It is through the consistency of the physical, emotional, and spiritual security that we can provide the spice of surprise which can have so much value. It is important that we tantalize the women we love with the sweet taste of an occasional surprise. The surprise can take the form of taking them someplace special without letting them know where we are going. It can also be as grand as our imagination will allow. It is just important that we remember a little mystery gives our romancing efforts some extra flavor.

The Power Of Your Imagination
The power of imagination is one of our greatest tools in keeping the women we love excited and interested in our relationships. It is a skill, not a gift which has to be exercised like any other muscle. Like most men, I had a good imagination but I tended to only exercise it on fantasy football and sexual fantasies. I had to learn to use it to nurture my relationship. More specifically, I had to focus it on romance and things that would touch the heart of the women that I loved. This was incredibly hard at first. I started by asking other guys what cool, romantic things they had done. As I got more information, I started to think out of the box and come up with my own ideas. One of my best ideas was to tell my wife that I was going to take her out to lunch but not tell her where. I began by telling her that I had a great surprise for her, and that it all was a big secret that required that she ride in the car blind-folded until we arrived at our destination.

An unexpected gift at an unexpected time
One of the most powerful tools in exciting the emotional feelings of the women we love is an unexpected gift at an unexpected time. Nothing will communicate that you are constantly thinking about them as much as gift when they least expect it. It tells them that not only are they on your mind but also on your heart. It does not have to be an expensive or elaborate gift.

Often small, hand-made gifts can have the greatest effect. I believe that our lives are a series of small impactful moments that, strung together, make a necklace of loving, unforgettable, intimate moments, and which define our value not only to ourselves but to others. Add to your lover’s necklace of intimate moments that have touched her, and show her that she is valued and loved. Remember, an unexpected gift at an unexpected time.

Gifting in the presence of others
The maximum effect of a gift is not in is value but in its presentation. Women want other women to know that they are cherished, desired, and appreciated by the man they love. One of the best ways to do this is presenting a gift to her in the presence of others. On a regular basis, at least once every three or four months, I send flowers to my wife at her place of work. I include a sexy, romantic notation on it that she will not want to share with any of the other women in her office. Her inability to share the contents of the card always gets the imaginative juices of the other women in her office flowing. Much to her joy! The flowers always cause a stir and the other women are always asking whether it is her birthday or anniversary. How full of pride she is when she gets to respond that her man sent it “just because”. On Valentine’s Day, my favorite love day, I always make it a big deal for her at her job. One year I had flowers delivered in the morning, picked her up for lunch with a big card and a gift. Afterward, a quartet of singers came to her job, and in front of her whole work-place, sang her a love song from me. I received a call from one of the women at her job telling me that I really touched her with the love and caring I showed my wife. They are still talking about that Valentine’s Day. I also like to give her Christmas present to her on Christmas Eve in front of the family. The effect of the gift is multiplied in the presence of others. It is very important to remember that money has very little to do with making a gift special. The best gifts, the ones that touch her the most, are those that are hand-made and show time and effort.

The gift of two consistent things
The woman I love needs and deserves to feel special. I choose to make her feel special in many little ways, but the consistency of my efforts is what allows her to relax into my love and know un-equivocally that my love is hers. One of the ways that I fortify that feeling on her part is by doing two little things for her on a consistent basis. In choosing these two little things, I sought to find something that would make her feel special and that I would be able to do no matter what. I felt that these two little things had to be something that I felt comfortable that I could do without fail.

I realized that I could not just stop and start, but had to make a deep and abiding commitment to do these things if I wanted them to have the desired effect. I ultimately decided upon committing myself to always open the door for her. Be it car door, house door, any door. The other thing I choose was to always light her cigarette for her whether we were in public or at home. Once I decided on these things, I told her what I was going to do. She initially greeted my proclamation with a smile and a slight sense of skepticism. From then on, I opened every door and lit every cigarette. Sometimes, when she would reach for the door or start to light her own cigarette, I had to tell her, “That’s my job!” Slowly she started to pause before she lit her cigarette or approached a door. Before long she relaxed into my gift to her. She now does not even think about. She has claimed it as my gift to her. Other people notice that I do these two little things for her and it shapes their opinion of the way she is loved by me. I have received an unexpected payoff in this endeavor. She started doing two little things for me that make me feel special to her. I also could feel her more secure in my love. I wanted her to find that balance between being insecure and taking our love for granted. The gift of these two consistent things has contributed to her being able to relax into sureness about my love for her.

