THE FULL TEXT Man Overboard: A Self Defence Course For Men In Marriage

My name is Michael Kiely, I have written a short book for men who are losing the battle of the sexes. It offers a radical solution that has been proven in field trials in Australia. I am seeking a publisher and posted the manuscript here for 18 months to gather reader reactions.

It is now available for purchase online at www.savemarriagebook.com at a very low price. Thanks to everyone who read the manuscript and made comments. We have had 450 test readers. The vast majority agreed: this book is essential reading for any man wanting a new and more effective approach to dealing with the woman in their life.

..........

MAN OVERBOARD

A Self Defence Course for Men in Marriage

by Michael Kiely

READERS REACTIONS

400+ people from all walks of life and age groups "test read" the book in manuscript form.

Women love it.

"It is a validation of how every woman feels but fails to communicate to her husband." 40 year old Gold Coast businesswoman.

“It spoke to my heart and represented me and my deepest needs, desires... Just reading it freed something inside of me." 35 year old woman from North Carolina.

“I read it in one sitting and was rivetted. As a woman, wife and mother I found it refreshing. As a psychotherapist I believe it will be useful.” Marie B.

“I have been married to the same man for thirty three years. I would say that communication is the hardest thing for a couple to learn. Men and Women think differently. I loved the book. It is a masterpiece. When it goes to print may I please buy four copies. I run tourist accomodation... I would like to put a copy in every suite or perhaps I should sell it for you. Pam

Men in crisis love it:

Male, 40+, MD, ad agency, divorced "I've read a lot of these books. When my marriage was on the rocks I read many of them and found most of them a waste of time. Anyway to you book. I like the fact that it's short. I
think too many of the books I read were just filling space because they had
too. Men from Mars is a good example. I also like the quotes you have
scattered through the book. I found myself moved by some of the anecdotes
about your own relationship. I think many American books are not as frank
about how hard this is. Relationships involve a lot of pain and insights are
in my experience hard to come by. You've been pretty frank about how hard
it is and I think that's somewhat comforting. It's a good idea - most books
in this space are too long and a bit idealistic."

30-something male, married 15 years: “I thoroughly enjoyed it. I just couldn’t put it down! I found it very easy to read. I read the book without my wife’s knowledge and went about using some of the strategies you mentioned, and they worked. I can relate to what you said, and I woke up to what my wife was really saying, and our relationship has improved.
I have recommended my mates read this book.”

Michael,
Thanks for the manuscript and have been reading it during my lunch
breaks. Its truly inspiring. My life has mirrored yours to some extent. I was married for nearly fifteen years at the time and I knew not every thing was great. So one night in bed I sat up and asked my wife what was wrong. She sat up and said that she stilled loved me but did not want to live with me any
more. Being hit by a Mack truck could not have hurt more. All the
questions that flooded my mind.... how could I live with out her, the
kids(2),would they be calling some one else dad, who would live with
who, was there an affair(there was), what had I done that was so wrong
etc etc.
We actually held the marriage together with a lot of sole searching and
talking and the fact that I would not let go. As it turns out I was
doing some of the things in the book but if I had seen this book to read
then, I'm sure we would have been back on track sooner. It took about 18
months before happy families again. I have read some books on the
subject. Of these I found Steven Covey's book Seven habit of highly
effective Families the best but it did not hit on purely the husband and
wife relationship, more the family situation. Our marriage now (5 years
on) is still good but now it's going to be great. I have used some of
the thing written about in your book since getting it over a week ago and
things have never been better.
There is the old saying "If the wife is happy, life's happy" Now I know
why. This book should be an attachment to any marriage certificate and
may be the divorce rate might be reduced.
In the preface you mentioned Ramin who was planning workshops?? Is this
a work shop for the contents of this book. It occurred to me while
reading the book that it could so easily be turned into a quick 3 hour
work shop for men or packaged so that it could be a self help package
distributed via councillors, help groups, churches,etc. Not as a book
but self help cards with main points and a brief exercise that follows.
Just a thought... God knows how many men need it........

Thanks again for sharing this with us,
Regards Merv.


Endorsed by the Fatherhood Foundation:

“'Man Overboard' by Michael Kiely is a breakthrough book, designed to help men rescue and renew their marriage relationships. Michael has been married for over 30 years, has three children and a background in business and marketing. He shares with his readers how he rescued his own marriage when it went into crisis mode. 'Man Overboard' is short (100 pages), filled with headlines, valuable insights and quotations and doesn't beat around the bush. Every man should read this book if he is serious about staying married. Michael Kiely's book will give you keys to win the battle of love and save your marriage from destruction. But beware, this book is only for the brave. The fainthearted should not read this book.' – Warwick Marsh

Other writers love it:

“It’s a cracking read (and will be of help in my own life).” Paul Ham, author,” Kokoda”

“You have some fantastic material. You offer a unique perspective that in a way rolls the debate back 50 years, yet is a radical alternative. It will be very controversial which will be good for sales and your profile.” Jill Margo, MEN’SISSUES writer, Australian Financial Review

Not all writers love it

I've read the work. One word: crap. I'm glad your wife is still around. I can't imagine why. The thing reads like an advertisement for race-tipping software. It reeks of marketing insincerity. My only suggestion is to scrap it and try to write a brief and honest text under a title such as A SHORT MEDITATION ON KEEPING THE WOMAN YOU LOVE. I am sure this advice will be of no use whatsoever to you. Yours, with fond memories. Peter (Temple – award-winning crime writer)


Finally it checks out with counsellors as valid:

Female, 52, Marriage Guidance Counsellor, divorced: "Started to read your book at work today… very difficult to put it down… found it very informative, funny at times, but very sad to think we hurt each other so unnecessarily… Robert is keen to read it… I think women will love what you have to say… your explanations of relationship patterns are pretty accurate from the female perspective…

DRAFT manuscript Author MICHAEL KIELY; 02 9484 6761; 02 6374 0329; 0417 280 540 MAN OVERBOARD
A self-defence course for men in marriage A survival guide for husbands and lovers who are losing the eternal struggle between man and woman FLASH: Less than 100 pages - A man-sized book about love
There's only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn what it is I'll get married again. -Clint Eastwood There is only one way to have a happy marriage and I think I’ve found it. - Michael Kiely
BACK COVER What you will find INSIDE: • First aid for marriage in crisis • Instant pain relief
• Tactics to turn the tables • Return to incredible sex
• 10 Secrets of the female mind • 30 ways to win a woman’s love… again WARNING: THIS BOOK IS ONLY FOR THE FOLLOWING READERS Men...
[ ] who are losing their woman [ ] who want to secure their current relationship [ ] who want to have more loving relationships with women [ ] who feel their woman has lost respect for them [ ] who feel controlled in their love relationship [ ] who find themselves enduring her emotional outbursts without knowing why [ ] who want more sex in their love relationship [ ] who want to know how their partner's mind works [ ] who have been hurt in their love relationships Women... [ ] preparing to leave him [ ] who can't understand why men are so stupid when it comes to love [ ] who have been hurt so many times they’ve given up on men [ ] who need to be convinced that there are men out there who can love them in the way they need to feel loved [ ] who have kissed too many frogs and have lost faith that Prince Charming exists A SPECIAL WARNING FOR WOMEN: Resist the urge to jam this book under your adorable man's nose and demand he read it. Field trials prove that doing so will have the reverse effect of what you are seeking. A FINAL WARNING FOR MEN: When you start using the techniques you will find in this book, your partner will be overcome with curiosity and delight. Do not reveal the source of your ideas – this book. Let’s keep it our little secret. No woman wants to feel she is so adorable you had to get a recipe book to find out how to express your adoration. If you must reveal your source, tell her this book only confirmed what you’ve been thinking about for some time… Good luck.
AUTHOR’S BIO

Michael Kiely is a writer, composer, journalist, musician, speaker, woolgrower, father, grandfather and husband. He lives at “Uamby”, a grazing property beside the Cudgegong River in Goolma, in the Central West of New South Wales.



INSIDE

Preface

If you get anything of value from this book, don’t thank me. Thank the following people who made it happen:

This book started as a series of emails to a bright, funny man called Ramin. The first man I ever gave advice to about this stuff. Ramin Marzbani who said, “I don’t have time to read all those books. You write a small book with the ideas in it.” Ramin who insisted on planning the seminar/workshop series, said he’d help in any way, found the money to get us started, called himself my ‘first disciple’. Ramin is responsible for this small book. Thank Ramin.

God, the Universe, or something I don’t understand also sent Warwick Marsh to help me. He runs the Fatherhood Foundation with his wife Alison. He believed in me when I didn’t. Made me see how sacred was the task. Like Jake and Elwood Blues, we can say: “No ma’am, we’re musicians. We’re on a mission from God.” Thank Warwick.

Thank Gary Martin, from Living Valley Springs in Kin Kin, who offered to take the first bulk order of the book for his shop. No messing about.

There are around 450 people who read the manuscript and commented. Thank them, too. They had a strong influence on rewriting the manuscript.

Thank Linda Smith from That’s Life magazine for editing the manuscript on her vacation when she had just become engaged to my friend Simon. Simon’s encouragement and insight was also inspiring. Thank Simon.

Thanks to Robyn Henderson from Seachange Publishing who taught me how to self publish in less than a day.

But my eternal gratitude goes to the person about whom this book was written: Louisa. She has remained true to the Path of Love since that fateful day I met her in 1972. Risking everything for True Love. Enduring any amount of pain for True Love. Because Love is the answer, the door, the journey. I simply followed her. She is proof that God loves me.

Michael Kiely
Goolma, May 2007

Contents:

Is your marriage in crisis?
Why fight for your marriage?
Is this book for you?
She was planning to leave me… again
Does this sound like your life?
Why your marriage is a battlefield
Women on the front foot
Finding your perfect match
Putting you back on the front foot
Only one of you has to change
The tactic that puts you on top immediately
Lots of unbelievable sex
First aid for sick marriages
Why me? It’s not fair
What a woman wants
Reawakening the passion
How to woo a woman everyday
Behold the toilet brush
The two spaces
A note about pain
What if it doesn’t work?
A long term strategy
Are you on “The Path”?
The groom proposes a toast to the bride
A list of other useful books

Introduction On the 26th of November, 2003 my wife Louisa stood beside me in the rose garden of our property “Uamby” to renew the wedding vows we had made 25 years before. Nothing dramatic about that. But six months before this ceremony she had been planning to leave! She had decided our love was dead. She had felt this way for a long time. She was out the door – not physically, but mentally and emotionally. Gone. But I didn’t know. I thought we were fine. I was devastated when I found out. Once a woman has made that decision, it is usually impossible to drag her back. But in the next three months a miracle happened. I was able to convince her to stay, to pursue her quest for True Love with me, Mr Sad Sack - who'd bungled his love affair with his wife so badly that she’d left him once before and was leaving him again. How did I do it? She wasn’t a push over. The first time she'd walked out – when our first child was only 3 months old - it was because she would not accept a comfortable, tolerable existence if it meant she couldn’t have what she dreamed of, yearned for, and insisted upon: True Love. That time I somehow managed to scramble back into the marriage, but this time she meant business. Three kids and 25 years later she was convinced she'd made the wrong choice. I was never going to be her Prince Charming.
I am proud to tell you that I saved my marriage this time, too. But better than that, I secured my marriage. It scares me to think how close I came to losing it, again. But I dragged it back from the brink. I did it. And you can do it too, using the approach outlined in this book. MISSION POSSIBLE The Mission of this book is to cut the divorce rate in half. Wipe out all that agony and bitterness and hopelessness and destruction and futility. I believe it is possible. You can help make it happen. I would like to hear of your experiences with the ideas you find here. Email me at Michael@newhorizon.au.com

BACK ON THE FRONT FOOT This book is about saving marriages. It cannot solve your problem for you. Only you can do that. It cannot tell you what to do in your case. Only you can decide that. It cannot give you the words to say. Only you can find them within yourself. But this book can give you hope because it contains in its pages a plan that worked for me and is working for others. It’s a bold plan, a revolutionary plan for reviving love and putting you on the front foot in the battle of the sexes. It asks a lot of you, especially the courage to fight in a totally new way that doesn’t make sense. But you really have no choice. It’s a case of “No guts, no girl.” Only you can decide if it is right for you. I know it is right for your opponent. I know your opponent. She is the Universal Warrior of Love. Woman. Skilled in the trench warfare of marriage, wily, well-supported and well-armed. Your strongest suit in this game is your ability to hang in. You’ll need it. But even if you’re only hanging by a thread, you’re still in the game. And within striking distance of victory. All the gods are with you. Because Love is the force that makes the Universe hang together, makes the planets spin round the Sun, and makes Nature work. Your greatest weapon is the Love hidden within you. Here’s to setting it free. And setting you and your partner free from this unwinnable struggle for control of each other. Good luck.
[“Women: you can’t live with them. Pass the beer nuts.” – Norm Peterson, Cheers!]









