greater concern with protecting their private parts. This
seemingly contradictory behavior reveals a lot of about how
women are different from men. For example, it demonstrates that
they are much more accomplished at dealing with vulnerability
than men. You would do well to explore this topic and others like it
in your quest to better understand women.
• A related behavior that seems contradictory is that a woman will
choose to wear a short skirt or revealing blouse, yet will also
constantly pull down the skirt to cover her legs and clutch the
blouse to keep from revealing too much cleavage. The logical
thing would seem to be to wear something less revealing so you
wouldn’t have to keep adjusting, but a woman doesn’t mind
adjusting her clothes. Either consciously or unconsciously, she
realizes that: 1) the revealing outfit makes her attractive; 2)
adjusting it suggests a certain degree of modesty; and 3) adjusting
 it draws attention to the revealing nature of the clothing. See what
I mean about women being more complicated?
• A lot of old women wear too much perfume. This may have to do
with a declining sense of smell, but I think it has more to do with
them trying to cover up the fact that they are showing their age.
Women never stop being vain, even when they are old. You will
never go wrong complimenting a woman, no matter how old she
is.
 Chapter Thirty-Nine
Color

As noted previously, women are typically much more attuned to their

senses. Often they appreciate things like shading, designs, pairing of
colors or designs, etc much more than the typical heterosexual man.

• Men will discuss colors using primary names such as green, blue,
white, purple, and yellow. When necessary, they will modify them
with “light” and “dark” as necessary.
• Women much prefer color names that evoke additional images (if
not clarity), such as cornflower, eggshell, hunter, periwinkle,
eggplant, teal, brick, sandstone, cinnamon, putty…well, the list is
endless…and confusing to a man.
• The exception to this rule is that men will be rigidly faithful and
utterly unembarrassed about using the “official” color names for
high performance cars, such as: Arctic White, Guards Red, Ferrari
Red, Gulf Blue, Anthracite Gray, Seal Gray, Speed Yellow, British
Racing Green…well, this list is endless, too…and meaningless to
women.
• The other exception to this rule is that women will use primary
color names derisively, as in, “She wore that horrible green dress”
or “He drives that awful yellow car”.
• Women can match generally clothing colors much better than
men. Most women know the complex and confusing rules of
putting together various patterns and fabrics.
• Men generally rely on their wives’ advice in matching colors,
fabrics, and patterns. Women almost never listen to their
husbands for that type of advice.
• Men learn a few simple rules at the men’s store and rarely push
the limits. For example, an ambiguously gay sales clerk at a
men’s store will say that you should treat striped dress shirts as
solids when matching ties. A man will be somewhat dubious that
this could really be true, but will grasp on to this “rule” as
justification when he is forced to wear a striped shirt because he
failed to stop by the cleaners the previous day.
 Chapter Forty
Temperature
A woman is rarely happy with the temperature. In my experience,
they are generally cold when I am just right. This probably has a lot
to do with the clothing they wear. Let’s face it, a sleeveless dress
doesn’t offer much insulation. Also, I think women’s skin is much
more sensitive.

• It is a proven fact that married couples always have opposite

temperature preferences—i.e., if he is hot natured, then she will be
cold-natured or vice-versa.
• The differing temperature preferences will require negotiation and
accommodation to find an acceptable détente’.
• The temperature preference issue becomes particularly noticeable
when you travel away from home and stay in a hotel. It’s difficult
enough to regulate the temperature in a hotel room, but for two
people to be happy with it—not easy.
• Certain extremities of a woman’s body are always cold—typically
her hands and feet. Women love to warm their cold extremities
and will show no mercy in placing cold feet or hands against you,
particularly in bed.
• If a woman in your company is cold and you have a jacket, you
should offer it to her even if you will then be cold and
uncomfortable.
• If you find yourself frequently giving your jacket to your wife and
then being cold, you may want to remind her right before you leave
home that it may be chilly. Do not say that you are tired of giving
her your jacket since that reveals the fact that you are not really a
gentleman.
 Chapter Forty-One
Body Language

Reading a woman’s body language is really important. It’s also

impossible. Here’s a helpful chart on the meaning of a woman’s body
language and facial expressions. I included what the same thing
might mean in a man for comparison purposes.

