We all want a great romantic relationship filled with respect, attraction, laughter, sexual chemistry, emotional safety, and shared adventures, yet so many relationships are filled with the opposite. So what can you do to ensure your marriage stays on track?
The men I help also want to feel like a man – confident, grounded, desired, and trusted – but are currently feeling more like a victim of a broken system.
But there are some frustrating, counter-intuitive factors that nobody explained to us before we took the plunge and committed our lives to this relationship.
You don’t get there by doing what makes logical sense. You get there by learning to live in paradox.
Creating a deeply connected, intimate relationship requires that we learn how to be OK with tension and uncertainty. We must learn how to hold two opposite truths in our hands at the same time – and have the courage to lead toward what we want.
In this article, I want to walk you through 25 paradoxes every man must face if he wants to master attraction in a long-term relationship or marriage.
These aren’t techniques. They’re shifts in understanding and self confidence. They’re what separate the men who moan and complain about the lack of intimacy in their relationship from the men who calmly and confidently know how to CREATE the intimacy they want.
Are you ready to face the challenge?
1. The Only Way to Create Intimacy Quickly… Is to Create It Slowly
You want your partner to trust you again. To feel safe enough to be affectionate again. To open up and want to be intimate with you again.
So you try harder. You talk more. But you get impatient when your efforts don’t get results right away.
But intimacy doesn’t respond to pressure. It responds to calm, confident consistency. It responds to who you are being – your character – and it requires time for the trust and safety to build.
The paradox: The more urgently you chase closeness, the further it runs away. But when you slow down, get quiet, and show up over time without pushing, intimacy can start to return.
This is one of the most crazy-making and frustrating factors. Especially for men who are used to fixing things fast.
But if you can tolerate the slow progress without panicking and getting anxious, you’ll be one of the rare men who actually becomes trustworthy enough to achieve the enthusiastic sexual relationship you really want.
2. To Be a Strong Leader, Be Vulnerable
Many people think leadership means having all the right answers, staying composed, and showing no cracks.
But emotional leadership in a relationship is different. It starts with the courage to be honest, to own the truth of your experience, to courageously face the uncertainty and be OK.
Your wife doesn’t need a robot. She needs a man who understands and owns his feelings and can talk about them without making other people responsible for fixing them.
Masculine leadership isn’t stoicism. It’s emotional competency and courage in the face of challenge.
A man who hides his feelings in the name of “being strong” becomes emotionally unavailable. And emotional unavailability is kryptonite to intimacy, it breaks her trust in you and destroys the safety she needs to let you in again.
3. If You’re Not Feeling A Little Out Of Your Depth, You’re Not Learning Or Growing
Intimacy is damaged when a man thinks he’s always smarter, wiser, or more emotionally mature than his partner.
“I’ve read all the books…I’ve done all the work. She needs to fix her sh*t”
That attitude is both a ceiling on your growth and a sure fire way to make your wife feel like she’s never going to be good enough. If you’re closed off from learning something from your interactions with your partner – if you don’t have an open mind and heart around her – then you’re not truly listening and she feels it.
She is one of your best teachers. So don’t be so judgemental. Let her thoughts and emotions challenge you. Know that her perspective is an incredibly valuable mirror for you if you can not take it personally and remain curious about what there is to learn about her, about you and about your relationship.
If she’s cold, distant and shut down, ask yourself: Have I been speaking at her more than just being here with her in whatever she’s going through?
4. Givers Are the Most – and the Least – Successful People
Some men give to get. They always try to be nice and keep everyone else happy, but their motivation is not to share their love and intimacy, it’s to protect themselves from uncertainty. They’re trying to make themselves feel worthy of love by managing other people’s opinion of them. And it causes them to become manipulative.
They NEED the other person’s validation of them to feel good about themselves.
When you give without any expectation of receiving anything in return, your generosity is clean and can be received as it’s intended, as a gift of love without strings attached.
Men who develop the strength of character to be generous in this way are magnetically attractive to women.