Is your marriage in crisis? Is your marriage in crisis? Try this quick quiz.
A. Are you married? Y/N B. Are you married? Y/N C. Are you married? Y/N D. Are you married? Y/N E. Are you married? Y/N
If you answered 'Yes' to one of these questions, there is a 99% chance your marriage is currently in crisis, recently been in crisis, about to go into crisis, or on a slow burn towards crisis. There is an epidemic of crisis in marriage today. I meet men everyday who are facing divorce or separation. … are about to… or who are locked in a cold war with their lovers. And men who have war stories to tell. When it all blows up they are usually the last to know and they are shocked to find that the relationship, which they believed to be set in stone, was actually built on a lie.
[One advantage of marriage it seems to me is that when you fall out of love with him or he falls out of love with you it keeps you together until maybe you fall in again. - Judith Viorst]
It is a rare marriage today that is not in crisis, going into crisis, or coming out of crisis. … intact or ended. The stark reality is hidden by the number of women just biding their time, waiting to push the eject button. Women are bailing out on relationships , and men are not equipped to handle the fall out. Women have more emotional strength to call on and usually have greater support networks of close friends and relatives with whom they can share their emotions and troubles. Most men, on the other hand, live emotionally isolated lives, and are stripped bare when they are abandoned.
[The course of true love never did run smooth. – William Shakespeare]
The male victims of this trend are often blasé, too confident of their partner's loyalty, taking it for granted that she’ll stand by her man. “Of course, we have our tiffs,” they’ll say, “but she’s reasonably happy.” In fact, they don’t know. They’ve never asked. They cannot read the signals their wives send because men and women are worlds apart in the way they think and how they try to communicate. They never tell you upfront what’s going on. You are supposed to know. The truth is that many women who appear happy (or not unhappy) have been silently angry and wounded for years and are planning to do something about it. They are, in effect, like time bombs, slowly ticking towards an explosion that will shatter his world and announce the start of her new life. She will be supported by the court system, family members and girlfriends. He is more likely to be alone, because he leaned entirely on her for emotional support.
I’ve been through it. It can rip your heart out and leave you bitter and shattered. But it doesn’t have to be that way. My marriage survived and is now stronger than it has ever been. The good side of this epidemic is that you are not alone. It is hurting everyone. You’re not some poor dumb loser; you’re just a man in a modern marriage. Crisis is normal. Everyone’s doing it tough, no matter what they say. You’ll discover in this book that crisis is also the sign of a healthy marriage because it is part of the game. It’s not the crisis that is dangerous – it’s how you handle it. This book gives you a strategy to survive and thrive through crisis.
[For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of our tasks; the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. - Rainer Maria Rilke]
Why fight for your marriage? Why fight for a marriage that’s gone sour? Is it worth it, if there’s so much misery? This is what I was asked by a well-known Australian journalist. Many people believe in disposable relationships – if this one gets a little worn, toss it out and get a new one. But running away from the problem doesn’t solve it. You see, the problem runs away with you. You unpack your emotional baggage in the next relationship and there it is, labelled “My Big Problem with Relationships”. Everyone has one. That’s the big joke: we point the finger at the other party when our love affairs break down. But the main culprit is there, behind the pointing finger. Is it worth fighting for a marriage? Think of this: Divorce is financially disastrous for everyone. Divorce can cripple your family’s wealth, destroying everything you’ve busted your arse for since Day 1. It can have a dramatic affect on your children, leaving them feeling abandoned and setting them up for relationship problems of their own in the future. And it doesn’t deliver on its biggest promise: greater happiness for at least one party.
[However good or bad you feel about your relationship, the person you are with at this moment is the right person because he or she is a mirror of how you are inside. – Deepak Chopra]
People who bail out of marriage are generally no happier than those who stay and fight for their marriage, according to University of Chicago studies in the 1980s and 1990s. Divorce is not the answer in most cases. And because the problems travel with the partners into new relationships, it’s better to stay put and solve the problem than seek greener grass on the other side. Second and third marriages fall apart faster and more often than first marriages.
Married people are also usually healthier, wealthier, happier and enjoy more sex than singles or divorcees, according to British research. Married men live longer. So saving your marriage could mean saving your life.
[It takes a long time to be really married. One marries many times at many different levels within a marriage. If you have more marriages than you have divorces within the marriage, you're lucky and you stick it out. - Ruby Dee]
So, you can go through all the expense and trauma and find yourself no better off, in fact worse off because of the First Eternal Law of Marriage: Marriage is an investment over time. It is about intimacy – learning about each other and how to respond to each other’s needs. If you go back to “Start” you lose all the ground you’ve made so far. Learning to love and be loved takes a lifetime. It’s hard work, especially for males. Look at this: “Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century,” says Mark Twain.

So we arrive at the first of the Eternal Laws of Marriage: “Marriage is an investment over time.”

[The First Eternal Law of Marriage: Marriage is an investment over time.]
There are 10 Laws, each one as Eternal as Life and Love themselves. But they can’t help you unless you really want to be helped. Do you really want to save your marriage? Are you convinced that you want to spend the rest of your life with this woman? Are you committed? Do you have the guts to truly love your wife? Are you prepared to do whatever it takes to win her hand and her heart? If you are, you have the best chance of success and happiness will be yours. Make this commitment to yourself now and this book could be the key to your salvation.

[A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person. - Mignon McLaughlin]
Rules of the House Before we proceed, here are the rules of the house: Rule 1: Don’t reject the ideas given in this book if they don’t make sense to you. Test the advice against your own experience. Be cautious. Put me to the test. But what’s the alternative? If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got. Kicked in the teeth.
Rule 2: Seek help if you feel you are chronically depressed or suffer from a psychological disorder that is making it difficult to enjoy normal relationships. If you “hate” women, you need help. I saw my first counsellor more than 30 years ago and have used them whenever I’ve felt the need to sort myself out. It doesn’t mean you’re looney if you see a psychologist – the real looney is the person who needs help and won't ask for it. Rule 3: Life is about having fun. Have fun with the stuff in this book. Push yourself. I dare you to outrage some people with the New You. Enjoy their reactions.

[I’ve decided not to get married again. Instead I’m going to find a bitch I hate and give her a house. – Nigel Milan]
Who am I to talk? I have no formal training in marriage guidance, counselling, psychology, not even a first aid diploma. But I am a man and I have made every mistake a man can make with women… and lived to tell the tale. I have been deeply and almost terminally wounded by Love. I have lived for more than 30 years with my wife in a vigorous and at times physically dangerous relationship. Since my early teens I have been pursuing the answer to the eternal question: “What does love mean?” I have read many books on the subject of Love and Sexual Politics. The more I read, the less I knew. I am still ignorant of it in many ways. But I am on The Path and she is on The Path with me. But what right have I talk about Love? The same right St Paul had to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Paul was struck off his horse by a flash of light on the road to Damascus, where he was persecuting the Christians. His 'incident' floored him; he heard voices and lost his sight. The voices told him in an instant everything he needed to know about Christ. He felt the presence of the dead and risen religious leader, heard his voice in his head. He had trouble convincing Christ's followers that he was a changed man. (My experience has been the same - when persecutor becomes devotee, it sounds like baloney.)
[“Immediately his ears were opened, and the impediment of his tongue was loosened, and he spoke plainly.” – Mark 7:35]
I was struck off my high horse one morning after meditating. Here’s what happened: I was sitting over by the window, having just finished meditating for half an hour. Louisa, my wife, was sitting propped up on the bed opposite me, still meditating. We’d been practicing meditation for six years – spending half an hour each morning and evening just relaxing, with eyes closed, repeating some special sounds (a mantra) in our minds. It is deeply relaxing and your mind can sometimes slip into a special zone where insights and inspirations can happen. I just was sitting there, singing silently in my mind the words of a song I wrote when my wife and I were separated for a year after the birth of our first child - she left me for another man three months after the baby was born. That’s was 26 years before. The pain of it still haunted me to that day. During our separation I wrote a lot of songs as a way of dealing with the pain. The words of one of them were running through my mind seconds before the ‘incident’ that changed my life forever. The lyrics of the last verse include the lines: ”…To the sound of someone crying In my empty, open room.”
When I wrote the song all those years ago I never knew who was doing the crying - it could have been one of the many girls I fell in and out of love with during my separation. It could have been me. But at that instant, while day-dreaming about some old lyrics, I was shocked by a startling vision of a human heart. It was floating in the air, pulsing. And it was being protected by two small hands. There was a curtain of tears streaming behind it, like a waterfall, but uniform drops… And I could hear faint crying, sort of sobbing. I knew instantly something I’d never considered before - that the one crying in my empty, open room was my wife, Louisa. And I knew instantly, without being told, that the reason she had treated me so cruelly and left in the first place was because she needed to seek elsewhere for the love I could not give her - True Love .
[My heart was split, and a flower appeared; and grace sprang up; and bore fruit for my God. – Song of Solomon, Old Testament]
Suddenly I knew, without being told, everything about Louisa's longing to be loved. But more than that, I knew instantly about every woman's longing to be loved. Every woman’s longing for True Love. I saw how we men have been hoodwinked into accepting second-rate emotion for Love. And I saw how little we men knew about the inner life of woman.
[Spiritual ecstasy is not a feeling or an idea but a shift in perception in which direct contact with spirit is made. – Deepak Chopra]
I felt like the character from Tales of Arabian Nights who scaled the walls of the harem and saw the private lives of the women there... and escaped with his life to tell the tale. I had this glimpse into the female mind, and what a different mind it is. We are different to women in the deepest spiritual and emotional ways. I now understand the fundamental design problem that sets man and women at war with each other... It’s no one's fault. We're built to fight each other. The wonder of it all is that we keep trying to love each other. We are hard-wired to search of love. That is the Love Imperative. It is inescapable. It resonates in all the cells of our bodies. If we want love – and we do – we have to fight for it. The Second Eternal Law of Marriage is this: we all of us want, need, and spend our lives seeking for love.
[The Second Eternal Law of Marriage: Everyone has a deep need to love and be loved.]
I also saw how we men commit every day The Giant Insult: reducing women to beasts of burden and scullery maids - roles like mother and wife that turn them into mere servants. We rob them of their self-respect as human beings. We refuse to acknowledge their integrity.

My wife is a person just like me, who has dreams and ambitions that were crushed in the "Relationship Trap". Wanting to be a good girlfriend, wife, and mother, she sacrificed her individuality, told by Society that this was the correct course. (Girls are such goodie goodies, they are suckers for this sort of pressure. Remember at school?) Each time we simply leave an item of clothing on the floor we are saying "You are my servant". This naturally has created inside women a reservoir of resentment that emerges in the torture chamber of marriage in the form of an attack that proves the male cannot do a thing right.

