There is only one way to build perfect relationship and we all would like to know it.

I often get asked questions on my trainings, consultations or via e-mail and most of the questions are being repeated from time to time. I decided to put the answers to them in the end of the book. It is very likely that by reading them you’ll still find your situation unique and see no a solution here. But I don’t target ready-made recipes for specific situations in this chapter. It is impossible to cover all the questions and situations since there is a huge variety of them. I just wanted to show how all the findings, tips and tricks presented earlier in this book may serve an excellent background for your search for solutions to specific problems and challenges you face. You are surely able to find similar solutions yourself. All that we have discussed above offers you a base to sort out any situation at all stages of your relationship.

Question: Where can I get acquainted with a woman?

Answer: The most versatile place to strike up the acquaintance is the street. In the street you can meet various people of all possible ages, interests, occupations, social groups and statuses. For those who want to “swim in salty water” I advise to visit public areas with lots of women like: humanitarian universities, clothing stores, fitness clubs, classes of yoga, modern dance, horse riding, etc.

Question: Where can I get acquainted with a man?

Answer: The Internet here is a quite preferable place since male audience is prevailing among the Internet users. The main recommendations here include placing your best photo, avoiding hackneyed cliches in your personal and communication with a portion of challenge and flirtation without fail. However, in a virtual, artificial environment the selection is also artificial. Therefore you should better increase the probability to meet the right person by visiting the places with the highest chances to be visited by a man of your type. Certainly, you are to carry out pre-planning for possible conversation and apprehend some topics that may be of interest to such man.

Question: What should I talk with a woman about?

Answer: Well, talk about anything. The main thing here is HOW you talk. Of course, it is desirable to offer a woman such topics, on which she will be able to keep the ball of conversation going. But if you want the most universal topic the discussion of interpersonal relationships will suit you best.

Question: I met a man much older than me both in terms of age and social status. He does not want to live together or marry me and avoids talking about our mutual future. What should I do?

Answer: This man will not marry you neither now nor in the long term. The only reasonable solution in this situation is to deliver an ultimatum to him: either he moves forward to the next stage in your relationship or you’re leaving him. The main points here are the following: start such conversation at a time when communication goes in a peaceful manner and be prepared to go to the bitter end.

Question: In the next house (at classes, at work, etc.) lives a man/woman with whom we see each other regularly and who greatly attracts me. What should I do?

Answer: Just come up and propose to go to a specific location together at a particular time. For example: "Hello. I’ve got a spare ticket to the theater for a nice performance. I would like to go there with you. The performance will be on Tuesday evening. Objections are not accepted. Please, leave me your contacts so it would be easier to meet each other before the performance starts". After such monologue you will hear some objections made specifically for you to demonstrate the ability to parry them. At the same time keep in mind that your proposal to this person definitely cannot change the attitude of him/her towards you. The proposal itself will neither make it better nor worse.

Question: My partner doesn’t want to talk to me. He/she tries to distance himself/herself from me and puts no efforts into building greater intimacy. What should I do?

Answer: Start working with yourself by raising love and respect to yourself, by realizing your own responsibility and capability to improve your relationship. Then start a long-term work aiming at reconditioning the microclimate in your couple. And only after you’ve done everything you can try to involve your partner in this challenging work.

Question: My sexual life with my partner has become completely extinct. Not a trace of the former passion remains. Is there a way to remedy the situation?

Answer: It’s difficult to accurately identify the cause but most likely it is the general atmosphere existing in your relationship. If it is at the freezing point you need to invest efforts in making it warmer. If your relationship is absorbed in routine you should look for solutions in unusual and even extraordinary actions. If the main reason of the setback lies in your physical attractiveness reduction then it's high time to start actively changing your appearance and behavior. Changing your image is, perhaps, far more motivating factor than a shuffling places, positions, toys or sexual techniques. For this purpose, intentionally initiated or veiled role-playing games, extra costumes and outfits, changes in image, using new verbal constructions, individual dances, and so forth may be of great help.

Question: My husband is a selfish person living for pleasure, seeking for any opportunity to slip away from home, having absolutely no desire to put efforts into the relationship and to help me with the baby. How can I change my partner?

Answer: Well, here we see the shift in the emotional balance making him a relationship leader. Therefore, you need to start investing efforts into winning back your leading position. My advice in this case coincides with the guidelines given in the chapter "How relationships work", which reflect both global work on your personality and local modification of your behavior in order to raise your family status. In this situation, perhaps, the most important recommendation is not to be afraid to defend your decisions and your desires in spite of emerging risks. Of course, the process of changing former foundations and stereotypes is always quite painful and your partner's resistance here is inevitable. However this is the only way for you to take an opportunity to change the lifestyle you that you dislike and begin to build the family you really want.

