A good fight may clear the air and lead a couple in the right direction. If you think fighting is always bad, learn how to fight better. Because if you don’t take the fight, you’re likely to face the same problems in the next relationship.

A new study by the University of Tromsø in Norway finds that fighting is healthy for most relationships. “Many think that fighting is negative, but it seems that being open to fighting may in fact be good for the relationship,” says Marte Rye Heimdal, one of three students behind the study, to Dagbladet.

Sex and chores are the most common reasons why couples fight. If you or she feel that there’s not enough intimacy or sex, it’s easy to become grumpy and hot tempered. It’s the same with balancing the household workload. It’s normal. We have to remind ourselves that these kind of fights are not symptoms of a mismatch marriage. They are normal. Even necessary.

“Some divorces are necessary because the spouses are destroying each other. It has been like this through all times. But increasingly often people chose divorce because it’s the easiest choice. A lot of them could have grown by staying and facing the problems. Instead, the same difficulties may surface in the next relationship because they were not solved,” says psychiatrist Hans Olav Tungesvik to DagenMagazinet.

The trick is to fight fair and not too often. Here are five rules for the good fight:

1. Listen to your woman.
Try to figure out what the problem is before you react.

2. Allow her and yourself to be angry.
If you try to contain your feelings important issues may not be resolved.

3. Go straight to the point.
Beating around the bush may cause misunderstandings that can escalate the fight.

4. Do damage control.
Have a fair fight without attacking her as a person. Also, take responsibility for the outcome of the fight. You don’t want it to spiral to a point of no return.

5. Compromise.
Fighting is very rarely solved by facts, as they’re based on feelings, opinions and expectations. You have to give to receive.

Photo by mrhayata

What a great day! The birds are singing and the sun is shining and I am smiling because I had Sex today. Whoohoo! Can you tell it’s been a while? Well, all the tension and frustration is forgotten now because, well, I HAD SEX TODAY!

Actually I didn’t. Not yet, anyway. And if I did, I certainly would not post it here. I never kiss and tell. But you know the feeling of having sex after a long dry spell, right? It’s good. A real boost for your manliness and your ego.

Enjoy the high while you can because dry spells are normal. According to Newsweek (via Dr. Phil) unmarried guys get laid less than once a month on average. Married men average just below 6 lays per month. Some have have a lot more and some have much less. Every fifth married man live in what experts call a sexless marriage, with ten times or less per year (Wikipedia:Sexless marriage)

My point is this: Don’t let it bring you down. It’s normal.

High sexual activity is normal too, you know. In short bursts. Like in the beginning of a relationship. When she’s all you’re thinking about and you’re both busy exploring each other. You may be doing wild things like outdoor sex, sex in every room in the house or sex in a bathroom at a dinner party. It’s very normal.

Then it cools off. It’s not that hot anymore. You lose focus. You’re distracted. That’s normal too because there are other things in your life besides sex and your girlfriend.

Like work. Work can be a major distraction and energy drain. And kids. Who can have sex while a child is crying? And all that other stuff like money trouble, chores, in-laws, neighbours, sickness, unemployment.

All these things are no problems as long as they are temporary distractions. The trouble starts when you no longer get those bursts of sexual highs. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” No sex is a relationship killer. Not just becauses you need to get off. It’s about intimacy too. Sexual arousal comes natural in an intimate relationship. The lack of sex shows that you’re no longer that intimate. It’s all work.

So, what to do? Besides the five rules for an awesome marriage, here are three crucial tips.

1. Remove distractions
Find out what your major distractions are, and apply some structure. Make your own rules for how you want things to be. Like, if it is work, you must agree on how much work anyone can bring home and how much overtime that’s acceptable. Even if it’s the same amount of work, it’s easier to handle if you both know what to expect.

2. Take time-outs
Give each other time away from it all. Let her go visit a friend in another city while you take care of kids, bills and cleaning. It’s important that she’s gone enough to let go and accept that you can handle things without her. And long enough for you to learn to handle everything alone and appreciate the things she does at home. Next it’s your turn.

3. Date her
Popcorn in front of the TV when the kids are sleeping is not a date. Get a babysitter and get some undistracted time together. Make it easy an low key. Drop the restaurant and other distracting stuff. Go for a walk instead. Find a spot to watch the sun set and talk about what made you laugh the last week. Tell her about the last time she made you drool. Ask her about her dream and hopes for the future. Then take her dancing. Never underestimate a good dance, even if it’s only some clumsy steps on the pavement.

Photo by Stephen Glauser

1. Don’t do chores together.
2. Date night.
3. Do not put your kids first.
4. Have a boys night out.
5. Dial down your expectations.

