Albert XL Arnaiz is a relationship counselling with a twist; he's perhaps an anti-relationship counsellor. He's a life coach with a niche; he's an infidelity coach. He charges €1,000 (about $1,000 or £850) for a short course on how to cheat on you partner. He claims many chief executive officers of large companies have sought his counsel.
The 43-year old, who lives in Barcelona, Spain, also runs the podcast, Tu Profesor Infiel, which is Spanish for 'Your Professor of Infidelity'.
Early this year, Albert Arnaiz's 'self-help' book, SHICRET: How to Be Unfaithful Without Getting Caught, was published. The book is a seven-step method to cheating. The steps are: Secrecy, Hearing, Intimidating, Cohabiting, Reiterating, Evading and Terminating. The initial letter of the steps make for the book title's acronym.
Not having read his book, I've only got an idea about three of his seven steps. Cohabiting is how to live with partner you're cheating on - he maintains that lying "can be terribly exhausting." Reiterating is about how to keep on cheating - he claims that an affair "can make you a bigger, happier person". And terminating is about how to end an affair to "reduce the chances of getting caught."
I don't think I want to dig deeper for the other four steps. And that's not me being judgemental about infidelity because I'm not. I don't want to read Albert Arnaiz's book because it has attracted bad reviews.
Albert Arnaiz claims that "Globally, 40 per cent more women are unfaithful than 35 years ago", 80 per cent of Brazilians have cheated and "Eighty per cent of people who cheat still manage to save their relationship." I'm interested to know where he gets his figures from because accurate data on infidelity is difficult to come by.
He also said: "... it is usually a lie when people say they had an affair because they were emotionally unfulfilled. They wanted great sex."
For the record, Albert Arnaiz is now in a committed relationship with woman, and together they have a young daughter. He met his partner while cheating who in turn was cheating on her partner,. Before his current relationship, he claims to have cheated about 100 times. On those who were interviewed in his book, the journalist Michael Odell, who quite recently met with Albert Arnaiz, wrote: "I have a suspicion these case studies all involve him."
Apart from writing his book and doing his podcast, Albert Arnaiz is a college lecturer in Barcelona; he teaches marketing. Methinks he may be marketing himself. It seems that Albert Arnaiz's Shicret book is yet another self-help book written by a snake oil salesman!
Have you read any good self-help books?
If so, what self-help book/s would you recommend, and why?
Though I need a lot of help, I'm not really into self-help books. But the best 'self-help' book I read was Max Atkinson's book, Our Masters' Voices: The Language and Body Language of Politics. It's a very interesting book about how politicians give speeches. Though not written as a self-help book, I used it as a way to develop my lecturing/public speaking skills. For example, if you want to convince people to your point of view, always cite three examples to substantiate your argument - three is a magic number. Another example is when giving a speech, imagine yourself as a conductor of the orchestra, the audience (the orchestra) needs authoritative and confident direction by the conductor but also needs to enjoy the performance - a nonstop performance is rarely enjoyable so break it up with pauses, recaps and asides to give people a chance to take breath. It's quite a manipulative 'self-help' book, but what one isn't?!
14
24 comments
The whole point of being in a loving relationship, worth fighting for and conserving, is that it is monogamous with a lover you value on many different levels. As a libertine, I'd never have a secret relationship behind my FWB's back, but I've never made a secret from her of my enjoyment (from time to time) of a sexual encounter with another woman. I do not need her permission to do this, of course, but certainly I wouldn't seeing it as "cheating" because for that, somebody needs to be deceived. Equally, I wouldn't have said FWB if my wife hadn't be inconsiderate enough to die at a stupidly early stage - but even lovers can't always be perfect
The book is quite useless for those in a FWB, open, swinging, polygamous and polyamorous relationships. I suspect the book is quite useless for those not in such relationships.
Such services wouldn't be necessary if people weren't so hung up on monogamy 🤨
I agree with you. No monogamist should buy the book.
I love to read never self help books. It’s all hogwash.
My sentiments exactly.
Dude is making money teaching people to be bad! LOL That's horrible.
I gave up self help books years ago. They never helped. Just made me feel bad.
Self-help books aren't great for one's self-esteem sometimes.
I enjoy the occassional personal development book - some of which one might consider "self help". I don't have a favorite. I appreciate a lot of point of views. Some I've read and really only managed to reinforce things I already believed to be true. Others provided an insight that I hadn't previously had or a viewpoint I hadn't considered. Mostly I think a lot of people get in their own way when it comes to success and reading a book is unlikely to help, but likely won't hurt. As for a guide to cheating? Most men don't need help with that. Plenty do it. I just watched the Netflix miniseries on the Ashley Madison scandal and it pretty much told me what we all know if we've been on this site long. But I did laugh at the comment about Albert being in a committed relationship...yeah...so was the AM CEO and the massive leak of info included how very frequently he was cheating on her.
I think the best 'self-help' books are those not written as such. I think people can learn and reflect on nearly all books they read.
I was thinking about that Ashley Madison doc too, while reading this.
Interesting info!
