by Mark McCoy
In management, it’s called, “Don’t let your subordinates pass the monkey over you.” Talk to her about it. Try to get out of the technical loop of life. A romantic dinner over a glass of wine is a great opportunity for a conversation. Don’t waste the time on electric bills. Try this:
“Those earrings are really beautiful on you. On regular days, I just don’t notice. ”
“Do you think you’ll want to get old with me?”
“Let’s break routine a bit. Maybe we’ll learn tennis together? What about that trip to Mexico that we canceled last year. Maybe we’ll go this summer?”
“How is that car of yours? Having fun with it? Maybe it’s time for some other excitement?”
Try playing the game, “Who Would You Live With If You Had To Choose Someone That We Know?” Suddenly, you’ll discover that Thomas is actually her favorite. You weren’t even impressed by him. What does Thomas have that makes him her default? What caused her to reject John, who’s not a bad guy at all?
***
Listen to her. Talking is first of all about listening. Women aren’t looking for solutions, they are looking for someone to listen to them. That’s the first thing. Solutions will come afterwards. For every problem, first talk about all the possible solutions. Think about all sorts of things, just don’t misuse one thing: time. Time fixes everything. And usually, the problem solves itself over time.
Talk about what lies underneath the surface. She’s angry about something. You can argue about it until the cows come home. Instead of that, talk to her what’s been bothering her recently. Let’s try to think about it together. Something at work? Sex? Friendships? In her personal development? Maybe in her self-confidence that suddenly disappeared? Maybe the crisis of turning thirty ?
Talk about you. Are you happy? What would you like to be doing next year? Have you ever thought about switching professions? About learning how to drive race cars? About studying cinema? We don’t have the money for it? Maybe there is some? Maybe it’s worth it? Do you see yourself doing the same job for the rest of your life? At the same company? Are you satisfied with that? Talk about your friends, about your relationships with them. About your parents. The kids. Or by contrast, at what age do you see yourselves having kids? Who said we would have them at all?
Go out to restaurants. Simple ones. A bottle of wine and pasta. A few silences, a bit of rest, a few glances, and suddenly a topic pops up. Ask her, “How was your day?” That’s fine. But once in a while, try to ask how her month was. Let her think about it. Important conclusions will come. And how was your month? Talk about it. Be interested. Ask, flatter. It can’t be that you won’t mention her new perfume. You can also tell her that you liked the shirts that she used to wear better. “What, really? I thought you didn’t like them,” she’ll say, and she’ll feel like she exists for you. Go together to buy her some clothes. You sit on the chair and she’ll try things on. If you like something in particular, buy it. Whenever she wears it, you’ll remember that you bought it together. Afterwards, have lunch together. A couple of stolen hours in the middle of life. And I’m not even talking about the stolen hours in the hotel.
Decide to go to a play, ballet, opera or rock show once a month. Go for a fun evening or something. When you bought the tickets, you didn’t know what kind of mood you’d be in on the night of the show. It turns out that the play is on a day that you have a small crisis. The outing will force you to put aside the crisis and enable you to make up and have a good time together. A play or really good show is like an adrenaline rush to your hearts. New ideas will pop into your minds, and be a trigger for some activity or decision. After a good play or movie, no one wants to sleep, they want to live. To talk. To think. Together. It’s the glue of a relationship. This togetherness will remind you why you are together.
There are also dangers. It might not be pleasant but this closeness is likely to flood you with the feeling that you have nothing to do together. Deal with it. Recognition, conversation, therapy, a new beginning. Something that’s even more unpleasant is that it could lead you to separate. It’s true, who knows. It won’t be easy, but there could be benefits to this too. Maybe you saved yourself five wasted years? Five years that could be five amazing years with a new partner. And don’t think, why didn’t I leave ages ago? It could be that you simply weren’t ready to open yourself up to the world. Frightening, isn’t it? It’s a lot more frightening to let life pass you buy.
