For those who, for whatever unaccountable reason, have not yet read the book, Worshipping Your Wife, here is a 750-word Readers Digest or Cliff Notes version:
WORSHIPPING YOUR WIFE: Six Steps for Turning Marriage Back Into Passionate Courtship
“Boyfriends need to understand that if women are worshipped, the world will be a better place.”
—Nicole Kidman
“If you want your wife to be a Goddess, worship her.”
—Clairette de Longvilliers
“The thrill is gone.”
It’s the lament of so many married couples. Husbands and wives drift apart, physically and emotionally, or maintain alliances of custom and convenience, keepers of a flickering flame.
Love has its seasons, as John Gray reminds us in Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. It's folly to expect eternal springtime, perpetual romance.
But what if it's not necessarily true? What if love can be rekindled, even the all-consuming passion of first love? And not rekindled briefly, for just a season, but “ever after,” creating that fairytale future couples dream about when saying their vows?
That’s the extravagant claim of Worshipping Your Wife: Six Steps for Turning Marriage Back Into Passionate Courtship. Yes, courtship—because that’s when guys and girls find each other most mysterious and magnetic.
Here's the entire six-step program in a nutshell—nominally addressed to husbands, but most effective when hand-delivered by their wives (or girlfriends), with salty or salient passages underlined.
The husband needs to:
Step 1: Realize that "the thrill is gone" and that he wants to get it back
A man will do anything to win the woman of his dreams. Should he lose her, he will do anything to win her back. Why, then, is he not willing to do anything, on a daily basis, to keep her contented? Because husbands don't perceive that a wife can be lost if never again wooed or won, that marriage is also a crisis, deserving of extreme efforts.
Step 2: Save his sex energies for his wife
The dirty little secret is that passion doesn't ebb, magic doesn't vanish—not for most husbands anyway. Their fantasy life continues unabated, only focused away from their wives. With visual erotica a mouseclick away, too many husbands, while technically faithful, yield to imaginary infidelity. And, at the risk of sounding Victorian, chronic masturbation, solo and secretive, can rob a marriage of its binding energies.
Step 3: Make her his fantasy
The solution is for the husband to make his wife the centerfold of his inflamed imagination, as she was during courtship. When a husband begins treating her with that same homage, the deadening scales of familiarity will dissolve and he will see her restored to full, feminine mystery and radiance.
Step 4: Court her every day, attempt to win her anew
Let the dragon-slaying, and sonnet-making, and gift-giving continue. Also: In courtship, the man proclaims his romantic ever-readiness, but the woman decides when (or if) sex will happen. It is a wonderfully workable formula, attuned to the dynamics of male and female sexuality. Let the man be hopeful all day long, striving to earn or seduce ultimate favors. Let the wife initiate and announce the main event ("Gentlemen, start your engines!"). Sex will be better and hotter for both--and more frequent.
Step 5: Pamper her and pitch in around the house
Is it unmanly to pamper your wife? Is it insulting, or infantilizing to open doors for her when she's perfectly capable herself? Should a husband stick to gender-specific chores--washing the car, hauling out the garbage? The courtship model makes quick work of such debates: You can't do enough for her! And, in today's
two-income marriages, the woman ought not be expected to tie on the apron the minute she parks her briefcase. Let her log a few after-work hours in the La-Z-Boy (with a magazine and a Merlot). It may pay erotic dividends later that night.
Step 6: Dare to be known by her
Most men aren't comfortable discussing intimate or emotional issues--even sexual fantasies. But the more a marriage returns to the courtship model, the more a husband's thoughts—and fantasies--turn to his wife during the day, the more he will have to share with her at night (or other private times). Opening up to her will serve to strengthen emotional and sexual bonding--and preclude any temptation for a "misunderstood" husband to unburden himself to another woman.
Summing up
“To me it’s pretty simple,” began a memorable post I found in a wife-worshipping message board. “It’s all about doing what I can do to make my wife happy. Because when she’s happy, I’m happy. It doesn’t take much once you get the hang of it. Every single day I just pretend we are dating and I try to win her heart.”
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