by Jilly Cooper
Exotic clothes
Remember that no man ever went off his wife because he saw a crowd of men round her. So always pull out the stops when you go to parties, or out in the evening, or pick your husband up from the office. It is important to him that other people think you’re attractive.
And even if your husband does prefer you without make-up, put some on when you go to a party. You’ll have to compete with all those dollies with their false pieces and their three pairs of false eyelashes. Your husband won’t be amused if he has to keep leaving the pretty girl he’s chatting up to look after you because you’ve been abandoned.
If a wife wants to jazz up her husband’s wardrobe, her best method is to start giving him exotic clothes for his birthday. He’ll never go and buy them of his own accord.
It is also up to husbands and wives to take an interest in each other’s appearance. Tell your husband when he looks handsome, and even if you are the sort of man who can’t tell a discarded false eyelash from a centipede, compliment your wife on her appearance when she buys a new outfit or is dressed up to go out in the evening.
SEWING
Great row potential here.
Shirt buttons always fly off when the man is getting dressed in the morning, or last thing at night when you’re both going to bed, so they never get sewn on. Your wife will also plump for Terylene socks and say they are healthier and cheaper, and can be thrown away when they go into holes, to be told by her husband that his mother always darned his woollen ones.
If the wife really can’t sew, she should just content herself with sewing on buttons, and send all major repairs to the cleaners, where they can be done for a few shillings.
Holidays
MUCH OF THE chapter on honeymoons applies here. People are so grimly determined to enjoy every moment of their holidays that they feel dismayed and cheated if anything goes wrong.
You’re probably both exhausted, particularly if you’ve only been married a short time, and have had all the strain of getting adjusted. You’ve been planning and looking forward to your holiday for ages, then you arrive at your destination and find you’re so unused to doing nothing that it takes you at least a fortnight to unwind. Then it’s time to go home again.
There is also the sex problem. Before you were married, holidays were always treated as safaris. The moment you boarded the train at Victoria, the sap started rising, the eye started roving on the lookout for a holiday playmate. After you’re married, the hunting instinct dies very hard. As a friend of mine said: ‘Taking a married man to the South of France is rather like taking a foxhound to a meet on a lead, and not letting him join in the chase.’
I’m not a believer in retaliation but if your husband does get a crush on another girl on holiday — carrying her beachbag, always ready with a large towel when she comes up from the sea — your best answer rather than sulking is to take to the nearest gigolo. And if there isn’t a gigolo to take, comfort yourself with the thought that holiday romances seldom last beyond the holiday.
Going on holiday with friends, of course, is one of the quickest ways of losing them. The most amiable people turn into absolute monsters when they’ve got too much spare time on their hands.
Everyone will either want to do different things (lying in the sun, sightseeing, diving, pony trekking, or merely getting drunk) or else no one will admit what they want to do, and go round looking martyred:
‘What would you like to do today, my darling?’
‘Anything you like, darling.’
‘Oh don’t be awkward.’
Particularly avoid going with people who are much richer than you (you’ll worry the whole time about spending too much) or poorer than you (or you’ll spend your time grumbling about their meanness).
We went to France once in a party of twelve, all great friends. It was a catastrophe. Meals were exactly like being back at school: ‘Hands up for salade niçoise.’ All the people who could speak French pulled rank on the people who couldn’t or didn’t dare. All the wives sulked because all the husbands had got crushes on the one single girl, who was sulking because she couldn’t hook the one single man. Bad will was absolutely rampant.
I am painting a gloomy picture of holidays, because I think people often feel that if they’ve had a disastrous holiday their marriage must be on the rocks. ‘If we can’t get on when we’re on holiday,’ they say, ‘there must be something radically wrong.’ Forget it. Cheerful pessimism is the best approach to a holiday, and console yourself that the most disastrous holidays are always the funniest in retrospect.
HOW TO BEHAVE
On holiday there is invariably one who does the planning — booking rooms, tickets, etc. — and one who resists being planned. If you’re the resister, cut down on the beefing, whether it’s about the lack of soap, coat-hangers, hot water, drawer space, bed space, or amount of garlic in the food. Remember when in Rome … and shut up about it.
Don’t overdo the sun — holidays are meant for lots of sex, and you won’t feel like it if you wince every time you touch each other. And it’s depressing to start peeling like a ticker-tape welcome as soon as you turn brown.
Travel is inclined to broaden the hips as well as the mind. Take a few shifts and larger sized trousers.
Take lots of books and sleeping pills. One often can’t sleep in hot countries, and nothing is more depressing than to feel that all of the good of your holiday is being wasted because of insomnia. Take something to settle your stomach, so you won’t spend all night thundering to the lavatory like the Gadarene Swine.
Remember you won’t be able to buy the Pill, or whatever you use, in a Catholic country. One couple were staying in a villa in Spain, and a particularly greedy guest came down one morning, found their contraceptive paste in the fridge, thought it was some exotic pâté and spread it on his toast for breakfast.
