This article is for all the wives and ladies who are getting married soon. Not all marriages are successful. Not every wife can be a good wife.
Marriage is a union of two individual–a man and a woman. The husband has its role to play and can improve his relationship, likewise a wife can do the same.
If you are wondering why I am writing an article on ‘How to be a better wife’ and not on the duties of a husband. Well, I have already covered that part as well.
You can read how to be a better husband. There are some amazing ways by which you can improve yourself, make your wife happy and your relationship.
If you want, you can read that to your husband.
Once you get married, it’s not over, the journey of a marital life is long. Many fails whereas many spend the years together happily. Every happy couple has their secret mantra that keeps their relationship last longer.
When you are newly married to the love of your life, you would imagine how you could be a better wife for your husband. How you could keep your family happy? What are the duties of a wife that you have to fulfil to keep your husband happy?
I have been married for seven years now and I have recently given birth to a beautiful, healthy baby boy.
Throughout my married life till now, I have heard several times people saying that it is your duty as a wife to do this and that. I always question who has defined what should be the duty of a wife.
When you are married, it’s a union of two souls and there should be equal rights to both. No one is bound to do this or that duty to make each other happy.
If a wife can cook, a husband can as well. If a wife can take care of the baby, so does the husband can.
Even after all this, you could wonder sometimes in what way you can make your husband happy and motivated. Little things you could do that will make your husband feel proud and ignite the love for you.
It is no secret that having a good wife can make a man’s life much happier and more content. It is commonly accepted that a good wife makes for a happy life. However, it is certainly not the whole story.
But it’s true that a better wife can add much more value and positivism into a married life.
Ways To Be A Better Wife & Make Your Husband Happy
Be Respectful of Him
Always be respectful of your husband in public and private. Mutual respect in marriage is important, as it is a sign of trust.
A lot of changes after marriage. If there is no mutual respect, it will become impossible to hold your marriage.
As a wife, show him how much he means to you. Give him the respect he deserves. Motivate and encourage him. Do not speak to him in a rude and aggressive tone while communicating.
Acknowledge his efforts that he is dedicating himself to you. Give him the respect by involving him in your major decisions.
Be Supportive
Being supportive of your husband can make you a better wife. You can support him emotionally and financially, too. Have the patience and the right amount of understanding to support him in his decision making.
After marriage, you and your husband are now co-dependent on each other for everything. Be each other’s backbone.
If your husband is going through a rough time as a wife, provide him as much support as you can. Be his backbone, make him believe in himself, encourage him to stand up, give him the assurance that his wife, i.e., you will always be there beside him firmly.
Be his Cheerleader
I am a stay-at-home working mom, and I keep myself pretty busy all the day. My husband works in an IT firm and mostly his work shift is quiet a hectic. He is an optimistic person, but sometimes he gets annoyed and agitated when things don’t go in the right direction.
You know corporate life doesn’t give you the respite. At these times, I am his only cheerleader. As a wife, I always want to see him at peace and happy. When that gets disturb it’s my responsibility to make him calm.
I try to cheer him up by distracting him, motivate him to do better and listen to all the reasons that he is pissed off with. However, I hardly understand his IT work things, but that’s not an issue. It’s important that I let him outburst that’s on his mind.
Show him you love him
You can show your husband that you love him by doing little things. There are a ton of things that you could do daily to show him your love.
It is unnecessary in a relationship to say ‘I LOVE YOU’ a hundred times. Instead, you can express your love in several ways. You can make him a cup of coffee in the morning without him asking for it.
You can write him a small note of appreciation. You can make him a bowl of chicken soup when he is unwell. When he needs it, you can give him some space.
Likewise, you can show him your love in a lot of other ways, too.
Appreciate His Effort
We all want to hear words of appreciation from our spouse sometimes. It feels good. Appreciating your husband can help you fight off resentments if he has any.
When an appreciation comes from his wife, he will feel motivated and boost his confidence level.
How can you appreciate your husband?
“Thank you for taking out the trash,”
If he is putting an effort into doing something better for you, show your gratitude.
For example, he is cooking a meal for you because you are unwell. Appreciate him for his lovely effort and shower him the love that he deserves.
Trust His Motives
The question is not whether you should trust your husband’s motives, but what you want to believe.
When you are married, there are decisions that are needed to be taken together. There are high chances of differences in opinion. But both need to trust each other’s instinct and motives.
As a wife, trust your partner’s honest motives.