Sorry about the cliché, but there is nothing more important than love. Whoever has it, knows. Whoever doesn’t, doesn’t know that he isn’t alive. If you don’t have love, don’t think that’s how life is. That’s how it is for you, now, and you deserve to change it. It reminds me of all the women who thought that amazing orgasms were only in the movies until they had one themselves.
Within this whole psycho-spiritual process, there is one landmine that deserves an entire chapter. Go on, turn the page.
Twinklings of Understanding
The difficult conversation is not for amateurs Listen, understand
There are all kinds of conversations between couples, but I am here to talk to you about the hardest one of all: a serious problem, dramatic argument, someone was really hurt, a major mistake, maybe even a catastrophe like discovering an affair. You enter disaster mode. Just from the sparks of fury, the curtains could catch fire. Of course, along the way you made tons of mistakes, and of course from the conversation itself, new problems were created (So! You slept with Susan, too! Good to know!). Of course, we’re talking about things that it seems only a miracle could save you from, situations that demand an immediate and magic solution, what they used to call in ancient Greece “Deus ex machina,” which means “god from the machine”; that is, a problem solved with the intervention of a god. So, that’s the thing, it’s not solved this way.
There are problems that don’t need to be solved right away, situations that by definition, it’s better not to do anything about, better to let time do its work. Time usually knows what to do, even when it doesn’t seem that way. Even a complicated problem that threatens to destroy your lives is likely to be solved by time, and by the experience and wisdom that it brings with it. When you are exhausted from an argument and see no way out, take a break. A temporary strike. Let a few days pass and see how things work out. On the other hand, in order for it to pass and for time to be on your side, you must absorb a few rules that will help you pass through the hell of the difficult conversation.
Women want to be heard. So basic, so simple. We talked about this in the previous chapter. When your spouse expresses distress, don’t suggest practical solutions right away. The fact that you’re used to saving her and the world, that you study and immediately see a way to solve the problem, that doesn’t mean you understand her. The fact that she isn’t satisfied stems from the fact that before all else, she wants to feel that you deeply understand her distress. If you express empathy and understanding, half of the problem is already solved in her mind. By the way, this is the same way how she berates you about something and you walk around for days with your shoulders hunched, but she’s already forgotten what happened. The most important thing is to release her stress. It doesn’t mean she won’t be happy to get help, but only in the next stage.
The horrors of the night
Nighttime intensifies the drama. Every choked cry sounds like a heartbreaking lament. The darkness, exhaustion, and silence transform a silly quarrel into grounds for divorce. And it’s clear, of course, that the more you tire and want to sleep, the more she’ll start throwing punches like: “How can you sleep? We haven’t talked all day! Do you plan on leaving it like this?!”
A trap. A small question thrown into the air. If you don’t answer, you’re mean and hurtful; if you do, you’re in trouble, about to plunge into the never-ending back-and-forth of intelligence, sensitivity, bitterness, tensions and everything else that she doesn’t like. Your head is spinning, your eyes are clouded, you’re dying to hug the p
illow and drop into serenity, and she, like a woodpecker, just doesn’t stop. Every now and then, you turn to her side, shoot out an answer, go back to your side, and think it’s over. There is silence from her side. You’re almost asleep and then she starts again.
Your path here is simple. Sit up in bed, turn on the light. Take her hand in yours and say: “Listen, my love, I see that it’s bothering you. To tell you the truth, me too. I’m exhausted and not focused. Let’s get up in the morning, refreshed, and we’ll talk about everything over a cup of coffee.” If you’re a real man and plant a kiss on her forehead, you’ve played it well.
Give her something
You can’t win every argument. It seems like you’ve won or given in, but deep down, she’s still uneasy. Again, she’ll feel like you’re analytical, maybe, but also a demagogue, a juggler of words, convinced of your righteousness, it doesn’t really matter. Nothing happens if, every now and again, you tell her: “Listen, sweetie, I think that you were right and I wasn’t sensitive to the problem, but I was hurt too. I’m sorry.” Don’t forget to seal it with a kiss.