Go somewhere where there’s something to do: a casino, the odd night club, boats to sail, etc.
Money should be shared and kept an eye on: nothing wrecks a holiday more than the constant fear that you may run out.
Husbands and wives should do their own packing to avoid endless recriminations about spongebags, razors and cameras left behind.
It’s horrible coming home to a dirty untidy house. If you haven’t got a daily, pay a chum a couple of quid to come in the day before you get home to give the house a going over.
Don’t show slides. Don’t bore everyone when you get back with stories of your holiday. My husband refuses to talk about it, and hangs a notice on his office door saying ‘yes’.
Sex
BED
BED/SEX/INTERCOURSE/MAKING LOVE — CALL it what you like — is the cornerstone of marriage. If the sex side of a marriage is really good, you seldom hear of it breaking up. If you keep your partner happy in bed, he’s unlikely to stray, and if he does he nearly always comes back.
Few people are born geniuses in bed — it is something you learn step by step, like a child learns to talk. The first essential is to be honest with one another. Don’t pretend to be going into ecstasies of excitement if you are not, or your partner will automatically assume he is doing the right things to please you, and keep on doing them.
A wife — if she can possibly help it — shouldn’t pretend to be having an orgasm if she is not. Although her husband will flop down satisfied beside her afterwards, she will unconsciously build up a resentment both against him for not seeing through the cheat, and against herself for cheating.
Of course it’s not vital to have an orgasm every time you go to bed with a man, but the fact remains that it’s much nicer if you do. It draws you together, it gives you a marvellous feeling, and it’s the best sleeping pill in the world.
Another myth that must be shattered is that men are lustful beasts whose appetites must be slaked, and women have to endure it.
‘Your father was very good to me and never bothered me much,’ Victorian mothers used to tell daughters who were about to get married. ‘
Just shut your eyes and think of England.’
Recent research, however, has discovered that women can be just as highly sexed as men, need intercourse just as often, but in most instances are too inhibited to ask for it.
Nothing that two people do in their own home
A wife should therefore not be ashamed to take a wholehearted enjoyment in sex, ask for it often, and if her husband isn’t forthcoming, to seduce him, by making herself pretty, wearing sexy underwear, or simply by wandering round in the nude.
Don’t be too fastidious. Nothing that two people who love each other do for their mutual enjoyment in the privacy of their own home can be wrong. If he’s on a Lolita kick, pander to his whims and dress up in a gym tunic. If she’s got a slave girl complex, tie her up before you make love to her.
Sex books are quite helpful but they always made us howl with laughter. They kept talking about the ‘upright male member’, which made us think of an incorruptible MP.
Read as much erotic literature as you can get your hands on, not only to excite you, but to give you ideas. Marriage needs every novelty to keep it going. A man I know said his wife was absolutely sensational in bed for at least a month after she’d read Fanny Hill.
For beginners (see the chapter on the honeymoon) the thing to remember is to take things slowly. It may be six months or a year before you manage to establish a sexual rapport. It’s only in books that the man goes on drilling all night, and suddenly the rock splits and the oil comes gushing out. Enthusiasm is nine-tenths of the battle, and perseverance. Kindness and gratitude are also essential. Tell your husband what doesn’t work for you, but make pretty sure you tell him when it is good. If having the inside of your thighs stroked excites you, say so. Don’t let him wait thirty years to find out.
On a Lolita kick
Once a year
HOW OFTEN
This is entirely up to you. Everyone lies about it if you ask them. I read in one book that the average man of thirty has sexual intercourse 2.8 times a week. When I told my husband, a rather smug gleam came into his eye, but he was curious to know what they did on the.8 occasion.
On the other hand, one Indian sex manual says that during the first year of marriage couples should have intercourse three times a night for the first three months, twice a night for the next three months, and every night for the rest of the year. After which I suppose you die of exhaustion.
There’s no rule. Sometimes you may get a jag and have each other a dozen times in a weekend, sometimes if you’re both tired you may not feel like touching each other for a week or so.
HOW NOT TO LOOK IN BED
Curlers and great blobs of face cream are grounds for divorce — no woman need wear them. If you want curly hair, get a set of heated rollers. If you want a soft skin, put on face cream in the bath.
People should wash and clean their teeth before they go to bed, and have at least one bath a day. This may sound elementary, but it’s amazing how many people don’t, and, sweat fetishists apart, most people would rather make love to someone who smells and tastes good.
Have separate beds if you must, but not separate rooms. Once you get on to the separate rooms kick, it’s so easy to shut yourself in every night and grow further and further away from your partner. If one of you snores, or is a bad sleeper and wants to read, have a bed made up in the spare room, so you can slip into it if you get really desperate about three o’clock in the morning.
Don’t, however, get out of the habit of making love. Quite often if you’ve been snapping at each other you will find that once you sleep together everything will be all right again.
