The conventional wisdom about texting with your wife is to keep it to logistics only and don't always answer right away. This makes sense as it shows that you are in fact a busy man and that you wont have serious conversation over a shitty medium such as text.

In January, as part of my news-years goals, I decided to tweak that a little, to good effect. It may not work for everybody, but a big part of my frame is to keep things light and fun so in that vein, I downloaded bitmoji and Giffy on my phone. I answer almost every text with an image from one of those two apps. For example, when she hits me up with wanting and explanation for why I cook dinner A instead of dinner B for the kids last night while she was out, rather than ignore her, which is a silent "fuck off" in my marriage, I send a giff of Robert Downy Jr. (Who she loves) saying "deal with it."

The subtle difference in the message here is that I am saying "I am not answering you question," but in a fun way that tells her I don't take her too seriously. After several months of this, my wife has slipped into my frame and stopped asking me shitty questions over text all together. The added value is that it has also created the expectation of AA and AM when I am home as well.