["Many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see and did not see it, and to hear what you hear and did not hear it.” – Matthew 13:16-17]
These and many other things I saw. Deepak Chopra described what happened to me in that moment, in his book 'The Path to Love'. “One of the most beautiful proofs of ecstasy is delivered in a moment of inspiration,” he says. “We suddenly see the truth, we gain insight, clarity, and objectivity.”
This is me - no track record, no qualifications. Just a guy who had a vision and who has read a few books and thinks he understands what a male can do to achieve Nirvana: a True Love relationship with your girlfriend, lover, wife, whoever the lucky person is to whom you are tied by Chains of Love. Lashed together and lashing each other. She was planning to leave me… again The instant after my vision of the Crying Heart, I jumped up and rushed over to my wife with tears streaming down my face – I threw myself down on her breast and said “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I know. I know.” And in that instant she somehow knew what I meant because she said the fateful words: “You are so lucky. You are so protected.” Protected? What could she mean? By this it turned out she meant she had already made plans to leave me a second time. Our 25th wedding anniversary was coming up. Now that our children had all grown up and we were no longer struggling financially, she felt we would drift apart. But things would be OK now, wouldn’t they, I wanted to know? I was a different person. I could feel love, True Love. Now I knew what she needed and felt an endless stream of love coming out of me. And it was then that I discovered that it may be too late to save my marriage. She had already shifted into the departure lounge. She told me there was a piece of her heart that was numbed, that might be reached by someone else… and that she was keeping her options open! Mr Perfect could appear at any moment.
[True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen. - Francois, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)]
I went into shock. I thought my Big Miraculous Change was all that was needed. But after 25 years of disappointment, she wasn’t going to believe me. She had no trust in me. She was wounded and frightened of giving me the love that she’d offered so many times in the past and that I’d rebuffed. She resented all the years I had been unavailable to her and the kids as a truly loving father and husband. And now there was another guy – no one in particular, but she was open to offers. This news stuck me like a knife in the guts. I could do two things. Either give up… or fight for my wife. I loved her and I was not going to lose her again. I decided I was going to win her heart and her hand again. But competing against someone who is perfect - and remains perfect so long as they remain somewhere in the future - was tough. I decided my advantage was that I was here and the imaginary guy was still somewhere else. I decided to do what I should have been doing all those years – woo her. This was my first lesson: guys, you’ve got to woo your woman every day. Why? Here is the first insight into the female mind: they want to be in love all the time. They don’t just want to be loved. They want to feel loved. But they want more than that to be happy. They want to be in love. Romantic love. The Third Eternal Law of Marriage is this: The pursuit of a woman should not cease after you marry her... The wooing should never cease.
[The Third Eternal Law of Marriage: The pursuit of a woman should not cease after you marry her.]
After 25 years of neglect, I had a lot of ground to make up, and the time bomb was ticking. The “other guy” could turn up any day. Does this sound like your life? Does this sound like your life? Nearly everything you do is wrong. She criticises you all the time. She is a control freak who wants to run you around like a trained dog. She thinks you are unable to do the simplest thing and is always checking up on you. “Did you remember to put the garbage out? You still haven’t changed that light bulb in the bathroom. I wish you wouldn’t leave your underpants on the floor. It’s unhygienic.” She treats you like a child. She complains about how you spend your time, who you spend it with and she complains about how you spend money.
[Marry and with luck it may go well. But when a marriage fails, those who marry live at home in hell. - Euripides, 5th century BC]
When she is not complaining, there is an uneasy truce when you are civil to each other, but that’s it. Sometimes she is in a better mood and you get on well. Then there are the long silences – the silent treatment. You don’t know what you’ve done wrong and she’s not about to tell you. You have sex about once in blue moon because she’s lost interest or you don’t want to risk approaching her because she can cut you down with a word.
[The Fourth Eternal Law of Marriage: Married couples often speak the Language of Opposite Meanings. They send the opposite message to what they mean to say.]
It might be worse. She could be having bouts of unexplained crying. She might become aggressive and tearful when she’s had a few drinks. You keep your head down and wait for it to blow over. Or things might have reached the stage where you hear the fateful words: “We have to talk.” And it’s: “This isn’t working… I am unhappy… You don’t love me… I need some time to myself… I need to go and find myself…” If you’re hearing the sounds of goodbye, you’re a lucky guy. Some women leave without a word.
[The real act of marriage takes place in the heart, not in the ballroom or church or synagogue. It's a choice you make - not just on your wedding day, but over and over again - and that choice is reflected in the way you treat your husband or wife. Barbara De Angelis]
There is an epidemic of women leaving men in our society. Whichever way you look at it, it’s a dog’s life for a male in marriage today. It’s the rare man who can say honestly he has everything under control in his relationships. It’s the confident ones who go down the hardest. In the words of PC chipmaker Intel’s Andy Grove, “Only the paranoid survive.” ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––--------------------------PANEL: The Language of Opposite Meanings PANEL COPY: Here is a definition of the Language of Opposite Meanings: “When one partner says something, the other partner often hears the opposite meaning.” When she is nagging you and criticising you – when everything you do is wrong – she is actually saying “I don’t trust that you care for me and protect me. Please care for me and love me. I love you.” The male, however, usually hears: “You are hopeless. You are not a good husband/boyfriend/lover. I really made a mistake picking you. I don’t love you.” He in turn, unable to take the pain of the woman he loves attacking him, retreats – into the garage, down to the club, behind the newspaper, or into the office, immersing himself in work and career or taking a second job. By his retreat he is telling her in male language that he loves her and needs to feel loved, but she gets the opposite message. She feels as though he is pushing her away. So while both of you are saying “I love you and want you to love me” each is getting the message from the other “I don’t care about you.” ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-------------------------- Why your marriage is a battlefield Don’t feel like a failure if you and your wife are at war. It’s the natural state of a marriage. The biggest breakthrough for me came when I read this in a book called Passionate Marriage by Dr David Schnarch. (Get this book and read it if you can.) He runs the Marriage & Family Health Centre in Evergreen, Colorado and his book was a life raft that saved my sanity while I was salvaging my marriage.
[The conception of two people living together for twenty-five years without having a cross word suggests a lack of spirit only to be admired in sheep. -Alan Patrick Herbert]
Dr Schnarch discovered that marriage is a system that has stages all marriages must go through… and grow through. Some marriages don’t survive all the stages. But if you can stay the distance, you come out the other end a powerful person, able to love and be loved in the most awe-inspiring way. It’s the promise of life itself. Marriage was meant to be a battlefield because it is a “people growing” process. It is meant to be painful because it is the arena where your Ego does battle with your Higher Self over your need for love. There can be only one winner. Your Ego has got to lose and your Higher Self (or your heart) has got to win if you are to survive as a couple. Let’s just follow the Ego through Dr Schnarch’s system of marriage. Stage One: Infatuation. The Ego is amazed – here is a person who sees him as he truly is, an attractive and loveable person. The Ego falls in love, can’t do enough for the lover who provided the proof the Ego needed that it is a good person, a special person, a loveable person. Infatuation – being love sick – sees you lose yourself completely to the power of the love object. But it is not the other party you are in love with. You are in love with the reflection of yourself. It feels like you love the other person. And you do. But not because that person is deeply loveable – you haven’t had time to learn about them to that extent, to have become intimate with them. When you are infatuated you have the illusion of intimacy. You believe she knows you deeply and vice versa. But you don’t and you can’t. But mark this point – you assume that she knows you and that you know her extremely well. This leads to Stage 2: Fusion. Like emotional Siamese twins, you are inseparable. She is the only person who understands you and vice versa because she is your twin. You lose yourself in her. She becomes your world. And you become hers. You start to assume that she thinks the same way you do and vice versa… that you have the same basic beliefs. This Stage sees your Ego wanting to merge with another person, like returning to a mother’s womb when you were blissfully happy and safe. But marriage is about growing into a mature adult, standing on your own feet emotionally. Fused people are emotionally dependent. Love given by an emotionally dependent lover is less valuable because it is not given freely – it is traded for the security of knowing your emotional crutch will be there when you need it. Now comes Stage 3: Gridlock. The Ego finally emerges from mother’s womb when the loved one’s Ego starts to assert itself. The differences between the never-were-but-appeared-to-be-twins become open for all to see when the intoxication of Infatuation lifts. (Infatuation can never last and has never lasted. You can only seek to recapture it as the ecstasy possible in a relationship between authentic and self-aware adults. In fact, the purpose of the book you are holding is to “institutionalise infatuation”.)
[All married couples should learn the art of battle as they should learn the art of making love. Good battle is objective and honest - never vicious or cruel. Good battle is healthy and constructive, and brings to a marriage the principal of equal partnership. - Ann Landers]
Gridlock happens like a huge traffic jam. You want… I want… My needs aren’t being met… You’ve changed… The Princess and the Prince have left the stage and the Trouble and Strife and the Hapless Hubby have taken their place. (Or The Girlfriend and The Bloke I Live With…) Now your little habits… like leaving the toilet seat up, your beard bristles in the basin, not changing the toilet roll, watching hours of football on TV… are not so endearing. And her tone of voice has changed when she is asking you to do things – chores, she always has a long list of things for you to do, all of them essential. And when she asks about each of them you feel like a little kid being interrogated by your mother. Her needs become more important to her than your needs. Your needs become more important to you than her needs. You now compete with each other where you used to fall over each other to let the other person have their way. And then comes the silence. It’s like walking into a freezer. You come home and she’s icy. She’s not saying what you’ve done, that’s for you to find out. (“If he loved me he’d know why I’m upset.”) And she’s right. Your level of intimacy is now so low you can’t tell when something important has happened. (Missed any anniversaries lately?) And once she starts in on you – nagging you about things you can’t deny, you can’t defend against - she’s always in the right. Your reaction? Silence. Withdrawal. Down the pub, out on the boat, stay at work, glued to the TV, locked in the study… unavailable. You escape because she inflicts pain when she starts in on you, you have no defence except to retreat as soon as possible. This is Gridlock. Ego vs. Ego. Lashed together and lashing each other. Locked in tandem, their chains are the fetters of Fusion: what Dr Schnarch calls “other validation” – in other words, my self-image as a good and loveable person is proven or “validated” by the other person, not me. If I were validating myself it would be ‘self validation’, the sign of an authentic mature adult, standing on their own legs emotionally and free to give and receive love (the ultimate goal).
[Marriages are made in heaven. But, again, so are thunder, lightning, tornados and hail –Unknown]
Many couples can stay in Gridlock for the rest of their lives. But things have changed in recent times to shatter this unpeaceful peace. It is usually the woman who causes the next stage to be reached: Stage Four. The Crucible. This is where the battlefield shifts from attempting to change the other person directly to changing yourself. The one who decides to change themself forces the other person to change. And that creates a crisis in the relationship. The old balance of power has shifted.
[Marriage - as its veterans know well - is the continuous process of getting used to things you hadn't expected. -Tom Mullen]
One partner makes a move towards greater “differentiation” – standing apart from the merger, demanding their integrity. (A differentiated person, in Dr Schnarch’s book, is self validating, unfused, able to stand alone and feel comfortable. They are able to “self-soothe” – console themselves and ease their own anxiety - in situations where conflict with their partner threatens their sense of security.) One party makes a move. Then the action begins. Women on the front foot Most often the woman calls the relationship into crisis by deciding to get out of it. She long ago gave up trying to communicate with the male, largely because she was speaking an alien language he couldn’t understand.... because she assumed (as he still did) that they thought and felt the same way. (A deadly echo from the Fusion stage.) So she was telling him in female language that she needed emergency loving. (Remember: all that nagging about chores is really only her way of saying “You act like you don’t care for me anymore. Please show me you care.”) He was missing the message because the tone of it repulsed him and sent him scurrying for cover. He also wanted to know she cared, but the message she sent him didn’t sound like love to him. In fact, by immersing himself in work and career or taking a second job, he was telling her in male language that he loved her and needed to feel loved, but she was getting the opposite message. She didn’t get the emergency loving she needed, decided he’d given up caring, and she in turn gave up and started looking for an escape hatch.
[“All Men Are Bastards.” – Calendar and Diaries series]
Often the first time the male is aware of the problem is when she is on the way out the door. I know; it happened to me twice and almost three times. She blindsided me. She felt I didn’t love her and went off in search of love elsewhere with no notice. And found it the first time in the next room with a flatmate. That’s a pretty definite act of differentiation – she felt secure enough to take risks with her heart after a long term, intense relationship. Now that’s how much she needed love and how badly I was providing it. I was a classic case of the emotionally unavailable male – burying myself in work to escape confronting the intimacy issues my wife and kids had with me. I was avoiding my responsibilities as a mature adult. In fact what she did each time was to, in Dr Schnarch’s words, to hand me “a personal growth opportunity that I did not welcome”. Let’s say your partner drags you into the Crucible. What are your options? You can’t stay the same. You must either advance or retreat. Retreat means acting the victim. Let her dictate the terms of your defeat. You’re the loser, you’re the one being left behind. In my case the humiliation was so complete that several men have asked me “Why did you take her back?” a question that stunned me when I first heard it. My answer was, “Because I love her.” And then I added, “And she would not have left had I been able to tell her I loved her and shown her how much.” So retreat sounds unattractive. Advance is the other option. I chose to advance. To get back on the front foot. I rode back into battle armed with new weapons. And I met enemies in strange places. I first had to defeat Mr Perfect. Finding your perfect match There is a myth that exists in fairy tales and Hollywood movies that somewhere in the world we each have a perfect match. Someone who would love us for who we are and life would be wonderful everyday. “Someday my Prince will come,” sings the fairytale Princess. The easiest explanation for screwing up a relationship is “I picked the wrong person.” My wife told me – when I had my epiphany and had become a truly loving husband – that part of her heart had been numbed by the years of neglect and that this part could be touched by another man, someone she had yet to meet. I called him Mr Perfect. A seductive idea, Mr Perfect. My wife had all her life, since she was a little girl, dreamed of meeting Prince Charming and being swept off her feet. Her search led her to audition a series of potential Princes who didn’t meet the high standards – I was one.
[The Fifth Eternal Law of Marriage: You cannot change the other person; you can only change yourself.]
Some women never give up the search and never marry. Others marry too late. Most settle for Mr Close Enough and try to change him. When that fails they settle into the grinding hand-to-hand struggle of Gridlock. Many elderly couples are locked in outwardly unloving relationships like this, something I found disturbing about my grandparents who had successfully raised seven children and were both very religious people.
[Why does a woman work ten years to change a man's habits and then complain that he's not the man she married? - Barbara Streisand]
The system of marriage does not recognise Mr or Mrs Perfect. They don’t exist, except in dreams. The dreamers hope to escape from the hard work of learning to be a loving lover.
[A great marriage is not when the 'perfect couple' come together. It is when an imperfect couple learns to enjoy their differences. -Dave Meurer]
The key to understanding this is “differentiation”. Dr Schnarch believes that your level of emotional dependency – needing someone else to believe in you before you can believe in yourself – was set by the highest level of maturity reached within your family by your parents. This means you are dialled in at a certain level of development. That’s your starting point. The second startling fact about “differentiation”: we always pick a marriage partner who is at the same level of differentiation as we are. (The relationship wouldn’t last long enough to become a marriage otherwise.) This means neither party is Mr or Mrs Perfect unless you both are. The woman waiting for Prince Charming is being blocked by her own imperfections. The Prince wouldn’t be interested. He’s looking for his Princess.
[You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by seeing an imperfect person perfectly. -Sam Keen]
“We do not pick our perfect match because we ourselves are not perfect,” says Hugh and Gail Prather in Notes to Each Other. “The universe hands us a flawless diamond - in the rough. Only if we are willing to polish off every part of ourselves that cannot join do we end up with a soul mate.” Only then are you ready to truly love and be loved. So both of you have work to do… on yourselves. But don’t expect your lover to believe that. To change someone you must be the change you want them to make. If you want a more loving lover, be a more loving lover. That’s the heart of my message. “To be loved, be loveable,” said Ovid. How do you make yourself loveable? That is revealed below.
[“Marriage is our last, best chance to grow up.” - Joseph Barth]
Putting you back on the front foot Women today have the whip hand – they decide when the marriage isn’t working, they decide when you’ll have sex, they decide most things… you just keep your head down and keep working to pay for it all.

