How to Stay Married (5 page)

Men like a place they can relax in and if the wife is the tidy one, she shouldn’t nag and fuss her husband the moment he gets home.

‘I can’t stand it any longer,’ said one newly married husband, ‘she’s taken all my books and put them in drawers like my shirts.’

‘Among some of the best marriages,’ my tame psychiatrist told me, ‘are those in which, although the husband and wife started at relatively distant poles of neatness and sloppiness, they moved towards a common middle ground, through love, understanding and willingness to understand each other’s needs.’

CHANGING PEOPLE

YOU SHOULDN’T GO
into marriage expecting to change people. Once a bumbler always a bumbler, once a rake always a rake (a gay eye isn’t likely to be doused by marriage). Once a slut – although she may make heroic and semi-successful attempts to improve – always a slut. When we were first married, my husband used to dream of the day I stopped work, like the Three Sisters yearning for Moscow: ‘The house will be tidy, we shall make love every morning, and at last I shall be given breakfast.’

Well, I stopped work, and chaos reigned very much as usual. It’s a case of
plus ça change
, I’m afraid.

Your only hope is that by making people happier and more secure they may realise the potential inside them and develop into brilliant businessmen, marvellous lovers, superb cooks, or alas, even bores. And remember, the wife who nags her husband on to making a fortune won’t see nearly so much of him. He’ll be in the office from morn until night. She can’t have it both ways.

DIFFERING TASTES

Certain things are bound to grate. He may have a passion for flying ducks and Peter Scott and she may go a bundle on coloured plastic bulrushes and a chiming doorbell.

The wife may also use certain expressions like ‘Pleased to meet you,’ which irritate her husband to death; or he may say ‘What a generous portion’ every time she puts his food in front of him.

Now is the time to strike. If you say you can’t stand something in the first flush of love, your partner probably won’t mind and will do something about it. If, after ten years, you suddenly tell your husband it drives you mad every time he says: ‘Sit ye down’ when guests arrive, he’ll be deeply offended, and ask you why you didn’t complain before.

IRRITATING HABITS

Everyone has some irritating habits – the only thing to do when your partner draws your attention to them is to swallow your pride and be grateful, because they may well have been irritating everyone else as well.

I have given up smoking and eating apples in bed, or cooking in my fur coat, and I try not to drench the butter dish with marmalade. My husband no longer spends a quarter of an hour each morning clearing the frog out of his throat, and if he still picks his nose, he does it behind a newspaper.

There are bound to be areas in your marriage where you are diametrically opposed. Compromise is the only answer. I’m cold blooded, my husband is hot blooded. I sleep with six blankets, he sleeps half out of the bed.

I like arriving late for parties so I can make an entrance, he likes arriving on the dot because he hates missing valuable drinking time. I can’t count the number of
quiet
cigarettes we’ve had in the car, waiting for a decent time to arrive.

Don’t worry too much that habits which irritate you now will get more and more on your nerves. My tame psychiatrist again told me: ‘Those quirks in one’s marriage partner which annoy one in early days often become in later years the most lovable traits.’

MY HUSBAND AND
I quarrel very seldom, we both loathe rows and hate being shouted at. I was very worried when I first married because I read that quarrelling was one of the most common methods of relieving tensions in marriage, and was confronted with the awful possibility that our marriage had no proper tensions.

It is very hard to generalise about rows. Some of the happiest married people I know have the most blazing rows, and then make it up very quickly – like MPs who argue heatedly in the House all night, and then meet on terms of utter amicability in the bar five minutes later.

However much a row clears the air, one is bound during its course to say something vicious and hurtful, which may well be absorbed and brooded upon later. Try therefore to cut rowing down to the minimum. It will upset children when they come along, and if you row in public, it’s boring and embarrassing for other people, and you won’t get asked out any more.

We found the occasions when rows were most likely to break out were:

Friday night
– both partners are tired at the end of the week.

Going away for weekends
– one person is always ready and anxious to avoid the rush-hour, the other is
frantically
packing all the wrong things, so the first five miles of the journey will be punctuated with cries of ‘Oh God’ and U-turns against the ever-increasing traffic to collect something forgotten.

Weddings
– the vicar’s pep-talk in church on Christian behaviour in marriage always sets us off on the wrong foot. Then afterwards we’ll be suffering from post-champagne gloom and wondering if we’re as happy as the couple who’ve just got married.

Television
– husband always wants to watch boxing, and the wife the play.

Desks
– the tidy one will be irritated because the untidy one is always rifling the desk, and pinching all the stamps and envelopes.

Clothes
– men not having a clean shirt, or clean underpants to wear in the morning.

Space in the bedroom
– the wife will appropriate five and three-quarters out of six of the drawers and three out of four of the coat hangers, and leave her clothes all over the only chair.

