If we lined up 12 guys who are married, and we attached a microphone to each one, and 12 wives who had never met these guys listened to them for one week and then ranked them from Grand Champion husband down to loser husband, what would be their criteria for the placing? I gave a couple of key principles yesterday based on feedback from Patty on me and from observing a lot of good and bad marriages over the years as a pastor. Here is another key principle that is very important if you want to really make your wife the happiest woman on the planet earth.

3. A good husband is always praising and appreciating everything his wife does for him and never complaining about what she doesn’t do. The motto I use to help remind myself of this principle is, ”Everything is gravy”. What that means is that I need to get rid of all expectations. If I expect Patty to do something then I don’t appreciate it when she does it, because that was what she was supposed to do, and if she doesn’t do it, I fuss because she didn’t fulfill her obligation to me which I had established in my own mind. If I have no expectations, then everything is gravy, and oh boy, do I love gravy! Our expectations are the bars in the prison that we build for our wife. Freedom gives joy and confinement and restrictions take it away. Our goal as a husband is to give our wife joy, not to take it away. Affirm, praise, appreciate, compliment, build-up, value, more and more. If you hire a housekeeper and pay her good money you can have expectations, if you hire a cook, pay them well and expect to eat well, if you hire a prostitute, you get what you pay for. Patty is my wife, my life partner, and a gift from God.