[Insurance is like marriage. You pay, pay, pay, and you never get anything back. - Al Bundy, Married with Children]
Men are on the back foot. Look at this short list of proofs:
The media takes the feminist line that men are the problem.
The courts assume men are the problem.
Teachers have convinced themselves boys are dumber than girls. And boys live up (or down) to their expectations.
Advertising agencies make fun of men in their ads to appeal to women buyers.
Women convince their children that “he” is the problem.
It’s time men got back on the front foot. We need to win back the respect that used to be a man’s right as husband and father. We need to restore men to their place in the family. But we can only do that by convincing our wives that we deserve that respect. You can’t force people to feel or think the way you want them to. The great expert on human nature Dale Carnegie taught that you have to inspire them to change the way they think and feel. This book gives you a strategy for inspiring your woman to love and respect you again. Self defence starts with you This book is called a “Self Defence Course” because that’s what it is. It sets out plainly and simply a three-step process you can follow to disarm and capture your enemy. But unlike any ordinary self defence course, it’s not about your enemy – it’s about you. Only you can stop the pain that both of you are feeling as you struggle to come to terms with each other. Gandhi said: “Be the change you want to see in others.” Every counsellor and expert will tell you: you can’t change people. Endless nagging doesn’t make men better husbands. Retreating into your cave and acting hurt hasn’t worked with your wife yet, has it? It doesn’t work with mine. Fighting with her doesn’t work. She only gets more entrenched in her point of view. Reasoning with her doesn’t work. Let’s face it, women are not reasonable from a male point of view. She’s not going to change… she’d have done it by now. If you think hunkering down and waiting out the storm will see her become sweet and loving again, you are wrong. The odds are she’ll get worse and finally she’ll press the eject button.
[If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got. – Anon.]
You have to take the battle up to her. Force change on her by changing yourself. Come out of your corner and hit her with every thing you’ve got in your arsenal of Love. You can love a woman into submission.
[The kind of marriage you make depends upon the kind of person you are. If you are a happy, well-adjusted person, the chances are your marriage will be a happy one. If you have made adjustments so far with more satisfaction than distress, you are likely to make your marriage and family adjustments satisfactorily. If you are discontented and bitter about your lot in life, you will have to change before you can expect to live happily ever after. -Evelyn Duvall and Reuben Hill]
This Course challenges you to lead the way in renovating your relationship. It challenges you to change the way you think about your partner, what you do and say to them, and how you think about yourself. Be warned. This Course is easy only if you are flexible and courageous. Do you have the guts to truly love your wife? That is the question you will answer to yourself as you go through the stages of this Course. Remember, the love that you are seeking is searching for you right now, according to Deepak Chopra. Are you ready to answer its call?
[“Although it happens spontaneously, falling in love isn’t accidental – there are no accidents in the spiritual life, only patterns we haven’t yet recognised. All love is based on the search for spirit. This is the first major insight to be found in romantic love – it really isn’t about two people falling in love. It is two people seeing spirit in each other.” - Deepak Chopra]
Stage 1: Forgiveness The tactic that puts you on top immediately Looked at from a common sense point of view, I am talking a load of rubbish. My plan for putting you back in control of your married life makes no sense at all. (It is “counter-intuitive”, but that doesn’t mean it won’t work. Example, we fly through the air in a machine made of metal that weighs hundreds of tonnes. Now does that make sense? No. But it works. It’s called a jet aircraft.) Stage 1 in the Self Defence Course for Men in Marriage introduces the first weapon: Forgiveness. That’s right. Hit her with an act of Compassion. Forgive her for all the nasty things she has said to you. Forgive her for the way she has made you feel so many times – like a piece of crap. Forgive her for trying to destroy your marriage. Forgive her for trying to reduce you to the level of the guy who pays for everything but doesn’t get to enjoy any of it. (It’s called maintenance or alimony.) Forgive her for thinking only of herself. Forgive her for having an affair or for considering having one (if that’s happened).
Marriage is the only war where you sleep with the enemy - Gary Busey
Now this ain’t easy. But the payoff is so huge you’ve got to try it. Sounds outrageously impossible? It’s not. And the benefits, my friend, are fantastic. Forgiveness Benefit 1: The pain in your guts goes, almost disappears. You feel better and better the more you can forgive. That’s because only the strong can forgive. By acting strong you feel strong. Forgiveness Benefit 2: You become more powerful in your dealings with her. Calmer. More controlled. Stronger. Less reactive. More mature. Forgiveness Benefit 3: She notices, don’t you worry. In a marriage conflict, she is scanning your reactions for any tiny sign of weakness so she can go in for a shot. It’s survival time for her… and for you. You are both living on your instincts. She will sense your new strength. An Act of Forgiveness is easy to say, hard to do. Here is a simple way to start. Step 1: Think it. Think about how she sees things. Try to imagine you were her in this situation. Criticise yourself a little. How have you let her down? Even if you think she’s unrealistic, it’s how she thinks and you’re not going to change that in any other way than by following this Course. Try some “Compassion”. Compassion – ‘suffering with’ or ‘walking with another’s suffering’ – is the ability to acknowledge pain in another and support their struggle. I have found that you cannot know or understand the pain of another unless you have felt pain yourself. And the deepest cut you have received determines how deeply you can feel for another. So use the pain you’ve been given to project your feelings into hers. How must she be feeling? Women hate conflict and causing pain in others (contrary to appearances). At the same time, try some Empathy – ‘feeling within another’ – the ability to know what it feels like to be someone else. Climb out of your selfish skin for long enough to see what other people see… and you’ll be amazed. It’s the first step to taking back your power. The “Empathy Exercise” is very important – I have seen it open up a man’s eyes in an instant. In a blinding flash of insight, someone close to me came to understand just what he’d put his partner through and he was able to forgive her easily… whereas only an hour or so before he had been full of bitterness and anger. All that was gone and only tears of remorse remained. He had opened his heart and he now could express the love she so badly wanted. You may need some help for the empathy exercise – someone to guide you through. A counsellor, a coach, or a female friend who can gently open your eyes by asking questions. Step 2: Say it. Say to yourself: “I forgive (her name) for (whatever I believe she did that damaged me and our relationship.)” It may feel strange at first, like a new golf swing… but repeat it several times. Get used to the idea. You’re not letting her off the hook – she did those things. But you are saying you don’t want revenge for it. You don’t want to hurt her or get back at her. You want to replace that feeling of revenge with a feeling of understanding. She did it. She’ll have to wear it. But you’re not judge and jury. You are now a bystander. Step 3: Write it. It might help to write her a letter (which you don’t send). Set down all the ways she hurt you and how it made you feel. Go into as much detail as you want – express your anger. Finish by telling her you have forgiven her. Tell her what you feel for her deep down and how much you want the relationship to work. Then either burn the letter or hide it somewhere. You might want to read it again to remind yourself in future how you took the first big step towards mending your problems together because you are the bigger person in the conflict. You had the guts to change the way you reacted in the situation, choosing courage in the face of fear and anger. And you won.

Step 4: Feel it. It can take a long time to reach Complete Forgiveness. Once you do, you feel no anger about how you have been treated by her. You feel sorry for her instead, and you feel sorry for the part you played in making her act that way. You feel like trying to make it up to her. Your pain and anxiety about what happened to you has almost all gone.
“A happy marriage is the union of two forgivers.” - Ruth Bell Graham
What do I know about Forgiveness? It saved my life and my marriage. Here is the story of my “long, dark night of the soul”. When my defacto wife of four years walked out on me with our 3- month- old child, she moved in with a new boyfriend under the same roof – in the next room! I was stunned and blind-sided. There was nothing I could do to stop it. No physical attack on the guy would have brought her back to me, no attack on her would have either. They were protected by law. I took her to a lawyer to see whether I could stop her leaving the country to follow this guy overseas. The lawyer laughed me out of his office with the words, “You’re just a jealous boyfriend. You have no rights.”
[The Sixth Eternal Law of Marriage: Love forgives and forgives and forgives again.]
I was crushed, beaten. I was the father of this child and the Law said, “You have no rights. You are nothing.” So all I could do was what I did. When the pain had subsided enough, I tried to understand her and why she was acting as she was. In other words, I used empathy. (Empathy.) And I realised she was starved for love and possibly suffering some trauma or depression, brought on by my behaviour. I had withdrawn emotionally after the birth and become a workaholic to pay for this new family I had found myself providing for. I had abandoned her at age 22 to handle a new baby on her own in a foreign country, far away from her family. I felt her pain. (Compassion.) No wonder she was easy pickings. I could only Forgive her – and I did, little bit by little bit – and defend her when both our families condemned her and made her feel outcast. I pleaded for understanding because I understood what she had gone through. I was at fault. If I had loved and supported her, she would never have left me. I created my own pain. When I had forgiven, I felt better about what was happening, more confident I could handle it. Forgiveness makes it easier to master the next weapon.
“Whenever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer him with love.” - Mahatma Gandhi


Handling the pain Pain is not negotiable. It comes with the turf. Love and pain go hand in hand. You won’t escape pain by doing anything mentioned in this book. But you’ll know greater joy. The twin virtues of Compassion and Empathy – mentioned by the Dalai Lama as the essential building blocks of love – are both grown inside you by the experience of pain. So don’t fear pain. Welcome it like a brother. It is your teacher and liberator. Once through its Course you will emerge like a warrior, battle-scarred but hardened and wise in the ways of the battlefield. And afraid of no one, especially yourself. There are two types of pain: clean pain and dirty pain. Clean pain is pain you know you cannot avoid. You understand how you contributed to it, brought it on yourself, and you face the music. Clean pain usually teaches us a lesson and then lets us go. Dirty pain is pain you deny or try to run away from. It catches up to you and it is harder to take than clean pain. This is because you are denying the role you played in creating it and resisting its lesson. I know which type of pain I prefer.
Never say marriage has more joy than pain. -Euripedes Alcestis
You never get used to pain, but you can become comfortable in the knowledge that you’ve felt it and survived it before and you’ll do so again. Knowing this can give you courage to go on when others drop out of the fight.
I think men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for marriage. They've experienced pain and bought jewellery. -Rita Rudner “When you’re oblivious to ways marriage can operate as a people-growing process, all you see are problems and pathology – and the challenges of marriage will probably defeat you. Your pain will have no meaning except failure and disappointment; no richness, no soul. Spirituality is an attitude that reveals life’s meaning through everyday experience; however, don’t bother seeking sanctuary in your marriage. Seeking protection from its pains and pleasures misses it purpose: marriage prepares us to live and love on life’s terms.” - Dr David Schnarch, Passionate Marriage
Stage 2: Surrender The tactic that turns the tide Here we are at Surrender. This is the single most important point of this Course. It is the most powerful weapon you have at your disposal. Surrender, lay down your arms, stop the war. Stop struggling. Give up. Go down for the count. You'll win by losing. (I warned you this would get wacky.) How can you get started? Easy… Cry. That’s what I did. I burst into tears one day and confessed that I now understood what my approach to love had done to my wife – starved her of the deep affection she craved. I’d finally “got it.” She did not believe it for some months, but I set about wooing her on a scale not seen since Romeo and Juliet. Eventually, 25 years of scepticism collapsed under the siege of my love. So OK. You can’t cry – it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you surrender. Surrender to the inevitable. Fall on your sword. Concede the field to her. Sue for peace on her terms. You will never win the battle with your wife while you struggle against her. Love is the only weapon left to you that will be effective Like Forgiveness, this is ‘counter-intuitive’. That is, it sounds back-the-front. Yet it is precisely what will work because the opposite is the case if you do the opposite – continue fighting. If you continue fighting, she will walk away – and you lose. You’ll never win that battle by arguments, threats or lies. You will lose if you fight. It’s that simple. Surrender? Give up? Lose your power? Yes, and no. It sounds insane, but believe me it works. The moment you appear to lose in the eyes of your opponent in the war of the sexes, you start to win. The tide turns. Don’t ask me why. It just does. The reason can be found in this story from ancient Celtic mythology.
A good marriage is therapy, every living day. – Steve Biddulph, Manhood
King Arthur was once captured by a giant monster called Gromore who said he would kill him if he couldn't answer a riddle within one year. The riddle was: "What do women want most of all?" Arthur rode off and didn't have much luck until he ran into an ugly old crone called Ragnell who agreed to tell him the answer if he would marry her to his son, Sir Gwain. Gwain agreed, and the crone told Arthur the answer to the riddle: What women want most of all is "sovereignty". When Sir Gwain kissed the ugly old woman after the wedding she turned into a beautiful princess and told him she could be a princess by night and a hag by day or vice versa. Which did he prefer? Gwain - a gentleman - told Ragnell he would let her decide. He gave her sovereignty. So she decided to be a princess both by night and by day. The knight – representing you and me – surrendered his power to the lady and she in turn solved his problem for him by changing herself. (Remember you can’t change people by nagging, criticising or by force. You can only change them by making them want to change – by inspiring them to do it.) It’s like winning the war by refusing to fight. When you surrender to love, you are crowned with glory. Why? Because no woman can tolerate injustice. Your wife seeks to gain the advantage at every encounter when you are ‘gridlocked’ (the normal state of marriage – trench warfare) because she sees you as being unjust. She’ll have a laundry list of the things you do wrong or don’t do. She feels victimised by you, just as you feel victimised by her. But you see things differently: from where you stand, she’s victimising you. No matter what you think about it, the version of reality you have to deal with exists inside the mind of the person who you are trying to win. Her version of reality is the one you’ve got to work with. You won’t convince her she’s wrong. Have you ever been able to do that? Never. That path leads nowhere.
[The Seventh Eternal Law of Marriage: Struggle ceases when you surrender to Love.]
Give in, admit you have been 100% wrong and declare that she is 100% right. Surrender unilaterally and sincerely. Then watch what happens. When I had demonstrated my surrender was not a faked conversion, Louisa was quick to defend my old self and give strong praise of much of my old behaviour. (The stuff they never mention, like killing yourself to provide nice homes and private schooling for the kids and cars to drive and overseas trips. The very items you feel justify your feelings of victimisation. “Where’s my reward for killing the buffalo? Where’s all the sex I should get?”) She can’t fight with an opponent who surrenders. You become strangely powerful. You have re-defined the battlefield. You’ve change the game. It’s no longer about scoring points off each other – she’s better at that than you are anyway… she gets more practice. Instead she is forced to contend with a man who has changed and taken away from her the target she enjoyed hitting. You gain power. Surrender is the secret to success, the central point of this entire exercise. It is the silver bullet that slays the vampire and puts you back in the driver’s seat in your marriage.
“When they are fully committed in love, the husband sees God in the wife and the wife sees God in the husband. On this basis they are able to surrender to each other, because they are only surrendering to the spirit in everything.” - Deepak Chopra
First aid for sick marriages Surrender is emergency treatment for a marriage sliding into the divorce courts. If you do nothing else in the short term but Surrender, you should have bought the time you need to salvage the situation. In most cases. If you can get her to stop seeing the lawyer, stop kicking you out of the family home, stop walking out the door herself, you have stopped the bleeding. Now you need to work on a cure, and fast.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her. - Ephesians 5:25
Surrender is so unexpected and powerful, it usually stops women in their tracks. They can’t handle it. They’ve never seen it before… especially in you. The uncharacteristic behaviour that follows catches them by surprise and puts a question into their minds. “Maybe he’s genuine. Maybe he’s flipped his lid. He might have changed. Let’s see…” And you’re back on the front foot. You’re controlling the agenda. You’re controlling the timing. You are centre stage. Now it’s time for the performance of your life. Now it’s time for the wooing to start again, big time. Why me? It’s not fair Hold on! It takes two to tango. No ying without yang. She contributed at least 50% to the state of our marriage. Why should I have to do all the forgiving, apologising and the wooing? Why should I be the one giving in all the time? Good question. I’ve had two middle aged male friends reject my Total Love Attack strategy. Let’s call them Alex and Trevor, because those are their names. They rejected the approach on the grounds that:
It means “doing what you’re told”. That is, total submission to a woman as a mommy figure.
I was just “c***-struck”. That is, so stoked about my wife and so desperate to hold on to her (for sex) that I had lost my mind.