Behavior towards In a woman it may In a man it may

the opposite mean… mean…
sex
Smiling • She is happy • He wants sex
• She is sad • He just had sex
• She is mad • His team is winning
• She likes you
• She hates you
• She thinks you are
cute and harmless
• She might be open
for sex
• She might not be
open for sex
• It has nothing to do
with you
• She’s scheming
• She wants you to
change the baby
Frowning • She is mad at you • He wants sex
• She broke a nail • He’s disappointed at
• She is trying to do not getting sex
math in her head • His team is losing
• She realized you’ve • Something is wrong
done something with his car
stupid • He’s trying to think
• She is trying to about something
decide how to say other than sex
‘no’ to sex with you • He’s trying to cook
 • She realizes you’ve more than one thing
slipped away at a time
without changing
the baby
Crying • She is happy • He wants sex
• She is sad • Someone died
• She is mad • His team lost in the
• She likes you finals
• She hates you • He found out he’s
• She feels romantic not getting sex.
• She saw a sappy Again.
movie
Laughing • She is happy • He wants sex
• She is sad • He beat a friend at
• She is mad something
• She likes you • His team won
• She hates you • He thinks something
• She thinks you are is funny
funny or silly • His boss told a lame
• She thinks you look joke
like a moron
• She wants another
woman to think the
two of you are
having fun together
Arms crossed • She is really mad • He wants sex
• She is wondering • He’s trying to make
why you are so late his biceps look
• She is not going to bigger
have sex with you • He’s impatient
• She is cold waiting for her
• She is cold and • He’s mad
mad that you
haven’t offered her
your jacket
Leaning back with Women never do this • He wants sex
fingers interlinked • He is relaxed
behind head • He is the alpha male
in the group
Hands on hips • She’s mad • He wants sex
 • She disapproves • He has just finished
• She’s about to start running
a cheer
Staring • She likes you • He wants sex
• She hates you • He can’t take his
• She is mad at you eyes of her
• He’s acting like he is
listening to her, but
is really thinking
about how sexy she
looks
Squinting • She forgot her • He wants sex
contacts or glasses • He’s totally baffled
• She’s mad at you by her
• She’s trying to
decide if she’s mad
at you
• She has no idea
what you are
talking about
• She’s trying to do
math in her head
• She’s debating
whether to have
sex with you
Winking • She likes you • He wants sex
• She sees you as • He’s putting the
cute and harmless move on her
• She has something
in her eye
Waving • She is trying to get • He wants sex
your attention
• She is trying to get
someone else’s
attention
• She’s saying ‘hello’
• She’s saying
‘goodbye’
• She is dismissing
you
 • She is a beauty
queen and you are
one of her subjects
Pounding fist on • She’s mad at you • He wants sex
the table • She broke a nail • He’s mad
• His team just scored
• He just beat his
friend at something
Pounding head on Women don’t do this • He wants sex
the wall • He just got told ‘no’
by her
• He just got dumped
by her
Sitting quietly • She’s content • He wants sex
• She’s scheming
• She’s hoping you
won’t hit on her
• She’s hoping you
will hit on her
Leaning forward • She’s interested in • He wants sex
you
• She’s interested in
something else
• She’s about to tell
you to pound sand
• She’s reaching for
something
Leaning away • She thinks you • He wants sex
have bad breath
• She’s not interested
in you
• She’s looking at
that bad tie-shirt
combo you picked
out
Yelling • She’s really, really • He wants sex
mad at you • He’s mad
• You woke the baby • His team just scored
• The other team just
scored
 • She said ‘yes’ to sex
• She said ‘no’ to sex
Whispering • The baby is asleep • He wants sex
• He’s playing golf
• He’s trying to be
romantic
Nodding head • She means ‘yes’ • He wants sex
• She means ‘no’ • He means ‘yes’
• She’s thinking • His team is in the
about it process of scoring
Shaking head • She means ‘no’ • He wants sex
• She means ‘yes’ • He means ‘no’
• She thinks you are • The other team is in
a cretin the process of
• She’s mad scoring
• She thinks you’re
funny or silly
• She hates your
driving
• She’s getting the
hair out of her face
Patting your leg • She is saying ‘no’ • He wants sex
to sex • He thinks he can get
• She is saying ‘yes’ away with it
to sex
Holding a rolling • She’s about to Men don’t do this (but
pin make homemade he still wants sex)
biscuits for you
• She’s about to kill
you
Pursing lips • She’s getting ready • He wants sex
to kiss you
• She’s thinking
• She’s getting ready
to say ‘no’
• She realizes you
went to Hooters
instead of Home
Depot like you said
 Chapter Forty-Two
Superpowers