Question: My husband/wife does not drink, has a job, takes care of me, but frays my nerves a lot. I feel exhausted and my warm feelings have run out. His/her whining and grouchy behavior regularly drives me crazy. What could you advise in such situation?

Answer: Of course, the situation, in which you control the relationship greater than your partner brings no less pain to you than to him. Here are some recommendations to get out of this crisis.

First, you must accept the fact of emotional imbalance in the relationship as well as your leading role in it as a normal thing. Do not doubt your moral and ethical qualities since sooner or later everyone finds himself in the same situation. Empathize with yourself no less than with your partner.

Second thing is to lower for yourself the importance of the answers to those questions that you are so concerned about. For example: "Do I love my partner?", "Is our relationship good for me?", "What exists in my life more: happiness or unhappiness?" and so on. Instead of such questions ask yourself what you can do and what your partner can do to make these questions bother you less.

Thirdly, subject your guilt to criticism. Make a list of all items, which you can blame yourself for and question each of them. Carefully consider how grounded your self-reproach is. Relationship is built by two partners for the purpose of meeting the needs of both of them. And if the needs of one or both partners are not satisfied it is not surprising when serious difficulties occur, and both partners are responsible for them.

Fourthly, learn how to manage your own anger. How to achieve this? While you are in the irritable condition just abstract away from the situation and take a detached view. Ask yourself whether something terrible has happened or you're just waiting for a chance to vent your anger. If you cannot control yourself politely apologize and leave the conversation. Just strive towards communication without blaming. Never shift the responsibility for your mood onto your partner. Perceive the emerging problems not as a catastrophe but as a great opportunity to show your ability to sort them out.

Fifthly, spend more time trying to find the positive sides in your partner, not negative. All the negative traits of your partner can be reduced to just one, which is his/her follower position. Instead of finding your partner’s faults concentrate on the qualities that attracted you to him/her before. It is most likely that this person has not changed as much as you think.

Sixthly, convince yourself that you may rightfully terminate the relationship if your needs are not met in it. Your partner is an adult person and you should not take care of him/her as of a child. There is no necessity at all to make your life and the life of your family miserable because of an excessive sense of duty. Such approach will help you to easily get out of the traps created by the feeling of guilt or fear of the future.

Sevenly, apply efforts to become more intimate with the partner. Actively and patiently listen to his/her feelings, needs and worries. Mobilize yourself to pay more attention to him/her even if you have no inspiration to do that. The basis of intimacy is communication and time spent together. When you share feelings (even negative ones) without blaming, you make a step towards your partner. It is very likely that neither you nor your partner ever talk to each other about what each of you really values and needs. Isn’t it time to change it now?

Question: We live in different cities, and unsuccessfully try to preserve our relationship. We see each other once in a blue moon and our relationship gradually becomes icy-cold. Unfortunately, there is no chance for us to live together in the foreseeable future. From time to time it seems to me that my partner does not want that anymore. How can I save my relationship?

Answer: The only possible way out of this situation is via a constructive, "adult" conversation, which aims to jointly determine how and to what deadline you both will solve the difficulties occurred and start living together. Most likely your partner will try to escape this talk and decision making on the above issues. But you need to finally set specific joint actions and deadlines for EACH of you. It is essential that BOTH of you will do the work on overcoming the problems and try your best to stay on your game, to keep up the relationship and to sort out the housing issue. Only if both agree to put serious efforts into mutual future, to build a clear action plan and won’t leave this activity on words only, this relationship will make sense. Otherwise, it is better to end it.

Question: After many years of living together we both feel that former feelings have faded away. Many times we tried different kinds of joint and separate recreation and added romance to our relationship but it didn’t work. What should we do?

Answer: Remember I told you that happiness is a process but not a result. Search for a panacea is natural for human behavior but it doesn’t work for family relationships. Quick decisions, of course, can breathe new life into communication with your partner but their effect is ephemeral. Keeping up long-term relationship is somewhat similar to the process of learning foreign languages - if you constantly apply efforts it is in full bloom, and when to let relationship take its course the past achievements will slowly sink into oblivion. It is a gradual and a hard process. And if you haven’t got sufficient results so far then you either have applied few efforts or simply misdirected them.

Question: Our relationship is like a war. Nobody wants to make concessions to the other. Conflicts happen quite often and sometimes grow into smashing plates with yelling and abuse. Our quarrels scare us, our near relations and friends. Now we have reached, at which proceeding with our relationship seems totally unbearable.

Answer: I have already mentioned that most people unduly tend to be right instead of being happy. Think of what is more important to you. If you seek to be always right, then there is no necessity to live with your partner. If you want to be happy then it is time to start taking the responsibility for each of your steps, thinking about your every move from the position: "Does that make me happy or not?" But don’t always seek for pleasure. Remember that building successful relationship is often about doing now what you don’t like to do in order to later get the results you dream of.