These opinions are fairly typical for Australian males. Both these guys are sad sacks who live without partners (at time of writing) after unsuccessfully trying to live with women on many occasions. Both of them desperately want to have a successful relationship with a woman – to give and receive love. But neither of them can see a way to do it without handing their balls to the woman on a plate. (Ouch!) The reality is this: she’ll hand them right back to you, with interest. And that interest can include the best sex you’ll ever have, far better than the big, tough “Macho, Macho Man” will ever get. That’s the best reason I can think of for the “Surrender” strategy – sex. Lots of it.
If you judge people, you have no time to love them. -Mother Theresa
But there’s more science to it than that. There are 7 reasons why the male has to take it on the chin and make the running in the Total Love Attack strategy:
REASON FOR TAKING THE FALL #1: The girl is leaving you, sport. She’s the customer and you’re the salesman. Get this: Rule Number 1 - the customer is always right. Rule Number 2 – if the customer is ever wrong, go back and read Rule Number 1. It stands to reason that you might need to make a few concessions, at least until you get her back on the team. REASON FOR TAKING THE FALL #2: She hasn’t contributed 50% to the relationship problems. Girls are very relationship savvy. She may have started half the fights, been in the wrong 50% of the time, and caused 50% of the grief… but you were the one who had the main problem with the relationship. Blokes are like that. We’re not comfortable with our feelings, we have no training or role models to follow. We think she should be satisfied that we hang around and allow her to cook and clean for us. When it comes to investing in the relationship, she has put in 80% to 90% of the effort. If the relationship’s broken, then we can only blame the maintenance guy who hasn’t been on the job – you and me. REASON FOR TAKING THE FALL #3: She has been hurt badly for a long time by your rejection of her love, your refusal to make her feel cared for, your refusal to accept her feelings as valid, your refusal to make her feel special, and your refusal to share your feelings with her. (You didn’t know you were doing this, but that’s what you did, and there’s no way you’ll convince a woman that it’s OK to do those things because she doesn’t believe you didn’t know. She thinks you think the same way she does, remember? In fact she misinterpreted everything you did, but the fact remains – she was hurt, badly, for a long time, and you’re the culprit in her eyes. And she’s the customer. REASON FOR TAKING THE FALL #4: We are able to take it on the chin. Men are less emotional than women and can see the logic of sacrificing something up front for big returns later on. God knows we suffered in silence for long enough during the open warfare in this relationship. We can take a good hiding with our mouth’s shut. We’re big enough to swallow our pride and get on with the job. REASON FOR TAKING THE FALL #5: Someone’s got to give in and change the game. If you remain deadlocked, there’s only one outcome – the one you committed yourself to avoiding at the very start of this book. You lose her. Do you want to be right – and alone? Or loved and respected? Women don’t love you because you can beat them in an argument. REASON FOR TAKING THE FALL #6: Women have a good trailer load of anger against men in general that they want to unload from the start. And that’s before you have to unload to begin with, even before you added your pile of manure to it. She needs to offload some psychological garbage before she can truly be fair and reasonable in a relationship. Many women have been hurt by their fathers – felt abandoned when he was a boozer, when he walked out on the family, when he wasn’t there for her when she was growing up (too busy at work). Then they are hurt by the many idiot boy friends that they encountered – sexual predators, emotional pygmies and boofheads (like you and me) who hurt their feelings, used and abused them, rejected their offers of love, treated them the way we thought girls had to be treated if you were any sort of real man: i.e. badly. Then there is the “patriarchy” – the old male-dominated society. Sexism. The feminists got one thing right and 99 things wrong. The one thing they got right was that society valued females in the old days as less important than males. Women couldn’t get certain jobs, couldn’t rise to the top, were treated as domestic servants and child bearers by Society. This is now largely not the case. But if you were brought up under the old regime, you grew up thinking that as a girl you weren’t good enough. Who got preference over you? Males. What are you? A male. “They’re all the same.” Though it wasn’t your fault, you share the collective blame. Female logic. But if you had an abusive mother, for instance, part of your anger would be directed at the other women in your life. You couldn’t help it either. REASON FOR TAKING THE FALL #7: You’re a male. So you’re wrong. Everybody knows it – watch the TV shows and ads. They don’t show women being stupid dorks. Only males. Feminists have done such a good job of bagging males as a gender that the whole of society now feels comfortable bagging one gender. No wonder boys are difficult at school – they are taught to think of themselves as stupid by the media well before they get to school. So we play up (or down) to expectations. If you expect to be wrong, you’ll be wrong.

“There are only two things wrong with men. Everything they say and everything they do.” - 3M Post-It Note
For all these reasons, the best strategy is to own up as the culprit, take your medicine, and smile. If no girl wants to buy your brand of love long term, you need to change the brand you’re selling. Get the new and improved version of Masculine Love and you’ll be a hit. But be warned, women don’t want a good little mamma’s boy tied to their apron strings. They don’t want a man who’ll do as he’s told all the time. They want a man who respects them and who they can respect. They want a wild man who will sweep them up in a romantic adventure, dominate them like a brute, ravish them, then set them back on a pedestal. They want a guy who makes them feel so secure and loved that they can trust him to take over making the decisions and captaining the ship.
One intense sexual storm in a hay barn means more to her than three years of tepid lovemaking. She wants passion and purpose in a man, and she carries a weighty desire in her, a passion somewhere between erotic feeling and religious intensity. – Robert Bly
So there is a period of proving you are a New Man… waiting for her to trust that the New Man won’t disappear and leave the old man in his place. Once she trusts you’re fair dinkum, you get your balls back. And your life. And as she becomes less defensive, you’ll even get admissions of guilt and apologies for her part in the disaster that nearly became of your marriage. But don’t hang out for that. She may not ever mature to that extent. Just be glad you’re still there. Better than sex The following sentences from Deepak Chopra’s book The Path to Love might appear mysterious, but “surrender” promises far more than domestic harmony and more sex. “Through surrender the needs of the ego, which can be extremely selfish and unloving, are transformed into the true need of the spirit, which is always the same – the need to grow. As you grow, you exchange shallow, false feelings for deep, true emotions, and thus compassion, trust, devotion, and service become realities. Such a marriage is sacred; it can never falter because it is based on divine essence." Stage 3: Woo her The tactic that delivers lots of unbelievable sex Let’s get down to it. What do you want out of life? Wait: I can guess: lots of unbelievable sex and a life free from nagging. Well, here is the carrot for following the steep path of love. You get to do the things you want to do – have more sex, stay up late to watch the game, eat unhealthy food, etc. And you get to laugh a lot more. Why? Because your wife is happy because she is in love – madly in love – with you. How can this be? It’s because you have wooed her all over again, only this time the infatuation doesn’t fade. It becomes permanent… because you dedicate yourself to wooing her. Everyday. Ceaselessly.
[The Eighth Eternal Law of Marriage: Love begets love.]
Why must you woo her? Because inside their minds and hearts women only want one thing: to be in love, all the time. Sweet romantic love, from a Prince Charming who showers them with attention and affection. It works like a perpetual motion machine:
Step 1. You act in a loving way. Step 2. She becomes more loving and loveable. Step 3. You in turn find it easier and more fun to give her loving attention. Step 4. She in turn becomes more loving… and on it goes.

For true love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have. And if you go to draw at the true fountainhead, the more water you draw, the more abundant is its flow. -Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The term “making love” means “having sex” today. But there was a time when a man could be making love to a woman just by paying her attention. Women love attention. They feel affection for those who give them attention. You “make” love grow in a woman by wooing her. She in turn makes love grown in you by her reaction – sweet, sweet lovin’. John Gray (in Men are From Mars, Women Are from Venus) agrees with me. He says that if you make sure your wife’s love needs are being met by demonstrating your feelings in action, it will ‘open her heart’. And it in turn opens yours because “a man’s heart opens as he succeeds in fulfilling a woman.” Wooing doesn’t mean lying – false praise and a box of chocolates. You’ve got to deliver the real stuff. It helps to know what a woman really wants.
[The Ninth Eternal Law of Marriage: The pursuit should not cease at the altar]
This next section is the longest in the Course because it aims to fix the basic problem inside you: you just don’t understand women. If you did, you wouldn’t be in this hole. It’s like trying to play a round of golf with no clubs. You can swing all you like, but you won’t score. What a woman wants Let's hear from a woman. If we listen we might discover what we need to know. This is my wife Louisa’s story, as it appeared in the booklet we gave to family and friends attending our 25th anniversary renewal of vows: When I was a young child I believed in fairy tale romances with happy endings. As I grew up I never stopped believing in the promise of true love. What other people would consider to be a fantasy, I was determined would be my life. It became a deep, driving desire. As I encountered boyfriends and the more ‘grown up’ version of love, nothing changed. At university I met Michael. We began living together almost immediately. But we were young (18 and 20 years of age) and we did not know how to communicate. We failed to reach the most important part of my fairytale dream - that communion between two individuals. My fairytale wasn’t working. Even though Michael was a kind and loving partner, we were not ‘in love’. Not true love. I was feeling lonely and abandoned. My mother had always told me that my happiness was paramount. So, I left to follow the promise of true love, just after Jessica was born. Shortly I found myself on my own again, but now with a small child. This didn’t happen in the fairy stories either. Of course, I remembered that the heroes of these stories had to go through bad times to triumph at the end. But no one told me how hard that was. Abandoned, my dreams of true love shattered, an amazing thing happened: Love did come to my rescue. I discovered love of One Self. Out of the rejection I went through, came an understanding of my true Self. “To value yourself is to love yourself,” says Deepak Chopra. “It is really from here that your love for others comes.” Suddenly I was alone, but not lonely. I was confident. I could do anything. I did crazy things. I wore op shop clothes, but I felt like a princess. I was free. I knew I could remain free while sharing a life with another. The fairytale dream could come true, I just knew it. And it could be true for Michael and I. My new sense of self made me supremely confident. Despite the possibility that Michael would reject me – he had an attractive, intelligent girlfriend by this time - I arrived unannounced with Jessica at his parents’ home in Sydney. Unafraid of the consequences. (What I didn’t know was that Michael had told all the girls he met while I was away that, if I returned, he was mine.) I made a pretty good argument and backed it up with good, old–fashioned seduction. We were soon back in a relationship - one that we were both committed to. He settled down to a career, and ‘providing’ for his family while I dutifully had two more kids and looked after them. It’s not really for about 10 years then that you even put your head up to see how ‘the fairytale’ was is going. Overall, it looked pretty good. Family, stable income, a husband who cared for you. Hang about, though - LOVE is more than that. It’s freedom. It’s the support of one who thinks you are the greatest. It’s feeling wild and crazy. It’s the passion of being wanted, not merely being cared for. No, I thought – you are too demanding. Be happy. Near enough is probably good enough. Still, I kept reading about Love – kept thinking, kept hoping that one day the ‘real’ thing would come along.
"When I say women put love first, I don’t mean women choose to make love and relationship a priority – these things just are a priority in our awareness. We don’t choose to have our heart focussed on the man we love – it just is. We don’t choose to always be thinking of ways to connect with you – we just do. We don’t decide to put love first – it just is first." – Barbara De Angelis
Then, just when I had despaired of Michael ever becoming the fairytale lover I yearned for, and decided the relationship would eventually drift apart, another amazing thing happened: he had a dramatic incident. One day, out of nowhere, after our morning meditation, Michael was overcome by uncontrollable tears. He came to me and cried like a child. I started crying, although I didn’t know why. He said he had a vision. In it he said he saw my heart suffering and all the tears I had cried for 30 years – all the loneliness - waiting for my dream of love to come true. He was transformed in an instant by this vision. He spoke and acted like a completely different person. While he had merely tolerated all my talk about ‘Love’, he finally “got it” – in a flash. In true fairy story style, the Frog became a Prince. From being someone who had no real understanding of what I had been trying to say, he’s become an expert in the field, avidly reading anything he can get his hands on about Love. I have been showered with roses, expensive lingerie, candlelit dinners, aromatherapy, candles, long massages, diamond rings, and poetry and songs, countless songs written for me and about me. Now I have a bloke who will take his turn to clean the toilet and scrub the shower recess and do the laundry and cook dinner and wash up – because he wants me to be free to develop my true self. It was overwhelming at first. I had become used to the ‘nearly excellent’ relationship. In the wee small hours, I would wonder about the fairy tale. I am now learning to live in my dream. I agreed to marry him again (renew our vows on our 25th anniversary) because he has become the man I always wanted. I always knew that Love would conquer all. Love is what we are allowed, indeed meant to have. Along the way during this difficult journey, I discovered it’s not just about a love affair with someone. It’s a love affair with Life... The Lesson I take from this story: women want romance, women want communication, women want to feel wild and crazy sometimes, and women want to feel free to become the best person they can be.
What more can they want?
A woman wants many things, but most of all she wants to be in love. Not just loved. She wants a man to feel passionate about her. Women want to know the passion of love everyday… to know they are loved completely and entirely.
"The more you learn about women and about love, the better you’ll be as a husband or lover, and the more control you’ll have over your love life." – Barbara De Angelis
For women everything they do is an expression of love. Shopping, cooking, planning holidays, thinking about redecorating… all become acts of love because they see them as nurturing. And they interpret your actions as acts of love. Forget to put out the garbage? You don’t love her enough. Taking time to get around to the lawn? It’s because you don’t care enough. Haven’t replaced those light globes that are out…. ? Etc. You get the drift.
Looking back, I have this to regret, that too often when I loved, I did not say so. - David Grayson
That’s not to say you should do everything she tells you to without considering your own needs. There’s a period of self-denial while you re-win her trust. But self-denial can mean you lose yourself and lose interest in her if it goes on. After the balance of justice’s scales has been restored in her mind, you just need to continually demonstrate you care about her and love her deeply. She’ll forgive many failings if she knows your heart is in the right place. There are two fundamental things a woman wants from you to prove your love: attentiveness and intimacy. WHAT WOMEN WANT #1: Attentiveness: If you’re not interested in her enough to notice her and show an interest in her, it’s hard to fake it. You’ll never make it. If the bitterness of Gridlock makes it hard, see “Reawakening the Passion” below. If you’ve read this far I am assuming you truly love her and that she is the most important thing in your life. Attentiveness means simply paying attention – being aware of her most of the time, and letting her know in little ways. (See “Wooing your woman everyday” below.) WHAT WOMEN WANT #2: Intimacy: A woman also wants intimacy. This can be hard for a man not used to talking about his feelings. It means making yourself vulnerable – open to be hurt. All it takes is guts, the courage you use everyday to make a living. I have no easy solution to this intimacy stuff: Your challenge is to become an expert on your feelings and an expert on exposing them. Here’s a simple formula: Think about how things make you feel and tell yourself in simple words about it. Then start by making simple statements to your wife about how you feel about her and how it makes you feel when you fight. NB. This is not an invitation to unload criticism and negativity. Bite your tongue. Honesty is not the best policy when it comes to criticism and negativity. Don't give in to the self-indulgence of 'speaking your mind', no matter what she says. You'll discover why I recommend this if you ignore my advice.