Giving only works when it’s confidently done from genuine desire, not fearful desperation.
Ask yourself: “Am I doing this so she won’t leave me, so she’ll love me, touch me, f*ck me?” Or: “Am I doing this because this is the man I choose to be, no matter what?”
5. Saying Yes Got You Here. Saying No Will Get You Where You Want To Go Next
Often times men get stuck living in the “happy wife, happy life” version of marriage. But intimacy is not sustainable when you always disregard your desires for hers.
You say yes to make her happy. You say yes to avoid conflict. You say yes so you don’t have to feel uncomfortable.
And now… you feel like a doormat. You’ve lost yourself. You’ve lost your ability to be confident in yourself and to lead your life and relationship forward.
To create the intimate relationship you really want, you will need to do some work on your perspective of yourself, your character, your values, wants and boundaries.
It’s impossible for a man who never says “no” to change his relationship.
Saying “no” with love and conviction is what creates trust, safety and attraction. She doesn’t want a people-pleaser. She wants a confident man who knows who he is and what he wants (and doesn’t want).
6. The Opposite of Success Isn’t Failure. It’s Mediocrity
Mediocrity in relationships looks like this: low tension, no arguments, no passion, no intimacy and no connection.
It’s not dramatic. It’s just… flat. It’s boring but safe.
You stop trying. She stops caring. Sex vanishes. Intimacy dies quietly.
It’s better to face a hard truth, even risk losing the relationship, than to coast into numbness.
Men who have the intimate marriage you want, don’t settle for “not bad.” They fight with passion for what they want. Even if it means burning down the old version of the relationship, to them it’s worth it to build something real.
7. It’s Easier to Achieve the Impossible Than the Realistic
Many of the men I work with are trying not to get this life thing “wrong”, trying not to lose.
They want their wife to “like him again” or “be attracted to him again” or “desire him again” or “respect him again”. They want to “fix the lack of sex and affection” – a problem which they think she has. And she feels that constant disapointment and criticism and rather than challenging her to want to address the problem, it just makes her feel not good enough, not attractive enough, and definitely stops her from feeling sexual with him.
I want you to see that there’s a bigger game to play here.
Often in my work with men I get him to come up with a vision for his relationship that both scares and inspires him.
Why?
Because this vision calls out his strength and masculinity and moves him forward as a man. It challenges him to grow.
And when you lead from that place, the place of facing a challenge for something you believe in, everything changes.
8. The Job of a Leader Is to Create More Leaders – Not More Followers
If your wife is emotionally reactive, indecisive, or unmotivated, ask yourself this: Have I created space for her to be a leader too?
Have I trusted her wisdom? Have I been so dominant with my needs that she’s stopped sharing and contributing in a productive and proactive way?
When you start trusting her strength and wisdom – and willingly invite and encourage it – you stop leading over her and start leading with her.
9. You Must Risk Your Current Success to Reach the Next Level
You’ve built something together. A home. A family. A rhythm to life. Maybe a comfortable existence.
But now you’re being called to change.
You have to be willing to risk her disapproval to create a deeper, more honest and more real connection between you.
You have to risk your current sex life to bring up what’s missing and what you want to change.
You have to risk your emotional safety to be able to speak truthfully.
But the other side of this risk is more trust, more emotional connection, more respect, more attraction, more affection and yes more sex.
Comfort kills intimacy. Risk revives it.
10. The Less You Need Her, the More She Can Feel Safe Moving Towards You
Neediness repels intimacy and connection. It desperately screams: “Please validate me, so I can feel good about myself again.”
Leadership attracts. It calmly says: “I love you. But I don’t need you to love me back to feel good about myself.”
When you drop the need to be reassured by your wife – when you learn how to self validate and become emotionally self-reliant – you create an environment where genuine desire and attraction can happen.
11. The Less Your Partner Needs You, the More Powerful the Connection
You want your wife to need you. To need your support, your affection, your desire for her.
But what if she doesn’t?
What happens inside you? Can you handle it? Or do you freak out, get frustrated, feel anxious or unloved?
