“If you don’t stop obsessing, and talking about your weight and diet, I swear to God, I’m going to punch you in the face,” I glared at my husband.

“I’m trying to lose it all before the twins are born, so I can be fit and healthy. Four kids, remember?”

“Oh…… but can you do it quietly?”

“No. It’s fun that it winds you up, heh.”

Then, we had *sex.

There you have it, the 4 H’s of our fairly successful marriage (so far). Nearly 7 years in (and over a decade together), my husband and I have worked out what keeps things fresh and sorta happy (hey, we’re not perfect).

Honesty, Humour, Humility and Humping (that’s ‘sex’ for you folks who do not indulge in this particular colloquialism. Oh hey, you can substitute that with Horniness, I guess).

*No, that last part didn’t happen that particular day.

Here’s a handy (ooh, another H!) guideline to the 4 H’s, should you feel the need to spice things up (or just because you really like me and my words).

Honesty: The truth has always worked for my husband and I. One thing I really like and love about him is this – he will tell me what he thinks, regardless of how I may feel about what he has to say. Because it means I listen, I pay attention. He’s a verbal diarrhearist (totally a word), but he makes all his words count. I grew up in a family where we didn’t really talk about ‘things’, so a lot of guesswork was involved when it came to emotional intelligence. Let’s just say, I didn’t always pass the test, and people’s feelings got hurt. With my husband, honesty always works for us. We may spar, fight, disagree, roll our eyes, or agree lovingly, but we always know where the other person stands. No guesswork, no walking around on eggshells. We just say it.

Humour: When we were just friends and on the cusp of dating (as in, we spent a lot of time together, just the two of us, but lord no, we weren’t DATING), I made the mistake of telling him how that little girl in the movie, The Ring, creeps me out with her long hair over her face, and when she crawls out of the television (just writing this is giving me the heebie jeebies). I also confessed to him my obsession with CSI, the TV series. A week later, he gave me a CD full of CSI episodes so I could binge-watch on the weekend. Excited, I settled myself down to a Saturday night of just me and Grissom, in a darkened living room (my rental place’s light had busted and I didn’t get it fixed, what?). Five minutes into the show, there was a pause. Then a slideshow of fuzzy kittens started (I also told him how much I love fuzzy kittens). I was a little suspicious, but quickly got distracted by the cuteness bursting forth from my screen. Until Creepy Girl from The Ring also burst forth. He had inserted a clip from the movie, right into my show. Just to creep me out and because he thought it was the funniest thing. In retrospect, it was funny. It was also a little mean, but mostly hilarious. Throughout out early courtship days, he scared me a few more times with the Creepy Girl, all in good fun. Since then, we’ve invented our own little language and gestures, and a gazillion inside jokes. We still laugh daily.

Humility: My husband is very good at his job. I can’t tell you what it is or how he’s good at it, not because it’s top secret, but because it’s all very techy and I’m not very techy. He builds systems and stuff, using lines of code (see, did I just put you to sleep?). But the man is humble, he doesn’t brag. He doesn’t tell people that he builds these things from scratch, sitting around in his boxers, eating Cheetos (pre-diet days, obviously. These days, he snacks on air), sometimes, overnight, and then sells them to multinational corporations (but hey, now I’ve gone to tell the world, oops). However, he recognizes that all the little things I do around the house matters, even though it’s nothing as important as running a company. He’s proud of me. And that’s humbling.

Humping: Let’s not beat around the bush – sex matters in a marriage. How much, how often, or just how – well, that’s up to you. Just do it.

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