The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

intensely annoyed if he asked me to make a special stop at the drugstore to pick up shaving cream. Studies show that the most common sources of conflict among couples are money, work, sex, communication, religion, children, in-laws, appreciation, and leisure activities. Having a newborn is also particularly tough. However, these categories—as seemingly all-inclusive as they were—didn’t quite capture my problem areas. I thought hard about my particular marriage, and the changes I could make to restore the tenderness and patience of our newlywed, prebaby days.
    First, I needed to change my approach to household work. I was spending too much time handing out assignments and nagging, and not only was I nagging Jamie to do his work, I was nagging him to give me praise for my work. Also, I wanted to become more lighthearted, especially in moments of anger. A line by G. K. Chesterton echoed in my head: “It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light” (or, as the saying goes, “Dying is easy; comedy is hard”). And I wanted to stop taking Jamie for granted. Small, frequent gestures of thoughtfulness were more important than flowers on Valentine’s Day, and I wanted to load Jamie with small treats and courtesies, praise and appreciation—after all, as my Secret of Adulthood holds, “What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while. ”
    Jamie didn’t ask me what experiments I’d planned for the month, and I didn’t tell him. I knew him well enough to know that although he realized that, in some ways, he was my lab rat, hearing about the details would make him feel self-conscious.
    These resolutions were going to be tough for me—I knew that. I wasn’t unrealistic enough to expect to be able to keep every resolution, every day,but I wanted to aim higher than I had. One reason I started my happiness project by raising my energy and clearing my clutter was that I knew I’d be more able to act lighthearted and loving if I didn’t feel overwhelmed by mental or physical disorder. It seemed ridiculous, but already, having a tidier closet and getting more sleep was putting me into a happier and more peaceable frame of mind. The challenge would be to keep up with January’s resolutions now that I was adding a new list of resolutions for February.
    QUIT NAGGING.
    Jamie hated being nagged, and I hated being a nag, yet I found myself doing it all too often. Studies show that the quality of a couple’s friendship determines, in large part, whether they feel satisfied with their marriage’s romance and passion, and nothing kills the feeling of friendship (and passion) more than nagging. Anyway, nagging doesn’t work.
    Our Valentine’s cards gave me a chance to put this resolution to a test. As happens to many people, about five minutes after Eliza was born, I was possessed with an irresistible urge to send out yearly holiday cards. In a decision born more out of desperation rather than originality, I’d decided to make a tradition of sending cards in February for Valentine’s Day, instead of in December, when life is crazy.
    When it was time to send out the cards this year, as Jamie and I sat down to watch Close Encounters of the Third Kind, I got out the enormous stacks of envelopes and asked brightly, “Would you like to stuff or seal?”
    He gave me a sad look and said, “Please don’t make me.”
    I struggled to decide how to answer. Should I insist that he help? Should I tell him that it wasn’t fair that I had to do all the work? That I’d done the hard part of ordering the cards and arranging for the photo (an adorable picture of Eleanor and Eliza in ballet clothes), and he was just helping with the easy part? On the other hand, I’d decided to do thesecards to suit myself. Was it fair to ask him to help? Well, fairness didn’t really matter. I’d rather finish the envelopes myself than feel like a nag.
    “It’s okay,” I told him with a sigh. “Don’t worry about it.” I did feel a few twinges of resentment when I glanced at Jamie lounging back on the sofa, but I realized that I enjoyed not feeling like a nag more than I enjoyed watching TV without licking envelopes at the same time.
    After the movie, Jamie looked over at me, where I sat surrounded by stuffed, sealed, and stamped red envelopes.
    He put his hand on mine. “Will you be my Valentine?”
    I was glad that I’d decided not to push it.
    To make it easier to quit nagging, I made myself a checklist of antinagging