Continuing the mystery
Boredom is the ultimate relationship killer. Boredom is the result of not putting enough imagination into creating mystery for the relationship. Sitting around watching TV every night might be okay for us men, but it does not address the needs of the women we love. I had to come to the awareness that it was my job to insure that the mystery in my relationship stayed alive. Most people do not or choose not to recognize the critical need for mystery. Publishers sell millions upon millions of mystery and romance novels every year to fulfill this need. Just like with romance, I had to turn on my imagination to increase the mystery in my relationship. First, a definition – mystery is an unexpected action with an unexpected ending. Almost any action can turn into a mystery. Taking her to dinner without telling her where or why. Calling ahead and having the waiter bring her a flower. Creating a weekend away “just because.” An adventurous drive to nowhere just to spend time with her. Involving her friends in creating the mystery often increases the intensity of the mystery. Use them! They often are excited to help you continue to court the woman that you love and are an excellent source for ideas. Involve her family. They too, are usually more than willing to help and give suggestions. Recently, I bought tickets for a concert to my favorite artist, India.Aire. She is my favorite artist because of her emotional honesty and her belief in the healing power of all kinds of love. I wanted to share her with the woman I love. So instead of just telling her I had the tickets, I told her that I had a surprise for her the day before the concert. I told her that she really needed to be home from work by a certain time. I also told her that we were leaving the house for her surprise. I called her at work and told her how excited I was about her surprise. The act of giving her small pieces of information started her mind working. The mystery was on! When she came home from work, early by the way, she asked what the surprise was. I very nonchalantly told her to get dressed up and I would take her to her surprise. The act of spending my time on her, and for her, touched her. Long before we arrived at the concert she had tasted the sweet dessert of my love from this little bit of time and energy that I had spent on her. All through the concert she held my hand and was full of kisses. She was very present in this moment that we were sharing. She remarked as we walked out of the concert that she wanted to keep the ticket stubs. I knew that I had been successful in creating another special moment of our love.

Touching her emotionally – the written word
Understand as I have come to understand that nothing touches the woman I love more than the written words of my feelings for her and the vision of our future together. Talking to her about my love for her is good, but pales in comparison in its impact to the words of love that I write for her. A short paragraph or a ten-page letter has the same ability to impact her, and break through the inability to verbally express the depth and breadth of what I may be feeling for her. When I first started, I made the mistake of worrying about my grammar or sentence structure. I worried about my spelling or clarity. I was writing from my head for a woman who wanted to be touched by my heart. I started to write from my heart first and edit with my head only after the corners of my heart had been emptied onto the paper. I understand that for some of you guys the idea of writing anything, especially something about feelings, is about as emotionally appealing as sticking pins in your eyes. Fight the impulse to put it off or otherwise not do it. The fact that it is hard for you will only make the impact on the woman you love that much greater. Start with something small, a paragraph or two, and present it to her in a romantic setting. Focus on your feelings. Share your vision for your relationship. Let her in to the places that you share with no one else. Give her the most precious gift of knowing all of you. It will be hard at first, but it will get easier very quickly.

