Well, while Amy is away this week she asked me to do this week's post. I'm Andrew Rusbatch and I am the co-author of Save My Marriage Today and regular blogger on www.savemymarriagetoday.com/live. I have worked alongside Amy in dealing with relationship issues for a number of years. Many of you will know me as the guy in the How To Be Irresistible To Men video course, and if you flick up to the "About" tab at the top of the page, you will see a picture of me doing my best to smile and look sexy!

So when I was thinking about something interesting to write, one that came into my mind was thoughts about cohabitation and what sort of effect this has on relationships. Looking at the figures, around 4.9 million adult couples of the opposite sex live together unmarried. Compare this to around 400 000 couples 45 years ago, and we see a social trend that some social scientists believe is going to have significant effects on future marital disruption and spending habits of a major sector in our society. Heady stuff huh?

Let's be honest though, cohabitation is not something new to most people nowadays, though attitudes both for and against cohabitation are still quite strong. Moral rights campaigners indicate it is part of a slippery slope toward a new breed of society with scant regard to commitment, while others say it is a responsible trial-run for marriage, without the associated cost of divorce and asset separation. Is he, or isn't he, the-one?

I like to think of cohabitation as one of the many necessary steps in a relationship, and liken it to marriage with trainer-wheels. The belief that living together before marriage is a useful way to find out whether you are really compatible and avoid a bad marriage or costly divorce is now widespread among most young people. But it still has the capacity to teach us something…

I thought I knew a lot about my partner until I shifted in with them, and I understand they thought the same about me. Gee, was I in for a shock! I have lived with a couple of partners, the first being when I was around 21 years old. I rather foolishly assumed that being a girl she would have the same careful attention to detail around the home that my four older sisters did. I knew how to cook and clean, and there was nothing around the home that I did not know how to do. Living with a partner at that time really opened my eyes to how some people live, and I was horrified at the time to discover how different we really were. After living together for some time we both discovered that we were incompatible, and we parted company soon after. I called it my awakening, when I finally realized how different some of us can be from others. In that relationship a lot of long-held beliefs were shattered. However, I learnt a very valuable lesson.

When you don't live together, your partner only sees the side of you that you want them to see. They don't get to see you when you are grumpy, tired, sick, or your gross habits. I know, you will all say something here, but everyone has at least one gross habit, even if it is something as simple as leaving your long hair to block the sink or not rinsing the shower out after you have shaved your legs. Sometimes the smallest things can drive home the reality that your partner is not perfect and is a person like the rest of us after all.

So if you know so little about your partner, how can you possibly make a considered decision to spend the rest of your life together? Perhaps that's where cohabitation has a role to play.

They say falling in love with someone is a leap of faith. Depending on how well you know your love will determine how far this leap is. So is cohabitation a way of minimizing the risk of divorce, or is it seen as a cheap and easy alternative to marriage?

Well you need to start by going into it with your eyes wide open. Before shifting in with a man, consider why you are doing it. Is it because you want it, is it because it will make it more convenient, or is it the all-crucial "moving it to the next level"? Is this really marriage with trainer wheels? 

Women will analyze a situation and examine possible interpretations of what this move may mean and what implications this is going to have on the state of the relationship, both now and in the future. Most guys simply see it as somewhere pretty to stick your stuff and to be nurtured and don't think too much into the future.

So the question then comes, when is an appropriate time in a relationship for each of you to shed your independence and singledom and entertain the idea of cohabitation? 6 days into the relationship? 6 weeks? 6 months? 6 years even?

And do you think it leads to a stronger marriage?

Whew … what a day at 000Relationships.com!  We finally launched the 2006 Edition of "How to Be Irresistible to Men."  I've put my heart and soul into it, and I truly believe that today marks the day when women are finally going to have the chance to take a course that respects them as women, that empowers them, and that achieves more than just getting men to dance at their heels – a course that teaches women to get the kind of love they've always dreamed about.

After working with Sarah for the past six months, I've seen women being happiest when they've found a man who really loves them for who they are inside, at the soul level.  It can be fun to play the dating game and learn how to press men's buttons.  They're so easy to infatuate!  But ultimately, knowing how to get a man trailing after you feels like a hollow sort of victory.  What I want, and what I think so many of us want, is the kind of great love that endures time and tests.  Being able to conquer a playboy is fun but not really satisfying for me.  I want to be a gray-haired lady someday with my gray-haired husband, both of us swinging in a rocking chair and watching the sunset.

