Sometimes, hug her just to hug her.
One main reason to create day-to-day closeness—even if no sex is on the agenda that night—is that women can spot the signs that sex
is
on the agenda and assume that your sweet gestures are not sweet at all, but are just sex-motivated. At its worst, we look like we only care about our wife when we want sex.
Now, us guys know that’s not true. But unfortunately it
is
true that in the busyness of life, we sometimes simply forget about doing the loving little things just because we love our wives, so the thought of sex becomes a sort of trigger to remember to be a bit more attentive.
What that means is that we have
actually
trained our wives to be cynical and suspect total self-interest on our part whenever they see those attentive gestures. So there’s a need for a little reconditioning. We need to hug our wife, send her a sweet e-mail during the day, rub her back, help her out around the house, cuddle with her in bed…and not ask for sex. At least sometimes.
5. Help her around the house. It helps you.
On the survey, about 60 percent of women interviewed said that simple helpfulness around the house would increase the likelihood that they would want to make love more frequently—if only because they would have more energy! As you’d expect, the margin was significantly higher (up to 70 percent) among women who worked outside the home or had school-age kids.
As one stay-at-home mom said, “My husband and I have a little joke between us. I say, ‘Honey, there is nothing more sexy than watching you clean something. And there’s
really
nothing more sexy than watching you clean the toilet!’ It’s all about feeling that he wants to take care of me.”
This is not just anecdotal opinion, either. A recent study by famed marriage psychologist John Gottman found that men who do more housework have both happier marriages
and
better sex lives.
Picking up the broom or doing dishes after a hard day on the job isn’t exactly…well, what you were thinking when you were thinking you couldn’t wait to get home! But as Gottman found, this kind of sacrificial support can often be more impressive than a dozen roses.
6. Don’t take “not tonight” personally—use it as a learning tool.
As we’ve seen, in almost every instance, she doesn’t
mean
it personally, it is not the “rejection” that you think it is, and it says literally nothing about her desire for you. Yes, it
feels
like rejection and it feels personal. But if we can think clearly on this one, we can actually bring more fulfillment to both parties.
Next time, try this: Use her “not tonight, dear” as a learning tool to understand
why
she’s saying no. I’ll bet your eyes will be opened to new ways to love and support your wife that perhaps you hadn’t noticed before. You can get off the merry-go-round of feeling helplessly deprived and actually
do something about it
.
You can get off the merry-go-round of feeling helplessly deprived and actually
do something about it
.
7. Clean up your act.
Several women, upon finding out that we were writing this chapter, asked Shaunti privately, “You will tell them to brush their teeth, won’t you?” Quite a few women told us that the most basic hygiene would make the difference between wanting to be intimate, or not. Back when we were dating, we never would have forgotten to brush our teeth or take a shower before a date—so why do that to our wife now?
As one woman put it, “I want him just to brush his teeth regularly. And I’d like him to shave his face whiskers before we do the wild thing!”
8. When in doubt, ask her.
Just like the existence of this whole chapter, this particular “to do” runs against the grain of my middle-class, Midwestern, don’t-talk-about-sex reticence. While it may not be comfortable, you just need to ask your wife what she likes, what she doesn’t, and how to improve. And make sure she knows that you
want
to know whether she’s
One main reason to create day-to-day closeness—even if no sex is on the agenda that night—is that women can spot the signs that sex
is
on the agenda and assume that your sweet gestures are not sweet at all, but are just sex-motivated. At its worst, we look like we only care about our wife when we want sex.
Now, us guys know that’s not true. But unfortunately it
is
true that in the busyness of life, we sometimes simply forget about doing the loving little things just because we love our wives, so the thought of sex becomes a sort of trigger to remember to be a bit more attentive.
What that means is that we have
actually
trained our wives to be cynical and suspect total self-interest on our part whenever they see those attentive gestures. So there’s a need for a little reconditioning. We need to hug our wife, send her a sweet e-mail during the day, rub her back, help her out around the house, cuddle with her in bed…and not ask for sex. At least sometimes.
5. Help her around the house. It helps you.
On the survey, about 60 percent of women interviewed said that simple helpfulness around the house would increase the likelihood that they would want to make love more frequently—if only because they would have more energy! As you’d expect, the margin was significantly higher (up to 70 percent) among women who worked outside the home or had school-age kids.
As one stay-at-home mom said, “My husband and I have a little joke between us. I say, ‘Honey, there is nothing more sexy than watching you clean something. And there’s
really
nothing more sexy than watching you clean the toilet!’ It’s all about feeling that he wants to take care of me.”
This is not just anecdotal opinion, either. A recent study by famed marriage psychologist John Gottman found that men who do more housework have both happier marriages
and
better sex lives.
Picking up the broom or doing dishes after a hard day on the job isn’t exactly…well, what you were thinking when you were thinking you couldn’t wait to get home! But as Gottman found, this kind of sacrificial support can often be more impressive than a dozen roses.
6. Don’t take “not tonight” personally—use it as a learning tool.
As we’ve seen, in almost every instance, she doesn’t
mean
it personally, it is not the “rejection” that you think it is, and it says literally nothing about her desire for you. Yes, it
feels
like rejection and it feels personal. But if we can think clearly on this one, we can actually bring more fulfillment to both parties.
Next time, try this: Use her “not tonight, dear” as a learning tool to understand
why
she’s saying no. I’ll bet your eyes will be opened to new ways to love and support your wife that perhaps you hadn’t noticed before. You can get off the merry-go-round of feeling helplessly deprived and actually
do something about it
.
You can get off the merry-go-round of feeling helplessly deprived and actually
do something about it
.
7. Clean up your act.
Several women, upon finding out that we were writing this chapter, asked Shaunti privately, “You will tell them to brush their teeth, won’t you?” Quite a few women told us that the most basic hygiene would make the difference between wanting to be intimate, or not. Back when we were dating, we never would have forgotten to brush our teeth or take a shower before a date—so why do that to our wife now?
As one woman put it, “I want him just to brush his teeth regularly. And I’d like him to shave his face whiskers before we do the wild thing!”
8. When in doubt, ask her.
Just like the existence of this whole chapter, this particular “to do” runs against the grain of my middle-class, Midwestern, don’t-talk-about-sex reticence. While it may not be comfortable, you just need to ask your wife what she likes, what she doesn’t, and how to improve. And make sure she knows that you
want
to know whether she’s
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