Winning Points with the Woman in Your Life One Touchdown at a Time

CHAPTER 1

Stepping into the Stadium

As you step into the stadium for the first time, your entire body and mind are filled with both anticipation and apprehension for what lies ahead of you in the coming season. As the new star quarterback, a great many things will rest upon your shoulders.

Chief among them: How many yards will your team gain on the very first down of your very first game? You see, you want it known upfront that you are a team to be reckoned with. Will you run or pass the ball? Will you call an audible or use the coach’s plan? How will you ultimately win the most games, with as few fumbles, penalties and pass interferences as possible, so that you can eventually make it to the Super Bowl?

Fun Football Fact: In what year and in which stadium was the first NFL playoff game ever played?

Obviously, no one steps into the stadium to lose. But, what do you need to actually win? This time-honored question remains on the lips and deep in the minds of every coach and player today.

And yet, thousands of books, countless practices and a seemingly endless number of games, both won and lost, have gone into generating the wisdom and foresight attained by the most talented coaches and players, those who can best answer this question. They have come to understand that the answer boils down to the responses learned from reading, watching and practicing. The same set of guidelines applies to relationships, where men and women of all ages ask the exact same question: How do I win in the game of love? Of course, the answer doesn’t change either. In order to win, you need to learn and practice the rules of engagement.

This book is meant to be a guideline for some of those rules. I am sure that if you are reading this book, you are already interested in learning. The next step will be to practice, practice, practice! The way to learn to play solid football is to get on the field, but that can happen only after you have read the playbook and carefully listened to valuable advice from experienced coaches and players. The team and the coach will test you on the playbook once you have entered onto the field.

To learn about women, you have to do exactly the same thing as the players do on a football team. You can’t get onto their field and into their end zone simply by guessing. You have to prepare first, learning all that you can about that playing field you are about to enter onto and the team you are about to join. If you want to win at love, you will need to gain the same trust, honor, and respect from the woman in your life that the players on your team have for you.

While mistakes happen in any game—and relationship—many can be prevented by learning the right set of moves and using the correct language, that will get you off the bench, in the game and eventually into the end zone. Anything worth having is worth working for and the right relationship is definitely worth that work. Any successful player knows that firsthand. They know that you have to read the playbook, review the action, listen carefully, and sweat a lot!

Just as Tom Dempsey (November 8, 1970) and Jason Elam (October 25, 1998) both kicked 63-yard record—breaking field goals, you too will make a record-setting kick in your relationship if you treat the woman in your life with honor and respect. Treat her like a queen and she’ll treat you like you were Tom Brady or Jerry Rice! So grab a towel and a jug of Gatorade, put on your shoulder pads, helmet, uniform and cleats. Let’s head out onto the field and learn why men and women are so different and what a woman needs to satisfy her man.

Even if that statement sounds confusing now, it will become clearer as you continue to read. One of the most valuable lessons you can learn is that once your mate is satisfied, you will be in for the game of your life as she will want to show her appreciation and satisfy you! Above all, women want men to understand them, just as men want to be understood by women. There is nothing new about that concept. All living beings want to be treated with loving care, kindness and concern.

Therefore, the amount of loving care, kindness and concern that you bestow on a woman will directly affect the way she treats you. So sit back, relax, and enjoy making it to the Super Bowl of relationships and winning! Now let’s step onto the playing field. There should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 1 Corinthians 12:25

Fun Football Fact: The first NFL playoff game was held indoors at the Chicago Stadium in 1932.

Oops! I almost forgot to give you your pep talk before you stepped out of the locker room, so here goes. This book will give you a brief look into the world and mind of a woman, including the way she thinks and how to score points with her, while suffering the least number of penalties or turnovers.

It should be noted that the material in this book pertains to a majority of the general population of men and women. Of course, there are exceptions—those men who are more right-brain oriented and those women who lean towards the left-brain.

Additionally, in writing this book, I am not implying that the responsibility of the entire relationship rests solely on the shoulders of the man. Rather, this book is only one tool, a tool designed to help men better understand women in order to enhance their relationships. Even though this book is written to help men comprehend more factually why women are the way they are, it is actually a book that will help both sexes learn to understand and better communicate with each other. You can apply these facts, values and thoughts to any relationship in your life.