The problem is that most dating & seduction courses will teach you the basics of flirting, dressing, and being "light and breezy" to attract a man.  Of course those things attract men!  But what happens if you want more than that?  What if you want to attract higher quality men, the kind of men who know the game is played and won't have any of it?  What if you want to re-ignite the fire between you and the partner you currently have?  All the first date advice in the world won't help you that much!

That's why we created the 2006 Edition of "How to Be Irresistible to Men," available now at www.000relationships.com/tomen.  It's a 2-hour video course, broken into 12 lessons on important topics that will utterly transform how you look at relationships.  I'm so proud of the workbook, too, that I wrote to accompany the lessons.  It's got reviews of the key concepts, exercises, and recommended reading lists.

Honestly, this stuff could change your life.  Even if you've bought all the other e-books out there on dating and relationships, you've just scratched the surface.  I'm amazed at what we managed to create.

So go ahead!  Check it out!  The wonderful thing is that we're able to offer a 60-day no-questions-asked moneyback guarantee, so even if you think that it's not something you'd really be interested in, give it a try!  If it doesn't transform your thinking on dating and relationships, email me.  I'll give you a refund immediately.

I just really, really want every woman out there who can try this course to do so.  We need more love in the world!  We women deserve more than relationships where we have to play games to feel like we've earned male attention.  We deserve to be happy with men who truly love us, and that's what my course will teach you to get.

So thanks for supporting us here at 000Relationships.com through this long "birthing" process of the new edition, and don't forget to check it out!   Again, it's at:

www.000relationships.com/tomen

A while back, Sarah received a consultation from a woman who wanted to how her particular disability was going to affect her search for love.  I very much liked the way Sarah responded to the question, so I've included her response (edited to removed identifying details) below.

It's a difficult situation to have a "special need" (or whatever politically correct term is the current currency) and explain the implications of your need to a man who is considering making a future with you.  A physical disability that prevents you from enjoying the same activities he enjoys or prevents you from co-creating the kind of future he has always imagined can be grounds to end the relationship.

But luckily, a man who can see past the "dis-" in "dis-ability" is the most wonderful sort of man of all: a man who sees a woman's soul and falls in love with who she is, not what she is or isn't able to do.

As Sarah points out, though, the biggest challenge for persons with special needs is to avoid the victim mentality.  If you see yourself as a victim or as someone beleagured by an overwhelming challenge, you'll attract men who'll feed into your low self-esteeem and keep you in your victim state.

A wonderful friend of mine is in a wheelchair.  Certainly doesn't hurt him at all in his search for love!  He's such a positive person that his wheelchair serves as an ice-breaker and an attention-drawer.

Another wonderful friend of mine is blind.  Her resentment and pride pushes many men away.  But, at the same time, her passion for causes and acute sensitivity attracts other men.

In the end, it is our attitude about who we are that will affect our love life more profoundly than our physical or environmental conditions.  That's because relationships are about love … and none of us were born with disabled hearts.

From Sarah: 

I feel encouraged by your email and the way you describe yourself as attractive and self-confident, professional and well-traveled. It sounds as though you have filled your years with lots of life-changing experiences as well as life lessons, so that by the time you have reached "seniority" you can say you have lived well and have a depth of life experience. I myself am a firm believer that our lives are a precious gift, and a positive attitude is the key to unlocking life’s many treasures.

No matter what age or depth of life experience we achieve, we all have our stumbling blocks.  Rather than viewing divorces as setbacks, I encourage people to use them as opportunities for growth. No matter who you have experienced life and love with, there is the opportunity to learn something about them, something about life, and most of all the opportunity to learn something about yourself.

A disability can be seen as a special challenge; however, it is only a challenge in as far as you wish to make it. Sometimes our focus on our weaknesses and faults can result in our fears becoming self-fulfilling prophecies. The person who thinks they are fat will eventually let their weight or body image prevent them from meeting men. I converse with people who have a range of challenges or issues that they believe present difficulties in their search for love. Even people without physical challenges can have internal challenges they need to overcome such as depression, self-esteem issues, and shyness. They are only challenges if you choose to make them that.

If you have a disability, remember that this is an aspect of you that may be different to the norm, but it makes you no less special or capable of nurturing and developing relationships.

