Quick disclaimer, I’m basically describing my own wife here. So your mileage may vary. I will say that I am remarkably happy with Jennifer and that her personality and presence is a huge factor in my happiness and the level of sex that we have. Also at the time of getting involved with her, I really only had a few of these rules in my head as rules, so I really do see myself as being quite lucky in what me at 21 years old signed me up for me back in 1991.

Also this post is assuming that by wife, I really mean a one and done marriage option to a young woman with intent for kids together and lasting for 50+ years hand in hand into the sunset of death do us part. I’m not worried about remarriage, or middle aged couples or whatever. I’m talking fertile kids starting the rest of their life together.

The basic problem is that most men do not go looking for a wife. They start looking for a date, and then try and turn the date into more dates, then the dates into a girlfriend, then a girlfriend into a relationship, and then and only then worry about whether or not to bridge the relationship into marriage. Of course by then you may be realizing you’ve been backing the wrong horse as what was great for a few dates (that would be tits, ass and easy pussy) isn’t the best or only thing for a lifetime together.

If you’re really looking for a wife, kids, the PTA, ER visits, Thanksgiving Dinners, a joint bank account and someone who will hold your hand until the last minute as they push your bed into surgery, then you need to start with that somewhat in mind. By all means date around, but when you start to see major red flags, just stop dating them and move on. If you’re dating within any sort of coherent social group and you are passing on women because you are “looking for a woman with wife material” that will likely make all the women in that group at least consider you.

The truth is that men willing to commit to a woman in this day and age are in short short supply, and your value is high. You can afford to be a little picker than you think. Here’s my list of criteria;

1. No Smoking. Basically it’s a nasty habit but it’s also a serious health risk. The woman that smokes will age much faster and become much less sexy over time. Also you risk lower weight babies and birth defects if she can’t stop during pregnancy. Also importantly people that smoke just smell so powerfully bad that it overrides even their own sense of smell and much of sexual attraction is smell based. Imagine your wife can’t even smell your pheromones over the smell of her own cigarettes, how is she going to react to you sexually? Badly that’s how. Plus people that smoke just die earlier. If you’re signing up for 50+ years together with a non-smoker, it’s really like 35+ years with a smoker with the last 5-10 years being them dying by degrees in front of you, and then you living alone and sad as your kick off to retirement. I know this seems harsh, but as soon as you see a woman light up a cigarette just cross her off the list and move on.

2. B Cup Breasts. Overall the potential wife needs to be attractive and good looking. After all you’re going to be looking at that face and ass for 50+ years, so she better be tasty as you can get. My basic handle on this is B Cup breasts. A young woman with B Cups is going to be proportional and in shape overall. After the kids those puppies are going to morph into C Cups and C Cups are absolutely perfect. Enough for a handful, they crush against your chest when you kiss just right, they fill out a shirt, cleavage gets activated and they don’t suffer from sagginess like D or larger does. Miss D Cup at 22 is Mrs. EE Cup at 42 and her back always hurts and she’s cranky from the pain half the month. Her ass is wide as well. Be advised.

3. Basic Health. If a young woman is on routine medications for various ailments, you need to ask some serious questions about her health. Find out about her health as a child. Find out about any special complications or difficulties when she was young. None of these are deal breakers or course, but if you find a history of basic illness you can bet that this will be the pattern into the future as well. It’s not the job of your marriage to save the world or even any one woman; it’s to have a full productive happy life. If you want to save people be a fireman or an EMT worker or something. So if she’s constantly sucking an inhaler when she’s 24, you can bet it will be worse at 34 and the kids will probably be much the same as well. You really have to ask serious questions about psych meds and diabetes if you see that sort of history too.

4. Positive Family History. Did she have a reasonably intact family home and childhood? If she’s from a divorced family then you will have a higher likelihood of divorce in your marriage to her. Again the purpose of your marriage is not to save a woman, it’s to have a happy productive life with someone. Is the rest of her family basically normal and generally free of mental illness, developmental disabilities, crime, cancer and drama? By all means make allowances for the few black sheep in every family, but a coherent bad pattern is a stumbling block. If meeting her family feels like a social worker visit just bail and start over.