Since I am a woman, I am better qualified to write about how women think, feel and act. Through my experiences, I have come to learn what I want and need from a man in order for me to react favorably to him.

The conclusions that I have come to in this book are a result of a lifetime of these experiences as well as years of reading about, being a part of, and watching both successful and unsuccessful relationships unfold. Any additional insight I have gained, is the zenith of the countless years I have spent studying about and interviewing people involved in both successful and unsuccessful relationships. For this book in particular, I have also interviewed men and women of various ages and backgrounds to gather a deeper understanding into their needs, wants and desires. This book is the culmination of all those interviews, along with my own personal experiences and the facts that I have gathered throughout my life’s journey.

It should be stated that the type of men or women that you initially attract into your life will be based upon your own personal belief system about yourself and the world around you.

This book will be a very useful tool as you work to create a winning relationship no matter what your personal values are either consciously or subconsciously. So with that said, let’s walk into the stadium and onto the field of love.

Fun Football Fact: Who came up with the name Super Bowl?

CHAPTER 2

Getting onto the Field

Shedding a Little Light on the Complex World of Male-Female Relationships: Why We Are the Way We Are.

So you’ve made it into the stadium and you are now stepping onto the playing field for your first day of practice with the Dallas Cowboys. Nervous excitement courses through your veins as the coach talks about the various formations he is going to run the team through and begins to discuss the different play calls and strategies he will be using during this season’s games.

While much of what the coach talks about initially lies within the realm of football common sense and comes easily to you, there are a few nuances in the game plan that you will be unfamiliar with. Also, some of the plays are new to you and could cause complications and confusion in the season ahead if you don’t understand them. A team’s language will guide you in how to interact and communicate with your teammates on the playing field. This language that each player must learn is full of individual components, called the plays. For each play, there is a plan. Each of these plays and plans has been specially formulated through years of research and scientific study, producing entire systems of proven techniques that can make winners out of the players and teams.

Fun Football Fact: The term Super Bowl was created by Lamar Hunt, owner of the Kansas City Chiefs.

Once the methods were proven effective, they were gathered together and worked into a playbook for each team to base its plays and plans on. It is that playbook that each teammate must learn in order to be part of the winning team. This process is much the same as that of the plays and plans of a relationship. You need to read the manual, learn from those who are already where you want to be in their relationships and listen actively to your partner in order to learn how to speak their language. Once you learn this language, you can enter the game confidently and achieve victory!

A woman’s perception of her relationship, as well as the language she uses within a relationship may seem very complicated, and sometimes confusing. You may find particular things in her language syntax that are hard to understand and certainly difficult to interpret! And as if that weren’t enough, many women have a tendency to turn over and over in their heads most of what is said to them, finding more than what may actually be there.

While men tend to go with the flow without over-analyzing things, women try to find out what’s behind the words they see and hear when dealing with their loved ones. This process is intuitively part of their naturally protective circuitry, helping them emotionally guard themselves and their loved ones. Have you ever heard the statement, You don’t want to mess with Mother Bear? This applies here because women are built as nurturers and maintain a natural curiosity about their environment, in order to help them protect themselves and those they love from perceived dangers.

Fun Football Fact: Which coach has won the most games in NFL history?

This natural curiosity triggers what I like to call the need to know gene. Women have the need to know or to discover all the information about their surroundings and then make judgment calls as to any dangers that may affect those they love. This of course, can lead to any number of natural responses to the perceived dangers of their surroundings and an inherent desire to analyze all causes and effects. Because curiosity (analyzing) is a natural response for women, it tends to bleed over into other areas of their lives, namely their relationships.

In addition to analyzing most of what is said to them, women may often have hidden meaning in what they say, even if they don’t intend to put it there. Men are not as complicated (in a good way) with their spoken language. What men say is most often what they mean. So, why is it that so many women seem to include hidden messages behind their words? In the same way that women tend to over-analyze things, sometimes they also include hidden meaning in their spoken words. The reasons for this can be partially found by looking at the traditional upbringing and social history of women. Parents and other adults teach women, at a very early age, that they need to be strong, confident and know what they want. They are also told that they need to be assertive and independent in order to succeed at fulfilling their dreams and desires for their future.