Sarah shared this with me the other day, and I'd like to reprint it here.  If you're struggling with accepting being out of a relationship, or if you're looking for ways to change yourself so that you'll become more attractive to men, then this message might just come at the right time.

The first key to finding love is to believe that it will happen. Believe that you are single at the moment for a reason, and that destiny is trying to teach you something about yourself at this time. It might be to feel comfortable within your own company, or to celebrate being an individual and having control over what happens in your everyday life. But now that you are looking for more, the belief that it will happen will enable you to start to attract your reality.

You may be looking for things in your life to change so that you can attract a man. This is perhaps a misguided way of looking at finding love. The key to finding genuine love is to identify what the person inside you really is, and to celebrate being it. Don’t be the version of you that you think you need to be in order to find the man of your dreams. If you are able to be yourself and love being that person, your genuine nature will attract genuine men to you.

Remember that like attracts like, so if you are looking for genuine love you need to celebrate the genuine you. That way the men who are drawn to you are attracted to the real you.

If Sarah's message spoke to you, you'll love the 2006 Edition of "How to Be Irresistible to Men" (available August 1).  It's an incredible program that will bring out your inner, genuine irresistibility without making you into someone false that you're not.

Our second place winner in the 000Relationships LIVE Readers Story competition teaches us that even when we find the man of our dreams, get married, and believe that we have a future of happy-ever-after to look forward to, the story doesn't end…

"My Story" 

My name is Beth.  I grew up in a typical suburban family in Central Florida.   I left my parents home in 1973 to attend the University of Florida.  Like many young women then as now, I left my parents’ home with the typical post adolescent insecurities about my self image.  I was terribly insecure about my appearance and shy about meeting and dating men in general.  I always had a few dates, but my fears were paralyzing and those dates never led to any long lasting or serious relationships.  I was terribly smitten by a couple of men that showed an interest and tried to pursue me long term over the years but ultimately their attention and efforts were not enough to help me overcome my fears.

I continued my education and moved cross-country to continue my college education in San Francisco.  Despite my fear of men, I was amazingly fearless in my pursuits and had opportunities and successes in my education and professional life that many of my peers envied.  They admired and respected my courage and strength.  Only my closest confidantes recognized and understood how inexperienced and underdeveloped I was in the affairs of the heart.
 
By about age 28 most of my girlfriends were married and with children.  I started to become a little frightened that I would never find true love.  At that age I was working for a major engineering research and development company in a low level management position.  Even though I was surrounded by eligible men and my corporate responsibilities included supervising some of these men I was still clueless how to connect with them in a romantic way.

My roommate at the time, who was a couple of years younger than me, was going through a divorce from her first husband.   She and I in an effort to keep our lives entertaining and with the ever-present desire to find a really good man joined one of the original dating services.   Nothing like the online dating of today.  A sales representative from the dating service came to our apartment to interview us, get our profile data and take pictures of us for a card catalogue of sorts they kept to manage their clientele.   Once a week we would receive in the mail a batch of index cards with photos and brief profiles.  No phone number: it was up to the men who received your matching index card to make the first phone call.
 
I had a number of men contact me over a period of a few months and had some first dates but, as usual, no big success.  That is, until I met Lloyd.   I didn't fall head over heels for him as one might imagine.  In fact, when I met him my first impression was that he and I had virtually nothing in common.  He was a jock and a hunter that had grown up in New York.  He was divorced.  I was raised in a Southern family and had no interest in sports and had never even had a live in relationship. My passions were art and literature.

He seemed like a nice enough man, though, and was pretty cute, so after our first date when he asked, "When can I see you again?" I decided to give him some more time to capture my heart.   My response was, "I dunno, when would you like to see me again?"  He quickly responded, "How about tomorrow?"

And so we did, and each time he asked his request was "How about tomorrow?"  I can remember telling my assistant at work about this new man in my life.  We would joke about my new dating adventure and even gave Lloyd a nickname.  When Lloyd would call me at work, my assistant would put him on hold and call to me in my cubicle, "The hunter's on the phone.”  We would chuckle, and then I would take the call.
 
As time went by and Lloyd and I spent more and more time together, my feelings for him grew.  Soon we were practically inseparable.   I started to enjoy going to basketball games with him and going to watch him play softball.  A whole new world opened up for me.   Lloyd likewise would accompany me to the independent films with subtitles and take me out to trendy little restaurants and try all kinds of new foods that he really hated but never complained and was always willing to share and share alike in our diverse tastes and interests.

