How to Stay Married

by Jilly Cooper

  HUSBANDS

  If you find a half bottle of wine in the kitchen, check before you drink it. Your wife may be saving it for cooking some exotic dish.

  Don’t be bossy in the kitchen. Nothing irritates a woman more than to be told to add some more paprika, or that your mother always made it with real mashed potato.

  MONEY

  Honesty about money is absolutely essential in marriage. If you are to avoid major rows, you must know how much money you’ve got in the bank, and how much each of you is spending.

  In theory all bills should be kept together and paid at the end of each month. Weekly accounts should be kept and the financial situation should be reviewed every month.

  In practice we never did any of these things. We both got married with overdrafts well into three figures — having lived at home I had no idea of the cost of living, and between us we were earning far less than £2,000 a year. We ricocheted from one financial crisis to another.

  Economising is particularly hard when you’re first married, for there are so many things to do to the house, and if the wife is determined to impress the husband with her cooking, it’s cream and wine in everything.

  We used to have absurd economy campaigns: drinking tea instead of coffee for breakfast, driving miles to find a garage which sold cheaper petrol, turning out the lights and creeping round in the dark to save electricity, smoking less (which meant we ate more), eating less (which meant we smoked more).

  We did evolve a splendid bill-paying evasion technique. We never paid a thing until we got a solicitor’s letter; then we would send the creditor a cheque, unsigned, so they would spend another week returning it, whereupon it would be returned in successive weeks, with the date left off, the wrong year, or the numbers and letters differing.

  Another ruse was to ring up when the final reminder turned up and say in aggrieved tones: ‘But I’ve already paid it’, and they’ll spend at least a month trying to trace it.

  With electricity, gas and telephone, you can always write and query the amount, saying you’ve been away for the last month and you can’t think why the bill is so high.

  Perhaps the best method is to keep sending the bill back with ‘Not known here’ written across it.

  I tried once to keep accounts and in the third week, when I was making great efforts to economise, I saw to my horror that the expenditure had doubled. I went sobbing to my husband, who pointed out quite kindly that I’d added the date in.

  Try to pay the rates by the month — and why not investigate a household budget account with your bank manager? It considerably simplifies bill-paying. Another minor money problem is that one always assumes that one’s partner will have some money on him, and he never has, so you find you have to jump off buses because neither of you can pay the fare, or walk home five miles from parties in the middle of the night because you can’t afford a taxi.

  Remember that each partner is bound to think the other one is extravagant, and that everyone always thinks he is broke however rich he is. As one friend said the other day: ‘We’re just as poor as when we were first married but on a grander scale.’

  SHOPPING

  Shop early in the morning when there’s more choice, and mid-week when things are cheaper.

  Always make a list, or you’ll have the absurd situation of trailing miles to Soho market in your lunch hour, then buying all the things you’ve forgotten on the way home — at Fortnums.

  Don’t let men go near the shops, they’ll blue the week’s housekeeping on salmon and rump steak and come home very smug because they’ve shopped so much more quickly than you would have done.

  Take things out of your shopping bag and put them away at once, or you’ll have frozen raspberries melting on to the drawing room carpet, and liver blood permanently on your cheque book.

  Despite the maxim: ‘If you can get it on tick it’s free, if you can pay by cheque it’s almost free, but if you have to pay cash, it’s bloody expensive,’ pay cash if you can. Our biggest shopping bill is always drink, because we can chalk it up at the off-licence round the corner.

  Be tolerant of each other’s extravagances. Everyone lapses from time to time. One of the nicest things about my husband is that he never grumbles about my buying a new dress unless he thinks it is ugly.

  TIDINESS AND UNTIDINESS

  If the husband is married to a real slut, who constantly keeps the house in a mess and serves up vile food, he has every right to complain. There’s a happy medium between being a doormat and a bully. Rather than work yourself into a frenzy of resentment, first try to tease your wife out of her sloppiness, and if that doesn’t work, risk a scene by telling her it just isn’t good enough.

  A firm hand

  Women on the whole quite like a firm hand, and one of the saddest things a wife ever said to me was: ‘It was only on the day he left me that he told me for the first time that I was a lousy cook, I turned the place into a pigsty, I never ironed his shirts, and left mustard under the plates.’

  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.’

  ‘If there’s one thing I can’t stand …’

  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.’

  Rows

  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.’

  Poor Michael

  A note on feminine problems

  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?’

  Christmas

  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.

  Relations and friends

  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. He
rrings 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.

  If you have a row with your husband or wife, and pack your bags, go to a discreet friend, never, never go home to your parents. You will say a lot of adverse things about your partner in the heat of the moment which you will forget afterwards, but your parents will remember them and it will be extremely difficult afterwards for your parents and partner to pick up the threads again.

  FRIENDS

  A friend married is a friend lost, goes the proverb, and certainly one of the sad facts of marriage is that it’s almost impossible to keep up with friends one’s other half doesn’t like. You can relegate them to lunch dates and evenings when your partner is out, but invariably they get the message and sweep off in low-gear dudgeon.

  Much of the first year of marriage is spent weeding out the sheep from the goats. Both parties should try not to be jealous of the other half’s close friends. My husband certainly made short work of any friends he considered a) boring, b) unstable influences.

  If you find your husband’s friends a bore, establish a reputation for delicacy early on in the marriage, then when they lurch in drunkenly from the pub, you can plead exhaustion and disappear upstairs to read a book.

  DROPPERS-IN

  Ought to be abolished. People should telephone first and see if you want to see them. No one will bother you the first month or so. They used to apologise to us for telephoning after seven o’clock, assuming we’d be in bed. After that they’ll descend in droves, looking curiously for signs of strain in your faces, avid to see what kind of mess you’ve made of your flat.