One thing that I hope to explore a bit with this blog is what leads to a good marriage. How can you be a good partner? This New York Times Magazine article suggests that generosity is a huge factor:
Men and women with the highest scores on the generosity scale were far more likely to report that they were “very happy” in their marriages. The benefits of generosity were particularly pronounced among couples with children. Among the parents who posted above-average scores for marital generosity, about 50 percent reported being “very happy” together.
Caveat:
Experts say the generosity can be as simple as couple making coffee, giving flowers or physical attention.
But whatever one spouse is giving, the other has to actually want.
‘(It’s) signaling to your spouse that you know them, and are trying to do things for them that are consistent with your understanding of them,’ Bradford Wilcox, one of the study’s researchers, told MSNBC.
I wonder if one of the implications of this is that if you are trying to discern whether to marry someone, if you do not find yourself trying to make them happy by spontaneously doing things for them, that is a sign that you don’t love them and therefore probably shouldn’t get married to them.
Datingwise 
I wouldn’t say that generosity is any more indicative of love than taking your pants off is indicative of lust. It’s the culmination of love, maybe, but the absence of it does not suggest the absence of love.
Maybe I’m just trying to rationalize my own behavior, because I sort of have a history of generosity problems. I blame inertia and stupidity.
P.S. – I wonder if in the future males will evolve to swoon over females who blog about keys to marital bliss. That would make so much more sense than swooning over just barely achievable seeming females.
Generosity is certainly indicative of the level of focus one partner has on the other. If you’re a guy and you don’t find yourself giving to your woman, you aren’t thinking about her enough.