By Mark Bazer

E-mail, it goes without saying (but I've got this whole space to fill), has revolutionized how we communicate. Over e-mail, we conduct business, make plans, joke with friends, tell columnists they aren't worth reading, the list goes on—and only gets more boring.

But there's one area that e-mail hasn't been able to penetrate: spousal relations. This is regretful.

Husbands and wives may occasionally send one another e-mail, but the current rate is hardly enough.

There are far too many delicate subjects in a marriage to be left to face-to-face communication, where emotion and knee-jerk reactions rule.

And that is why I recently proposed to my wife that we conduct over e-mail all our communication, save for the purest expressions of our love.

At first, my wife wanted to argue with my idea.

"Shhh," I said. "E-mail me your concerns." She did. I typed her a thoughtful, even-keeled reply, and since then our marriage has been pure bliss.

At home, with all of our "issues" out of the way, my wife and I spend our evenings reading to each other from a giant book of riddles and laughing, laughing, laughing.

I'll never go back to the old days. In the past, a dirty sock left on the floor could easily lead to one of those blowout fights that make the upstairs neighbors put their unit on the market.

The progression was always the same: My wife would comment on the sock. I would acknowledge it but then, obviously, point out that I never comment on all of the things she does wrong. She'd become enraged. I'd see her enraged and raise it with an incredibly stupid comment I'd still be apologizing for months later. The neighbors would call their real estate agent. Three hours later, we'd all have make-up sex and agree to fix the roof.

No more. Now my wife sends a terse e-mail, "Mark, you left a dirty sock on the floor." I read it, get unbelievably angry, calm down, forward the e-mail to everyone in my office so they know I'm dealing with some heavy issues and shouldn't bother me, and then compose a mature reply.

Sometimes, my wife's nice enough to title the e-mail "Your Socks" so that I can skip reading it and go straight to the getting unbelievably angry stage.

As you can see, fights are avoided and, as a bonus, my wife and I have electronic records of what we both have done wrong. Someday, we'll compile a database and objectively measure who is the better person.

Before you adopt my marriage-by-e-mail plan, I must admit it is not infallible. Not every issue can be discussed smoothly over e-mail.

Last week, for example, my wife sent me an e-mail trying to interest me in a bank transaction she was working on with some of her Nigerian friends, noting, "AN ASSOCIATE OF ME WHO IS A REPRESENT OF THE BUREAU OF FINANCE RECOMMENDED YOUR PERSONALITY."

Unfortunately, by the time I dug the e-mail out of the spam folder, someone else had seized the opportunity.

You also will want to be wary of checking for your spouse's e-mails too often, and should avoid reading them on your handheld device. The whole idea is to isolate what would otherwise be tense marital relations into manageable blocks of your life. I set aside the first three hours of every workday to fire off and respond to e-mails to and from my wife.

Marriage takes work. That's what I was always told. But the people telling me that were the same ones who still use the U.S. Postal Service.

Times have changed for the better—isn't it time your marriage did as well?