The love letter

Writing to the woman that you love can take many forms. The love letter is one of my favorite forms because it has a defined structure that appeals to my male mind. First, it starts with a loving salutation such as “My dearest love.” Then in the body of the letter I share feelings, not thoughts. No “I think” and lots of “I feel.” Use adjectives with colors to describe feelings. For example, my lust for you today is the color of a flaming red sun burning hot with desire. Remember that the woman we love realizes that we are guys and that we really only see the seven primary colors. So any attempt at this will get you a lot of points just for the effort. Also use numbers to describe intensity. At the beginning of our love, I loved you at a 4 but now my love has grown to a strong 8. I like to use my love letters to share with the woman I love the gratitude and love I feel when we work through something or have an emotionally touching moment. And the kicker is to mail it to her. Send it to her work address. It will change the color of her day. Or just mail it to her at home. Makes no sense to me, but something about it leaving our house with a stamp, going to the post office and returning back to our house where she gets to open it makes it more impactful. Use your judgment about sending it to her job. If she works in the kind of environment that her mail may be opened or otherwise compromised be careful what you say.

Written dialogue as a process to connect with her

One of the most powerful tools that the woman I love and I have for staying emotionally connected is written dialogue. We learned this technique at the marriage encounters that we’ve attended. When we are stuck in a place where we cannot find understanding of the other person’s position, or find ourselves unable to get to the middle of argument in order to find a com-promise, we use written dialogue. We also use it to stay in touch emotionally with each other, because it gives us a format to talk to each other, and check in with each other, as the busy days of our lives try to push us away from each other. It is important to understand that as powerful a tool as it is to break through problems, it is equally and more importantly a tool to be used to stay emotionally connected.

Go to a book store and buy a couple of blank hard-covered books. We found that hardcover books symbolically gave more value to our writings than just using paper note books. We even printed titles on our books. We call them our “Love Books.” Our experience was that we did this every day for a long time. Now, we do it less regularly but continue to be committed to utilizing it when we are verbally blocked and defending positions.

Written dialogue as another avenue to fix an issue

Writing often allows us to get clear on what we are feeling. Sometimes the feelings are so jumbled in our heads that the verbal expressions of these unclear thoughts make the problem worse, not better. If, after speaking with the woman I love about an issue I feel I have not properly conveyed to her, I will often write a question for her that we can dialogue on. Surprisingly, this almost always leads us to the feelings surrounding the issue and, once we reach those true feelings, we can find common ground and compromise. My wife is always touched by my willingness to write because she knows that it is not easy for me and that it requires energy and caring to do it.

Often we men feel anger first. I had to come to understand that for a man, anger is a more socially acceptable response than hurt or fear. I learned that anger is almost always a cover emotion for fear or hurt. Usually it is a fear that I would not get something I wanted or that I would lose something I thought I needed. After too many trials, I came to learn that the woman I loved responded much better to the real emotion in play instead of the more superficial cover feeling of anger. Even after I realized this, it was still hard for me to express. I thought I would be seen as weak or that my manhood would be called into question. There are things I could do to call into question my manhood, sharing my feelings of fear or hurt with the woman I love is not one of them.

Say So..Speak the words that are in your head and heart
Often, I have told the woman I loved how I loved her. I told her that I needed her in vivid detail. I expressed deep feelings of joy, gratitude, excitement, and pain. The only problem was that the words never left my lips. She never heard them. It became so routine for me to do this that I started to get confused about when and what I had actually spoken to her of these feelings. I do not know if I was afraid or lazy but the bottom line was that she was not hearing the things that I needed her to hear.

I think that a part of me knew that to speak the words was to make me vulnerable to her. I saw this as a scary thing. I saw this as giving someone the power to hurt me. I could not trust! The problem with being stuck in this emotional place was that I was not sharing who I was with the woman I loved. She was getting only part of me. And she could tell the difference. This was a place where rational thinking could not help me. I had to have faith. I had to believe in love and I had to be willing to risk. I had to take a shot and jump over the cliff. I had to believe in my love. I had to be willing to share with her the pieces of my heart. I had to speak to her all that I felt in my heart.

The trick for me was to not think. I had to say it when I thought it. I had to move the thought quickly from my head to my lips. When I did not do this, the thought, the moment was lost. It was a lie that I told myself that I would tell her later or that I told her before. The greatest lie that I told myself was that she already knew how I felt. Each feeling, each moment stands by itself. It is either fulfilled or lost. It is either shared or held in. There is no tomorrow as far as shared feelings are concerned. Once the moment is past it is lost. It still is a struggle sometimes, but it has gotten much easier to share with her, the love I feel.

