How to Keep Your Wife "In Love" with You Indefinitely

Of course, online anonymity prevents me from writing about my current relationships. Let's just say that a ten-year marriage ended in widowhood. Enough years have gone by that I feel able to publish a short, general list of the Top Ten things my late husband did to keep our marriage vibrant.

He was not perfect, although I have to resist the temptation to act as if he were. Nobody is perfect. My husband died of multiple myeloma. For him, as for several people with this rare form of cancer, unaccountable mood swings were the only warning sign he got before reaching a terminal stage.

I mention this in case some of you married men out there may secretly be thinking that you're not perfect, therefore your marriage isn't perfect, therefore your wife probably wants to leave you anyway, so why try any longer? This article is meant to encourage you. Unless you have some equally gruesome disease (such as alcoholism) the low moments in your marriage can hardly get lower than some of those produced by multiple myeloma. It's still possible to make the good times good enough that your wife will love you through the bad times.

1. Good husbands take full responsibility for birth control. Pills upset a woman's natural hormone balance too much. If they don't have more drastic effects, birth control pills may cause her to feel more attracted to a different type of man. (One study on which I've seen no follow-up suggested that when women can have children we're physically attracted to the men who may have the most compatible DNA; when we can't have children we're attracted to men who either have incompatible DNA or are sterile.) Surgery that works for the wife will have serious long-term consequences. Surgery for the husband is a possibility if he really hates children or has terrible genes. Condoms and the rhythm method are a way to space out births within marriage, not a way to keep a house baby-free. If unwanted babies are a serious threat to the stability of the family, good husbands learn to enjoy safe sex.