For Better Or Worse

As I've already told you, I'm very happy that Grumpy's adventures are to appear in The Glancer magazine starting next month. He may be the one who's Grumpy, but sometimes I'm never happy. This time it's the title. They were going to simply call the column Grumpy, but I didn't really think that said enough about what it was about. So today I sent them a few suggestions and they picked Happy With Grumpy, which obviously I now think is ok since I wrote it. The problem is the explanation line, which reads: One Naperville Wife Shares Her Stories on Life & Marriage.
Now technically there's nothing actually wrong with that. The column is stories about our life and marriage. The problem is the 'wife' bit.
I called Grumpy at work.
"It's such an insult," I whined. "They want to call me..a..a..wife!"
"You are a wife," he replied.
"Yes, I know," I moaned. "But it sounds like I'm an appendage. I'm more independent than that."
"Ok, so what's the column about?" he said. Too logical for his own good, that man.
"It's all about you," I replied.
"And who am I?" he asked.
"My husband."
"So that makes you my wife. Don't see the problem."
"It just makes me sound so ordinary," I continued.
"You are ordinary. What do you want it to say? Naperville megalomaniac shares her stories?"
So now I'm a desperate housewife (no, no, not housewife, that's even worse) struggling to find a better word than 'wife'.
So far I've come with life partner, better half and woman, but none of these are real alternatives. Grumpy's suggestion goes back to our English roots. In Cockney rhyming slang, a wife is 'trouble and strife'.
"Just call yourself trouble," he snapped. "Oh, and if you really want to be seen as a independent woman here, get your own visa!"