Of course, you shouldn’t trust anything blindly. You must see and understand if his motives are true and won’t cause any harm to your family.
But if he is sure and have trust in his decisions, as a wife and life partner support him.
Be His Best Friend
My husband considers me his best friend and vice versa. When you are married, try to redefine your relationship. You can make your marriage last longer, only when both are compatible with each other to stick with each other for a longer time.
It is important that you, as a wife, nurture your husband, understand him, respect his feelings, be a better listener to him when he needs you, and laugh at his silly jokes. Be his friend more than a dutiful wife.
Be the best friend who stays beside him even at his fault, make him understand, be the person with whom he can share everything and grow old together.
Give Him Space & Freedom
It is important both the husband and the wife have their respective space and freedom. If your husband is asking for a little time off, respect that.
If he wants to go out, let him breathe the fresh air and give him the freedom. Do not call him now and then. Do not ask them too many questions like where are you going? When are you coming back? Why are you going? Is everything okay?
You need to stop that. He is an adult and he can manage himself. If you want to be a better wife, respect his space and want for freedom.
Do not Criticize
Certainly, you wouldn’t want to poison your marital life. If you are looking for answers on how to be a better wife, you must know this–never criticize your husband unnecessarily.
Constructive criticisms don’t hurt and harm. If you are always criticising your partner, you are pushing your significant other from you.
Soon, he will hide things from you, won’t feel comfortable sharing with you. He will secretly resent staying with you. He might soon prefer to leave the conversation in the middle and won’t ever feel like having a healthy communication.
I am sure you wouldn’t want any of them to happen in your happy married life.
Communicate Instead of Fighting
A good wife has the quality of taking control of her married life as and when required.
In my seven years of married life, I have established one important thing, and that’s ‘communication.’
I won’t lie. My husband and I fight often. We have varied and strong opinions which is normal. No person is alike. Every individual has their opinions, some prefer to take a stand on their opinion more firmly.
But above all, our priority is always to solve issues based on an effective communication. I have realised over the time how powerful communication is.
Now, after having a baby in our life, we always keep a tab about our tone and statements when we argue. The good thing is our fight last for a maximum 15-20 minutes whenever we realize it’s going beyond that we set a time to talk peacefully.
Mostly, after we put our baby to sleep, we sit and talk about what’s going on.
Encourage Him to be Healthy
If your husband is not motivated towards exercise and keeping his health on a check. As a good wife, you must encourage him to be healthy.
Health is important. If your husband is like my husband, lazy and laid back, you have to pull up your socks to motivate your husband for exercises.
I have been doing this for months now. I have never forced him for anything. But I try to make my husband understand why his staying healthy is important for me.
To encourage him, I do the exercises with him, like “I am going for a jogging, will you accompany me?”
Or, sometimes I set wake him up early and we do exercises together on our balcony for 30 minutes
When wives care for their husband, they feel good and they want the attention. Eventually, they will follow you.
Be Close to him Emotionally
Give your husband your undivided attention and affirmations. Make an effort to understand him and read his mind. If he is emotionally vulnerable, be present beside him. Let your husband know gently that he can trust you with his feelings and can share them.
Usually, men do not want to show their emotional side, but once they are comfortable, they won’t mind sharing their fragile state of mind with their wives.
It happens when couples are not closer to each other emotionally. I believe emotional closeness is more important than physical closeness in a marriage.
Make Time for him
How often do you spend quality time with your husband?
I know life gets busy with career and kids, but your marriage is your priority too. To maintain the closeness, both must spend as much time as possible together.
As a wife, you can plan a surprise date, plan for a vacation, cultivate new interest together, cook a meal together and so on. There are so many things that you could do with your husband and spend time with him.
Spending time will bring you closer to your husband. It also gives you the opportunity and time to understand each other better.
Allow Him to Grow Professionally
Support from your spouse can make or break the path to prosperity. This is another way that could help you make a better wife.
If you see your husband is growing fast in his career, don’t be jealous. Support him and encourage him to do better and achieve the heights.
Modern relationships are complex. Couples often fight over who gets the high salary, who is more successful professionally, and so on.
If you selflessly support your husband in achieving his dream, you will contribute towards greater happiness in your family.
Help him to attain a clear road map for his profession. If he wants any sort of help from you, try to provide that by showing encouragement and compassion.
Surprise him
I love surprising my husband. I love watching his smiling face. The surprises are not extravagant, though. They are little things like leaving a note on his desk showing my gratitude towards him.