I met a girl the other day who boasted she only gives herself to her husband once a year on his birthday. A woman should be grateful that her husband wants her, and any woman who keeps on saying ‘I don’t feel like it tonight’, unless she’s ill, pregnant or recovering from a baby, deserves to have an unfaithful husband.
Equally no man should deny his wife, if she obviously wants it. There’s no excuse for the sort of career man — an American, as it happens — who will only sleep with his wife on Friday and Saturday, so he’ll be fresh for work on the weekdays.
Another of the great myths about sex is that for the first year you glut yourselves like someone working in a sweet shop, and after that the glamour wears off and you settle down to pastimes like bringing up children and gardening. In any good marriage, sex should get better and better as the years go by, even if you indulge in it marginally less often.
Affaires
ANOTHER GREAT FALLACY is that marriage stops you falling in love with people. It doesn’t. One of the most happily married men I know says he was riddled with guilt because he developed a violent crush on a blonde staying in the same hotel while he was on honeymoon. If you were the sort of person who was always falling in love before marriage, you’ll probably go on doing it afterwards. Don’t panic — nip it in the bud early. Refuse to see the person concerned. It will tear your guts out for a few weeks, but you’ll find you get over it, just as you got over the crushes you had before you were married.
If you fancy someone, and you know they fancy you, don’t try and rely on mutual self-control. These things if allowed to develop invariably get out of hand and can escalate into nasty things like divorce. The most shortsighted remark ever made at the beginning of an affaire is: ‘You’re happily married and I’m happily married, and if we have an affaire, we’re both adult enough not to let it get out of hand or anyone get hurt.’ This is rubbish. Someone always gets hurt, and it’ll probably be you. And remember, once your husband or wife finds out you are having an affaire with someone else it will cause them appalling unhappiness, and your marriage will never be the ‘glad confident morning’ it was.
MUTUAL INFIDELITY
‘Husbands are such a bore,’ said a friend of mine. ‘They always want to know who you’re dating.’ Some couples manage to go their own way, making a pledge of mutual infidelity, but I cannot help feeling that one of the partners must be enjoying it more than the other.
If you must have affaires, be discreet. The cardinal sin is to be found out. And when it’s all over and you’re feeling a louse and you want to clear your conscience, don’t indulge in tearful confessions to your husband and feel you’ve cleaned the slate. It will upset him quite unnecessarily.
DISCOVERY
If you do discover your husband is having an affaire with someone, and he doesn’t know you know, play it cool. It may blow over. Remember, ‘the robb’d that smiles steals something from the thief.’
If you find out, and your partner knows you know, the only solution is to raise hell, and insist that it stops immediately. Once you start condoning something like this, you’re lost. Usually the jolt of your finding out and minding so much is enough to make him give up the other person, in which case welcome him home like the prodigal son, and never never reproach him again.
People often have affaires as a bid for more attention from their partners and purposely leave clues so that their partners will find out and be jolted into loving them more. So if you discover your husband is having an affaire with someone, have a look at your own behaviour before you blame him to see if it’s you who’s at fault.
A FEW PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS
If your wife seems like a bolter, put her on the same passport, then you won’t waste a fortune in air tickets getting her back.
If you suspect your partner is having an affaire with a particular person, go into howls of immoderate laughter every time that person’s name is mentioned. When they ask why you’re laughing, laugh some more and say no one takes that idiot seriously. Nothing douses passion quicker than ridicule. I really fancied a man once, until someone pointed out he looked like Dracula.
DETECTION
There are a number of indications that your partner is having an affaire with someone:
If your husband insists he’s been lunching at the local with the boys, and comes home reeking of garlic, gets out a
packet of matches with the Mirabelle printed on it, and lights a king-size cigarette when he normally smokes Woodbines.
If he starts a pointless row at breakfast, so he can storm out of the house, and needn’t come back until late.
If he suddenly starts working late consistently and comes home smelling of scent.
If he looks happy on a Monday morning, and miserable on a Friday night.
If he suddenly starts having a bath in the morning.
If the distance between the ends of his tie is different in the morning from the evening.
If he keeps making ridiculous excuses to buy more cigarettes during the weekend when there are plenty of packets in the house.
If there’s a spate of wrong numbers, it may not be burglars …
If your wife after always dressing scruffily for the office suddenly starts smartening herself up, shaving her legs, buying new underwear, and getting home late.
If she doesn’t look dismayed when you say you’re going to America for three weeks.
If she is home all day and the loo seat is up when you get home.
If she suddenly gets sexually revved up. Women are like machines, the more they’re used the better they work.
If she starts suggesting you make love to her standing on your head, she may have been reading the Kama Sutra.
If she starts leaving intellectual books by the bed, or tidying the house frantically in the morning …
If you have a man friend to stay, and he knows where to put things away when he’s doing the drying up.
If you’re both out to work and you come home and find the towels all tidy in the bathroom instead of scrumpled up as usual. Or if the cat isn’t hungry …