Women are much more advanced creatures than men and are thus
superior beings. This doesn’t really bother most men. I think we take
solace in our greater physical strength and general ability to operate
mechanical things.

• In spite of the fact that women are superior creatures, there are a
few things they don’t seem to be able to do well or perhaps, don’t
want to do, that enable men to have positions of power and
responsibility. A few women hate this, but most women seem to
deal with it just fine because they know how much control they
really have over the men in their lives.
• Most women learn early how to effectively manipulate others,
especially men, through indirect methods. Most men are clueless
when a woman is manipulating them, but it’s sometimes possible
and fascinating to observe it in another relationship.
• Women have keen powers of observation and can read your mood
from the slightest movement of your eyebrow or change in your
voice tone. They can hear a baby cry in another room in the
middle of a thunderstorm. They can discern the slightest color or
fabric mismatch in clothing.
• With no effort whatsoever, a woman can remember precisely what
every other woman was wearing at a party.
• A woman’s exceptional powers of observation apparently do not
extend, however, to avoiding curbs and other hard things that
damage expensive alloy wheels.
• Men are naturally savages and would be happy as such. Women
use their superpower of persistence to drive men to become
civilized and do great things. I have no idea how or why they do
that.
• Women can comfortably do several things at once. We call this
multi-tasking. Men cannot do this effectively. Any woman can
simultaneously talk on the phone, feed a baby, watch TV, read a
magazine, make dinner for the rest of the family, and mouth
directions to her husband. A man can do one of these things at a
 time and, if interrupted, will be totally distracted and incapable of
doing anything productive for ten minutes or more afterwards.
• An attractive woman wearing a short dress can completely shut
down the brain of a man for up to a minute by simply crossing her
legs.
• There will be times that you, as a male, are in the company of very
tough, intimidating men. Perhaps those men are in an argument
and preparing to fight. Unless you have secretly developed Bruce
Lee-like martial arts skills, you will probably keep well out of their
way to avoid getting drawn in. That’s the wise thing. You may
also be amazed to see a woman, perhaps a tiny older woman step
right in the middle of the impending fracas and tell those men to
grow up. In most instances, the men will sulk off. In moments like
this you will realize that women have an altogether different kind of
power over men. In this case it has nothing to do with sexual
attraction, but rather with a woman’s remarkable sixth sense for
the emotional environment and how to manage men, particularly
when they are acting savagely.
 Chapter Forty-Three
Jealousy

Jealousy is a very common emotional response, but that doesn’t

make it a good thing. It reflects a natural tendency of both sexes to
control and protect something they value. Sometimes it is impossible
to prevent. Most of the time it creates problems and, if allowed to
fester, causes serious and often permanent damage to relationships.

