Romance in Marriage

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

There are several things that you can do to make your wife more beautiful. Some of these involve changing the ways you interact with her, so that she is happily guided and motivated to make herself beautiful for you. Others involve purging the pollutants from your visual environment, so that your mind is unimpaired in perceiving her beauty. Still others involve changing your thought habits, so that you can enjoy the beauty that is there for you. If you diligently do these things, your wife can appear more beautiful even as she ages, providing a strong and pleasurable bond in your marriage. On the other hand, if you fail to do these things, your wife can become visually uninteresting or even repulsive to you, leaving you frustrated and struggling to be mentally faithful to her. The choice and power are yours.

Admire her beauty with words, touches, looks, and gifts

A woman naturally wants to feel beautiful, and likes having her body admired by her husband. If a woman believes that her husband is attracted to her and appreciates her feminine beauty, she will strive to become more beautiful for him. However, if she believes that she is hopelessly unattractive to her husband, she will be discouraged and will put less effort into being beautiful.

Tell her with words, admiring looks, and little gifts (such as jewelry or clothing) that her body is beautiful, her eyes are pretty, or her figure is comely. Tell her that seeing her body warms and calms you. Let her see you gazing adoringly at her. Compliment her on those particular parts of her body that especially turn your head. If she knows they are attractive to you, she can hold them and present them to you in more seductive ways.

If you are sincere, appreciative, and persistent, she will come to see herself as a beautiful creature, and will become more aware of how her appearance affects you. She will smile more, stand taller, and begin to do a dozen other little things to be more beautiful for you. All of this will happen because beauty loves to be admired, and thrives in the spotlight. What a woman really wants is to be beautiful to her husband, but she needs you to give her a taste of what that feels like.

For a second and third opinion on this topic, read the Legend of Johnny Lingo’s Eight-Cow Wife and Are husbands to blame for their wives becoming fat?

Express appreciation for her efforts

Take judicious advantage of the fact that a woman loves to be complimented on her appearance. Your wife, no matter how discouraged, will at least occasionally make efforts to be more physically attractive, by doing her hair, choosing clothes that look good on her, straightening her posture, smiling, using makeup, etc. As you notice those efforts, and compliment her on her appearance, she will happily continue those efforts and even make additional efforts to make herself more attractive to you.

The compliments should always be sincere, cheerful and positive. They must never be sarcastic or manipulative. Positive reinforcement—a wink, an admiring look, an expression of sincere appreciation or admiration, or a smile—will get you better results in the long run than criticism will. Positive reinforcement will improve her confidence in her own efforts to be beautiful, and increase her desire to please you. Criticism will do the opposite. Never criticize her. The positive, patient, sensitive approach is always best.

Live healthfully with her

Two thirds of adults in the U.S. are overweight because of poor habits and choices that naturally result from our modern obesigenic environment and sedentary lifestyle. Read The Diet Dropout’s Guide to Natural Weight Loss to learn how to change your environment and get back in shape together with your wife.

Love her

For many women, food provides comfort and distraction that should instead be coming from a husband’s love. Giving your wife more positive attention may help her feel less need to overeat.

Harness the halo effect

A positive perception of one trait that a person has can influence your perception of other traits. The positive perception sets up an aura or halo around the person in your mind. This is called a halo effect. Your perception of your wife’s appearance may be influenced by your perception of other aspects of her character and personality, such as her kindness, strength, intelligence, etc. If you treat her well, compliment her on her wisdom and strength, and express gratitude for her kindness and other good qualities, two things will happen. First, your appreciation for those qualities will naturally increase. And second, she will be motivated to further improve herself in those and other ways. As a result of your greater appreciation, and of her increased efforts, she will seem more kind, strong, and intelligent to you, and, because of the halo effect, more beautiful also. To get started, sit down and make of list of twenty things that you like about her, and then think about them frequently. Compliment her on at least one of them each day. As you focus on her positive aspects, she will become a more beautiful person to you.

Balance your visual diet, and let her be your eye candy

A habit of looking at women who are unusually beautiful can dampen your enjoyment of your own woman’s beauty.
Research has shown that perceptions of feminine beauty are subject to a perceptual contrast effect. In other words, the way we perceive something depends on the alternatives we are comparing (or contrasting) it with. This is aptly illustrated with white paint, which comes in various degrees of brightness, from white to ultra bright white. Something newly painted with white paint looks great until it is placed next to something painted in a bright white. It then looks gray. Likewise, if the bright white object is placed next to something painted ultra bright white it will look gray also. Each object initially appears white, and is entirely satisfactory. It is only when compared to a brighter white object that it appears gray. As with paint, so it is with women. In experiments1,2 in which men rate the attractiveness of a series of women (in photos), a woman of “average attractiveness” (as determined previously by a group of judges) will tend to be given lower ratings by men who are shown her photo mixed in with photos of highly attractive women, than by men who are shown her photo alone or mixed in with photos of mostly less attractive women.

If you are finding it difficult to see the physical beauty in your wife, it may be because you are not giving your eyes a well-balanced visual diet. You may be getting too much eye candy and not enough visual veggies. Balance your visual environment so that you see fewer women who are unusually attractive (eye candy) and more women of average attractiveness (i.e. visual veggies). When you are in a crowd and have nothing to look at but people, spend more time looking at those who are less attractive. With such a visual diet, your wife will be more attractive to you because of the perceptual contrast effect. Beauty is in the mind of the beholder.