Question: I have known about his/her infidelity. What should I do? How to overcome the pain?

Answer: If you get to know about the affair of your partner you subconsciously make a choice about whether you will forgive him/her or not. And it is extremely important that this choice coincides with that of your conscious mind. Otherwise, you'll find yourself at the mercy of destructive emotions that can cause serious damage to your life. Hatred, anger and resentment are very harmful since they literally eat you up. They are absolutely incompatible with states of joy, peace and relaxation. Such emotions affect your behavior, hurt you and your partner and inevitably destroy your relationship. I even didn’t say that they can easily do harm to the physical state of your body. That's why you need to listen to your thoughts and emotions and help them to reach an agreement. The result of these negotiations should be a final decision of forgiveness or if it’s beyond your powers - the decision to terminate the current relationship.

Forgiveness frees you from the bondage of hatred, anger and frustration. The only way to rise above the negative and painful attitude in relationship is to take the liberty of forgiving the person who hurt you. If you sincerely forgive you do a step not towards your partner - YOU DO A STEP TOWARDS YOURSELF. Forgiveness implies the application of maximum efforts to keep your ability to manage your emotional state. This is a gift to yourself that makes you free. So do it not for your partner - do it for yourself.

Question: When we first met he was a successful, fit and neat, but now he is lazy and passive, doesn’t strive for anything. How to influence him, how to get back the man I loved in the past? Or, if we consider a similar situation from a man’s viewpoint: wife has become fat and flabby, does not want to work, doesn’t improve herself, since she has got stuck in everyday life.

Answer: After several years of life people get used to the fact that their partners are always available regardless of how they grow personally, how they look after their appearance and whether they pay attention to the spouse or not. In family life most of us allow ourselves things we could not dare at the initial stage of relationship. These are things we do not do when communicating with friends, colleagues, vendors, barbers, doctors, etc. At the same time, it is your task to raise the qualification standard for yourself and for your partner. Before you tell him or her that you will not put up with the current state of things you need to meet yourself the demands you lay down, to be a good example. Therefore, first ask yourself: "Do I do the same as my partner does? Don’t I do the things that I used to never allow myself to do in the past?"

Start with the work on yourself and your own behavior. Also be sure to see to it that the opportunities for self-improvement are roughly equal for both partners. For example, for a woman raising three kids it is really hard and sometimes even impossible to find time for personal growth and taking care of her appearance. Only after your time opportunities are balanced and you are already a good exemplar you may clearly and understandably explain your partner what actions you expect from him/her and the consequences that may result from his/her inaction and unwillingness to meet your expectations. And of course, you will have not to allow yourself or your partner to stop halfway.

Question: I have recently met at work (on vacation, somewhere else) a remarkable man/woman, who really drives me crazy. Once again I experienced the emotions that I had many years ago. We often quarrel with my husband/wife and live like strangers but we have kids. What should I do?

Answer: First, it is important to understand that the shift of emotional balance in your favor does not mean it will last forever. One may state that with high probability the feelings to the new man/woman as well as to your spouse will change in the near future. Emotions are always unstable. This situation could be completely opposite. You could easily live for many years with your new flame and then meet you current husband/wife and get strongly fascinated by him or her. Tumultuous fit of an emotion is the enjoyment of the particular moment, which never lasts forever. Therefore, it is necessary to think from the position of common sense. Only if you believe that the new relationship is more reliable and that you won’t do a great harm to your children you may put your family at further risk. Otherwise, you should ask yourself the question: “Are my current emotions worth proceeding with bringing negative elements to the atmosphere my family?”

Question: I have a good and happy marriage example of my friend. Why my friend is much luckier than me?

Answer: There is a good story the great golfer Bernhard Langer ... Once the ball hit the tree and got stuck in the branches. Everybody suggested that he should take a penalty shot but he climbed a tree and knocked the ball out very successfully. Everyone was impressed by the way he did it and after the game he was approached by reporter with a question:

- Mr. Langer, you were so lucky with this shot from the tree, weren’t you?

- Yes. - said the player, - It's a funny thing, the more I practice the luckier I get.

Question: How to teach a woman to make oral sex properly?

Answer: First, show her porn. Secondly, demonstrate yourself how to do it right by using her index finger as an example.

Question: My partner totally does not understand me. How to tell him/her about my desires?

Answer: Well, by saying "You do not understand me" most people mean "You're not doing what I want you to do". In order to make a person fulfill your needs you will first need to find the way to deliver this information to him/her. If we talk about the relationship without open dialogue it can be done through a game, in which you exchange notes with your wishes. Secondly you’ll need to take responsive actions targeted at meeting the needs of your partner. That’s the only way to motivate your partner to put efforts into the relationship.