Changing Male Behavior, Part One

“She’d gone and picked another guy with major hangups. According to her girlfriend, she had a thing for such reclamation projects. But weren’t ALL men basically projects?”

I think there’s some truth to that last statement, even if I wrote it myself (in an unpublished novel). Lord knows I was, and am, a project for my wife. I look back on our wedding and wonder, Did she know then how much remodeling it would take for her to properly domesticate me and make me fit for cohabitation? Did she have a plan, a blueprint, a timeline?

One of these days maybe I’ll ask her.

And yet, sweet young things are often counseled against marrying a man with the expectation of changing him. This so-called truism was even codified as Rule No. 18 in The Rules: Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right, Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider’s 1995 best-seller: “Don't Expect a Man to Change or Try to Change Him.” The co-authors promise happy relationships and happy marriages to the readers who follow their 35 specific rules.

Apparently, the idea of changing male behavior is a kind of psychological heresy. But changing male behavior for a successful and lasting romantic relationship is not only doable, it’s essential. (Notice, I’m NOT suggesting the feasibility or necessity of changing male nature, which is hard-wired; on the contrary, my prescriptions for changing male behavior are based on understanding and exploiting male nature.)

I codified a couple of essential behavioral changes as Steps 2 & 3 in Worshipping Your Wife: Six Steps for Turning Marriage Back Into Passionate Courtship (alas, not a best-seller, not yet anyway):

Step 2: Save His Sex Energies For His Wife.
Step 3: Make Her His Fantasy

These two steps can lead to big-time changes—gynormous changes—in terms of romantically and sexually binding the husband to his wife for the duration.

And they can be accomplished, either unilaterally, with conscious and unflagging effort by an ardent husband intent on putting the magic back in his marriage (the approach in my book). Or by a wife, consciously applying those same principles, with or without the husband’s consent (the approach of Lady Misato on her website, Real Women Don’t Do Housework.

This may seem like exotic or radical notions, but are they really? It’s hardly Headline News that men can be manipulated by women. Isn’t that what women have been doing, pre- and post-Eden, lo these many millennia? Isn’t that their job?

In Chapter One of my book I quote philosopher George Gilder to precisely that effect: “Women manipulate male sexual desire in order to teach men the long-term cycles of female sexuality and biology on which civilization is based.”

I found the same idea, elaborated on with a personal slant, on a female supremacy message board years ago attributed to “Goddess M”:

“As females we need to admit to ourselves that we all have a desire to change our male. We want him to more often exhibit behaviors which please us, and less frequently exhibit behaviors that are displeasing to us.
“[But] females are taught by society that it is not right to want to change the male, and that even if it were ethical, it can't be done anyway. The conclusion we are to draw is that if we try to change our male our efforts will fail and we will be deeply disappointed.
“This is a lie, a lie of course foisted upon females by our prevailing patriarchal society…
“As females, control of the male orgasm is our best opportunity to improve our male’s behavior patterns and mold him more closely into the ‘man of our dreams’… Through enforced chastity we can change the male with relative ease, and we should do so…
His instincts will drive him to exhibiting pleasing behavior towards her, and will make it much more difficult for him to exhibit behaviors which she does not approve of."

The amazing thing is, men love to be manipulated in this way. On her website (now celebrating its first decade), Lady Misato has many testimonials to that effect. Let me excerpt just two:

“Dear Lady Misato, [My wife] has taken control outside of the bedroom, using sex to condition me to her will…My life has changed, perhaps forever. My wife is wonderful. I am amazed at her erotic power and her skill at wielding it… Your method is powerful and her implementation, flawless. I am hers to do as she will, and she knows it. Do I like to admit that? Not one bit! Can I do anything otherwise? Not at all.”
And a wife writes: “I just started trying your technique on my hubby and am amazed at how well it works! He has figured out exactly what I am doing, but, just as you said, he seems compelled to submit. It's wonderful!! Thank you!”

So... what kind of changes are we talking about?

I’ll give some examples in Part Two of this posting.