Because when she wants your attention from her genuine desire, not a need or dependency – when she chooses you from a state of self confidence – that’s when the intimate, sexual connection between you has the possibility of being passionate and electric again like it used to be when you were first together.
You don’t want a little girl who needs saving. You want a woman who is confident in herself, is feeling attractive and sexual and who deliberately chooses to engage with your sexual energy because she wants it.
12. Slow Down to Speed Up
Most of us have a strong instinct to fix. To push. To “do” something to get what we want to happen in our lives.
But unlike in business, relationships usually don’t respond well to this kind of direct pressure. Instyead, relationships grow and improve in response to who you are – your character – and to how you are “being”. with the other person.
What does this mean?
It means, how do you respond to challenging situations in your relationship?
Do you get anxious, frustrated, overwhelmed, aggressive?
Or do you stay calm, take your time to choose how you want to respond and approach each situation with curiosity and a desire to really understand the other person’s perspective?
Slow down.
Listen.
That pause before you speak? That’s where intimacy is given the space it needs to grow.
13. Surround Yourself with People You Respect And Admire
Do you want to keep learning and growing as a man?
Do you want to be able to know that you’re being the best man you can be in each situation?
Do you want to finally truly understand how to create and keep a strong emotional connection and sexual attraction alive in your relationship?
You may think that hanging around men who constantly complain about their wives, think it’s fine to watch porn every day, hookup with women outside their marriage, visit massage parlours, and pay for sex with prostitutes is not affecting the intimacy in your relationship.
But you would be wrong in that assumption.
Over the past 12 years of coaching men to create more passionate and intimate marriages I see how much these relationships with men of low character and low morals sabotage your ability to confidently lead the intimacy with your wife.
Their lack of integrity often make you feel like a victim of a low sex or sexless marriage, that your wife is deliberately punishing you and withholding what you want to emasculate you.
But that’s just not true. There is always a lack of trust, respect and emotional safety in a marriage that is struggling and lacking intimacy and sexual attraction. But the men who choose this easy option of getting sex outside the relationship, never learn how to create the stable emotional connection with their wife that is required for a consistent, passionate sex life.
So find men who you can learn from. Men who have already created what you want to experience in your life and relationship. Men who challenge you to be honest, to live with integrity. Who call you forward into a better version of the man you want to be.
Find men who support you and celebrate you and your vision of the life you want.
You don’t become a great man who is respected and desired by his wife by taking the easy option or by going it alone.
14. Feeling Insecure Is Not a Weakness, It’s a Sign of Growth
If you’re scared, unsure, or overwhelmed in your relationship…good!
What…?!
Yes it’s a good thing if you feel insecure, relationships are complex and unpredictable, it means you now have an opportunity to face the challenge and develop your view of yourself as a man and lead your relationship somewhere deeper.
The moment you feel comfortable, like you have all the answers, is the moment you’ve stopped learning and growing.
Men need challenges to develop their masculine strength, their confidence and their emotional resilience.
The more you can be OK with the insecure thoughts and feelings that arise while you’re facing the unknown, the more you will be able to build positive tension, respect and attraction with your wife.
15. Your Strengths Will Become Your Weaknesses
Your high intellect. Your self confidence. Your single focus. Your problem solving capabilities. These are great strengths that the majority of men I work with have in abundance in most areas of their lives…except at home with thier wife.
When left dormant, these traits become unconscious, we stop developing them and eventually they become the source of our insecurities in our relationships. We end up using them as shields to try and protect ourselves. We stop leading and creating with them. Instead we use them as strategies and excuses.
And you end up becoming the “nice guy.” The “quiet guy.” The “helpful guy.” The guy who avoids conflict and just tries to please other people and make them happy all the time.
But you lose your edge. The masculine energy that was a key part of her being attracted to you in the first place. And the sexual polarity and passion between you dies a slow, subtle death.
16. Your Weaknesses Are Your Biggest Asset
What do you do when you feel scared, embarrassed, triggered, disrespected, angry…?