MINOR IRRITATIONS ALL LIKELY TO CAUSE ROWS

The wife should avoid using her husband’s razor on her legs and not washing it out, or cleaning the bath with his flannel, or using a chisel as a screwdriver, or pinching the husband’s sweaters. There are also the eighteen odd socks in her husband’s top drawer, the rings of lipstick on his best handkerchief, running out of toothpaste, loo paper, soap. Forgetting to turn out lights, fires, the oven. Forgetting to give her husband his letters or telephone messages.

MAKING UP

Never be too proud to apologise, but do it properly, none of that ‘I’ve said I’m sorry, haven’t I?’, followed by a stream of abuse.

Don’t worry about letting the sun go down on your wrath – it’s no good worrying a row to its logical conclusion when you’re both tired and then lying awake the rest of the night. Take a sleeping pill, get a good night’s sleep and you’ll probably have forgotten you ever had a row by morning.

Try not to harbour grudges, never send someone to Coventry.

A sense of humour is all-important for ending rows. My husband once in a rare mid-row put both feet into one leg of his underpants and fell over, I went into peals of laughter and the row was at an end.

Once when I was threatening to leave him he looked reproachfully at the cat, and said: ‘But we can’t let poor Michael be the victim of a broken home.’

BLACK GLOOMS

SUFFERED PARTICULARLY BY
wives in the first six months after marriage, they usually stem from exhaustion, feeling totally unable to cope, and reaction after the wedding. They are extremely tedious for the husband, but nothing really to worry about unless they linger on longer than a week. Nothing will be achieved by telling her sharply to snap out of it – patience, a lot of loving and encouragement are the only answer.

THE CURSE

Should be re-named the blessing. Every row two weeks before it arrives, and a week after it’s finished, can be blamed on it.

ANNIVERSARIES

Husbands are notorious for forgetting birthdays and anniversaries. Don’t expect a heart-shaped box of chocolates on Valentine’s Day, but avoid a row on the birthday/anniversary by saying loudly about three days before: ‘What shall we do on my birthday/our anniversary on
Friday
, darling?’

THE ROW USUALLY
starts about September and continues through to February.

Wife:
Where shall we go for Christmas, darling?

Husband:
Anywhere you like, darling.

Wife:
Well I thought we might spend a few days with Mother.

Husband
(appalled): With your mother! No drink,
and
frost because we don’t go to church three times a day. If you think I’m staying with that old cow …

Wife
(interrupting with some asperity): What did you have in mind?

Husband:
Well I rather thought we might go to Scotland.

Wife:
To stay with your parents! No central heating, and those damned dogs – that’s charming.

And the row follows its normal course.

Many people like to go to their families for Christmas and they can’t understand why their partners find it such a strain. If you can’t stand going to either set of parents, get a large dog and say you can’t leave it.

CHRISTMAS PRESENTS

These can be an awful bore, particularly if you come from large families. We’ve evolved a system whereby my husband buys all the men’s presents, and I look after the women and children.

IN-LAWS

THE IDEAL IS
to marry an orphan. However hard you try, you’ll probably have some trouble with your in-laws. Mine have always been angelic to me but as my mother-in-law pointed out to me in a moment of candour, nobody is ever good enough to marry one’s children.

Be kind to your in-laws. Remember that many parents are so involved with their children that it’s an act of infidelity almost tantamount to divorce when they suddenly meet someone and marry them. For years a
mother
has considered herself her daughter’s or her son’s best friend, and suddenly she isn’t. She sees them confiding in someone else, and as they draw further and further away from her, she becomes more and more unpleasant by trying to hang on to them.

Tact is essential. Be particularly nice to your husband/ wife when in-laws are around, but don’t neck and don’t exclude them with private jokes. From the wife a bit of sucking up doesn’t come amiss. Ask your mother-in-law’s advice about cooking and washing, say your husband is always raving about her apple pie, how does she make it?

One thing that particularly upsets mothers-in-law is heavy eye make-up and long untidy hair, so if you want to take the business of getting on with her seriously, tie your hair back and soft pedal the make-up when you see her.

The husband’s best tack is to flirt with his mother-in-law, even if she’s an old boot. Few women can resist flattery.

Wives can flirt with their fathers-in-law, but don’t overdo it, or you’ll have your mother-in-law branding you a fast piece.

However much you dislike having your in-laws to stay, be philosophical about it: at least it will make you clean the place up. My mother-in-law once slept peacefully and unknowingly on a pillow-case full of wet washing. Don’t give them too lush food or they’ll think you’re being extravagant. Herrings and cider will impress them far more than lobster and caviar. And hide those battalions of empties before they arrive.

My husband always takes his parents on a tour of the house, pointing out things that need repairing in anticipation of a fat cheque.

YOUR OWN PARENTS

However fond you are of your own parents, remember that when a man marries ‘he shall leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife’.

Loyalty to your husband or wife must always come first. Don’t chatter to your mother too long or too often on the telephone, it will irritate your husband and possibly make him jealous.