No Advice – the art of listening
The woman I love comes home from a day at work full of challenges and frustrations. She comes home to me ready to reconnect emotionally with the man she loves. As women need to do, she starts sharing with me the blow by blow of her day. As I have mentioned, I have learned to listen for the feelings that are underlining the information she is sharing. I identify the feelings she is sharing with me and I focus on that and then give her advice on how to fix it. WRONG! BIG MISTAKE. Somewhere between playing cowboys and Indians and my first kiss I learned that to be a man meant to problem solve. This is a vital and important skill that I need to apply in my life on a daily basis. I, like most men, make the mistake of thinking that this is why the woman I love is sharing with me. That she wants a solution to her problem. The problem is that she does not want or need a solution to her problem. What she needs and wants is to verbalize until she gets clear in her own head what her solution is. Women talk to get perspective and to make sense of the things going on in their lives. This is their process. Their process is oftentimes the opposite of our process, which is to retreat into ourselves to get perspective and make sense of our challenges. On the rare occasions when she is stumped and needs a possible solution from me, she specifically asks for one.

Don’t solve – echo!

Once I stopped listening for information from the woman I loved and started listening for the feelings she was sharing, I could start to be empathetic. At first I did not know what to do with all the feelings she was sharing with me. I knew that she did not need my solutions, but I wanted and needed to be present in the conversation. I wanted to say something. By accident, I tried to echo back to her the feelings that I thought she was sharing. If she felt wronged, I would say how unfair it must feel to be treated that way. If she felt a sense of accomplishment, I would say it must feel good to achieve that after all the work you have done. If she felt frustrated, I would share that I, too, would be frustrated if I was dealing with a similar situation. I would try to just echo back to her in my own words what she was saying to me without my direction or solutions. At first, I felt real inept at this. As I did it more and more, I was able to echo the finer points of what she was feeling. A funny thing started to happen; she started to share more and more with me about the things that were going on with her. As a result, I started to feel more and more connected to her. I started to see that this was how the interaction between her and her girlfriends went. I started to see that this was the way that she wanted to share with me. This was what women called empathetic sharing.

Respond to the emotional not the rational

The key to learning to master empathetic sharing is to listen and respond to the emotion of what a woman is sharing. I had to listen for the emotions underneath what she was saying. In the beginning, I was very clumsy at doing this, so I focused on the “big four” emotions; anger, joy, fear, and excitement. I have learned that there are many more emotions. In time, as I practiced responding on an emotional level to the woman I loved, I became better at finding the finer points of the emotions she was sharing. This was sharing with the woman I loved in the way that she wanted to be shared with. This fulfilled her. She felt that, finally, she was being heard by the man in her life. I could feel it! She was more enthusiastic about sharing with me and I could tell by the look in her eyes that she was feeling really emotionally connected to me. Guys, this translates into better sex and a deeper understanding of and excitement for your woman.

How to spot the clues when you are doing a good job of listening

Watch her eyes! If she is looking deeply into your eyes without breaking eye contact she has reconnected with you. She is feeling that you are listening to her intently. Practice the art of eye contact. Always look deeply into her eyes when she is trying to connect with you. Occasionally, echo back her feelings so that she knows that you are hearing her and are completely present. Another clue is her body language. As she starts to relax and starts to reconnect with you she will start to lean into you and visually relax her body. You can also tell that you are doing a good job of listening when she tries to touch you while sharing. This means that she is feeling emotionally connected and wants to increase the connection with physical touch. Be careful not to end her sharing with you. Although it may seem that it is going on forever, she will very rarely need to spend more than ten to fifteen minutes to reconnect with you. Always let her end the reconnect. Otherwise you run the risk of appearing to be not interested. Understand that allowing her to feel emotionally connected to you is where the payoff for you as a man comes from.

