Alshech: Harm of Talking a lot with one's Wife

Alshech (Vayikra 9:24): There is concern that by welcoming guests – as proposed by Avos 1:5 - into your home that some of them might become too friendly with your wife and this will lead to sin.The solution proposed by this mishna is that the husband should not talk a lot with his wife. This is to convey the message that if a man needs to reduce the idle chatter [sicha] he has with his own wife then surely he should not be talking a lot with the wife of another or becoming overly friendly with her. This is what is meant by,“And this prohibition of not talking a lot is in regard to his own wife.” Thus when people come to your house and they see you minimizing talking to your wife they will make the deduction that surely they should minimize talking to her because she is the wife of another. However such a solution will reasonably cause the husband to be concerned by a probable serious side effect of minimizing conversations with his wife.. He will reason, "If the Sages said that in order to prevent guests from talking too much to my wife that I need to minimize what I say to her – then there is a better solution. It is better not to have guests rather than to minimize having a close relationship with my wife and in particular in speaking with her.” In fact he will reasonably conclude that the mitzva of domestic tranquility is very important and that love between a man and his wife is more important than love amongst others. However his reasoning is rejected as can be seen by the fact that Rav Yehuda HaNasi (the editor of the Mishna) states that we do in fact learn that one must minimize talking to wives of other men even more so then to one’s own wife. That is  because he saw that Yossi ben Yochanon was not concerned with the possibility that minimizing conversation with ones wife would harm the marriage. In fact we learn from this that talking a lot with one’s wife does not result in love and domestic tranquility. The opposite is true. It actually produces much harm. There are three different types of harm. Firstly it causes harm to oneself since it leads to increased sexual relations - that even though that is permitted – it causes physical weakness & deterioration. It is also possible that this will result in premature aging which are called the days of evil. Secondly by spending a great deal of time in conversation with his wife – he forsakes Torah study. Thirdly because he becomes accustomed to spend an excessive amount of time with her, he will come to have sexual intercourse with her even when she is a niddah and thus he will directly sin. This will result in that he will end up going to Gehinom and not returning. That is described by this mishna (Avos 1:5) as “inheriting Gehiniom” since Gehinom will be all that he has.

the key to understand the above is what does the term sicha mean and what is "a lot"

Meiri(Avos 1:5): Don’t have too much sicha (idle conversation) with a woman. The term sicha means speech which has no real purpose which is why people say sicha betalila (conversation with no purpose). For example Avoda Zara (19b) regarding Torah scholars their sicha requires close study. In other words even when they seem to be simply conversing without purpose, there is substance in their words which needs to be carefully studied. Some issue might be alluded to in their words or character or ethics can be gleaned from them.