In reality, though, oftentimes the media image of a woman is much different. Society in general, sees images of successful women on television and in the movies that are more demure and non-aggressive, but still get what they need and desire.

The woman on television or in the media, who ends up with the man of her dreams, may have played it coy, playing off on her seeming need for the man. The media image presented is often in direct conflict with the way that a woman may have been raised. Because of these two conflicting images, women have now received mixed messages and are subjected to confusing images about the way they should behave in society. On top of this, women see the men around them as being intrigued and often fascinated by the media image of a woman, an image that may not always interconnect with the ideals and values that they, as women, were brought up with.

Because of this, women may be unsure how to present themselves and may seek to bring forward aspects of both images at the same time. As a result, they may confuse the two images, hiding their true feelings and thoughts deep within their words, all the while struggling to achieve the final goal of communicating their needs or message to those that participate in their lives.

A perfect example of a woman who was portrayed in this fashion by the media was Princess Diana. Because she was portrayed as being meek, mild mannered, demure, and fragile, both men and women were fascinated and intrigued with her. Not only was she a beautiful princess, but she also seemed emotionally vulnerable, as well a woman a man could take care of; for many men, she was a fantasy of the perfect woman.

Fun Football Fact: Don Shula has won the most games in NFL history. He won his 325th game on November 14, 1993 as the coach for the Miami Dolphins. On that date, the Dolphins defeated the Philadelphia Eagles 19-14.

In reality, though, Princess Diana was a fiercely independent woman, a tigress capable of fighting when it came to what she believed in, someone who went after what she wanted with a tireless passion. This truth, and the truth of many women beyond Princess Diana, differs greatly from the images often times portrayed in the media. Are you beginning to understand the playing field a little bit more? Great, then let’s move on to…

Chemistry and Environment

Our environment has a great deal to do with how we relate and react to each other as well as how we communicate with other people. Another huge factor in our character make-up is the individual chemistry that everyone is born with. While much has been said about how different the sexes are, how much do we actually know? The facts show that men and women are conceived equally in terms of their overall intelligence.

However, somewhere between the twelfth and fourteenth weeks of pregnancy, there is a testosterone wash that flows over the brain of a male baby. i This wash does not take place during the formation of a female baby. Let’s take a look at how the brain works and try to understand why this is so important.

Testosterone is one of the main chemicals that enable the brain to manufacture and create serotonin, which is an important neurotransmitter in the brain, causing certain nerve cells in the brain to activate and become livelier. Serotonin can also act as an inhibitor. Most neurotransmitters can act as both an exciter and an inhibitor. Serotonin affects the brain’s interior, known as the ganglia.

The ganglia are the network of the brain, which is divided into two cells, the L cell and the R cell. Scientists believe that one of these cells makes serotonin and the other produces dopamine. Dopamine is a monoamine neurotransmitter formed in the brain and is essential to the normal functioning of the central nervous system. ii Dopamine acts as an inhibitor in the ganglia, thereby causing a calming effect and dampening activity.

It is believed that during the testosterone wash, a balance between the L cells and the R cells are set, determining the amount of serotonin and dopamine that the brain’s network will use. This also determines how spatially or temporally aware a person is, with men being born more spatially aware and women more temporally aware. A person who is spatially aware is generally a left-brain individual and someone who is temporally aware, is generally a right-brain individual.

Fun Football Fact: What do CC. Pyle the NFL and AFL all have in common?

The word spatial is defined as relating to space. iii As men are generally more spatially aware, they tend to be better at judging distances, which comes in handy during parallel parking! The word temporal, meanwhile, is defined as being of or limited by time. iv This may explain why women seem to be able to associate time and events without much difficulty. You know what I am talking about here men, that little thing that really bothers men about women—she remembers everything she thinks you have done wrong and when you did it! I believe this is due in part because of a woman’s propensity for temporal awareness.

Because of the testosterone wash, men tend to be more left- brain oriented and women rely more readily on the right-brain. Left-brain individuals tend to be more interested in facts, inclined to logic and reason. They are more motivated in providing for the home and usually more interested in becoming engineers, mathematicians and scientist. These are just a few career choices that a left-brain individual might make.

A right-brain individual tends to be better at,