It is not uncommon to find the initial love and warmth fading off soon after the honeymoon. Wondering how your mom and aunts could live with one man all their lives? You too could do that...

1. Make sure he makes you laugh

2. Looks don't matter, as long as he listens to you

3. If you discover, after six months or a year, that he's wonderful but you keep picking fights with him, keep the guy but go into therapy.

4. Ask yourself the following questions: Which TV heroine do you most identify with - the Heena girl or Sushmita Sen. Would you rather spend the next year sailing around the world or buying and decorating a cute little house? Which men on the street attract you - the ones wearing little bicycle shorts or the ones carrying babies in backpacks? If you picked Henna girl, the cute house, and the babies, chances are you're ready to settle down.

5. Get busy. Become vice president of something. Have a baby, or three. Weed the back yard. And the front yard. Find that you barely have time to talk to, much less sleep with, the man you have - never mind any possible new candidates.

6. During the rocky patch, price a divorce. Decide it's cheaper and easier to go to Kathmandu, or any other place that's equally romantic, remote, and restorative.

7. Have lots of sex. Not just in Kathmandui. Have sex even when you can't stand him.

8. Every so often, spot him talking to another woman and recognize that, to someone who doesn't know his insecurities or Internet addictions, he looks pretty damn good. Picture him leaving you for her, having a romantic wedding on the beach, raising a new crop of adorable children, while you sit home alone haranguing him to send the support check. This kind of masochistic exercise can actually be good for your relationship.

9. Every so often, do some flirting of your own. Picture yourself leaving your husband for this man, then informing him that you don't cook at all during the week and need your feet rubbed when you have your period. Feel exhausted at just the thought of breaking in someone new.

10. Lose the capacity to believe that sex with another man could transform your life.

11. Grow old in his arms, content, with no regrets