There’s a frustrating stage where each of you feels as though you’ve been wronged. You’re both hurt, each one focused on the wrong done to them, and the result is paralysis. Each of you is too proud to bow your head and say, “Sorry, I was wrong, I apologize, I’m nothing without you.” Instead, you move to the stage of nagging and bitterness. Believe me, I’m macho and quite proud, but listen, sometimes it’s better to say you’re sorry than suffer for two days.
Psychology
There are some really complicated cases, cases that require in-depth psychological analysis, cases in which deep angers float to the surface, and not necessarily in connection to the issue that’s under debate. Try and think about what’s bothering her under the surface. Talk to her in a paternal way. This doesn’t mean you should be arrogant. Just be mature and try to suggest a broader view of things. Maybe you haven’t been intimate for a couple of weeks already and she feels that you’re not attracted to her? Maybe she has a problem at work? Maybe something in her self-confidence has been hurt? Maybe her new haircut isn’t great, maybe yesterday you were a tad too excited about her new friend? Maybe you haven’t done anything lately to share the common burden? And maybe she’s having her period.
I don’t want to sound like a jerk, but listen and listen closely: You need to know exactly when she’s menstruating. Two days before, already start being gentler, or just give her space. If you can, do both at the same time. Women before they get their periods are like ticking time bombs. When their period finally arrives, the sand in their hourglass has already run out. They’re not to blame, of course. Imagine that every month, your dick starts dripping blood and your head becomes filled with nonsense. Not pleasant.
A flower the next day
Send her something the next morning – a small flower, a heart-shaped box of chocolates with a red ribbon. After all, the problem will show up in the evening again, so soften things up a bit if you can with some soft artillery.
Survival
It doesn’t matter how much you’ve prepared In the end, you’ll have to improvise
The decision to take down a target is never easy. Not for the decision maker and not for the executing agents. I can definitely say that in every one of the cases I know about, the decision was justified, in the interest of having a better, cleaner, safer world.
It was in Madrid. We knew that the target (Mad Man) was going to be staying at a certain hotel. We also knew what type of room he preferred. There were eight of them. We had to bug the room. MM was experienced and careful. In the past, we had already caught on to him, but the bastard checked in at noon, returned at night and simply changed rooms. The challenge was how to install a bug in each of the eight rooms, so that whatever room he gets, we’re prepared. A few months earlier, we had planted one of our men in the hotel, in the room service department. The problem was, he was too good at his job and had been promoted to a more senior position .
We decided that the work of installing the device would be taken care of by me and Sheila, my “girlfriend”: a pair of British tourists who want to choose a room for Sheila’s pedantic parents, after a careful examination of the view, floor, furniture color, etc. The condition for installing the bug was speed. We developed a special method which we practiced in a hotel room that was booked at the same time by another couple. I managed to achieve an installation and removal time of two and a half minutes, in two places, one in the bathroom and the other in the closet above the air conditioning system.
***
The hotel assigned us a junior manager who did everything he could to please us. While he showed Sheila the view from the balcony, I could disappear for a moment. In the first three rooms, everything went smoothly. I even managed to reduce the installation time by twenty seconds. The problem occurred in the fourth room. The manager who was showing us around surprised me. It was sudden and quick. It was embarrassing and dangerous. He understood everything. There was no time to think. His hand moved toward his walkie-talkie. I exchanged a split-second glance with Sheila. We had no choice but to stun him with instant paralyzing gas spray.
It was 6:30 p.m. The man lay on the carpet. We went into emergency mode. We called the other couple’s room. They informed the reception that the manager had passed out and that they had ordered an ambulance. The ambulance arrived within minutes. Our driver and nurse, who made up the other “couple” who had come with us, hurried to take away the manager. The nurse injected him with material that made his situation resemble some sort of medical attack, and they left. We wondered what to do with the man. I confess, we wondered whether we shouldn’t just kill him. You never know what he’ll remember and which faces he can identify. Why take a risk? After vacillating, we decided to leave him alive.