5. She Has A Clue. I don’t care what it is that she does at college, or even if she doesn’t go, but either way she needs some sort of direction and purpose to her life that doesn’t really require you to be attached to her for her to have a life of her own that’s functional and productive. If the whole point of her life is simply to meet a man and be a Stay At Home Mom, that fine as long as she is displaying a top notch SAHM skill set already. I’m talking baked goods, knitting, cooking, child care, cleaning, decorating and social planning skills. Or put another way – would some rich ass family hire her as housekeeper/nanny for $40,000 a year? I want to see some sort of ability to hold a job and responsibilities together as an adult.

6. Virgin. You heard me. The fewer sexual partners a woman has before marriage the higher her marital satisfaction and the sexual satisfaction she has within marriage. You very much want your wife to sexually imprint on sex with you and completely bond to you. The sex is just going to be that much better over the long term. Not to mention no other ex-lovers lurking on Facebook, sexual diseases, bad experiences and regrets to worry about. The harsh truth to the modern hook up girl is that yes indeed every time you sleep with another man, you damage your long term wife potential. Plus the best predicator of future behavior is past behavior and highly promiscuous women before marriage are probably far more likely to cheat on you during marriage.

For the record I also believe the man should ideally be a virgin too. I say this not from a current religious perspective – in my teens and early 20’s I was an evangelical Christian but am a quite firm atheist now – but simply from the perspective that while this was horribly hard in my time before Jennifer, the sexual payoff and trust between us is outstandingly good and on balance a significant part of our current happiness. I am laid like tile and have been for 15 years now. However I will not lie and say it was anything other than torture at the time though.

Edit: I revisted this issue here.

7. Totally Into You Sexually. This is the counter point of sorts to the virgin one. By the time we were engaged, we pretty much ran roughshod over “the rules” about no sex before marriage. We were still each others first which is the essential point of the virgin thing, but so sexually activated on each other that we simply did not care what anyone else had to say or think on the matter. My worry about a woman not willing to flex in the engagement period, is that she is simply not sexually interested enough in her man, or has a very low libido. You do need to see obvious sexual interest and eagerness in her for you. You don’t want a multi partner slut, you do want a wife that is sexually activated on you though. Chemistry matters, it really really matters.

8. Can problem solve with tools other than emotion. If you’re running into excess drama over minor issues, and the woman using tears, anger or moodiness as a problem solving tool, this will not get better over time. Treat it like a shit test a few times, but if you find it keeps coming back at you again and again, just move on. Who wants to spend 50 years with a screechtard whose hobby is giving you a colonoscopy? You are not the Beta Male she is looking for.

9. Has a talent. Again this is one of those open things where I don’t care what the talent is. All you need to see is that she has the willpower and interest to start something and master it. Maybe it’s a musical instrument, maybe it’s ice skating, maybe it’s knitting or gardening or soccer or whatever… it really doesn’t matter. She may very well move from talent to talent over the 50 years together, everything has a season, you just don’t want to get handcuffed to a couch potato that complains you never take her anywhere as her form of entertainment. She needs to provide some of her own stimulation and interest. You’ll find that you’ll probably share an interest or two over the years that just develops at some point. But if her idea of fun just involves nothing but sitting around eating and drinking at 25, don’t complain about being married to an angry slug at 45.

10. That thing that you really need from a life partner. There’s something that you as a man really need from your woman that you can’t flinch on. Maybe you’re all about politics and are a dyed in the wool Republican and intend to seek office – it probably helps if she is Republican too. Maybe you’re Jewish and you just really want a Kosher home – maybe she should be Jewish too. Maybe you’re a military guy and will be deployed often – it really helps if she can tolerate being apart and knows what she’s getting into.

See whatever it is that you’re about, if you’re compromising yourself to have her in your life, it’s never going to work. The idea is not trying to have some sort of 50/50 relationship and fairness and equality, the idea is that you have that thing that you can’t frakking flinch on that she gets you’re about. Then you cut her a lot of frakking slack on everything else that you don’t really care about.

If you’re a man of any worth, you’re a man about something. It really helps a great deal if she can be on board with that.