For explanations of each rule, check out the original article: The Secret to Marital Awesomeness

We are different. Men are simple. Women are complicated. Heard it before? Well, not this way. Stand-up comedian Carlos Mencia set the women straight in this little ‘tutorial’, and he knows how to make his point stand out. Just watch ’till the end of this clip.

1. Lose weight
If you are overweight, you are making the job harder for the little pecker. Yes I called it ‘little’. Get over it. It’s a tiny member of your body. And if you’re fat, it looks even smaller. As that’s not enough, it’s probably standing knee deep in your soft padding. Have you thought of that? You may be hiding an inch!

2. Improve your skills
It’s not the size that matters, it’s how you use it. You’ve heard it before, right? Well, it’s true. So what if your dick is not jaw-droppingly big. The shock and awe effect of pure size will only last so long. What really matters is if you can give her pleasure. Stop looking at yourself and pay attention to her. When you find out what make her go oooohh, she’ll think you’re huge.

That’s all. I’m not going to tell you what a normal penis size is, because it really doesn’t matter. If you are five feet tall and your girlfriend is petite, you’ll do just fine with a small dick. Even if you’re aiming for that seven feet amazon, you may do just fine with what you’ve got.

I’m a sucker for animations, particularly slap-stick-funny dialogue-less shorts like this Jungle Jail. I actually giggled when the big guy screamed like a little girl and I felt like cheering when they ran crashing through the walls. Good fun!

This has nothing to do with manliness. This is a cartoon version of machismo: two-dimensional and brightly colored. The description fits only shallow fiction characters from movies and books. There are no way a man can live up to this (and we’d be stupid if we tried).

Source:

There are a lot of politically-correct meddlers and angry femmes who want to keep us apart. But I see something in Snows [The Snows of Kilimanjaro] that makes me keep coming back. Behind all the cursing, erections, spitting and shooting is a man being a man. Confident, without apology, ready to be humiliated, without the prudish restraint of grace, or the contemporary stink of what lit critic Harold Bloom might call gender guilt. Male lit is violent, offensive, and crude, but it’s also genuine. (Men Write Better Than Women - Esquire)

Most men make that awful mistake of spending a lot less time with their friends after they find a good woman. Somehow we believe (our women told us) that this relationship is all we need. So we focus on our friends that are coupled up too, and have family friendly double dates. You might have that nagging feeling that this is wrong, but you shut it up by saying that ‘my marriage is more important than poker night’. Well, it’s NOT. I’ll give you three very good reasons why having fun with friends are more important than keeping your woman company in front of the TV:

Three Reasons Why Friends Are Better Than Girlfriends:

1. You can have as many friends as you want
If you’ve got a capacity for a lot of friends, go ahead. Nobody’s stopping you or turning sour because you are making new friends. It doesn’t quite work that way with girlfriends.

2. A friend is still a friend even if you haven’t seen him for a year
A girlfriend or wife needs regular attention. If you fail to do relationship maintenance, it will come to a grinding halt. Friendship goes into sleeping mode. It might be a bit rusty when you wake it four years later, but it’s still there.

3. If you lose a friend, you’ve still got friends
Losing a girlfriend makes you girlfriendless. You go from having to not having. There’s no in-betweens. When you have friends, you always have backup if you lose your wife, a friend or a family member. I call it my safety net.

Are you still not convinced that friends should have a higher priority than your girlfriend? Well, let me hit you with my final argument:

Three Reasons Why Friends Makes You More Attractive to Your Girlfriend:

1. Having many friends show her that you’d be OK without her. So she’d better take care of you.
2. Spending time with your friends makes her miss you, showing her how important you are to her.
3. Venting with your buddies takes the edge off the small unimportant things and make your relationship better.

Photo by Mighty mighty bigmac

“We should watch TV. But, we should watch TV in such a way that it does not need to neglect of social aspect of human lives,” says Sivaprasad Dantu in this guest article. His message is that we, men and women, are social animals that need to communicate with each other. If we spend our social time shoulder by shoulder in front of the flickering box, we are in fact neglecting each other.

TV Affected Our Socialisation

By Sivaprasad Dantu

Of the modern day inventions I think the advent and spread of Television Channels across the globe has subtly changed the contours of social relationship. Man is a social animal and socializing plays an important role in keeping ourselves concerned about others, in neighborhood and close relations.

