You can change your spouse

For more than 15 years, Richard A. Mackey, professor emeritus at Boston College's graduate school of social work, studied heterosexual couples who have been married more than 20 years but have never seen a couples therapist. He found that the long-marrieds instinctively learned not to insist their partner make big behavioral changes. They asked for tiny modifications. (For instance, instead of saying, "Can't you stop being such a slob?" or "Will you ever learn to pick up after yourself?" they ask, "Can you put your clothes in the hamper?")

But what surprised him -- and gives hope to anyone stuck in a small house with an unrepentant slob, control freak, pack rat, Star Wars figurine collector --is that over two decades of asking each other for small alterations, many spouses had nudged their partners into making significant changes without alienating them. This technique was particularly effective, Mackey says, when used on men.