Frequently Asked Questions From Men
These questions will guide you through common scenarios and what to do about them. If you have questions not covered here, ask our counselors about your specific situation.
Has Your Wife Left For Someone Else (Or Is About To)?
There are no absolutes, however, the reality is that 99% of the time when a woman leaves you for someone else, she has already shifted her heart away from you. Unfortunately, this means the chances of reconciliation are very slim to non-existent.
Occasionally a woman’s decision to leave may have been an emotional, on the spur of the moment reaction, in which case there might be some hope. If that is not the case then your focus needs to be on your children, and making sure you can diplomatically handle the storm that is yet to hit.
The more defensive or reactive you are in this situation, the worse things will be. It could still be helpful to get one of our books or our TMF Marriage System video course to learn where you went wrong, how to stop reacting when she pushes your buttons, and how to behave to minimize the damage. But we would not be honest if we told you that at this point there was still much hope.
Does Your Wife Want a Divorce?
First, there is the group of women who already have it all planned out. The train has already left the station and there is no stopping it. The best you can do is accept the situation and be prepared in case divorce procedures turn ugly. Otherwise you will react in ways that will worsen the situation.
Then there is a group of women who ask for a divorce as a sign to their husbands that the relationship has become so bad that if things don’t change, divorce will be the result. In these cases, the man needs to stop himself from becoming defensive and reactive, or it will be over, even if things settle down for a time. This is a warning that not many men get, and fewer heed.
If you are wise, you will heed this warning and do the following:
- Sign up for our men’s TMF Marriage System video course and put serious effort into it.
- Start seriously listening to your wife, stop all selfishness, stop arguing, and treat her like an angel, no matter what is going on.
- Put a huge amount of attention on being a great father, not just a good one.
- Tell your wife that you are doing the above, but without trying to get her to do or change anything, including taking the women’s course or reading our books.
- Pray that it’s not too late.
Is Your Wife Driving You To Leave (Or Have An Affair)?
This is the easiest to fix; but you’ll have to read one of our books at least, or study our full TMF Marriage System video course. There are things you need to learn about yourself and your wife that will help you understand and deal with her behavior and yours. Without this core knowledge, you are simply a victim of your own biological and mental reactions.
Once you understand the biological motivations that drive you and your wife, what behaviors are destructive to your marriage, and what behaviors are beneficial, and what the benefits are of making changes, things will turn around. Your behavior and perspective will shift in ways that will have an impact on both of you and you won’t want to call it quits.
Did Your Wife Catch You With Porn, On Dating Sites, Or Cheating?
These issues are a big deal for her, and if they persist, you could end up divorced. Ask yourself why you are married. Think of your kids! They do not deserve to be harmed by a divorce, and it is on you to keep things together.
Marriage is an amazing thing, but most people have no idea why they got married in the first place, or about the benefits that can be enjoyed when you know how to be married. When your marriage is amazing, you won’t want to look elsewhere, but it won’t become amazing all by itself.
Now is a good time to work on achieving a real marriage by educating yourself about what that means. Get a hold of one of our books, or if you were caught cheating on your wife, then you need to immerse yourself in the TMF Marriage System video course. The results will make you so glad you put in the effort.
Do You Yell At Your Wife (Or Worse)?
Without realizing it, most men kill their marriage by using their aggressive, masculine power against their wives.
If you hired a bodyguard for protection and he waved his gun at you, even jokingly, you would fire him. Women marry their men for protection, to feel safe. So do NOT growl, snap, use a loud voice, yell, hit, or do anything that expresses your aggressive male power. Be prepared for the consequences if that’s what you’re doing.
Even if your wife is ‘crazy’, nags at you constantly, picks fights, if she successfully pushes your buttons until you blow up at her, even then how you respond is still your responsibility. If you react with anger, then that will eclipse any thought of peace, love and happiness.
The best path for both of you is to learn how to disable your buttons, how to not be a victim to anger, how to eliminate any reactive or defensive behavior. You need to learn about marriage, about your wife, but mostly about your own mind and how to change your habits and responses.
The very first lessons in our TMF Marriage System video course will teach you a simple technique that will start giving you control over your reactive tendencies right away. First you’ll learn to not say things you’ll regret later. With practice, you will eventually stop the anger from even rising up.
Stop using trial and error in your marriage. That path is plagued with stress and turmoil. Learn to get a handle on your anger quickly and how to improve every other aspect of your marriage with the systematized process we teach in our video course.
Is Your Marriage Happy?
Though it is uncommon these days, having a happy marriage should be “normal.”
Everyone knows intuitively that marriage grants couples the opportunity for unlimited happiness. But you need to understand how you can achieve that happiness by doing what works and avoiding the obstacles.
If you know how to drive a car and get behind the wheel of a Maserati, you would know how to drive it, even if you had never driven a sports car before. You would understand what the gauges mean and how to work the wheel and pedals. This understanding allows you to enjoy the car without worrying about blowing it up or hitting a tree. At worst, you might have to experiment with some of the switches to see what they do. But there is no mystery.
It’s the same with marriage. Once you understand it, you can enjoy it. The problems come when you have no realistic conceptions about marriage. If you are not happily married, it is because you are not operating it correctly.
How Is Your Sex Life?
Most husbands would be surprised to know that many women want to have sex more often than they think, though perhaps not as often as the male body craves. So if it has become a “chore” for your wife, it usually is not her fault. All men think they are great lovers, but how do you really know if you are? Very few wives come clean in this department. If you do not understand why they are not being honest, you need to learn more about women, a subject that is extensively covered in our books and courses.