The good side of the spread of TV across homes, globally, is that they fill the information gap in seconds. Channels like Discovery and National Geographic truly enhance our knowledge, while we relax in our cozy chairs. They have effectively plugged information gap globally. Sitting in India, we watched the horror of September 11 when the terrorists demolished the Twin Towers with the civilian planes, that wiped out the light in many lives. Seeing is thousand times more powerful than reading about an event. Like wise TV channels enable the sports lovers to watch games or matches that interest them, though they are held continents away. The share traders, who used to depend on news papers for the share movement, now can watch live action on TV channels of not only their national stock markets but global markets too.

This is one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is that the TV channels have made social relationships less interesting compared to watching TV. I can not speak for the entire world, but I can say that in India at least, watching TV has come to occupy major slot in homes. There is less of talking among family members. Family members divide into groups and watch channels of their interest together, though they talk to each other little. The soap operas in India, with no social message attract huge following of housewives and others who have no regular jobs to do. Millions and Millions of hours are wasted in watching these TV serials that often glorify extra martial relationships, fantasy, crime etc. The addiction is strong among many families. Then after the dusk, again prime time Serials till late night attract many viewers.

TV watching is leading to a situation where husband and wife find no time to talk about their children or fortifying their own relationship. The elders and seniors in the family too feel neglected since there is nobody to talk to. They too have a TV for company. If you call on any of your close relatives or friends during the afternoon, to have a chat with them, mostly you will find them in their homes more engrossed in the TV Channels than pay attention to your visit. True, you will be welcomed and seated on a sofa, with the TV on. In the house you are visiting, on your arrival, if they greet you and switch off TV you are lucky. You feel happy that your plans to spend some time with your friends and relatives has come true in true sense. With the TV on, you tend to feel why you wasted your time in visiting them, who value TV watching as more important than your arrival there. Hence gap is widening between families and friends with close ties.

Many food items, which were for generations prepared at home with love and care are no longer prepared at home, thanks to TV. They are bought off shelf from food stores. Can the food preparations bought from market match the preparations made with love and care at home? I say no. This is another negative aspect of TV affliction.

During our child hood days, going out and playing in the evenings with friends was the order of the day. Now, children rarely move out of their homes, once they come back from schools or colleges. They sit in front of the TV and watch their favorite channels. Thus, they are losing crucial interaction with the friends of their age, and the physical exercise that they get with the games that they can get. With the result you will find many a child obese and having health problems. TV watching is leading to our living in a virtual world, though the real world is just before us awaiting our role to be played.

We should watch TV. But, we should watch TV in such a way that it does not need to neglect of social aspect of human lives. We should limit TV watching only for the time slot when we have nothing to do and not watch TV at the cost of many things that we ought to have done. TV watching must not lead to neglect of elders, relatives, friends and neighborhood, children. TV watching must not be allowed to affect our socialization. In short; as long as TV watching does not effect socialization with warmth it is OK.

We must draw a line: How many hours we can watch and what programs. We must switch off TV when we really have others company. There is no need for TV when others are craving for attention.

Article Source: EzineArticles.com

Is it to go fishing in the spur of a moment?
Is it to plan something with the guys without checking with your woman?
Is it to have only a few minutes alone every day?
Is it to talk to a woman without worrying that your wife would freak out?

The list could go on and on. There are no end to the small things that limit our freedom, but only you know what’s important to you. Find out what it is and do something about it.

How?

I’ve learned that there is only one way to get something you want: Demand it. Don’t trust on anybody else to take care of your needs.

But demanding it is not enough. That’s what children do. Adults take responsibility for their actions. So you’ve got to make sure that what you need is not too heavy on your family.

Here is my three step plan to get what you want:

1. Clear space
If you’re knee-deep in chores, there’s no way you can run off to the woods with your hunting buds. That kind of behavior would hurt your marriage. If you need the time, make sure that all things are done or scheduled to a different time.

2. Build trust
When you change your habits, it creates insecurity. Your wife may start wondering what’s wrong with her or your relationship. To prevent this from happening, you’ve got to make sure she knows what’s going on.

3. Demand it
State very clearly what you need, why and how you will fulfill your needs. Be very specific and start with one thing. When this new freedom has become a habit for both of you, you may introduce the next item on your wish list.

Take another look at the three step list and note one thing: The order is not rigid. You may start with demanding what you want, then work your way through trust and clearing space. No problem. In fact, sometimes that’s the best way. It’s often easier to clear space when everybody knows what you intend to put there. Else they may start to fill it with their own stuff.

Good luck to you (in)mate!

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This article is part of a Ten Day Special where I will look at marriage as a prison and try to figure out how we can make prison life better. Come back tomorrow!

Photo: Tiny Cells at Alcatraz by absolutwade