Sex & Relationships

Everything you need to know about being a good wife

When I announced my engagement on Facebook in April 2015, I received more likes than when I published a book or got a big job promotion. My world, according to social media, wanted me to know that becoming a wife was the most important and likable thing I had ever done.

The word “wife” is terrible. It conjures thoughts of patriarchy, subservience and second-class citizenship. Most of my close girlfriends, ages 30 to 45, hate the word “wife,” and yet they also couldn’t wait to receive a giant engagement ring and walk down the aisle in a $10,000 Vera Wang dress. They like the cutesy nickname “wifey,” but hate it when their husbands’ co-workers joke about inviting the wives along or introduce them as “the wife.”

It’s a conundrum for sure.

Courtesy Jo Piazza

What is a modern wife? What are the rules and who makes them? Who are our role models? Hillary Clinton? Melania Trump? Kim Kardashian? God save us.

But what’s the alternative? The word “partner” is equally bad, if not worse. It reeks of patchouli and the possibility for group sex. But is “wife” — with all its connotations of ownership, aprons and baking cookies — worse? The truth is there are no good alternatives.

So we might as well embrace it and make it our own. After I got hitched in September 2015, I spent the first 12 months of my marriage grappling with the question of how to be a wife. I had no idea what I was doing. And so I used my job as a travel editor to crowdsource how to be a wife.

In my new memoir, “How To Be Married: What I Learned From Real Women on Five Continents About Surviving My First (Really Hard) Year of Marriage” (Harmony, out now), I interviewed hundreds of women — from 20 countries on five continents — about what the word meant to them.

Here’s what I came up with:

Help create a cozy and comfortable home: Don’t do this because it makes your husband happy. Do it because it makes you happy and makes the two of you actually want to spend time in your home together. It was the women in Denmark who taught me that this matters. They buy deliciously scented candles and absurdly soft blankets and throw pillows by the sackful there.

Let your husband take the lead once in a while: Men like to think they’re in charge. Throughout the course of my research, particularly in Chile, I was told over and over again that men’s fragile egos demand a sense of control. Sometimes a wife needs to let her husband think he’s the one calling the shots — even though she’s influencing his behavior and decisions in more subtle ways.

Act like your husband’s mistress: Naturally this advice came from the French. Leave the nagging to his co-workers, keep your phone off the dinner table. Flirt with other men and walk around the house naked. Quit whining about looking fat or old. Don’t spend all of your time together in your grossest sweatpants. In other words, don’t give up after you say, “I do.”

Men need to feel needed: Scratch that. Everyone needs to feel needed. I can take care of myself, but the great part of being married is that I don’t have to do it all alone anymore. Let your spouse take care of you once in a while. That’s what they’re there for. This advice came from the Dutch, some of the most badass and independent women I met on this journey.

You can put your marriage before your career, and that’s OK: American women have been trained to think that if we don’t continue striving for the brass ring at all costs, we are failing the women’s movement. This is different in places like Holland and Denmark, where women work hard and are successful, but also don’t judge themselves or their lives strictly by their career achievements. Sometimes it’s OK to put your marriage first. Leave early to have dinner with your spouse. Make time for that vacation. Work part-time if it makes sense for you, your marriage and your family. It’s your choice. No one is judging you.

Sometimes a wife needs to let her husband think he’s the one calling the shots — even though she’s influencing his behavior and decisions in more subtle ways.

It’s also OK to put your career first: Be comfortable being the breadwinner. Be comfortable asking your husband to take over the housework and the child care duties if now is your time to make your mark. I heard this over and over from interviews I did with Swedish stay-at-home dads who told me the best decision they ever made was to stay home, take care of their kids and support their wives.

Say thank you: If you have a good spouse who is supportive and kind, tell them that. Complaining about marriage is practically an Olympic sport in America, particularly among women. Women all over the world, literally in almost every country I visited, called out Americans as some of the worst offenders when it came to complaining about their marriages. Call out the great things your husband does instead of always pointing out the negative.

Keep your own rainy day fund separate from your husband: Keep just enough money to support yourself. This advice came from long-married women in some of the most remote areas of India. Their husbands were the breadwinners, but they all had a hidden emergency fund … just in case. Call it your independence fund, call it your “f–k it” fund. It doesn’t matter. You may never need it, but you will always know it is there.