Warning:
What you’re about to read is not pleasant. Continue reading only if you feel emotionally prepared.
Women have always wondered where all the good men have gone.
Why do the guys you fall for always turn out to be so awful?
Why won’t guys work on the relationship?
Why do they seem threatened by communication?
What you may not know—and let’s be clear, most women don’t—is what men are telling each other.
What do men think the secret of a good relationship is?
What are men telling each other to do?
If you know where to look, the answer is out there in public. It’s online…
On website that sell dating advice to men.
You’re about to learn what some of those sites are telling men (and you might need a strong stomach for this one)…
Think Men Are Different These Days? You’re Right
Have you noticed that a lot of men seem on edge these days?
They’re easily irritated. They’re defensive. They’re aggressive.
In particular when they perceive an attack on their masculinity.
In relationships, this manifests as your guy getting angry at you for wanting to talk about things that aren’t working.
If you ask him to help more around the house, or express his feelings rather than getting grumpy, he might accuse you of trying to turn him into a woman. He’s a guy—you knew that when you got together with him!
When did “being a guy” become an excuse for not wanting to work on a relationship?
As you already know—because you’ve heard me say this over and over again—that excuse doesn’t cut it in the 21st century.
Today we no longer need relationships. We want relationships.
We want intimacy, connection, communication, affection, and security—and we dare to believe that men want them, too.
If a man thinks that you should be happy just because he’s agreed to be with you, then you have every right to say: “I love you, but I can’t make this work single-handedly. We’re in this together. I want you to be my soulmate, not just ‘a guy who’s agreed to be my boyfriend.’”
Where Did He Get These Ideas?
In the days before the internet, it was easy for women to find dating advice.
There were books. There were talk shows. There were more experienced girlfriends.
But for men, it wasn’t so easy.
Guys don’t share with other guys the way women do.
No man would be caught dead talking about his lack of success with women to another man!
That all changed with the flourishing of the pickup community in the early 2000s.
Suddenly, men had anonymous online spaces to discuss their skills with women.
Today, the chances that your guy has never been exposed to those ideas are slim.
Chances are, he’s come across a site like the one I’m about to share with you.
I hope you’re warmed up, because what I’m about to tell you made me feel so incredibly sad…
And I’ve been following the men’s seduction community for nearly 20 years!
One Man’s Worst Nightmare
This website, called ReviveHerLust.com, purports to be written by a guy named Dean.
Dean was a good guy. A nice guy. Who just wanted to please his woman.
But he fell in love with a woman who was out of his league.
They got married, and a year later the trouble started…
He explains:
“Like most men, I used to be a ‘nice guy’ who did whatever a woman said, treated her like a princess, and did everything possible to make her happy…”
What did he get for his effort?
A boring sex life. A “bitchy” wife who would “find any excuse she could to get upset, and hold things over my head… even if I made small mistakes….”
It got worse, he says. “She started ordering me around, telling me what I was and wasn’t allowed to do, and trying to subtly manipulate me into doing what she wanted me to do.”
Gosh, I thought as I read. I hope he talked to her! It’s pretty typical for things to break down in the second year of marriage.
Did Dean talk to his wife about how he was feeling?
Nope. He decided that what would solve the problem was an expensive romantic vacation.
When he sprung the idea on her, having already paid the deposit, she did the unthinkable…
She confessed their sex life wasn’t satisfying her and asked for a divorce.
In the crushing heartbreak that followed, Dean couldn’t stop thinking about one thing. Was it that he’d never told her how he really felt? Was regret over not setting appropriate boundaries? Was it an appreciation for just how hard marriage was?
It was not.
It was the shame of not being able to satisfy his woman in bed.
For many men, that’s the only story they’re able to tell themselves about a relationship.
Not that it didn’t work because they were too young, they lacked relationship skills, they didn’t know how to set boundaries or address conflict…
But rather that they didn’t demand the respect that would have naturally been given them had they been better in bed.
Ouch!
How to Train a Woman
But Dean’s “luck” with women turned around.
He went to a seminar about “how you can use the power of physiological conditioning to make women emotionally and sexually addicted to you.”