“For a marriage to have any chance,
every day at least six things should go unsaid.”
- Unknown
It takes guts to open up and risk ridicule. Don’t worry – she won’t laugh at you if you are obviously sincere. She’ll be confused and curious, most likely. If she does react badly, this is no reflection on you. It’s her problem. She’s been hurt badly and needs patience. Hang in there. Keep it up. You should wear her down. Trust is the key. Trust can take time to win back. But you’ve got the guts to do the hard yards. .
[The Tenth Eternal Law of Marriage: Attentiveness and Intimacy are the keys to happiness]
This intimacy stuff can be harrowing, but it gets better with time. And it makes sex amazing when she gets comfortable enough with you to share sex fantasies and vice versa. It removes her most powerful weapon: wanting to talk about her feelings and your relationship. Up until now, if she wanted to put you on the back foot at any time she could spring that one you. But get comfortable with it and your back on top. It makes the temporary discomfort worth it a million per cent.
“Your purpose is not to survive but to express every grain of passion that love arouses in you.” - Deepak Chopra
American love expert Barbara De Angelis says there are 3 secret needs every woman has:
They need to feel safe
They need to feel connected.
They need to feel valued.
I reckon a woman can feel all three if they experience attentiveness and intimacy. Know thine enemy? The famous Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu said knowledge of the enemy is the most important weapon you can have. The better you know their ways of planning and thinking, the more you will be able to anticipate their moves and win the day. In our case the “enemy” is the beloved. In fact, the real enemy is your own ignorance of the way women think and feel. The cause of conflict is our male interpretation of their female ways – most of the time we get the wrong message and send the wrong message, because we don’t know how to decode their signals. So the secret to surviving long term is understanding women and their needs. When I finally started speaking in understandable language with my wife I said “I thought you thought the same way I did.” And she said, “I thought you thought the same way I did.” We were both amazed once we untangled the confusion. There are some good books about the differences between men and women. If you are committed to solving this problem forever, you’ll do your homework. But for now, here is a summary of what I have gleaned from my study of the mysteries of the female mind, both by experience and research. THE 10 SECRETS OF A WOMAN’S MIND
SECRET #1: They want you to listen to them. Even when it seems trivial or stupid, it is probably important to them. And they judge how much you care about them by the effort you put into listening. Don’t interrupt with solutions and suggestions. They really aren’t looking for advice unless they ask for it. They are simply thinking out loud and want you to connect with them. Make encouraging sounds that say “I’m listening.” You can even say “I’m listening.”
SECRET #2: They want to talk about relationships. Men don’t give much time to this topic, but women are the great connectors. They think about relationships all the time. They see life as a big interconnected soap opera. If you want to build a strong connection with your lover, be prepared to spend time analysing aloud how the people you both know relate to each other and to you.
SECRET #3: They want to know you’re available. We men like to retreat inside ourselves to think about things, to mull things over before making a comment or giving a decision. We don’t like to be rushed. Women don’t understand this and think we are shutting them out when we do it. Just say “I need to spend a little time thinking about this. I’ll be back.”
SECRET #4: They sound like they are trying to control you because they feel insecure. When they try to arrange everything and give you a list of things to do, then check up on you like your mother used to, it’s because they are anxious. They feel responsible for everything. They believe nothing will get done without their interference. It could be you let her do too much and don’t pull your weight. You’ll put an end to such controlling behaviour when she trusts you to take an active part in planning and carrying out activities. Pull your weight. Don’t leave running the household to her. Call the electrician. Pick up items at the supermarket that you notice you are running out of at home. Show her you are thinking about things she would normally have to worry about. Don’t leave it all to her or she’ll feel overwhelmed and start passing on her anxieties to you in the form of instructions and worse, negative comments about your decisions in other matters. Once she can trust you to be part of the team, she’ll relax and the pressure will come off both of you.
SECRET #5: They want their feelings respected. If she brings up a problem, don’t dismiss it as not important because you can see it as a minor issue easily solved. Make an effort to let her voice her feelings and support her point of view. Don’t think you are helping by making the problem seem smaller that she thinks it is. You send her a message that her feelings aren’t important. She will respect you when you demonstrate that you respect her.
SECRET #6: They want to feel cared for. Women get their messages about how much you care from the way you act. If you give her your time and your attention, they she feels that you care. She will trust you when you make her feel cared for.
SECRET #7: They want to feel respected. When you forget an anniversary, you are saying “You are not important to me.” When you act as though she is more important than anything else in your life – work, friends, hobbies – she feels special, like she is Number 1 in your life. She will appreciate you when she feels she has your respect.
SECRET #8: They want constant reassurance. You can’t rely on expressions of love from yesterday. What are you going to do today to remind her she is the centre of your universe? You have earned the right, by marrying her, only to stick around and prove you love her every day. She will become more encouraging towards you when she feels comfortable in your love.
SECRET #9: They like to see you bring home the bacon, but they don’t think it is an excuse to bury yourself in work. When you hide from them on the pretense of providing them with a lifestyle you are not sending the message “I love you. Look how hard I work for you.” A lifestyle without your presence is not what they signed up for.
SECRET #10: They want you in their corner at all times. Never take another person’s side in an argument with your wife. The argument is temporary. Your relationship is forever. Give her the benefit of the doubt. Don’t try to be fair and objective. Nail your colours to the mast – you’re her best friend. You’d support your best mate in a fight, whether he was wrong or right, wouldn’t you? The same goes for your wife.
Once she feels cared for, respected, understood, supported, and loved, she will cease being a difficult woman to live with. She will blossom into the wonderful girl you first fell in love with. She will be your greatest supporter and Number 1 fan. Don’t give up the pursuit Women love to be pursued. Not harassed, but pursued by consent. They love the feeling of being a prize that a man will quest for. It makes them feel special. So they like persistence. Too many men – afraid of rejection or anticipating failure – give up the chase long before it is time. This is true for sex with your long time partner as it is for capturing the affections of a new partner. A woman might say goodnight and mean it, but she is still open to seduction. She’ll tell you if she’s not when you start. The most seductive thing you can do is capture her attention with words. Sometimes a fantasy story spun out of your imagination – about how the two of you meet in an unexpected encounter and how it leads to a sexual experience – can get the juices flowing. Sometimes a woman can get turned on by hearing about your encounters with other women in past lives. (Sometimes not. It depends on the degree of trust you have won. Tread lightly with this one.) Keep a close watch on her reactions and pursue the hunt where it leads. At same time, don’t ever back away when she wants to be the aggressor. Don’t think you’ve got to be the one on top. Learning to receive is as important as learning to give. ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––--------------------------PANEL: PANEL HEADLINE: The Love Room PANEL COPY: This is the best explanation of the difference between men and women and it comes from Barbara De Angelis in her book What Women Want Men to Know. A man’s mind and a woman’s mind are like houses, she says. There are different rooms for the different areas in our life – a ‘work’ room, a ‘body room’, a ‘recreation’ room, etc. For women, every room in the house is a Love Room. But men have only one Love Room in the house. If the man wants to focus on love, he consciously has to leave the other rooms. The woman feels: "I am in my Love House, which is full of Love Rooms, and I am relating to my mate in a loving, intimate way, only he is not in his Love Room! Maybe he’s in the Work Room of his mind… Suddenly, there I am, wanting to relate to him emotionally, which he translates as me wanting him to go to his Love Room, where he can be with me that way. But he doesn’t want to go to his Love Room – he’s busy in some other room." Women who don’t understand the concept of the Love Room don’t realise that their men are not available to them emotionally at the time. So they feel as though he is somehow shutting them out. And how does he feel about her attempt to drag him out of his current room and into the Love Room? "My attempt to connect emotionally can feel to him as if I am trying to control him, or tell him what to do,” says Barbara De Angelis. Again we have the Language of Opposite Meaning spreading confusion. ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––--------------------------Reawakening the passion If you have any trouble feeling passionate about someone who has been landing big hits on you for some time, here’s what I did. I went through the photo albums and found photos of Louisa when were first met. Bursting with sexual energy and love, she was impossible to resist. I had the two best photos blown up and framed – two copies of each, one for home and one for work so I could always be reminded of the beautiful creature I had wooed and won all those years ago. That creature was hiding inside my disappointed, disapproving wife, just waiting to be invited out to play. Old diaries, letters, anything that brings alive those days before Gridlock set in… get them out and enjoy a trip back through time. Do it alone, do it together (even better). Visit old locations if you can – old haunts, scenes that meant a great deal to you both. Reminisce and the lovers that you were will be awakened. Before long you might be able to see that young girl reappear in your wife’s face. Simply by doing loving things for her you will increase your feelings of love towards her. “When a man expresses himself in loving behaviour, automatically his feelings will follow and become more loving,” says John Gray in Men are From Mars, Women Are from Venus. “Even if a man is not feeling his love for a woman, he can still decide to do something loving for her. If his offering is received and appreciated, then he will begin to feel his love for her again.”
A successful marriage is an edifice that must be rebuilt every day. -Andre Maurois
How to woo a woman everyday You remember how to woo a woman, don’t you? How did you win her the first time? You paid her attention. You took her to places. You had fun together. You were a fun guy to be with because you were interested in her. You were interested in her. She was amazing – so beautiful and fresh and sexy and interesting. And best of all, she was interested in you. This made her even more interesting. You cared about her. You did not want anyone or anything to hurt or upset her. You were considerate. How did you show it? Do it again. Now. And then don’t stop. Ever.
Love doesn’t just sit there like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new. – Ursula K. LeGuin
Here are some of the tactics I employed to execute my strategy of a “Total Love Attack”: • Flowers – A good solid performer, especially if they are unexpected. I surprised my wife by filling her bedroom with long stemmed roses (five or six dozen) one day while she was out. That’s a demonstration of commitment. In our gridlocked days she would have complained about the cost. But now she simply lets me go at it. She can’t stop me, anyway. • Jewellery – Women tend to love it, so go for it. I bought her about six or seven smaller items and hid them – gift wrapped – all around the house in places Louisa could find them. The surprises were better than the pieces of jewellery. • Out to dinner – We do this anyway. So it’s not a big deal unless it is to someplace special or if it is unusual for you or there is …. (drum roll) … dancing! Girls love to dance. Men usually hate it because we’re brought up to run the ball upfield, not trip the light fandango. Don’t worry if you can’t dance, just be there with her and make an effort. Let yourself go and you’ll find the more relaxed you are, the sooner the dancer in you will emerge.
Marriage is not a noun; it's a verb. It isn't something you get. It's something you do. It's the way you love your partner every day. - Barbara De Angelis
• Lingerie – This can be risky because there’s a good chance your wife doesn’t like a part of her anatomy and that’s likely to be highlighted in anything you buy. It’s probably one of your favourite parts and you’ll be amazed to find out it’s her least favourite. (Women are irrational about their bodies. They have deep-seated insecurities about how they look. Even the top models hate their bodies. It’s a crime.) Don’t spoil the surprise by asking her advice. Take a risk. You’ll soon learn what not to buy. Plucking up the courage to walk into a lingerie shop can be the toughest part of the process. But once inside the assistants are used to embarrassed male customers and all will go smoothly. I have spent eight hundred dollars on a small piece of lace and cloth sewn together by some French label and forty nine dollars on a two piece outfit, lace and satin… both delighted my wife and she wears both. The French stuff is usually quality. And you take fewer risks with quality. Ask the shop assistant to teach you how to tell a quality garment. Become an expert. Lingerie is not only nice to wear, it stimulates a woman’s sense of femininity… and can lead to erotic outcomes which are mutually pleasurable and good for mending broken hearts. • Voice mail messages – I impersonate imaginary lovers calling my wife and conspiring to meet her behind my back. I put on accents and make impassioned pleas for her favours. It’s fun.
Love is not something you feel. It's something you do. -David Wilkerson
• Yellow sticky pads – When I am going away for a few days on business, I sometimes go through the house with a little pad of sticky yellow notepaper and a black texta pen and leave variations on the theme “I Love You” in places she’ll find as the days wear on. In the freezer, under her pillow, on the bathroom mirror, in among her underwear, in her handbag, above the door so she won’t see it until she turns to leave the room, high up on the wall in a place that I risk breaking my neck to reach. (Girls scream disapproval while you’re taking risks, but love it when the feat is complete.) I put one love note in the oven that she didn’t find until it nearly burst into flames when she fired it up without checking. Filled the kitchen with smoke. Laugh…….? Well, eventually she did. • A bottle of something –I was given a bottle of Grange as a gift. I usually re-gift something like that to someone who will appreciate it more than me. But I don’t do that no more, buddy. I took the last one away with us on a weekend jaunt, opened it secretly while she was serving hamburgers and produced it with a flourish to her squeals of delight mixed with protests about the cost (not too much of the protest, though). This was following up an earlier surprise of a bottle of French champagne I snaffled from somewhere (another gift). The result: delirium. A six over the Members’ Stand and out of the ground. • Time – Spend time with her simply talking about anything. Be available. Come out of your cave. I read to her from books of love poetry. (WHOA! I can hear you shout. OK. You don’t have to do anything I do. But, my friend, it does the trick.) I like spending time with my wife. Once a wife sees that, she will be more willing to let me have my time. • Butler - My son’s very beautiful and very observant girlfriend pointed out to my wife that I have become her butler. I make it a practice to bring her a cup of tea in bed in the mornings, and slice some fruit if we have any fresh, or juice some vegetables, whatever is available. I make her favourite poached eggs once or twice a week. And I have learned how to cook her favourite dish: lamb roast. I consciously put myself out to fetch things for her when I see her about to get up and get them for herself. I do it because I enjoy it and it feels good. And it is part of my “walking the talk” strategy. I stumbled onto it by sheer luck. My wife tripped and damaged her sciatic nerve, soon after my “conversion”. She was bed ridden for a week and needed to be chauffeured everywhere. I became her arms and legs for a few weeks, a good start for my campaign to win her heart. • Massage – This is the best relationship mender I can think of. It started for us when my wife’s damaged sciatic nerve left her in great pain. And has continued ever since. Feet, calves, thighs, buttocks, back, shoulders, neck, arms, hands, and that’s it. One rule: no sex afterwards unless she initiates it. It is not a trade for sex. She must feel no pressure, so she can enjoy the massage completely relaxed throughout. This might seem hard on the male masseur, but I find the joy of touching her body satisfying in itself. The physical closeness is what sex is mainly about. Fixation on orgasm is blocking lovers from the full enjoyment of sex, anyway. Sex catches up to you eventually and it is better for the wait. And what better way to demonstrate your love than by denying yourself the most basic urge. She knows what it means. I massage her twice or three times a week. I tell her what a privilege it is and how I get as much from it as she does. It won’t work if she feels guilty. You might have trouble getting her to agree at first. Keep trying. Start with only a foot massage. As she grows to trust you, it will develop.
If husbands could realize what large returns of profit may be gotten out of a wife by a small word of praise paid over the counter when the market is just right, they would bring matters around the way they wish them much oftener than they usually do. Arguments are unsafe with wives, because they examine them; but they do not examine compliments. One can pass upon a wife a compliment that is three-fourths base metal; she will not even bite it to see if it is good; all she notices is the size of it, not the quality. - Mark Twain