We needed time to go through all the rooms where the bug had been installed and remove them to make sure that we left no traces. One of the rooms was already occupied. Only after Sheila’s bursting into tears about a diamond earring that she forgot in the room while she was looking at it were we allowed in. The atmosphere was tense. There were guests in the room and we had to improvise. I told them that a screwdriver in a light socket caused an electrical short and darkness. I took down the bug on the pretext of trying to fix the power failure. We got out. We disappeared from the city. We failed, but survived. It’s a failure that’s discussed often in training, and used as a base for learning and practice. The decision to keep the manager alive helped us recover mentally. We took down MM a year later. The same technique, but in Rome. There’s nothing like Italians if you’re looking for a lack of vigilance.
Your Closest Friend
Treatment begets treatment,that’s what your dick is trying to tell you
It’s not easy to be the new guy. Listen to one catch and you’ll understand the depth of the problem: Most women don’t have orgasms from penetration. Instead, they have orgasms after clitoral stimulation. Nevertheless, a man is still measured for his ability to achieve a sustained erection and active penetration time. I don’t envy him.
But let’s do this in order. For young bachelors, it’s easy to get laid. Women today are not prey; they are often predators. They are independent, free from old ideas, and know what they want. The concept of “giving it away” has lost its meaning. Instead, we talk about women being assertive or, when they are older, cougars. The pick-up bar has turned into an arena where the women choose the men. The man has become the easy lay, or if you prefer, the man is the new woman. The era of liberation that became sexual freedom has turned female passion into a consumer power, and men are one type of supplier .
Unfortunately, there are no privileges connected with the new male status as the object of woman’s desire. A man still has to prove himself, as men had to in the past. Women don’t have to worry about getting hard or not getting hard. They don’t have to deal with early ejaculation (something which essentially ends the fuck) and they don�
��t have the opposite problem either, that they can’t have an orgasm. If a woman doesn’t have an orgasm, she can still fake it, and if she doesn’t fake it and doesn’t have an orgasm, it’s the man’s “fault.” The man is the one who is judged over whether the fuck was good or not good.
Here, the absurdity only increases. Since the first fuck is a kind of test for the man, especially if we’re talking about short flings, it requires the man to reach his peak already on the first night. The excess pressure placed on the man can often bring about the opposite effect – mediocre performance in the best case, fear of failure and impotence in the worst. And we haven’t even mentioned the fact that the modern man must be a romantic, a soft, sensitive and understanding lover.
***
The age of the independent woman confuses the man. He comes to bed after a day of work, tired, aware of his anxieties, strained by the professional and economic competition that reminds him every day that he hasn’t yet reached self-realization, and that’s without even talking about the ‘exit’. Greed is stronger than ever, career measurement is stronger than ever, and sexuality is too. You are expected to live up to standards of machismo of the old world, standards that expect you to “fuck hard” and also of the new world, of connecting sexuality to your feminine side. The desire to satisfy, succeed and live up to all the expectations neglects the man, who also needs touch and pleasure in his own way. So, what do you do?
Forget about norms. Be connected to yourself. Don’t be occupied with showing off your abilities, but with understanding yourself. Don’t waste time and energy researching performance and don’t feel obligated to prove yourself. Come clean, calm, remember the positive message that our time carries for you, which is that you must not relate to sex as though it is a war. You do not conquer and she is not conquered. You are two equal adults who are looking for common pleasure in each other’s arms (or between your legs). I don’t see anything wrong with not seeking penetration on the first night. Better that you should gain confidence and plan the right rhythm and touch. Listen to yourself and do what you want. Remember that you came to enjoy, not to prove yourself.