The Ideal Husband?

I have not read the novel The Time Traveler's Wife, nor will I probably ever see the film version, mostly because I can't stand the word wife. Anyway, since the movie version has been advertised so frequently lately it got me wondering--what is so appealing about this story? A woman meets a man, a time traveler, when she is young, falls in love with him, then proceeds to marry him, have kids, whatever. I don't really know the plot intricacies, if any. But what I realized was in some ways this is the story of a man who shows up and then disappears--seemingly without notice, right? So what makes him different from most men?

Perhaps it is really a story of ideal male behavior. Show up when you're really needed, dude, and go away the rest of the time. Re-appear to inspire love and lust, to impregnate, to get married, to be at the birth of said child, to sit at the side of your wife's bath and hand her the bath sponge.