As the heading suggests, these are tips I have learned from years of marriage about how to make your husband choose you every time.
In the world we live, where successful men are almost headhunted by beautiful, equally successful, younger and powerful women. It is vital that wives, (who are often, but not always, spending all of their time working and looking after the children), know how to make that man who's married to you, choose you above the other women with whom he comes into regular contact.
If he is a good dad and a faithful husband, don't pay too much negative attention to small issues like his inability to remember to get you flowers on Valentines Day for example.
Yes your friend's husband always remembers, but does he do all the things your husband does for you at the times when it really matters.
No one is perfect, and the man who remembers to send flowers at Valentine may be the man who feels he can use the flowers to make up for his inadequacies in other areas. I am categorically NOT saying that every man who brings flowers feels guilty for either spending too much time with his friends or not helping with the kids enough etc. This is far from the truth.
The point I am trying to make here is that it is more important for a man to be attentive to his wife on the days in the year when he has no special reason to be.
It is nice if he does do these things, but if he doesn't, while supporting you every day of the year, give him a break. He'll soon work out the romantic stuff by himself. Nagging him won't bring him any closer to you. Maybe sending him flowers one year may embarrass him enough to bring him to his senses.
‘Listening' is such an overused cliché these days that it's been forced out the other side of its true value.
Women want a man who listens to her, but we never think that men want a woman who listens to him. If you were doing all of the listening, but he never sat down and paid attention to a word you said, how frustrated would this make you? Now turn that around and you'll see how unhappy he must be because of your blasé attitude about his need to express himself.
It takes a bit of wringing to squeeze information out of my husband about his work, colleagues, concerns, projects, etc. But once I've wrung it out of him, his testosterone- fuelled pride relaxes and he is able to talk and talk and talk... I listen. He is my married man, just like it's his job to be my listening junkie, it's mine to make sure that when he thinks of a woman who listens to him, the face that shines brightly out of the crowd of women he talks to, is mine. When he needs to clear his head and really talk, he'll come home, not go out to the pub with a ‘friend' because I'm the one who's stolen his heart on this front.
Mistresses are known for their ability to be affectionate. Men are known to complain about their wives starving them of affection. Women expect their husbands to give them an impromptu neck massage, to kiss them as they part and when they see each other again. To spontaneously give them an affectionate hug as they stand doing washing up by the sink etc. This feels good to a woman, it tells us that our husbands still find us attractive, even after the extra weight and the stretch marks
Well, men need to be told this too. A man needs to know that the woman he married still finds him attractive regardless of the beer belly and the progressively stranger and more potent whiffs that unbeknownst to him, emit from his body. If you've never spontaneously hugged your married man and said you loved him, do it now. As his wife, you should be the one showing him how sexy and desirable he is, because there are women out there who would be glad to do so. Getting this kind of reassurance from you means that there is a very large possibility he won't want to find out whether these other women find him attractive or not. I am not advocating that men never stray if they've got wives who show them affection, because some probably still do. What I'm saying is that if a man's wife does not create for him a drought of affection, getting it from random colleagues wouldn't seem like a something new and different to him. (Regardless of what we would like to think, every day our husbands are touched by other women. Innocent touches mind you, as women often talk with their hands and generally playfully hit the men they're around.)
A person who eats steak regularly wouldn't salivate when plate of half-cooked chops is held out in front of him.
My husband is incapable of putting away his shoes. When we first married, I nagged and nagged to get him to do so. After a year or so, I realised 2 things. 1. He would never remember to put away his shoes on his own. 2. This was seriously getting on my nerves and making me very angry at the man I love.
I then decided that I had two choices if I was going to keep the peace. On the wide scheme of things, stray shoes were not in the least important to the running of our home, or the state of our marriage, yet they could contribute to taking small bites out of our happiness. My first choice was to give up my anger at this and put the shoes away myself, or continue to nag him until one of us or both, fly into a rage of built up anger.
I chose a fun third option, leave the stinking shoes where they were until he sees them or trips over them.
Almost instantly, he tripped over them a few times and began to abuse them himself under his breath. He still leaves them around occasionally, but now when he puts them away, he does that because he wants to and because he knows that I don't like them lying around. The simple decision of letting go has enabled me to see the shoes without seeing red. I even on rare occasions, put them away myself.
The next thing I want to let go of is my angst about the papers he leaves around the house when he's marking exams.
Make a choice to let go of one thing. Decide upon the most unimportant thing in your marriage that you've taken up issue with and can't let go. There is one thing that makes you nag at him even though you know it makes no difference to your lives or the well-being of those around you. The woman he married was fresh and easy-going, not the nag you turned out to be. Let your husband see you, his wife as the young woman he married, allow him to see glimpses of the carefree girl with whom he fell in love. When young, fresh colleagues at work carelessly laugh at his jokes, this action to him, is something he's accustomed to. These laughing, easy-going women are not more attractive than the slightly wrinkled but young woman, responsible mother of his kids, who takes care of him, because she is just as carefree. Alas, you've stolen his heart again.
5. Take care of how you look
Of course some of the other women your husband comes into contact with are mothers and wives and have no more time to take care of themselves than you do. But they still make a special effort. Many times, the person who sees us at our worse is our husband. Why? We try our best for our friends and our colleagues, why not him?
It is difficult to find the time to always look our best. Of course as a working mother of 3 young kids born 3 and a half years apart from each other, I know. But I try to make an effort for him as he does for me. If your husband stops washing himself, brushing his teeth or fixing his hair and walk around with his dressing gown all day long, would you still be attracted to him? You go out to work and the men you see there are always at their best. Of course you never see their sloppy side, but they all have one. Years of being a slate wiped clean of any femininity or sexuality would erode some of the attraction a man feels for even the most beautiful of wives.
Let your husbanc choose you because even though you look after the kids and work, he can see that you try your best to look good. You may not always have the time to do it, but you make a good effort.
Keep stealing his heart so that there would be no place left in there for anyone else to.