If You're Doing These 9 Things, You're The Perfect Wife

Being the perfect wife is pretty damn simple.

It's kind of like being the perfect partner, but the stakes are much higher. And in some ways, the reward is higher too. 

I thought when getting married, becoming the perfect wife was some sort of role I needed to train for. I would need lessons from other people in successful marriages. 

Or counselling, a concept I feared in my adolescence but thought marvellous in my adulthood.

I needn't have feared being a good wife, because I already knew how to be a good partner. I had enough practise at it, you could say I assimilated perfectly into the role.

But in case you're someone like me, where you have moments of doubt, I want to let you know you're doing a good job.

1. If you cook and clean…

Ok, I can feel your outrage already so let me quickly explain what I mean. 

The perfect wife is someone who can cook and clean for themselves. Not for other people. Not in the outdated, 1950's housewife sense. This isn't about the power between husband and wife.

It's about you being able to look after yourself. A good wife is someone who can:

• Stand on their own two feet.
• Look after their health.
• Know when something is wrong and do something about it.
• Put herself first because she can't be a good wife if she doesn't look after her mental, physical and emotional health.

As my old year ten P.E teacher used to say whilst forcing us to do push-ups; 

"If you don't look after yourself, you can't be a good friend, partner or person."

2. When you're between the sheets: You. Got. This. 

There's this running joke about marriage and sex. Basically, once you get the ring, you can expect the sex to stop. 

We've all laughed at that joke a million times. Some people have to hide their disdain as they realise they're laughing at their own reality.

And there are people who look at marriage as the end goal. 

Once they do have the ring, it's socially acceptable for them to stop sex, right?! 

Isn't that what everyone else is doing? And shouldn't the husband have expected that to happen?!

A good wife doesn't believe in sex conventions, nor does she believe a woman's role in the bedroom is to follow what everyone else is doing. A good wife:

• Knows what her husband wants in the bedroom
• Acts on this knowledge of what they want
• Knows how often her husband wants to have sex
• Doesn't expect her husband to dictate the frequency of sex
• Doesn't expect her husband to initiate sex
• Doesn't shy away from discussing sex and making it a part of a normal, healthy marriage

3. You hold your tongue when the ears are listening 

I see this happen all the time. It's a different type of PDA. It's the public display of arguments. It's when a couple niggles at each other in front of an audience. Or when it turns into a full-blown fight.

Wives aren't the culprit for starting these fights, by the way. 

But I have seen my fair share of wives use the public forum to take jabs at their partners. And usually about hypersensitive topics, too. I've seen wives:

• Talk about how much their husbands eat or drink
• Talk about how little they exercise
• Talk about how little they do around the house
• Talk about how little they do in the bedroom (and my TMI sensors went through the roof at that point)
• Talk about how little their husband provides emotionally or financially

This is all in front of the husband, by the way. Presented in good humour, which it's clearly not. And the husband hates it.

I can tell because my husband tells me that would be a sensitive topic for any man. And I can tell because the husband has a look on his face where he wishes his wife would shut her mouth.

It concerns me that the wife:

• Doesn't care about how hurt her husband feels, nor does she do something about it right then and there.
• Doesn't care about how hurt her husband might be about the topics yet still chooses to bring it up.
• Doesn't care about her relationship not to engage in PDAs. Argument ones, that is.

Good wives don't get into these petty arguments, nor do they see public forums as the space to critique their husbands.

4. Unreasonable expectations? No, you don't have them.

A good wife knows her man isn't Superman. A good wife also knows she isn't Lois Lane either.

We don't expect our husbands to suddenly transform into a different person once we get the ring. We don't expect him to have skills he didn't have before, a sex drive he didn't have, or an attitude towards life that differs overnight.

Sure, everyone can change. 

A good wife changed as much as a good husband does, too. But we don't expect that marriage means a husband has to be something he's not.

A wife shouldn't have these irrational expectations for change, either. 

It's in the same way we don't want them to expect that of us. We wouldn't want our husbands to marry us thinking we will overhaul our lifestyle, values and ideals simply because we're married.

5. Ultimatums? You don't know them, either. 

Have you ever seen a happily married man living with ultimatums and threats from his wife? 

Well, he's still living and surviving. But the relationship sucks (let's face it) and he is as miserable as he could possibly be.

Bad wives are very good at issuing ultimatums to husbands. We have this delusion that if we put our husband under duress, he will comply with our every wish. 

We also stupidly believe our commitment to the relationship is something we can use as a bargaining tool. If the man stuffs up, we punish him by withdrawing ourselves from the relationship.

A wife who does this sets horrible precedence and dynamic for the relationship. 

It implies a wife and husband aren't on equal footing. It also shows the wife doesn't value teamwork or healthy communication to build a marriage. 

Instead, they value ultimatums to prove their point. Very naughty, indeed. 

6. Freedom is the word you use most often

There are some wives who will admit to being controlling of their men. Then there are some who are controlling but won't admit it. Oblivion aside, a controlling woman doesn't make a good wife.

We don't want men to do it to us. 

We've been fighting against that for so long, and now isn't the time to seek retribution. It's also not our husband's fault if we revenge generations of controlling men on them. 

We're picking a fight with the wrong person.

There is no 'good controlling', either. 

A good wife doesn't justify her control by claiming it's for their husband's own good. Or even for the sake of the relationship. Even if the husband needs some boundaries, a good wife knows she isn't the one to impose them. 

Long-lasting marriages don't have a singular person in control. It defies the idea of teamwork altogether.

7. You keep your misery sensors switched on 24/7

Knowing your husband inside and out, enough to know when he's struggling, means you're a good wife. This isn't hard, by the way. 

To know your other half needs help, you simply need to:

• Pay attention to who he is on a normal day
• Pay attention when changes add up and when he isn't acting himself
• Pay attention to what he's saying and what he's doing
• Not let it get to the stage where someone has to point it out for you
• Not let it get to the stage where your husband has to say something is wrong, and this is a complete surprise to you
• Not be entirely obsessed with your own life or situation that you can't see what's going on in your own relationship

You can't be a good wife if you see your husband is in need, if he's struggling, and you let him struggle. 

Or you wait for him to come to you because you're too worried about offending him. Or insulting his male pride.

That's letting a problem perpetuate into your marriage. Despite it being "his problem", it's always going to become a relationship problem.

8. Money comparisons don't exist 

I know more relationships than not where the wife earns more than the husband. Sometimes it's a deliberate choice made by the couple; one person has more ambition than the other and together they help the wife be the big earner. 

And sometimes it's because the wife earns more, based on what she does, her study and her goals. It's life.

But that doesn't matter to a good wife, nor does she feel like she needs to talk about it in public or private. She isn't:

• Reminding her husband who earns all the money
• Reminding her husband who can withhold money in the relationship
• Talk about the money as if it's 'hers' and not 'ours'
• Talk about what she owns (house, cars etc) and saying it's 'hers' because her job paid for it
• Isn't talking about punishing her husband by not paying for his lifestyle

9. Correcting wrongful thoughts; "You aren't a bad husband"

And a good wife doesn't let her husband go through life thinking he's a bad one. Or comparing herself with him. Or even comparing herself to other wives.

Being a good wife isn't about being a gold medal winner. 

And it isn't a contest for someone to win. Everyone can be a good wife without someone being the best wife.

There are no winners. But unfortunately, there are losers.