He was a pretty macho guy and had the typical guy talk code and was sparing with his expressions of love and admiration, but I was beginning to understand that his faithful and dependable attention and his eagerness to please me spoke volumes about his feelings for me.  We dated for about a year and then decided to move in together.  After living together we found that not only could we survive this transition but that our relationship flourished and our feelings of love and contentment grew even stronger.   A little more than two years into our relationship, Lloyd asked me to marry him, and I graciously accepted his proposal.
 
I wasn't low maintenance.  I was still insecure about my self image even though I knew in my mind that my new husband absolutely adored everything about me inside and out.   I was 31 when I married him, and I don't think I honestly became comfortable with him seeing me naked in the shower or without my makeup until I was close to 40 years old.  But this amazingly sweet, gentle, kind and adoring man just kept reassuring me with his love and devotion that I was a beautiful and desirable and charming woman until I finally started to believe it.

Lloyd and I had an incredible marriage.   We became the absolute best friends and lovers and shared everything: our families and friends, our financial and professional goals, our vacations, our love of home, and did all this with almost never a cross word between us.   I learned the true meaning of unconditional love and thought that I was one of the luckiest women on the planet to have such a great guy and such a happy and successful marriage.
 
On November 26, 2003, we were traveling north on I-95 to visit family over Thanksgiving weekend when a drunk driver caused a horribly violent car crash.  I can remember the young people that stopped to help us telling me to squeeze Lloyd's hand, that he was injured worse and they were going to try and help him first.  I do remember actually squeezing his hand and telling him how much I loved him and to please hang on that I didn't think I could live without him.  I know he heard me because he squeezed back.

The next thing I remember was waking up a few days later in the hospital and Lloyd's best friend leaning over my bed to tell me that my precious Lloyd hadn't survived the crash.   My mind went blank.  It was more than I could deal with in my critically injured state.  I stayed in that frame of mind for weeks.  When I was finally released from the hospital and came home to a house full of family waiting there to try and help me through my long and painful recovery I wished I hadn't survived that crash.  In one instant my whole life had been taken from me.  My precious, long-waited-for husband was dead and I was left behind to pick up the pieces of our shattered lives.

But somehow his love for me had survived that crash and I could still feel his faithful and dependable presence encouraging me and giving me the strength that I needed to solve all the problems that faced the next year of my life.   Yes, I cried and I despaired and I wandered aimlessly through the many memories in my mind trying to imagine what could possibly left of my life that was worth living.   I was terribly scarred by my injuries and have permanent nerve damage in my upper left body.  I was 48 years old and alone for the first time in almost two decades.
 
I know this story is terribly sad but you will be relieved to know that there is a happy ending.   For the past almost three years now, I have worked very hard to recover from my grief and my injuries.  When I finally became well enough, I dedicated myself to getting strong and healthy, and, believe it or not, you really can survive these kinds of tragedies.

Today I feel good, really good.  Although I'm still scarred and have limitations, I feel very good about my body image.  I'm very proud of myself for the way I have gracefully and with determination pulled myself back together.  I wake up every morning with an almost childlike excitement about what new experience or adventure my day may bring.

I can also tell you that I recently met another very sweet, sensitive and caring man.  Although I don't know if our relationship will grown into a serious and committed one, I can tell you that I have absolutely no doubts that I am a beautiful, charming and accomplished woman and that this man or some other equally wonderful man will be a lasting and important part of my future, and it's all because of the unconditional love and encouragement of my precious Lloyd.  I also know that he is happy for me that I have survived his death and would want nothing less for me than the best that life has to offer.

I don't think there's anybody who doesn't know this already, but just in case … we've just launched a fantastic 6-Part MiniCourse for Sarah's "How to Be Irresistible to Men" course!  Sarah and I have been working on the minicourse for the past month, and it reflects many of our new ideas about where the 2006 Edition of "How to Be Irresistible to Men" will be going.  Each day introduces you to a new concept that will transform how you think about love and dating.  You can get it by signing up to the "How to Be Irresistible to Men" newsletter series at www.000relationships.com/tomen/.

I'm really excited about what Sarah and I have created.  I don't think that any program like this exists yet for women.  I've read sooo many dating and relationship books over the past year, and most of them teach one thing: how to manipulate men into falling for you.