Sometimes I surprise him with a delicious pasta dish for dinner. When he is at the office, I send him a song sung by me and tell him to listen using a headphone.
On birthdays, I prefer to surprise him with a handwritten note and a card. I feel that’s more touching.
What I mean is, surprise your husband with the motive of letting him know that you love him.
Be a Good Listener to him
I have already covered ‘How to be a better listener in a relationship’–there I have explained in detail how you can improve your listening skill and how better listening improves your relationship.
Communication is a two-way street, thus give your time and listen to him when he needs you.
Let him share what he has to say and be a listener without interruption.
Don’t compare him with Anyone Else
You should never compare your husband to others. If you are doing so, it will certainly bring a crack between you and him. It is important to understand that every human being is different and has a distinct personality.
I have seen how many wives compare their husbands with their friend’s husband.
For example, they complain about why their husband is not having a good physique, like the XYZ person. It’s stupid to compare and complain about your husband with the others. The qualities your husband have might not have in the others.
You must stop finding faults in your husband, thinking someone else is better. It can severely damage your marriage. Constant comparing might lead to insecurity in the marriage and a loss of empathy.
Never Cheat
You can be the best wife if you never cheat on your husband and disrespect your marriage.
Cheating is never acceptable. If you have issues in your marriage, fix it through communication with your husband. Try to figure out what could you do or how could you improve the relationship with your husband.
People have affairs when they feel lonely and disconnected from their spouse. When they feel there is nothing left to do anything in their marriages.
Whatever the reason may be, you must always remain faithful in your marriage and towards your spouse. Together, you can certainly figure out what’s missing in your relationship and work on that.
Make him laugh
Adding a sense of fun and humour in your life brings positivity. As a wife, you can always be the cheerleader and be the entertainer for your husband.
Be silly, make funny faces and make jokes for him he laughs at. Find out what kind of humour does he likes?
For example, my husband likes when I do stupid and naïve things. He adores me like a baby.
Be yourself and open in front of him. Be hilarious, dance and sing even if you can’t. Your motive should be to put up a smile on his face.
Don’t pick fights over small things
It’s a common misconception that conflicts in a marriage are always about big things. In reality, it’s the small things that start the fire.
A lot takes to keep a marriage in order. Be mindful of your tone. Choose the right moment to talk about the things that annoy you. Discuss amicably and keep the patience.
Bickering over small things is silly. They can be ignored. But if something that’s bothering you, instead of picking up fights, just sit and talk.
Don’t overburden him with expectations
Expectations are normal. When two individuals are in love and are together, there will be expectations. Some expectations will be fulfilled and some not.
Sometimes we expect too much from our significant other that brings in the tension in a marriage. Keep a balance. You don’t have to overburden your husband with a heap of expectations.
Do not expect that he will do everything for you. If you aren’t comfortable with anything that you are expecting from your husband and it hasn’t been fulfilled, be reasonable and think before jump with the conclusion on him.
Don’t pressure him to be the perfect husband & a father
There is no formula for a perfect husband and father. You won’t find anyone who is perfect at both. Instead of pressuring your husband to be the perfect, appreciate him for whatever best he is doing.
If you are expecting yourself to be a better wife, make an effort to understand your husband. We all have different expectations from our spouse and not all get fulfilled, and that’s completely acceptable.
Conclusion:
Be the wife who encourages, motivates, helps each other to grow and loves her husband. Find the best in him and be the reason for him to improve himself.
No one can tell how to be a best wife, but there are ways to make yourself better at what you are.
What does a husband need from his wife?
It’s no secret that marriages take work. But what does a husband need from his wife in order to have a happy and successful marriage?
A wife is the one person who knows her husband better. Precisely, both the husband and a wife need four key things – Trust, Love, Loyalty and Appreciation.
A husband needs his wife to be his best friend, confidante, and partner in crime. He needs her to be someone he can rely on and who will support him through thick and thin. He needs her to be someone he can share his deepest thoughts and feelings with, without fear of judgement or criticism.
What makes a man happy in marriage?
Though every man is different, there are some general things that can help to make any man happy in marriage. It has to be an elaborate answer but if you ask me the key elements, they would be:
Commitment
Strong friendship with your wife
Strong emotional connection
Lastly, It’s important to be able to enjoy life together
I feel chattered when I hear a woman saying”my partner does not have my time” that’s the mistake most women are making
http://uwagood.com/2022/01/15/5-thingswomen-dont-understand-in-a-relationship/
very true