Almost universally, men don’t understand what women actually want and need. Sincere study on your part can help quite a bit. Just don’t use porn-sites for ‘study purposes’, as this is far removed from lovemaking.
In short, most women usually need the following:
- Good hygiene
- Long, connected discussions – meaning you actively listen
- Lots of admiration
- Loving and sincere attention
- Listening beyond the spoken word
- Sincere compliments
- Slow, considerate, and pleasurable lovemaking
The following will absolutely reduce your wife’s desire for sex:
- Rushing
- Demanding
- Expectations
- Crudeness
- Complaining (e.g. that you don’t have sex often enough)
- The slightest hint that her body is not perfect
- Comparing her with other women
- Minimizing her efforts to please you
Women are not driven by their biology to the same goals of release as men. They rarely feel like “getting off.”
Hollywood portrayals of women craving sex in the same way as men do are total nonsense. There are some women like that, but not many. There is more to sex in marriage than the fleeting entertainment or release that it also provides. You will have a happier life if you learn about marriage and intimacy. The way to bring your lovemaking to a higher level is to include your heart, which just happens to be more natural for your wife.
Learning how to make love is like learning how to fly a fighter jet. There is nothing like it once you get going, but it requires a lot of knowledge, the importance of which is not immediately apparent.
How Is Your Relationship With Your Kids?
We started The Marriage Foundation so that parents would learn ‘how’ to be married and stay together. Our main aim was that children would not have to go through the devastating effects divorce has on them. The number one thing kids need is a happy, loving family life. If you get along well with your spouse, your kids will get all they need from the loving, supportive environment of your harmonious marriage.
Even when you are in the middle of marriage troubles, the relatively little effort that is required to learn about marriage and to fix yours is nothing compared to the lifetime of suffering caused by divorce, not to mention the traumatic effects it will have on your children.
If learning about marriage and creating an extraordinary family life is what you feel you want to do, then the easiest route is to use our discoveries and systematized processes taught in our books or our TMF Marriage System video course.
Does Your Wife Use Drugs Or Alcohol?
The number of people using drugs or alcohol to cope with every-day life is rampant. If your wife is one of them then realize that this may be her way of dealing with difficulties or deep-seated problems and conflicts.
Never put down her choice to use medication prescribed by doctors. Think of meds as a temporary crutch she needs while she is healing and learning how to gain control over her emotions.
Self-medicating with pot and alcohol is different, as they undermine will-power, putting all growth on hold. The right approach for you to take then is to be a friend who encourages without judgment. Be supportive; she is your chosen best friend and companion. She needs a shoulder to lean on, not a drill sergeant forcing her to do what is currently unmanageable.
If the drug or alcohol use begins negatively impacting other areas of your lives, or especially your children, please seek professional help.
You Should Listen To This Man’s Story
Listen to Jerry’s testimony below. Hearing his story will be well worth your time.
How The Marriage Foundation Can Help You
At The Marriage Foundation, we view getting married as the single, most extraordinary decision you will make in life. Like most couples, you were probably convinced that your love for each other would be strong enough to overcome all obstacles. However, if you are reading this then that means you have discovered that being married is not always easy and you have now reached a point where you feel that something needs to be done, but are at a loss what to do.
If anything can help you, there is no question that it is our marriage system. Unlike most other solutions, ours is unconditionally guaranteed, so that even if your marriage is already in great danger of ending in divorce, you can still safely give it a shot.
What makes our approach so different?
We believe your marriage will never change until your perspectives, attitudes, behaviors, and habits change. And those won’t change until you understand why, how and what you should change.
Our approach empowers you with an education. Once you are aware of a destructive habit, and start seeing the negative impact it has on your spouse and marriage, you will be more motivated to change it. Once you know what your spouse needs, it becomes much easier to enrich your marriage simply by providing it.
Our founder, Paul Friedman, developed his marriage system by personally working with hundreds of clients beginning in 2003, and has been refining it ever since. Paul’s system has three phases:
- We help you get your mind under control. This has to be done! Anger, emotions, habits, reactive words and behavior, everything must be brought under control otherwise you’ll never find peace and harmony in your marriage. Little triggers, like when your partner leaves the cap off the toothpaste, or is unintentionally rude, will continue to eat at your peace and build into resentment. The skills we teach are essential, and life changing. Your marriage (and whole life) will start improving almost immediately.
- We identify what destroys marriage and what builds it up again. Obviously being rude or being loving are on these lists. However, there are many commonly accepted behaviors that need to be identified and understood. For instance venting and criticism are commonly accepted (they’re on all family TV sitcoms), but they are very destructive. By the end of this section, you will understand why certain behaviors are destructive or beneficial so you will always be on the right path.
- We show you how to take your marriage to the stars! We do not believe in settling for a mundane marriage. You can, and should, have the best marriage ever. That is why you have to learn how to increase intimacy, about the unique natures of you and your spouse, and where your children fit within your new marriage. We will show you how you can make your marriage get better every day. You will enjoy the effects even years later.
The marriage system Paul taught to his personal clients has been recorded so you can also learn one-on-one from him through online videos. To support your learning, the marriage system also comes with access to our TMF certified counselors through email. They will answer any questions you have.
If you’d like to get a better idea of how our system works, then check out one of Paul’s books in the menu above. However the fastest way to start improving your marriage is to sign up for a free trial of our TMF Marriage System today.
If you’re not sure where your situation is at, or if you would like more reassurance, feel free to ask our counselors about your situation. They’ll help you see things from a new perspective and give you guidance based on the positive principles we teach.
Real marriage success comes from knowledge about yourself, your spouse, and your marriage. We see it happening over and over with our clients, from all walks of life. You can and should have an amazing marriage.