But I don't want men to simply fall for me.  I want love!  I want REAL love, a guy who will commit to me freely, from his own heart, and work on our relationship with a genuine desire for intimacy.  I want the kind of love that long-married couples have, the kind that only arises after you've worked through conflicts and difficult times together and come out stronger.

Most of the techniques taught in popular dating books will attract men to you, that's for sure.  But once you get into a relationship with those men, you'll find that their attraction was shallow.  You have to keep your games up to keep his interest level high.

That's because his initial feelings of attraction to you isn't actually love.  It's infatuation.  And, let me tell you, it's easy to get a guy infatuated with you!

Personally, I don't want to have to keep playing games to keep a guy interested.  I want to know that when the first sign of trouble arises, when that "veil of illusion" falls and he sees all my flaws, that he's going to make the decision to stick with me and work through whatever conflicts arise.

But to get to that point, I have some work to do on myself.  I have to be the kind of woman that men naturally feel comfortable with … the kind of woman that men know won't judge them … the kind of woman who is not only fun but also makes them feel more alive, more masculine, and more at peace.

Many women will say, "Hold on a minute.  It's is the point of my life to make men's lives better.  He has to do something for me, too!"

But it's exactly that kind of thinking that sabotages relationships.  The kind of thinking that says, "I'll give you love if you give me love."

Have you ever been loved unconditionally?  If so, you know how wonderful it feels to be loved no matter what … no matter what you've done for the other person … no matter whether you've hurt them or not … you simply know that you'll be loved anyway.

If you are doing something so that you can get love back from a man … if you're treating him a certain way so that he'll treat you a certain way … then you may benefit from our 2006 "How to Be Irresistible to Men" course.  It will teach you how to let your inner light shine in such a way that men will be drawn to your radiance.  You'll learn to let go of your expectations and instead trust in the natural course of attraction.  You'll learn how your beliefs create your reality, such that simply by shifting your thinking you can transform your love life.

There's only one catch: the 2006 Edition of "How to Be Irresistible to Men" hasn't been launched yet.  We're starting filming on it tomorrow.  We've got a fantastic guest speaker in, and I truly believe that magic is going to happen in the studio.  I'll keep you posted on its progress!

If you've already purchased the 2005 Edition of "How to Be Irresistible to Men," then you'll get the 2006 Edition free!  That's because every purchase of "How to Be Irresistible to Men" gives you lifetime membership to our Members Area.  You can start working on the current course and be ready to take your attraction to the next level when the 2006 Edition is launched.

For now, I highly recommend that you try out the 6-Part MiniCourse.  Again, all you have to do is sign up for the free "How to Be Irresistible to Men" Email Newsletter Series at www.000relationships.com/tomen/.  I'll be excited to hear what you think!

Like most children, I grew up in a world where weight mattered.  My mother was self-conscious about her weight, and how much weight others had gained or lost was always a ripe topic of discussion.

As a teenager I believed that if I weighed less I'd be loved more.  I knew that the only reason I wasn't as popular as I wished was because I wasn't slender.  I was built like a farm girl: strong and square. 

My belief that my body was responsible for all my social inadequacies didn't inspire me to change anything about how I ate, however.  I still baked batches of warm chocolate chip cookies, drank chocolate milk, and ate appreciatively of my mother's homemade bread drizzled with butter. 

Sally Tisdale's book The Best Thing I Ever Tasted: The Secret of Food discusses how deeply food is engrained in our personal histories.  The foods we were nourished with as a child become an indelible part of our psyche, evoking tastes, scents, and cravings long into adulthoood.

Yet sadly, for so many women, eating is no longer about nourishment.  It has become a secret, dirty pleasure.

When I was a teenager, I put up with my shameful body because I believed that I had no control over my desire to eat.  I tried diets from women's magazines but abandoned them when cold cabbage soup couldn't assuage my emotional hunger.  I despised myself as weak when I reached for cookies for breakfast.  I truly felt that my weight was a red flag to the world, signalling a weak will.

These attitudes were not unique to my teenage self.  They are common in the cult of beauty.  The feelings of shame and guilt about having a body that doesn't reflect our innermost dream about who we are can be torturous and lead us to feel like we are two people: the one who squeezes into ugly clothing, and the one we are in our dreams.

That is why is angers me so much when people (mainly men) tell me, "Overweight people are that way because they choose it.  It's a simple equation: what you gain is what you eat minus what you burn."