By the way "Tu Profesor Infiel" is not Catalan but Spanish, in Catalan it would be "El teu professor Infidel" though not a big difference really 
Thanks for your translation. The newspaper article I read got it wrong.
About the only "self-help" type book I can recall reading was one on how to workout. But perhaps most would say that isn't really in the category.
My reason for not reading more of them is that I'm so obnoxiously perfect now becoming more so would make me just about unbearable! 🤣
I'm going to borrow your defence now for why I don't read self-help books.
Wow. Never heard of him or his book.
It's probably best left that way!
I'll read most anything except self help books.
I don't thing I've read a self-help book.
I don't read self help books. I don't think anyone needs lessons on how to cheat. Just how many CEOs are 'many'? I don't see this book becoming a best seller.
I can't answer your question about how many CEOs; it's just a claim he made. Only he or the CEOs know. My guess, and it's only a guess, is that's it not many as we both understand the term.
@spunkycumfun My thoughts exactly.
@joisygirl It's good we agree. I've just been attacked as a European by an American. His argument was that America has saved Europe twice, I presume he means in the the two World Wars. Is that how most Americans feel about Europeans?
I should have written something like that a years ago.
It's never too late to write that book. Albert Arnaiz's book has just proved that there's a market for such books.
I have to say this was a very interesting topic today. I am sure many will get some very valuable advice from this one. I don't read self help books as I don't feel the need to as I can only learn from watching and being hands on.
Thanks for sharing this with us my friend, and I hope your Thursday is filled with many fun and sexy thrills too..
Like you, I don't read self-help books. There's no improving on perfection!
@spunkycumfun
I stole my line. But is ok.
@EnyojLife I like stealing lines!
@spunkycumfun
That’s part of being perfect ðŸ˜
@spunkycumfun
You guessed that it should have been “You stole my lineâ€. My fast typing and spellchecker often make mess.
@EnyojLife I make many such typos even though I'm largely a one-fingered typist!
@spunkycumfun
I type on phone. And it’s two fingers. But spellchecker doesn’t like me. Not at all. I’m reciprocating and hate it but it is worse with spellchecker off.
The same is true for languages and grammars. Of any language, except computer languages and old Latin. Good old logical Latin.
PS: I started drinking so you’ll excuse my long replies
@EnyojLife How fluent are you in Latin?
@spunkycumfun
Fluent? Not that I would get job at Vatican. ðŸ˜
It’s more that I found Latin more logical and orderly then other languages. Probably I just skimmed easy parts not serious work.
But I “speak†most of computer languages fluently ðŸ˜
@EnyojLife I never learnt Latin at school. It does seem quite a logical language but those computer languages are going to be more logical.
@spunkycumfun
Yeah but there is limit what computer language can express. It works only with computers that don’t mind repeat thousands and thousands of operations. Work at factory assembly line would be thrilling in comparison.
What I loved in Latin is absence of ambiguity. You alway know who is doing what to whom and when.
Again my knowledge wasn’t deep but I had that feeling of clarity
@EnyojLife I was only taught French and German at school. I kept my German up after leaving school.
@spunkycumfun
In school it was German and a few years of Latin.
Also I picked some English , Italian, Dutch and a few Slavic languages when I roamed Adriatic coast in search of ladies in need. Luckily all ladies from Scandinavia spoke some English ðŸ˜.
Funny thing I’m forgetting my mother tongue and I’m not learning English so frankly I don’t speak proficiently any language now. 😠although I read lot
almost exclusively in English.
@EnyojLife What is your mother tongue? Is it Polish?
@spunkycumfun
No. I’m from former Yugoslavia. So language was called Serbo-Croatian. Now it is Bosnian.
With some differences: Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Montenegrin are the same language with some differences in sentence structure and pronunciation but everyone can perfectly understand others.
Spoken English has the same variations between different countries that have it as official languages
Politics complicated everything
@EnyojLife Politics certainly complicated things. I was surprised how Slovenia managed to escape the worst of the bloody conflict.
@spunkycumfun
Slovenia was alway different than the rest of republics in Yugoslavia. Different mentality, culture even language was way different and hardly understood by others.
And historically differences was that they were not part of Ottoman imperium for 500 years as most of Balkan was. That was long time and it had deep impact.
Also Slovenia was ethnically compact not as mixed as other parts. Especially not as mixed as Bosnia and that was why the war was most brutal in Bosnia.
It’s complex
@EnyojLife Thanks for your explanation. I've visited Ljubljana twice; it's a beautiful city.
@spunkycumfun
It’s beautiful. And that river. There are also two beautiful lakes. And mountains. And it’s compact and easy to visit especially now as part of EU.
@EnyojLife I'd recommend anyone to visit the city. For Europeans, it's an ideal city break destination.
@spunkycumfun
This was nice exchange. And long one.
Take care until your next post
I don't buy self-help books and I've only read one ... Who Moved My Cheese ... and that's because my boss gave it to all his employees!
I had to look up the Who Moved My Cheese? book. I don't want my cheese moved more than it has to!