Out of the Doghouse

Book excerpt: It's all about cheating--the biggest threat to intimacy. Typically, men are good at creating rifts in relationships but terrible at mending them, especially after they've repeatedly betrayed their partner through sexual infidelity. For the most part, cheating men are both intimacy-challenged and empathy-challenged, and, as such, they lack the skills needed to overcome the damage wrought by their infidelity. Robert Weiss has spent over twenty years in the treatment of sex and intimacy issues. He's helped both cheating men and their betrayed spouses move through the horrors of infidelity. In Out of the Doghouse he shares his expertise, illuminating the ways in which men can move beyond their usual feeble efforts to smooth things over. Saying "I'm sorry" and trying to "buy forgiveness" with flowers and jewelry may temporarily calm the stormy seas of infidelity. However, these actions do nothing to re-establish intimacy and trust—the key components to help the distraught woman feel better about her relationship over the long-term and get over the cheating. The simple truth is men and women are very different when it comes to intimacy and relationships. While men are able to compartmentalize things like sexual infidelity, women typically view cheating as an affront to their entire relationship. They think, "If he is lying to me about sex, he's probably lying to me about everything." For betrayed women, trust just flat-out disintegrates. And without proper guidance, men have little hope of restoring it. Weiss provides exactly the needed guidance in Out of the Doghouse, helping men move past the usual infidelity roadblocks that result from cheating in ways that will not only save a damaged relationship, but restore intimacy to make it better than ever.