Before marriage, a man will go home and lie awake all night thinking about something you said; after marriage, he'll go to sleep before you finish saying it. - Helen Rowland
• Little somethings - I was at a loss what to do after this, when the words of a wonderful man I met through business came ringing back to me. John Ashe has smiled all the way through two marriages (both successful) and a bevy of daughters. He said “I always have a little something in my pocket for them when I come home.” Louisa likes a particular brand of chewing gum and so I’ll pick that up for her occasionally. I need to become more expert in the Ashe Method. It is plainly brilliant. It costs little to say “I thought about you today.” • Little attentions – A hundred small things make up the big message of love. Make the first thing you do when you get home to find her and kiss her/hug her/whatever. It reminds her she is #1. Remember to ask her about things she was planning to do during the day, to show you care. If you can, spend 20 minutes talking with her, making contact after the day, before turning to other things you want to do. Give her your full attention during these grounding sessions. She will feel heard and love you for it. It’s a form of foreplay. At other times, when she talks to you, try to give her your attention – even say “I’m listening” to drive the point home. Be on the lookout for signs she is tired or upset and ask her what’s wrong. Hug her several times each day for no reason. Touch her in non-sexual ways often, so she doesn’t feel every caress has to be about sex. Tell her “I love you” randomly throughout the day – call and leave the message on her voice mail. Show affection for her in public. Always pay more attention to her than others in public or at functions and parties. Hold her hand. Open the door for her. Look her in the eyes when talking to her. Ask her how she’s feeling. Make a fire or put on the heater in cold weather. (A primal male thing to do for a woman and she’ll love it.) Shower before sex. Leave the toilet seat down. Make the bed. Replace light bulbs promptly. Plan ‘dates’ several days ahead instead of at the last minute. Call when you’re going to be late. Take over some of her chores when she is tired. Take her for a walk. Compliment her for her hair or what she’s wearing.
Try praising your wife, even if it does frighten her at first. - Billy Sunday
• Poetry – You don’t have to be a poet to write poetry; you just need to be inspired by the subject. Poetry doesn’t even have to rhyme. Make the words heartfelt. If you can’t get started, get hold of a book of love poetry and use it for ideas. Or simply copy out one that appeals and give it to her. She won’t mind if it’s not your original work. It’s the feelings that count. Read what you have written out to her when you are alone. • Over to you: There are as many different ways to demonstrate your love and win your lover’s love again. Please let me know your own discoveries. (Contact details on the back page.) Stolen ideas When I went into my ‘love frenzy’, trying to woo the pants (literally) off my wife, I looked hard in bookshops, libraries and on the Net for a handbook of ideas – little cunning stunts you can pull that say “I Love You” in different, unexpected ways. But there was none available at the time – until the next year when Penguin brought out a little book called Hopeless Romantic: A Romance Manual For Men by Oliver Green and Matthew Keon. For less than $10 I got hundreds of wacky ideas – some of them too wacky for me, but good for starting your own thoughts. The authors have a simple formula: E+C=R. Effort + Creativity = Romance. You provide the effort, they provide the creativity and you enjoy the fruits of romance. Here are some of their ideas that I stole from their book:
Hide gifts, tickets to shows, etc. inside the book she is currently reading.
Have gifts delivered to her at home or at work in big boxes via courier.
Send her things through the mail, the old fashioned way. So few people do it.
SMS a message to her while you are at dinner. Key the message in while at the toilet, but don’t press send until you’re sitting across from her again. Eg. “I’m looking at the most beautiful girl in the world right now.”
Leave tickets, gifts, etc. in the glove compartment of her car.
Leave a love message inside the petrol compartment of her car.
Write a love message on the footpath somewhere she will see it, in chalk.
Write a message in hair gel on the mirror in the bathroom – it will become visible next time she showers. Refer to the beautiful person looking in the mirror.
Go to her place of work. Kiss her once, then leave.
Ring and say something loving, then hang up.
If you have a ceiling fan above the bed, clean the blades and sprinkle flower petals on them so that next time she turns it on she’ll be showered with love.
Arrive at her place of work with her bag packed and ready for a romantic weekend she doesn’t know about. Then whisk her away for a fun-filled, mystery weekend.
Thanks, Gentlemen. PANEL PANEL HEADLINE: Become "The Wild Man" PANEL COPY: What is "The Wild Man"? He has a genius for living and he lives inside of you, according to Steve Biddulph in his book Manhood. "He both represents – and teaches us – our own brilliance, wildness, greatness and spontaneity... Abandoning yourself to wildness turns out to be the most harmonious and generative thing you can do. When we are good we are OK, but when we are ‘wild’ we are geniuses." It's about trusting in your wild self, about letting go and following your intuition and impulses. Men who make things, who create gardens, who play jazz or write, who do anything creative, they know that magic happens when you let go. "Natural rhythms within us take over and bring out our real talents… The most creative [individuals] are close to the Wild Man and borrow his power.” Behold the toilet brush My mother waited on my father, brothers and me, hand and foot. It was her way of saying she loved us. It was also a way of staying in control of us. And she ruled with a powerful tone of voice. But she ruined me for relationships with women. I grew up with a strong belief that ‘women's work’ was not something men or boys did. Sounds quaint now, but it has deadly effects.

So any woman entering into a domestic arrangement with me was immediately insulted by my ingrained attitudes. I am ashamed to admit it, but until my epiphany I had never used a toilet brush. I wonder if I am the only one?
" The first year of marriage is one of adjustment, and so is every year after that.” – My friend Nick Day’s father
I call it the Giant Insult. Leaving beds unmade, dishes in the sink… ignoring my share of the household responsibilities. Every time a man leaves his clothes on the floor is saying to his lover, “You are my servant. You are the housemaid.” If she signed up for that deal it’s OK. But women today expect more respect. They want to be accepted as real people, with ambitions and achievements, with mountains to climb and careers to build. You attack the very core of her identity when you relegate her to a domestic role. Your actions say louder than words ‘You are worth less than I am.’ I had delivered the Giant Insult to my wife for decades, and wondered why she didn’t trust me to be a changed man.
The only true need anyone has is to be seen as real.
– Deepak Chopra
I have heard a woman say there’s nothing as erotic for a woman as the sight of a man with a vacuum cleaner in his hands. Don’t get me wrong. They still want a man to protect them and make them feel secure physically and emotionally. And they want a man to be aggressive in the bedroom and to pursue them with a passion. But if you want to prove your love to a woman, learn how to use the washing machine, become more practiced with the iron and introduce yourself to the toilet brush.
It may not happen overnight Don’t be surprised if she doesn’t welcome the New You with open arms. She may even reject you at first. This is the time to stay strong and focussed on the long term. There are three reasons why she might react this way: Rejection Reason 1. She doesn’t trust you or believe in this miraculous change. My wife took the best part of 2 years to fully trust me. After 25 years of disappointment and insults, she was within her rights to doubt my word. However she was enjoying the treatment from New Michael, so she stayed around long enough for me to prove my feelings were genuine. Rejection Reason 2: She’s been through the trauma of deciding to leave you and put it all behind her. Now you’re forcing her to reopen the wound and get back on the torture table. You are an inconvenience. Once a woman has made up her mind to go, she cuts the cable in her mind and waits for her opportunity. You’ve got to love her out of it, gently. Rejection Reason 3: The years of neglect have filled her with a large pool of resentment that needs to be drained. She has a vague feeling of the need for revenge, especially now she knows you are feeling towards her the way she felt towards you for all that time. All 3 reasons are valid. But all of them can be worn away under the Onslaught of Love. The two spaces After you surrender, not every day will be perfect. Your Ego and your wife’s Ego will want to reassert themselves and make both of you self-centred and selfish. If this happens, and a sharp word passes between you, you can react from either one of two spaces:
The ‘Struggle’ Space or The ‘Loving’ Space.
The Struggle Space is like a boxer’s corner – you come out fighting when you hear the bell. It is the way you know so well – the old way. Snipe back, Defend. Feel hurt and unfairly treated. Seek revenge (All this is happening between you and a person you claim to be in love with.) The Loving Space is where Love dominates your heart and mind. This Space is full of Forgiveness, Surrender, Compassion and Empathy. To choose which space to respond from, stop and ask yourself before you react: “What would Love do?” If you can, follow that path.