Dress her up and show her off
The woman I love, since she was a little girl, played dress up and it is no less important to her today. I have to be aware of the boredom that will set in from the routine of work, home, children, and work. It is my responsibility to take her out where she can be the glamorous, fun-filled girl I courted. I need to find places to take her where the music is sweet and atmosphere is elegant. I realized that without those special times where we can get dressed up and go out and have fun that we can start to suffer from the dead-mommy and dead-daddy syndrome. We are parents and providers, but we are also lovers and interesting people and going out allows us to feed both sides of who we are. It also reminds me of her beauty and uniqueness that contributed to me falling in love with her in the first place. Not only does she come away feeling refreshed about our relationship, so do I. She realizes that I am still proud of her and interested in her as a woman. I make it a point to show off the woman I love at least every couple of months.

The need to be desired

It is so easy to forget why I fell in love with my wife in the first place. It is so easy to take for granted her uniqueness when I see her every day in her mommy clothes or her work clothes. When I first met my wife she was new and exciting. Today she is still new and exciting because we choose to step out of the roles we play at home and step back into the roles of courting each other. I, like my wife, still need to feel desired on a deep physical level. Like the peacock that has a mate, every now and then, she and I both need to display our attractiveness to each other and enjoy the feeling of being desired physically. Especially for the woman that I love, the need to be physically desired is a continuing, crucial need. Her womanhood is partly defined by her need to get positive feedback from the man she loves that she is still physically desirable. Women, on a very deep level, realize that men are visual creatures and she needs to know she has our visual attention to feel secure. She knows that we look, she just wants to know that we still look at her that way too. I encourage the woman I love to buy things she feels pretty in. I let her know that it is important for her to buy these things as it is to buy clothes for the children. I go shopping with the woman I love, even though it is painful for me to go shopping. I get joy in watching her try on these sexy things. It almost always leads to playtime at home. This attention that I give her makes her feel feminine and tells her that I not only enjoy her being sexy, but that her feeling sexy about herself is important to me. I ignore this need at my own peril.

Everyone wants to be someone’s sex object

Guys, it is very easy to get confused on this subject. In this age of political correctness and women’s lib, it is easy to feel like a whipped dog and retreat from this whole idea. Let’s clear up the misconceptions. Everyone wants to be someone’s sex object. They just do not want to be only a sex object. As we spoke about before, every complete human being has three components, physical, spiritual-emotional, intellectual. Each one of these must be fed to feel complete and usefully whole. Women are no different. They long to be some-one’s sexual object of desire. They just need to feel it as a part of a complete physical, spiritual- emotional, and intellectual relationship. Within the boundaries of this relationship, the permission is there to focus on her as a sexual being. The per-mission comes from the attention paid to the other two areas of her self, the spiritual-emotional and intellectual. If you are paying attention to those other parts of her being, she will hungrily seek attention for her sexual(physical) nature. No one, man or women, wants to be made to feel less than or diminished by the act of another showing indifference to the other parts of their being. So revel in her sexiness. Celebrate it. Hold it up high as her special uniqueness. And most of all, don’t be afraid to devour her sexiness with all the strength of your manly desire.
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The importance of a consistent date night
If it is important to you, you will make time for it. No matter what is going on in your life, when your team has a game on, you make the time to watch it. The woman you love feels the importance of your relationship by the time you make for it. A consistent date night says “I value our relationship and I will make the time to tend to it and feed it so that it will grow strong and vibrant.” Conversely, allowing other things to get in the way of your date night, no matter what it may be, communicates that I am not that invested in our love. It says that, “I am taking it for granted.” If the woman you love took this attitude about your sex life you would quickly become angry and sullen. Let nothing get in the way of your date night. Let her know that not only do you want to do it but that you are looking forward to it. Use your date night to re-connect emotionally, with the woman you love. If you go to the movies, make sure you stop and have coffee after so that you can talk. If you go to dinner, make sure that you walk by the water after so that you can talk. If you just go get hot dogs, feed her the hot dog and then go for a walk and talk. Reconnect! Remember date night is YOUR TIME. No talk of bills or children. It is the time set aside for talking about your love and relation-ship. The consistency of the night is as important as the date itself. It allows our women to relax into the stability and steadiness of our love. It gives them a foundation of security to trust that we are “all in” our relationship with them.

