You (the husband) do a great thing for your wife. It costs you a lot of money, time, and effort. It's a real measure of the lengths to which you'll go just to demonstrate your undying love for her--something you'd certainly never do for anyone else. In fact, you double-check your own sanity to have even considered this grand gesture, let alone carrying through with it. Prior to your own marriage, you would have locked up your married friend--for his own good--for even considering such a gift. Yet here you are, professing your undying love in a way so grandiose as to make all other husbands look evil.

To be sure, your wife is grateful, showering you with praise and love for proving your love to her so magnificently. Ten minutes later, though, she yells at you for not taking out the trash! Your head spins from the confusion at this turn of events. You thought this huge effort and expense would buy you some leniency for at least a few months, but it only lasted ten minutes. What's wrong here?

Nothing is wrong. This is just the way women work. They live in the moment, carried by the prevailing winds of their emotional whims. One minute, they are eternally grateful for your love; the next, they are reminded of your gross incompetence and uselessness for repeatedly forgetting to take out the trash. It's crushing to a man to see his masterpiece tossed aside so callously. Women usually don't understand the brutality they exhibit by their emotional capriciousness. (Women do not see their emotionalism as capricious. They call it "being in touch with [emotional] reality." Each point of view has merit and should be understood by both men and women.) It's no wonder so many husbands give up trying to please their wives; they see it as an impossible task. They toss their ideas against the wall to see what sticks--that is, they search for the kind of gesture that will forever endear their wives to them--only to find nothing sticks more than a few minutes. Most often, men give up their search in utter frustration, logically believing the short-lived benefits do not justify the costs of emotionally investing in their wives. Women, then, see their prophecies fulfilled: their husbands just go through the motions and aren't romantic enough for them.

To be fair to women, this is not the whole story. Those grand gestures are indeed forever remembered (just as much as his screw-ups are forever remembered). They do indeed endear him to her. They are indeed a long-term investment, and they do provide a good return on investment. However, the long-term benefits of great investment in our wives don't pay out like we men would expect.

We expect to receive dividends for the next several years or so, being able to cash in a dividend here or there in exchange for later mistakes we make. For men, an investment has value only when it pays out. Owning a million dollars of, say, comic books isn't actually worth a million dollars to us until we sell the collection and get the money. Sitting on a million dollars without the ability to spend any of it isn't worth anything to a man, emotionally speaking. The value of the investment is in putting it to work for us, getting something we value more than the commodity.

For women, emotional investment works differently. For them, the investment is put into a safe deposit box and just sits there. They are richer just knowing it's there. If it were taken out, spent, traded for their husband's later screw-ups, then they'd no longer have that investment. They'd rather hang onto it and just know it exists. A simplistic way of looking at it is that a woman judges the value of her marriage or her husband by the size of the investment he's made in her. This value pays off in less tangible ways. It's not that she'll overlook later screw-ups he makes, but she'll avoid devaluing him for screwing up. She will see that he, too, is worthy of investment. She is more likely to brag about her man. She will hold herself up tall and proud of her successful marriage. She will tend to be more emotionally comfortable in her marriage and not restless. She'll be less likely to eye other men or to perform thought experiments about what it might be like to be single again. Cold, hard truths, men.

For men, emotional investment is to be treated like currency, stuff that can be traded, bartered, exchanged for other things we want. We feel we only need to keep at least a minimum balance. For women, emotional investment is more akin to building a castle, with each new gesture being another room. The castle is not a commodity that can be traded, but a home. Men fail to see the return on their investment in their wives, effectively sabotaging themselves by giving up. Women fail to see how their in-the-moment emotions can demoralize their husbands, effectively sabotaging themselves, too.

Know thyself. Know thy spouse. Both husband and wife need to learn the other's language if they wish to effectively relate. Men, keep making those investment, be they large or small. Women, always remember those investments and let him know often that you remember, so he'll keep investing in you. A long and successful marriage is not easy. Husbands and wives need to work at it by better understanding each other.