“There is no greater invitation to love than loving first.” -St. Augustine
We have a code word for when we’re either of us in the grip of our Ego – it’s called a Jimmy. Jimmy is the name I gave my Ego. He’s a nasty little piece of work, but he sure can put up a good argument. Very convincing. So whenever Jimmy has got the better of me I say, “I’m having a Jimmy” as I walk away to put some distance between my wife and myself. It works for us. When she has hers, I know she’ll be over it in a few hours. I take a little longer. Why Elvis was a loser with women…
Who would women say was the most attractive male in the world, in the 20th century? The sexiest man alive or dead? Elvis Presley. Who else could it be? Which male has had as greater following of other males who dress up to look like him? None. Elvis. The King. Men love him, women love him, kids love him. He literally dripped sexuality. He made women wet their pants. But Elvis was a loser with women in relationships. His wife Priscilla ran away with her karate instructor. He lost the love of his life – the girl who started living with him when she was 15 (chaperoned until she was of age) – because he couldn’t say “I love you”. Too scared. Elvis confesses his failure through the words of the famous song he sang to try to reach Priscilla via the radio: “Always On My Mind”. Let’s look at the words that meant so much to Elvis to see why he was a loser in love” 1.The lyrics of the song he chose to sing to his wife (the other title he addressed to her was “In The Cold Kentucky Rain”) he tries to slide out from under the charge of cruel neglect of his wife’s emotional needs by using ‘weasel words’: “Maybe I didn't treat you Quite as good as I should have Maybe I didn't love you Quite as often as I could have…” “Maybe…?” implies “Maybe not…?” as if there can be some debate. “Quite as much” implies it’s only a matter of degree. Therefore Elvis is trying to imply that his mistakes can be minimised or dismissed as not important. But Presley was guilty of massive cruelty to his wife. For instance, one biographer has Elvis refusing to have sex with his wife again after the birth of Lisa Marie, because he was uncomfortable having sex with a mother. 2. Elvis couldn’t claim he was ignorant of what she needed. He knew what he was failing to do. “Little things I should have said and done…” It’s the little things that let a woman know she is valued, that she is cared for. 3. Elvis admits to his failing: “I just never took the time…” It doesn’t take much time to say ‘’I love you…’ And Elvis had nothing else to do with his time except to play with his expensive toys and hang out with his old school buddies behind the walls at Graceland 4. “You were always on my mind” is the final refuge of the emotionally incapable or lazy husband. I know, because I tried to use this defence during one of my near misses. Of course she’s at the back of your mind, but not for any benefit to her. She’s there as your security blanket, like Mommy used to be. “I’m OK. The world’s OK so long as she’s at home for me…” Many men have massive ‘transference’ issues with their mothers, especially if she was as powerful woman like Grace Presley or Minnie Marx. Elvis was discovered as a talent only when he went with his own money to Sun Studios to make a recording for his Mommy’s birthday. 5. More admissions of failure: ”Maybe I didn't hold you All those lonely, lonely times And I guess I never told you I'm so happy that you're mine “If I made you feel second best Girl I'm so sorry I was blind “ Men can make a woman feel second best very quickly, without realising it. Not being sensitive is one thing that Elvis consents to ‘fessing up to in his music. Elvis, being at the top of the food chain for his gender, was hopelessly prepared for a life with woman. If the sexiest man on the planet couldn’t get it right – one way or the other – what chance have the rest of us? Elvis would always be the loser in these situations because he:
1. Refused to acknowledge his guilt and surrender unilaterally

2. Was dragged to admitting his mistakes, revealing a lack of credibility in his appeal for his woman, and

3. Admitted to being an emotionally dependent male with a ‘mommy’ complex, which women hate because it makes them feel overburdened with someone else’s neuroses.
And Percy was a winner… How different would ‘the King’s’ life have been if he had used the famous words sung by Percy Sledge in “When a man loves a woman.” Elvis would have realised that to truly love a woman, a man has to go “Overboard” to get the point across. Let’s look closely at the words – most people know them, any way. 1. “When a man loves a woman….Can't keep his mind on nothing else,” she’s No. 1 in his priorities. “He'd trade the world for the good thing he's found.” She loves the feeling of being No. 1 and looks for continual proof of it. 2. “If she is bad, he can't see it She can do no wrong Turn his back on his best friend if he put her down…” That’s right. She is right, even when she is wrong. Refer to the section The most successful grocery retailer in the world, Stew Leonard, lived by these principles: “Rule No. 1: The Customer is Always Right. Rule No. 2: If The Customer Is Ever Wrong, See Rule No. 1”. (And she is the Customer).” It would be interesting to see if the average Australian male would risk losing his best mate in an argument over his wife. 3. “He'll spend his very last dime Tryin' to hold on to what he needs…” The “Surrendered Male” goes to extremes to prove his love only because she needs such extreme proof to overcome her disbelief and cynicism after so many years of disappointment. Finally, the loving warrior lives by the belief that, if he allows the woman to win in every case, eventually she will demand that he get justice and hand back to him his rights. “He'd give up all his comforts And sleep out in the rain If she said that's the way it ought to be” She appears unjust in Gridlock because she believes she has been unfairly treated for many years. But once the internal set of scales are balanced, her inherent sense of justice takes over and the male wins back his comforts and privileges. Percy is then a winner because he:
1. Places his woman above all other interests in his life.

2. Defends her right to be wrong, even to the extent of facing down his best mate to support her.

3. Goes to extremes to demonstrate his love to her.

4. Surrenders completely to his woman and waits for her to feel safe in his love, when she will extend the hand of fairness to him and the balance will be restored.

What if it doesn’t work?
If you follow all the advice in this book and she still leaves you, what does it mean? If your relationship fails, it doesn’t mean you’ve failed. You’ve triumphed over your biggest opponent: your Ego. You’ve discovered the joy of no-strings-attached giving. You’ve become a person capable of giving and receiving love. You are a prize catch for any woman looking for True Love. Love will find you. It is searching for you. Stay open to its call. Your wife may have her own issues she needs to confront. Too big to get over. You may have to do what I did when mine left me… have faith in her. I believed she was searching for something I hadn’t given her. I felt strangely sure she would find it, but I never felt sure she’d come back. Something told me to believe in her essential goodness… and wait. It didn’t stop me getting on with my life as though she wasn’t coming back. I wore the pain and grew up a lot as a result. I supported her when she was being condemned by my family and hers. I was her only supporter… and she heard of it. It demonstrated my love. So that, when she had discovered Mr Perfect wasn’t what he appeared, once she was rejected and forced to confront her own issues of aloneness and differentiation, she knew there was one person who remained constant, in her corner, despite the horrendous pain I was suffering as a result of her decision to leave.
I used to believe that marriage would diminish me, reduce my options. That you had to be someone less to live with someone else when, of course, you have to be someone more. - Candice Bergen
As with everything else in this book, there are no guarantees. Life offers no guarantees. There is only one certainty and that is uncertainty. You or I could die in the next moment … our lovers can leave us tomorrow, by choice or by death. The only control you or I have is over our decisions. We can decide to grow up and stand on our own two feet, and meet life’s uncertainty feeling certain of one thing: we can take whatever it throws at us. That’s the best love of all. Love of yourself. Appreciation and affirmation of yourself. “Self validation” in Dr Schnarch’s words. Needing no one else to prove to us we are good and worthy and strong. Knowing that we are all those things, knowing it inside.
“If you would be loved, love and be lovable.” -Benjamin Franklin
Are you on The Path? If you wish to experience True Love and pass beyond the soul-damaging Gridlock that most married couples tolerate, you are a special person. You have been summoned by Spirit or something beyond our understanding. Love is a journey along a path that is dangerous and lonely and scary. It is not only a choice you make - but you are chosen for the journey by your readiness for the challenge. It is a Karmic Path - a set of obstacles that you must encounter to reach the next level of your spiritual maturity. Congratulations on your arrival at the portal of Love's journey. I believe you have the stamina for the challenge. The Spirit doesn’t call the Equipped for these great challenges. It equips the Called. Love is like caustic soda - it strips everything bare and makes everything frighteningly real. Not many men have the courage to truly love. I am not sure I have it myself, but I'm game to give it a go. Love is a word that conceals its meaning beneath common usage. It masquerades as something easy to do. We 'make love' as if just taking your clothes off and touching each other is a manufacturing process for the Universe's most precious non-substance. No training needed, just genitals and the balls to use them. We 'fall in love' like tripping over. Find ourselves besotted. Then trapped as we awaken from the dream and find the object of our desire is a person with hateful tendencies as well as being a loveable creature. Like the tar baby in the Brer Rabbit story, we struggle with the entanglement but it gets worse, not better. We say things we don't mean, we can't seem to say what we feel. Love devastates your rational thinking abilities because it is counter-intuitive and runs by its own internal logic. Forget justice, balance, A before B and then C. Love sets the rules then changes them between rounds. Slippery like an eel, Love offers no guarantee that if, for instance, you conformed to your wife's desires to the letter, that she would love you more for it. In fact, many women are swept off their feet by bastards who treat them badly. And these women love these bastards intensely for all their ill treatment. Love can crush your spirit and make you an empty shell. But just when it seems to have forsaken you, it can rush in like a king tide and almost drown you in joy. But it is the eternal promise of Love that keeps us on the path. Love is the glue that keeps the Universe together. It forms the bones of the animal and child. It resonates and vibrates in the smallest particle of matter. Our bodies and our spirits know what our minds don't - that Love is the direction, the alpha and omega, the answer and the question, the reason, oh sweet reason, that keeps us going in a cruel world. It is a faint tugging we feel - a vague discontent, an irritation, a feeling of incompleteness. Love is beckoning, asking you to acknowledge its presence everywhere and in everything. Fully engaged, Love will bring you to an understanding of God (whatever you call it), Nature, the Universe... and all these things you can touch through the heart of your beloved, which is the Doorway to Existence for You. The last chapter of the Love Story sees your separation from God eliminated. You become Love. God is Love. Game Over. Or just begun. The Groom Proposes a Toast to the Bride Louisa introduced me to a book by Kahlil Gibran called The Prophet. When I read the following section it sounded cool, but I couldn’t understand it. Looking back after 33 years, it was actually an accurate prediction for my life with Louisa. A script we have lived through. Scary for me. Second nature for her. ”When love beckons to you, follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep…”
We were warned that it’s not easy, but we didn’t listen.

“And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you...”

All of us have felt the blade in our stomaches.
”And when he speaks to you believe in him, Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden….”

Devastation, sinking to the depths, is as much a part of Love as rising to the exhilarating heights.
”For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you.”

Christ is said to have died for Love.

“Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.”

Life hands you a diamond in the rough then proceeds to polish of all parts that don’t fit.

“Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.”

Love can dislodge your mind from its foundations. It shook mine.
Why me?

Why did this epiphany happen to me? God only knows. I like to think my Mother intervened for me upstairs when she got there and could see my marriage was in grave danger of failure. Then there was the birth of our first grandson Xavier, who lives with us. The Welsh have an old Proverb: “Perfect love sometimes doesn’t come until the first grandchild!” He changed our view of ourselves and each other. Again we were approaching our 25th Anniversary. Mark Twain believed 25 years is a critical period: “Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.” I don’t know what happened to me or why. All I know is I have changed my priorities. The biggest breakthrough for me came when I discovered that marriage is not a safe place to be. It is not a protection against uncertainty. It is a scary process for stretching your character and making us grow up. As David Schnarch says, “No one is ready for marriage; marriage makes you ready for marriage.” Deepak Chopra agrees: “Marriage is a testing ground and a mirror. It tests your willingness to believe in love as a solution.” My willingness was tested for 25 years – what an amazing woman Louisa is, to persevere with a clod like me for all that time. That is loyalty. I owe her my life.

Lyrics: “Love Doesn’t Just Sit There Like A Stone”

Love doesn’t just sit there like a stone
Love’s not something you can own
It has to be made fresh each day
It’s like making bread they say
You can’t rely on yesterday’s

Love doesn’t just blossom like a rose
You can’t just plant it and it grows
It needs watering a lot
Especially when the weather’s hot
And some caring for the plot

I had a love that meant the world to me
But it was not the kind that set her free
And I was taking love I hadn’t earned
Naturally I soon got burned
And here’s the lesson that I learned

Love doesn’t just take off like a bird
Love’s not just a lot of words
If you love her set her free
True love’s happy just to see
Your lover being all she can be.

© 2007 Michael Kiely

A List of Useful Books These books have helped me over the years to come to terms with Louisa and the mysteries she and all women are. Passionate Marriage by Dr David Schnarch, Scribe, Sydney, 1997 The Path To Love, by Deepak Chopra, Harmony Books, New York, 1997 Men are From Mars, Women Are from Venus, by John Gray, Thorsons, London, 1992 The Art of Loving, by Erich Fromm, Thorsons, London, 1995 The Art of Happiness, The Dalai Lama, Hodder, Sydney, 1998. Why Men Don’t Listen & Women Can’t Read Maps, by Allan and Barbara Pease, Pease Training International, Mona Vale, 1999 Why Men Won’t Commit, by George Weinberg, Simmon & Schuster, London, 2003 What Women Want Men To Know, by Barbara De Angelis, Thorsons, London, 2001 She: Understanding Female Psychology, by Robert Johnson, Harper Collins, New York, 1989 Manhood, by Steve Biddulph, Finch, Lane Cove, 1995 The Surrendered Wife, by Laura Doyle, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1999 Men Who Hate Women & The Women Who Love Them, by Susan Forward, Bantam, New York, 2002 The Prophet Collection, Kahlil Gibran, Axiom, Stepney, 2001

Remarks About MAN OVERBOARD

“Beware! This book is only for the brave. The fainthearted should not read this book.”
- The Fatherhood Foundation

“It spoke to my heart. Just reading it freed something inside of me." – Mary Collins, North Carolina

“I read the book without my wife’s knowing and used some of the strategies you mentioned, and they worked! I have recommended my mates read this book.” – Tony B., Darlinghurst

“This book should be an attachment to any marriage certificate and the divorce rate might be reduced.” – Merv B., Melbourne

“It’s a cracking read (and will be of help in my own life).” - Paul Ham, author, ‘Kokoda’

“Fantastic material. You offer a unique perspective that in a way rolls the debate back 50 years, yet is a radical alternative. It will be very controversial.” - Jill Margo, MEN’S ISSUES writer, Australian Financial Review

"Started to read your book at work today… very difficult to put it down… I think women will love what you have to say… your explanations of relationship patterns are pretty accurate from the female perspective…" Jan, Marriage Guidance Counsellor

“I've read the work. One word: crap. I'm glad your wife is still around. I can't imagine why. The thing reads like an advertisement for race-tipping software. It reeks of marketing insincerity. My only suggestion is to scrap it ... I am sure this advice will be of no use whatsoever to you.” - Peter Temple, award-winning crime writer and my former writing teacher

Man Overboard is the best book on marriage for blokes, written by a bloke that I have ever read. It is short, sharp and to the point. For this reason Man Overboard is required reading in our 'Good to Great' Fatherhood Mentoring Course for the 21st Century. Michael Kiely shares the secrets to surviving marriage but staying in love. The greatest thing a father can do for his children is to love his children's mother. The best way to do this is to get married and stay married. Marriage is both a process of death and life that is not often understood. The life only comes when we embrace the death. As Rainer Rilke says, 'For one human being to love another, that is perhaps the most difficult of tasks; the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but a preparation. In Man Overboard Michael Kiely provides the keys to becoming a great husband, a great lover and in the process embarking on the journey to becoming a great dad.
Warwick Marsh - Fatherhood Foundation