The idea is simple—and I’m sure you’re already familiar with it.
Ever heard someone say that “men are like dogs—you’ve just got to train them”? Basic dog training involves rewarding behavior you like and punishing or ignoring behavior you don’t.
That was Dean’s big breakthrough.
He could use Pavlovian conditioning on women!
“By using the right mix of punishments and rewards,” he explains, “you can change how your woman treats you… So you can condition her to do less of the things that bother you and more of the things that make you happy.”
You notice how he STILL hasn’t recognized that he never communicated with his ex-wife?
He never asked her to change the way she was behaving towards him.
He never told her that what she was doing was bothering him.
He was so scared of talking to her that he’d rather throw money away on a last-ditch romantic gesture than have a difficult conversation that might reveal the truth:
Dean had feelings.
He had a LOT of feelings.
He had just as many feelings as she did, only his were about insecurity and shame and the fear of loss.
Dean never wondered why his ex acted the way she did.
He never considered that perhaps, beneath her rigidity and need to control, she might be feeling just like him.
She might be feeling insecure in the marriage. She might be feeling afraid.
Only her fears and insecurities came out in controlling behavior rather than people-pleasing.
Sadly, Dean doesn’t make any of those realizations.
Instead, the story he chooses to share with viewers is the story of his victimhood. How his marriage failed because his wife had all the control and could treat him however she liked..
While he slaved away trying to make her happy and lost his manliness as a result.
Today, Dean sells other men on the woman-training techniques that he credits for turning his life around.
He tells guys, “I want to save you from the heartache… from the masculinity-sucking confidence-draining pain of being with a woman who treats you like a third-world beggar (or a first-world housekeeper).”
What You Need to Know
Advice like this sends guys a very clear message.
If you ask your guy to help around the house, you’re making him into “a first-world housekeeper.”
If you say no to sex, then you’re making your guy “a third-world beggar” who has to beg for it.
That turns my stomach.
As you know as a member of my community 🙂 there’s an easy way to make your love life awesome. It involves communication. We need to help our guy understand female sexuality.
When men understand the science of the female sexual response, they see that what happens outside the bedroom has a major impact on what happens inside the bedroom.
But that’s not the story that many of these men’s websites are selling.
The story they’re selling is that men need to be in control. They need to feel powerful. They need to have mastery over their sexuality and their women.
The story they’re selling is that women are inferior because they’re “emotional creatures.”
Women’s feelings are a problem (because, for men, their own feelings are a problem).
Women’s feelings make them out of control (because, for men, their own feelings make them feel out of control).
And a superior man is always in control.
That’s why he makes sure that his partner is so addicted to him that she’ll do anything to avoid losing him—including stifling her own relationship complaints.
Now, none of us like to hear our partner complaining about something we’ve done. No one! But healthy couples learn to get through it, because their love for one another is more important than their personal insecurities.
But for many men, websites like these encourage them to prioritize their insecurities.
When these men hear their partners saying, “I need to talk to you about something,” what they hear in their minds is, “You’re not good enough.”
A relationship expert would reassure these guys that all relationships involve expressing dissatisfaction. Part of getting good at love is learning to stop taking it personally (for a great primer, see Dr. Terry Real’s video on The Feedback Wheel).
But too many men’s advice sites don’t say that. Instead, they say, “Yeah, man, she really is telling you you’re not good enough.”
And no man wants to be in that position.
He would rather be in a relationship where they never talked… than a relationship where his insecurity got triggered.
Try This
If you are with a man like this, one of the very best things you can do is to get him talking about what he’s learned about being a man.
Ask him about what he thinks the job of a man is in a relationship. Ask him what he thinks the job of a woman is.
What is the ideal couple? Can he point to any examples? How does he think that couple resolves conflict? Do they even have conflict?
You might even tell him that you read this article. Show it to him. Ask him if he thinks I got it right or wrong.
We have to get men talking.
Toxic ideas can’t thrive when there’s light and air and communication and compassion.
It’s when these ideas are kept secret and shared exclusively among men that everyone—both men and the women who love them—loses.
