To countenance the statistics on divorce is to recognize that happy, lasting marriages do not happen by default.
In strong marriages, each spouse, rather than sinking into indifference and complacency, makes an effort to do things that leave their partner enamored and appreciative.
To find out what kinds of things tend to have this effect when coming from the man in the marriage, I talked to Kate and some other married women about what husbands do on a day-to-day basis that make them swoon. Below, I’ll share what I learned from them and from the many relationship experts I’ve interviewed on the AoM podcast.
If you’ve already got a good relationship with your wife, these suggestions can help strengthen that bond and further boost its happiness.
If your marriage has been struggling, then engaging in these behaviors might help change the course of its trajectory. There can sometimes be a tendency in these situations for someone to think, “Why should I make an effort if she isn’t?” But often all it takes to get a relationship back on track is for one person to take the initiative in acting in a different way. Once one person starts sowing positive behavioral seeds, the other person becomes less defensive and instinctively starts acting in kind. A stalemate is broken and a virtuous cycle begins that turns the relationship around. If your wife doesn’t reciprocate by leveling up her own relational game, then, yes, that probably means your marriage needs a more serious/professional intervention.
But why not try the simple behaviors below first?
10 Ways to Be Better Husband Today
1. Be an interesting conversationalist.
Marriage is essentially one long conversation, and when the quality of the conversation between spouses sags, so does the quality of the relationship.
When you come home from work and your wife asks how your day was, don’t just say, “Fine,” and leave it at that. Even if not much happened, dig up a detail or two to share.
Intentionally collect conversational fodder during the day to share when you and your spouse catch up. Remember some interesting tidbit of office gossip you heard around the watercooler at work. Read interesting articles that catch your eye and file away some details you can talk about later. Be mulling over ideas you’ve heard so that if your wife asks, “What have you been thinking about lately?” you’ll have something to say.
While one of the privileges of a close, long-standing relationship is the ability to comfortably sit in silence, in the healthiest relationships, you enjoy conversing so much that you rarely want to.
2. Leave love notes.
Through years of watching marriages fall apart, divorce lawyer James Sexton has learned a thing or two about how to reverse engineer things and keep a relationship together. As he shared on the AoM podcast (his episode is such a good one; be sure to listen to it), his strongest suggestion for avoiding ever having to see him in his office is to simply “leave your wife a note every morning for a couple of weeks”:
just leave her a note, just a little, ‘Hey, Babe, thanks for last night on the couch watching TV. It was so nice, like the smell of you just makes me so happy. I fell asleep with it on me.’ Or ‘you looked so pretty when I woke up this morning and I’m so glad to have such a wonderful woman in my life. I love you.’ And that takes you 30 seconds, and I’m telling you that little tiny investment of time and effort will pay dividends like you wouldn’t believe.
If you want to really challenge yourself, leave your wife a love note every week for a year, like this guy did.
3. Be a man with a plan.
One woman I spoke to said she really appreciates it when her husband comes up with a plan for a date night or family outing and then executes it without her having to worry about anything.
“Plans really turn me on!” she declared.
Don’t wait around for your wife to plan your next date or family microadventure. Come up with an idea for a good time and then carry it out.
4. Perform small acts of service.
Years ago, AoM had something called the “Library of Random Man Knowledge” where readers could submit and browse through, well, random man knowledge (stay tuned, we’re working on bringing it back!). One reader submission said: “Bless your wife. Fill up her car’s tank with gas.”
For some reason, this really made Kate and I chuckle, and it’s become a running schtick in our marriage; if Kate gets in the car and the gas tank is on E, she’ll text me, “Hey, how come you didn’t bless me by filling up on gas?!”
But our joking aside, it’s actually good advice! Filling up the gas tank, and doing other little acts of service, is something your wife will really appreciate.
The women I spoke with mentioned this idea a lot. They said they really appreciate it when their husbands notice things they need and just take care of them (naturally without being a martyr about it, wanting a lot of credit, or using it as a way to keep score). It’s funny; a lot of the things they appreciated their husbands taking care of were car-related: Getting the oil changed. Filling up the tires with air. Getting the car washed. Chicks dig husbands who take care of their vechicles.
Pay attention to what your wife needs and values. If you’re not sure what sorts of things you could do to help her out, just ask.
5. Be the rock.
The women I spoke to all said they appreciate it when their husbands act as a rock when they’re stressed out. Here’s what one gal had to say:
I really appreciate my husband’s ability to maintain and create calm in chaotic/intense situations. He takes a difficult problem and breaks it down into manageable tasks and calmly organizes things to get it done. He really shines when he sees me getting stressed out and takes control.
We’ve written about how to be the rock in a relationship. The key is to not catch your wife’s anxiety when she’s stressed and instead be an oasis of calm stability. While most couples today want an egalitarian relationship, there are still times, especially when things get crazy, that most women would like a man to take charge and stand between her and a real or perceived threat.
6. Be the researcher and offer a solution.
It’s a common trope that women just want to be listened to when venting a problem and get annoyed when men try to offer a solution. There are certainly times this is true, but usually there’s also a point where she’d welcome some specific suggestions.
Sometimes that problem-solving can take the form that my friend mentioned above, where you help break down an issue into action steps.
Other times, you can be the person who looks into an answer to a question your wife has or some issue she’s worried about.
Matthew Dicks thinks people can be categorized as either eagles or mice; mice are very attentive to small details, while eagles take an overarching, birds-eye view of things. Both approaches can have their strengths. Anecdotally, it seems like men, on average, tend to be eagles, while women are often mice.