Because of the greater visual stimulation involved, a habit of looking at women (or pictures of women) who are made to look sexy (not just pretty) can have an even greater detrimental effect on your perception of your wife’s beauty.

To help make these improvements in your visual diet, you might mostly avoid television and movies, which are largely visual junk food. You might also consider changing your job if you are constantly exposed to unusually attractive women at work. There is some evidence4 that men, such as secondary school and college teachers, who are constantly exposed to attractive young women,5 become less satisfied with their mates as a result, are more likely to divorce, and are less likely to remarry than are men in other careers.

Pornography is especially destructive to a marriage relationship and to your perception of your wife’s beauty. See the Resources for Quitting Pornography page if you need help quitting.

1“Context effects on the perceived physical attractiveness of faces” by R. E. Geiselman, N. A. Haight and L. G. Kimata, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 20: 409-424 (1984).

2“A formal analysis of ratings of physical attractiveness: Successive contrast and simultaneous assimilation” by D. H. Wedell, A. Parducci, and R. E. Geiselman, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 23:230-249 (1987).

4“Teaching May Be Hazardous to Your Marriage” by Satoshi Kanazawa and Mary C. Still. Evolution and Human Behavior 21: 185-190. (2000).

5“Why I hate beauty” by Michael Levine and Hara Estroff Marano, Psychology Today 34:38-42 (2001).

Control your attitudes and fantasies

Your mind, like your car’s wheels, must be controlled if you want to get farther than the nearest ditch. Your perceptions are molded by the thoughts you choose to entertain. If you think often and long enough that your wife is unattractive, she will be so to you. On the other hand, if you look for the beauty in her appearance, you will likely find it.

Realize that much of beauty is in the mind of the beholder, and that many different female body shapes and sizes can be attractive. When it comes to a woman’s features, no size or shape is ideal. As evidence of this, reflect on the different fashions in feminine form through the ages. The Renaissance era, the 1920’s the 1970’s, and today all have had differing ideal female body shapes. Chances are that your wife’s features are inherently as beautiful as the next woman’s, whether they are the current fashion or not. Forget about the current fashion, and make your wife’s style your favorite. Use positive thoughts and fantasies to teach your mind that she is beautiful.

Take a clue from advertisers and adjust your vocabulary. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but the ear can also make a difference. Think of her physical characteristics in words that have positive connotations. Then, using these new words, think how lucky you are to have a woman with such desirable traits. Enjoy and appreciate them. Tell yourself they are attractive. You will gradually find it easier to think this way until it comes quite naturally.

One woman is your mate—all others are your sisters. If you can make that distinction clearly in your mind, and practice it in the way you look at women, your wife will become more attractive to you, and other women will be less distracting. Let her, with her real body, be the sole subject of your romantic interests and fantasies. As your sisters, other women merit your respect, but not your lustful thoughts or curious gaze. To you, only your wife needs to be romantically interesting.

Don’t compare. A habit of comparing your wife with other women is incompatible with full enjoyment of her beauty. Think of it this way. Suppose that you love cheesecake. When you are at a restaurant eating a piece of cheesecake, are you unable to enjoy it just because somewhere else there may be a cheesecake that tastes a little different, a little better in some way? No! You love cheesecake, so you relish every bite. You don’t close your eyes and imagine that you are eating some other cheesecake in some other restaurant. You don’t analyze it, thinking that you would be satisfied if only it were a little sweeter, smoother, firmer, or creamier. You don’t sit there looking at the cheesecake (ostensibly from the same recipe) pictured on a poster on the restaurant window, frustrated that yours doesn’t look quite as mouth-watering. Women are like cheesecake. They are all a little different. But overall, they are more similar than different, and basically delicious. You can’t enjoy that basic deliciousness if you have a habit of comparing what you have with what you don’t.

Features of other women (without all the makeup, lights, touchup, support, flattering poses, etc.) are really quite similar to those of your wife. If you were to see your wife with any other in exactly the same situation, the differences would probably not be as great as you have imagined. Despite the best efforts of certain rich men to make you think otherwise, every woman has unpleasant moods and imperfect skin.

Like cheesecake, your wife will taste best if you stay forever in enjoy mode and out of compare mode. Some men say, “I could never be satisfied with just one woman.” The truth is that the only way you will ever be satisfied is “with just one woman,” because constantly comparing is incompatible with satisfaction. No real woman’s features, no matter how desirable, can long satisfy you if you are in the habit of comparing them with idealized or imagined features of other women. On the other hand, if you refuse to compare, you can always enjoy.

Appreciate her imperfections

No matter how perfect your wife is, there will always be a perceived flaw that will ruin your enjoyment of her if you let it. If you are somehow able to fix that flaw, there will always be another one to take its place. The key to being satisfied with your wife is to appreciate her flaws. Flaws are evidence of her uniqueness and realness. Just as a jeweler sees the flaws in a diamond as evidence that it is natural, you can see your wife’s imperfections as evidence that she is a real, natural, unique woman, not some cheap airbrushed imitation.