Weight is emotional.  The heft of our body can weigh our hearts down.  Images of stick-thin models encourage us to believe that burning away all fat will lighten our spirits until we blissfully drift away.  Our desire for food is heavily influenced by whether we are happy or sad, content or stressed.  Food is our friend and enemy, filling us with the loving remembrance of childhood pleasures and the corresponding guilt of indulgence.

It is tragic how deeply our body image affects our sense of ourselves as sexual creatures.  We've been led to believe that we cannot be attractive or sexy unless we have a certain body type.

Some of us, like myself, were even taught to believe that whether or not people like us is based on our appearance.  Every time a guy we like rejects us, every time we don't get noticed, every time a relationship breaks up, it is tempting to blame it on our bodies.

"If I were more beautiful, he'd still be in love with me.  If I were more beautiful, I'd have men falling over their feet to be with me.  If I were more beautiful, I'd be happier."

Wrong.  This might only be true if we replaced the "If I were more beautiful…" with "If only I loved myself more…"

I have learned to live comfortably and happily in my body no matter what my shape and size, but I know that I will never escape the cultural mandate that punishes women for volputuous, sensuous, natural bodies.

Today, years removed from the chunky figure of my teenage years, I am embarrassed to admit that I am still proud of myself when I lose a few pounds.  The lower number on the scale is like a pat on the back.  In the back of my mind I imagine my mother telling me, "You've done well."

As women, we owe it to one another to stop perpetuating the cult of weight.  What would happen if we all stopped criticizing others for their weight?  Stopped complimenting friends for having lost a few pounds?  Stopped obsessing over dress sizes and diets?  Started enjoying good food, good living, and the wonderful bodies that make it all possible?

I think that the world would be a better place. 🙂 

Is time running out for us?

So many women I talk to, no matter how young they are, have the sense of a ticking hourglass.  They feel, deep inside, that if they don't find the right man soon to marry and settle down, the bloom of their youth will have passed and all the single men will have been taken.

It is such a deep rooted fear for all of us.  In the most primal regions of our hearts, we believe that we will die if we don't find love.

It is only very recent in human history that men and women have been able to live alone.  In indigenous societies, complementary male and female roles are vital for survival.  Without a man to hunt, there is no food.  Without a woman to tend to the home, there is no safe place to return to.  A woman with no man has to rely on the goodwill of others to survive.

Even though we now eat take-out instead of deer, come home to houses instead of shelters, and wash our clothes with machines instead of river rocks, we are not that far removed from our ancestors.  Thousands of years of human history cannot be overwritten in a few generations.  We were meant to pair up.  It is such a strong conviction that mere sexual need cannot explain it.

For most of us today, marriage is a choice.  We make a living on our own without much difficulty.  We don't need men.  As a result, we can afford to be picky.  We can afford to wait until the perfect partner comes along.

Yet we still feel that ticking clock.  We feel the need to find love and partner with someone.  Even though marriage is a choice, even though the divorce rates are sky-high, we STILL get married in overwhelming numbers.  Most of us will marry at least once during our lifetime.

We need marriage.  Though some believe that marriage is merely a way to rein in promiscuous behavior and control reproduction, it is too widespread as a human behavior (in nearly all societies across history) to be merely a method of social control.

Harville Hendrix, author of Getting the Love You Want, believes that marriage has a crucial part to play in modern society.  Through marriage, he believes, we heal one another.  No other relationship teaches us so much about ourselves and being better human beings.  Commitment is not constriction or constraint: rather, it disciplines us to resolve our conflicts, express ourselves freely without fear of rejection, and increases intimacy beyond what is possible in a de facto relationship.

As much as we'd like to believe that we can live without men, we know we can't.  Masculine energy balances us.  Men need us to love them; we need them to love.

One of men's deep-seated fears is that women will decide they no longer need men.  Men cannot survive without women.  In fact, marriage is so healthy for men that they will live longer, stay healthier, and even earn more money as a husband than as a bachelor.

Men adore women who fully and warm-heartedly admit that they need men.  Although "needy" has become a dirty word, too many of us are tempted to the other extreme.  We try to be so independent that we don't leave the smallest space for a man in our lives.  When we do date, we suppress our needs so that we appear as un-needy as possible.  As a result, the men in our lives feel emasculated.  They feel that they can do nothing for us that we can't do for ourselves.  In many cases, they end up leaving us for a woman who is much more childlike and needy for his affections.