Kate and I would say that’s the case in our relationship. She’ll tell you that she tends to get lost in the weeds and overwhelmed by details, and for that reason, when she has an issue or is having trouble deciding between options, she really appreciates when I’ll research it for her, as she knows I’m better at plowing through a ton of scientific studies, product reviews, or travel sites, synthesizing the information, and offering a suggestion; “I think you should take X supplement.” I’m like her personal ChatGPT (as the technology improves, I’ll probably be replaced by ChatGPT).
7. Exercise competence.
Napoleon Dynamite famously said, “Chicks dig guys with skills.” And it’s true! Research suggests that women find competency (combined with warmth) incredibly attractive in a guy. The women I spoke to all said it makes them swoon when their husbands know how to handle a variety of situations and get stuff done.
One woman I spoke to shared this example of how her husband displayed this trait:
We went on a bike outing with our extended family, and all the bikes available were in disrepair. Their brakes needed to be repaired or gears realigned, etc. My husband spent hours cheerfully tuning them all up and teaching the kids about their bikes. He also tended to several medical situations—a cut hand, a rash, etc. I love to see him confidently and competently handle those situations. He takes care of the people I love and that makes me love him even more.
Have skills (knowing all 100 of these is a good goal) and put them to use.
8. Offer frequent non-sexual affection.
Sex is awesome. Research suggests that’s how guys connect emotionally with their wives.
Women like sex, too. But they also like non-sexual affection like hugs and kisses. It’s one of the ways they connect emotionally with you.
So offer your wife frequent gestures of physical affection that aren’t deliberately designed to initiate sex.
9. Be generous with your appreciation.
One thing I hear again and again from the leadership and relationship experts I’ve interviewed on the podcast is that people want to be recognized for the contributions they make.
When you’re married, it’s easy to take for granted all the stuff your spouse does for you and the household. Clean laundry magically appears in your drawers. Your fridge is refilled each week. Dinners show up on the table.
Besides taking for granted the stuff your wife does, it’s easy to stop recognizing all the amazing qualities she has that attracted you to her in the first place. You become habituated to the stuff that used to make your heart swell with gratitude at the beginning of your relationship.
Take time and effort to remove the blinders time has accumulated over your eyes and notice the little things you love and appreciate about your spouse afresh. Then, voice your appreciation for those things — even for the routine stuff she does every day. It’s all still a gift that helps make your life.
Always offer appreciation at the time your wife does things for you or soon after if you’re not together. But also just randomly shoot her a text during the day to express your gratitude for something she did or who she is.
It can also be helpful to have a set time each week where you and your spouse appreciate each other, which brings us to:
10. Have a weekly marriage meeting.
AoM readers/listeners are probably tired of me mentioning this suggestion, because I do it a lot in our articles and on the podcast. But having a weekly marriage meeting is one of the most helpful habits Kate and I have adopted.
Having a once-a-week marriage meeting will help your relationship run more smoothly and stay strong. It lasts about 20 minutes and has four parts: expressing appreciation, going over chores/to-dos, planning for good times, and discussing big issues. Here’s exactly why and how to execute it.
It’s All About the Small Stuff
As you look over the list above, you’ll see a common thread in these suggestions: they’re all small behaviors and practices.
It’s easy to think that keeping a marriage together is about the big stuff — the date nights and romantic getaways. But it’s really about the small things you do day to day to stay connected.
It’s about continuing to do the little niceties you did for each other when you were first dating.
It’s about how you and your spouse show up for each other on a Tuesday morning.
A story divorce lawyer James Sexton shared on the podcast has stuck with me ever since and couldn’t be a better way to end this piece:
[There was a] young woman I was divorcing who had two children, and we’d been a lot of miles, and I said to her, “Was there a moment where you knew that your marriage was over?” And she said that there was a granola that she liked to eat that she used to put in her yogurt, and her husband used to always notice when she was running low on it, and he would always get a new bag of it for her. I guess it was only sold at a particular health food store or something. And she’s like, “I never told him that that meant so much to me, but it was just such a sweet thing that he would just notice that I was running out of my granola; he didn’t need it, but he would notice I was running out of my granola, and there’d just be this new bag. And he didn’t come to me and say like, ‘Oh look, I got granola for you.’ He didn’t want credit for it; it’s just something he did. It was this small gesture that I’m paying attention, that I see this detail, and that I love you, and I want to just extend this kindness, this courtesy to you.”
And she said that one day, she ran out of granola, and she thought, “Oh well, maybe he’s busy and he didn’t notice or whatever.” So she left the empty bag in there, and after a week or two, he still hadn’t replaced it, and she thought, “Okay, this is over.”
And she said it became apparent in the weeks that followed that this distance was coming between the two of them.
And I thought to myself, “What if that is it? If it’s just granola, it’s just these little tiny gestures of, ‘Oh, they use this milk, so let me put it on the table,’ or ‘Oh, they don’t like the sound of the garbage disposal, it jars them when it’s loud, so I go, ‘Hey, babe I’m gonna turn on the garbage disposal real quick. Don’t be afraid when I turn it on.’” Like the small considerations. You know them about your wife; I don’t. Your wife knows them about you; I don’t. And those, to me, those intimacies, those little things, the things you love, the things you’re afraid of, the things that get on your nerves, your partner theoretically has the ringside seat to those, and they can leverage them in the most beautiful ways.
I see it when they weaponize them, so by the time you get to my office, you go, “Okay, I’m angry at this person, and here’s where their soft spots are. So here’s where we can stab them.”
But I really think that if you can identify those things while you’re happily married, you can use them without a massive amount of effort — just small little efforts to build this abundance of happiness and goodwill between the two of you and maintain it.
