In my eBook, “50 Ways to Slowly Kill Your Marriage” (not to be confused with 50 Shades of Grey), I discuss the various ways a husband or wife can go about killing their marriage. Here’s one of them…

Totally fail to discover your spouse’s needs.

There are so many good books in this area. It may take some effort on your part to avoid all of them. In particular, try to avoid:

• The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman
• Staying Close by Dennis Rainey
• His Needs, Her Needs by Willard Harley
• Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs

There are needs common to most men and most women and then there are needs more specific to certain personalities. Your goal is to not discover or meet any of them because so much of marriage simply comes down to meeting your spouse’s needs.

Let’s look at some specifics.

Most men would rank sex as a very high need. As a wife, you need to put her husband off as often as you can. It’s perfectly acceptable to just say “no,” but you also may want to come up with a variety of excuses. Here are some good ones:

• I’m sick.
• I’m tired.
• I’m sick and tired.
• I’m not attracted to you.
• I have to get up early.
• I’m on my period.
• I’m just not in the mood tonight.
• The kids are awake.
• The kids are asleep and I don’t want to wake them.
• I didn’t sleep much last night.
• I have a headache (a classic!).
• We just did it.

Okay guys, your wife also has needs. Many women would say emotional closeness is a strong need. She needs to feel close to you. Connected. Usually before she’ll be in the mood for sex.

You should avoid having conversations with her. Stay away from sharing your feelings with her. And avoid asking her questions that might give her the wrong idea that you care about her. Don’t give her the wrong impression that you care anything at all about how her day was. If she had an important meeting or appointment, do not ask how it went. Put it right out of your head.

And by all means, do not show her any affection. No hand-holding. No hugs. No kissing. Now of course if she knows the only time you kiss her is when you want sex, then you should definitely kiss her.

Now here’s a way to make this even better (or worse, depending on your perspective)—you should still expect your spouse to meet your needs even though you have no interest in meeting theirs.

So guys, expect your wife to be highly interested in sex even though you have no desire to meet her need to feel emotionally connected to you. And women, you should expect your husband to talk with you and bond with you even though you have no interest in meeting his need for sex.

The key here is to understand your spouse really does have needs. They’re not just wants. Husbands need certain things from their wives. Wives need certain things from their husbands. Once you understand this important principle, you can be sure to neglect the most important ones.

Here’s a quick test to see if you’ll be good at this one—if you’re already thinking sex or emotional closeness are just wants and not needs, then you’re going to be very effective with this one. Good for you!

Of course the idea here is NOT to kill your marriage. So do the opposite.