Most of us try and hide those feelings. But your power gets hidden too.
So don’t hide your weaknesses, learn how to use them.
When you own your insecurities, nothing can harm you and you become trustworthy.
We all have these insecurities, so when you own them, they become a strength – you’re no longer a victim of them – and you become more human, more trustable, more real and more relatable.
When you do this, people can feel safe around you because they get to see the real you, not the pretend version we usually try to project out into the world, falsely believing no one can see the inner turmoil that’s really going on inside us.
17. If Your Vision For Your Relationship Doesn’t Scare You At Least A little, It’s Not A Big Enough Mission
Your relationship isn’t just about being comfortable and happy.
It’s about creating something remarkable together.
When you’re playing small, staying safe, and avoiding conflict at all costs, your wife can feel it and it affects her feelings of respect, trust and attraction towards you.
What is your mission as a couple? Do you know?
What do you want to build together that both challenges and inspires you?
Getting in touch with this vision is a key element of developing your masculine energy and attractiveness.
18. If You Want Her To Say Yes More, Get Better At Handling Hearing No
You want more love. More sex. More respect. More affection. More fun. More flirting.
You must understand that you will hear “no” many times along the way.
You must be willing to risk facing rejection, disagreements, and conflict if you want to create more of what you want.
If you fear hearing “no” you will never get to hear her say “yes” more often.
Your wife loves to be drawn out of the hyper organised, focused, “get stuff done” mindset and into her feminine energy.
This can only be done by a man who is being more masculine than she is at that moment. A man who is willing to invite her to fun, takes nothing personally, and doesn’t care if she says no.
The prospect of being criticised or rejected is the fear point that most of us back away from.
There is only ONE way to conquer scary stuff and that’s to walk right into it – over and over again until we learn there’s nothing to be scared of.
19. To Say No, You Need a Powerful Yes
If you don’t know what you’re committed to, you’ll say “yes” to everything.
What the hell does that mean?
It means first you have to get super clear on what kind of man you want to be and what kind of relationship you really want.
Then, once you have that clarity and you’re committed to having that future no matter what, start saying “no” to everything that doesn’t align with that vision.
The hardest part of this is practically defining what kind of man can create the kind of relationship that you want. Which is a big part of what I do with men in my one to one coaching program.
20. If You Want To Receive Something, Practice Giving It And Then Teach It
So much of the lack of connection and intimacy in the relationships I help the men I coach improve is directly related to a lack of emotional safety, trust and respect.
What’s the best way to understand emotional safety?
Practice giving it.
The best way to lead your relationship forward?
Start leading your own personal growth as a confident, unapologetically sexual and intimate man – even when it feels awkward to begin with.
The best way to rebuild trust and respect?
Live as a man who is trustworthy, and acts with integrity consistently.
And as you learn and grow through your own willingness to take action towards what you want, be open to talking to others about it. Teaching others what you’re learning helps you to cement it in your mind and get super clear what it means for you.
21. When You’re Exhausted, Work Out
When you feel drained emotionally, the worst thing you can do is collapse, give up and accept defeat.
Move. Breathe. Play. Lift something heavy. Challenge yourself.
Your nervous system needs a physical container to hold the intensity of the challenges you will face along the road of trying to create the life you want.
Without this, you will bring the same lack of conviction and resilience into your interactions in your relationship.
Your will learn that you can’t trust yourself, and if you can’t trust yourself, don’t expect your wife to be feeling full of trust and respect in you either.
22. If You Want To Succeed, Help Her Succeed
Stop trying to win OVER her. Start winning WITH her.
What does that mean?
It’s easy for us to approach relationships as a place to “get” our needs met but over time the constant neediness this creates is a guaranteed intimacy killer.
What if you viewed your marriage as a place to learn how to create connection and then navigate life together as a team in the best way possible, rather than a place to negotiate a specific result, how would that change how you approach each situation?
Your marriage is not a business transaction.