Love making outside of the bed
The women we love need the world to know that we love them. Some have this need greatly, some have a lesser need, but it is a need. I came to understand, in man terms, that this was sex outside of the bed. This made it easy for me to under-stand. The woman I love craves to be needed, stroked, and desired outside of the bed as well as inside of the bed. I had to give myself permission to kiss her in public, whisper my feelings into her ear when I visited her at her job, and hold her hand when I went anywhere with her. Touching her hands, her face, the nape of her neck, all things I did in the bed, I started to do when we were not in the bed. It helps me to think of this as a prolonged foreplay. I later started to understand that the woman I loved saw this as just a sharing of my feelings for her. It took on more meaning for her because now it was not just to start the love making process, but to keep the warm feelings of the love making present all the time. I had to get okay with doing the things I did to arouse her passion in the bed, outside of the bed. Sometimes this felt awkward but I wanted her to feel desired all the time, not just at bedtime.

P. D. A’s (Public Displays of Affection)

Many of us when we were younger, perhaps in our first relationships, were much less bothered by the idea of kissing or handholding in public. The newness of the touch of another’s hand or a kiss of their lips overwhelmed any ideas of shyness or embarrassment. I expressed my feelings free of the restraint of any manly ideas of what was acceptable or right. Somewhere, as I grew into manhood, I started to feel embarrassed about these public displays of emotion. I do not know if I was told that this was not the manly thing to do or that I absorbed it through our culture.

But I stopped. I stopped giving the woman I loved the affirmations of my feelings that she needed. When we were around other couples and they showed affection in public I became uncomfortable. The women I loved let me know that I was not fulfilling their need to be loved in the way that they needed to be loved. They told me I was a wonderful lover in the bed but that I rarely touched them or spoke words of love in public. This not only hurt them and left them wanting but it also made them feel “less than” in their community of women. I made a decision at that moment that no matter how I felt at first, I was going to become more demonstrative of my feelings and desires for the woman I loved. I made myself hold her hand anywhere we went. I kissed her more in public, a little at first, but more and more. She was surprised at the change in me, but she responded with glee and a new deeper level of closeness with me which I did not know was missing until I started to receive it. To my astonishment, she became much more loving and open-minded in bed. It was as if the lack of public display of my love for her made her doubt the depth of my love for her. She had been holding back the gift of all of her until she was sure. This small amount of effort on my part had given her the gift of knowing in her heart, truly and surely, that I was committed to this love of ours.

Pillow Talk in the street

Security wrapped in a blanket of romance is my mantra. Romance is the part that I have the hardest time remembering to do. At first I could not see the opportunities to be romantic. Finding the words to talk about the everyday stuff was hard enough. The “pay the bills” talk often was easier to do, but always less fulfilling for both of us. It always made me feel like those couples who sit and eat and have nothing to say to each other. They sit in the silence of lowered expectations. I knew that I did not want our love to end up like that. But the fanciful whisperings of a Don Juan was almost out of my reach. I knew I had to try. In the quiet of our bedroom I could speak of love. I found it insanely hard to speak the same things while sitting at a café or bar. Then I hit upon an idea. I would banish the bills talk and the day to day talk. I would tell her how her love made me feel at just that moment. I would not worry about the words. I would not worry even about if the words would come. I would just focus on that one thing… how her love made me feel right now. The first time I did this I was amazed that we fell into this very engaged conversation concerning the many aspects of our love for each other. The woman I loved seemed to have been waiting for the opportunity to talk with me about this. She held up her side of our pillow talk. As she did so, I grew more excited about where the conversation was going and had more to say. We ended up having a wonderful conversation about our love and our future in a sidewalk café on a beautiful sunny day. I knew, as it was happening, that this was going to become one of our special memories. All I had to do was to not worry about what to say and just tell her how her love for me made me feel today! Now, when I go out to spend some time with her I can choose to turn any lunch, any walk, any quiet time together into a special moment.