Can you admit to yourself that you need men without feeling ashamed or embarrassed?  I am not asking you to admit that you need "a man" — just that you need men.  It's not hard.  Yet it's amazing how that admission brings such a feeling of shame to the modern woman.

I love men.  I love them as friends and colleagues, as boys and old men, as strangers and lovers.  I am glad that men share our world with us.  Aren't you?

I got my hair cut last night at my favorite hair salon, the one where all the stylists are quirky over-30s with piercings and a vast knowledge of the latest celeb and local gossip.  As the stylist blowdried my hair with practiced flips of the brush, she told me about a woman who had come in earlier to accompany her teenage daughter for a haircut.  The stylist had asked the daughter, "What sort of style would you like?"  The daughter wouldn't even look up.  Her shoulders were hunched.  She mumbled, "Dunno."  The stylist was surprised; usually, teenagers have a very clear idea of what they want.  There was an awkward silence, which the mother quickly filled.  "She'll have her hair like this and like this."

The stylist shook her head as she was telling the story.  "The mother was a control freak," she said.  "She kept telling me how to cut the girl's hair as I was cutting it.  'I'm a professional,' I told her.  'I've been doing this for 20 years.  I wouldn't presume to tell you how to do your job, so please trust me.'

"She's not the only one like that.  Another woman came in with her husband.  They were both getting haircuts.  She told the stylist exactly how she wanted his hair cut.  She wanted it like Hugh Grant.  Then her husband went off with one stylist, and I started doing her hair.  Once her husband was out of earshot, he told the stylist, 'I really don't want it like that.'   So they compromised with a softer cut.  When the wife saw it, she was furious.  She raised a huge fit. 'I didn't ask for it to be like that!'  'No,' the stylist said, 'but he did.'"

I shook my head.  "So sad.  But it's so common, partners needing to be in control."

The stylist continued.  "I was just thinking, 'So what if he wants a different haircut?  You married him for better or worse, right?  How is his haircut going to harm you, especially if it makes him feel good?'  Women like that end up trying to control everything.  Someday he's going to have enough of it.  Five, ten, fifteen years down the road he's going to say, 'Hold on a minute. What's happened to my life? You're trying to turn me into you.  I'm out of here.'"

I added, "It's that need to change a man.  The fixer-upper attitude."

"Exactly.  And when she can't turn him into the man she wants, she acts like he has let her down.  He gets sick of her nagging and goes off to find someone who appreciates him for who he is."

It was a fantastic conversation for the price of a haircut.  In a hair salon, stylists see a cross-section of the world come and go every day.  They listen to the woes and tribulations of their clients.  Much like bartenders, they get an inside peek at people's lives that few professions have access to.  They see patterns that we can't see, because we're so immersed in the particular details of our own lives.

The stylist had hit on a very important concept.  Women who are used to being in control of their lives often feel as if they're helping their partners by "guiding" or "directing" them.  It can be quite scary to let go and allow their partners to make choices without offering any input or advice.

Beneath a person's need for control is the fear that everything will turn into a mess unless he or she is directly involved.  It is a simple equation.

Fear = Need to control = Lack of trust

And, as we all know, lack of trust in one's partner is poison for a relationship.

Men, in particular, find their wives' direct or indirect attempts to shape them stifling.  To marry, most men have to overcome a natural distaste for giving up independence and being accountable to someone.  When a wife begins to mother him and tell him what he needs to do for his own good, he begins to feel that she's questioning him.  He was good enough for her when they were courting; why isn't he good enough for her now?

One lesson that we can all learn is to let go of our need to control every aspect of our lives.  Let go and allow life to happen.  Don't give in to your fear of not knowing what's going to happen.  Enjoy the unpredictable nature of life and laugh when things don't turn out as you expect.  Learn to accept and love your partner as he is, even when his preferences and opinions are nothing like your own.

Best of all, when you let your partner be himself, make his own decisions without "helpful" suggestions from you, and choose options that you would never have considered, you get the wonderful benefit of a relationship that is surprising, spontaneous, and much more interesting than one controlled down to the dot on every 'i.'  You discover that you're not in a relationship with yourself; you're in a relationship with another human being whose internal world is vastly different from your own, and equally valid.  Because you no longer fear that he'll make the wrong decision, you will be able to relax and trust him in a way that you may have never been able to before.

Love and let go.