• You should never purposely try to make your wife or girlfriend

jealous, no matter how much you may think she deserves it.
• As previously noted, women learn early in life to manipulate and
control men through subtle, indirect methods. Making a man
jealous is one of the more effective means exerting control.
• There are myriad methods a woman may use to make you jealous.
She might mention seeing one of her old boyfriends and comment
on something personal about him—perhaps the cologne he still
wears or how strong his hands are—with the objective of making
you wonder if she’s more attracted to him than to you.
• What can you do about it? It’s not possible (for most of us
anyway) to turn off or ignore our spontaneous jealous feelings. It
is possible to prepare ahead of time to effectively deal with such
situations. I would suggest the following:
o Treat her right. If you consistently show your wife or
girlfriend respect and pay attention to her, she will be less
likely to try to use jealousy to confirm that you care about
here. Notice I said “be less likely” rather “never”.
o Have some self-respect. You are a pretty good guy, right?
She’s going out with or even married to YOU, not some
other guy, so there must have been something she found
attractive in you. You scored this hot woman and have the
right to be a little proud of yourself for that.
o Remember that other guys will find her attractive and will flirt
with her. It is going to happen. Doesn’t it feel kind of good
to have a girlfriend or wife that other men are jealous of?
o Contemplate life without her. You lived without her before
the relationship started, so no matter how much you love
 and feel you need her, it is in fact possible for you to survive
without her. I’m at all not suggesting you split up, but rather
that you recognize this so that the initial jealous feeling
doesn’t spiral into a full-blown “if I lost her, it would be
terrible and I’d never be happy…blah, blah, blah”. The fact
is, you’re a man and if push came to shove, you could find
another woman.
o Develop some positive questions to ask her when the
jealousy-inducing situation arises. This is important for two
reasons. First, it keeps you from asking the instinctive
questions that will get you in trouble (eg, Why were you
talking to him? What was he doing there? Do you like him
better than me?). Second, it puts you on the offensive.
Some suggestions:
 How did you feel when you saw him?
 What is he doing these days?
 Epilogue
Women Get Older

Women do not like the thought of aging. They are programmed to

look young and attractive all the time. They know that their bodies
change as the get older and they do not like most of the changes.
There are certain complications that come into play at key age
milestones:
• Thirty—She hears her biological clock ticking—gotta get married,
have babies, live in house with white picket fence, etc. She still
feels like a “young woman” but also feels like a grownup. She’s
probably a lot more mature than you are at thirty and she’s
wondering when you will start acting your age. Your job is to make
her pregnant and be a good father and husband.
• Forty—She starts to realize she’s not a “young woman” anymore
and has self-doubts. Even if she seems very mature and well-
grounded, there are all kinds of new concerns bouncing around in
her brain. This is a dangerous time if you are not careful. Your job
is to be a good provider and help get the kids through high school
and college.
• Fifty—She now knows she is not a “young woman” and has
probably started menopause, yet still feels like the same person
inside—How can that be?? I don’t feel old, yet my body is starting
to fall apart. Your job is to deal as best you can with the
menopause symptoms and try to make her feel young now and
then.
• Sixty—She is past menopause, which is good, but is now starting
to realize she is getting “old”. She’s aware of her mortality, but if
your marriage is good, she is probably looking forward to
retirement with you. Your job is to make her feel wanted and
secure.
• Seventy—She may not look it, but her body is getting old and
fragile. She has some permanent aches and pains. She probably
takes some medications and has some wrinkles. Your job is to be
at her side and enjoy spending time with her.
• Eighty—She knows for certain that she is an old woman now, yet
part of her can’t believe it. She is reminded frequently as other
 people her age get really ill and die. There’s a pretty good
possibility that you are one of them and it breaks her heart. Your
job is to have provided for her old age so she can live out her
years in relative comfort.
• Ninety—She is very old. If her mind is still good and she is a
sweet person, she is happy to see relatives and get letters now
and then. It’s hard for grandchildren to imagine her as a young
girl, but inside she still feels like one.

Somewhere along the way, she dies, too. The most complicated,
amazing creation stops breathing and returns to her creator.