Women feel loved through the small unconscious actions we take that show her we have her best interests at heart. Celebrate her growth. Support her ambitions. Be her biggest fan.
No that doesn’t mean have no wants of your own or having no boundaries around how you want to be treated, it means love the crap out of her while still living in integrity with your standards and boundaries.
When you stand up for yourself but are also willing to create a win-win relationship, you create an environment where attraction and respect can flourish again.
23. To Be Successful, Watch What Everyone Else Is Doing – and Do the Opposite
There are a lot of hurt people giving relationship advice on the internet. It’s easy to find resources that back up the story of how you’re being messed around by someone evil who is out to make your life miserable.
But the problem with this is that you become the victim and victims are powerless to create change in their lives which feels awful and will drain you of energy and damage your confidence.
When you’re the victim, she becomes the evil perpetrator of your pain and when you feel stuck and out of control of the source of pain in your life, you are unable to have the strength to stand up for yourself and to express yourself.
When she feels you viewing her as the source of your crappy life, it creates an environment which is unsafe and where trust is broken – there’s no way for any connection to build when you live in this kind of environment.
We end up withdrawing, complaining, avoiding conflict, and trying to stay “safe.”
But you’re not in danger. Yes, things are challenging right now. But life is a constant journey of challenges. It’s how you choose to respond to the challenges you’re facing that defines the man you are and the life you are creating.
So don’t fall into the victim narrative, labelling people as narcissistic, avoidant, bipolar etc. People are always doing the best they can with the current perspective they are taking about life, about themselves and about the potential things that might go terribly wrong in the future.
Speak the truth no one else is willing to. Take responsibility for what you want, don’t avoid the tough choices and conversations. Be your own lighthouse to the storm of life and you will also become a guiding light for others too.
24. Don’t Answer Her Questions. Question Her Questions
After many years in a relationship we can feel like we’re constantly being judged, under attack, criticised, and tested over and over again.
It can feel like an interogation, like you’re a rabbit trapped in the headlights of an oncoming car. What “should” you say? What “should” you do? What’s the “right” response that will stop this uncomfortable interaction?
There is no “right” response and even thinking that there is will sabotage your self confidence.
There is only a true response. That’s where the connection and intimacy in your marriage is hiding.
But if you’re not clear about what is your true response to a question, you have options…
Give yourself some time, “I’m not sure about that, let me think about it and I’ll get back to you.” Don’t let anyone push you into giving an answer that you’re not 100% clear is true for you.
Or ask a question back, “What has you asking that question right now?” or “I want to understand where that question is coming from first, what are you feeling?”
You don’t have to defend yourself. Honour your truth and honesty above everything. Give yourself the time you need to respond in the way you feel comfortable to. Challenge her back. Don’t be afraid of her responses.
Invite her into a deeper dialogue.
25. Most Men Want Clarity First. But Clarity Is Often Most Obvious in the Rearview Mirror
I know that you want certainty about how this will turn out. Whether your marriage can be saved. Whether you’ll ever feel desired and wanted again.
But that clarity comes after you have done the work to get very clear about who you are as a man, what you want for yourself in this life and what you’re not willing to agree to.
You have to begin the journey of becoming the man you respect and enjoy being before anyone else will join you on the journey towards what you want next.
Action precedes clarity.
Courage comes first. The learning and clarity arrives along the way.
Your Relationship Is the Crucible of Fire
If you’re unsure what to do in your marriage to bring back the passion, love and connection, there are options to help you. But you can’t avoid facing difficult choices and interactions.
You can’t logic your way to passion and intimacy. They are based on emotional connection and emotional connection requires courage, honesty and vulnerabilty.
You have to be willing to live in the paradox of life. Face tension. Stand in the fire of contradiction and choose to lead the way forward anyway.
This is what I do with men in my coaching programs.
I help you stop reacting to the fear, insecurity and confusion – and start creating certainty from within yourself.
If you want to learn how to become a man who is able to create more intimacy in your marriage, contact me for a free 60 minute coaching call where we’ll explore what you want and what’s currently holding you back.
