How to Stay Married

General marital problems

COMMUNICATION

ONE OF THE beauties of marriage is that you always have someone to look after, and to look after you, to share your problems, and to tell — without boasting — when something good happens to you.

It is vital that couples should get into the habit of talking to each other and be interested in each other’s activities, be it a game of cricket, an afternoon at the WI, or a day at the office. If you are able to communicate on a daily level, you will find it much easier to discuss things when a major crisis blows up — like a husband losing his job, a sudden sexual impasse, or the television breaking down.

Nothing is more depressing than seeing married couples on holiday or dining together gazing drearily into space with nothing to say to one another — at best it’s a shocking example to unmarried people.

I feel strongly that married women should try to set a good example to newlyweds or people about to get married. Nothing is more morale-lowering for the engaged girl than to be taken aside by a couple of bored and cynical married women and told how dreary marriage is, the only solution being infidelity or burying oneself in one’s children. Rather in the same way that women who have children often terrorise women who are pregnant for the first time with hair-raising stories of childbirth.

SEPARATION

In long separations from your husband or wife, there are all the problems of loneliness and fidelity. Even short separations — a week or a weekend — have their own difficulties.

When her husband goes away, a wife steels herself not to mind, and although she misses him, unconsciously she builds up other resources. She finds it is rather fun to read a novel until three o’clock in the morning, have time to get the house straight, watch what programmes she wants on television, not have to cook and wash, and be able to see all the people she is not allowed to see when her husband is at home.

Gradually, as the time for her husband’s return approaches, she gets more and more excited. She plans a special homecoming dinner, she buys a new dress and goes on a twenty-four hour diet so she will look beautiful. In her mind she has a marvellously idealised picture of his homecoming.

And then he arrives — hungover, grubby, exhausted, and if he’s been to America or anywhere else where the time is different from ours, he’ll be absolutely knackered. He won’t want to do anything else but fall into bed and then only to sleep.

The wife is inevitably disappointed — this is no god returning, merely a husband, grumbling about the rings round the bath, bringing not passion and tenderness but a suitcase of dirty shirts.

Similarly, a husband returning to his wife after some time away will find that an ecstatic welcome is often followed by a good deal of sniping and bad temper. The wife will have stored up so much unconscious resentment at being deprived of his presence, that she will take it out on him for a few days.

The only way to cope with après-separation situations is not to get panicky if your wife or husband acts strangely. It doesn’t mean they’ve met someone else, they are just taking a bit of time to adjust to your presence again. In a small way, it’s like starting one’s marriage over again.

JEALOUSY

Once your life is centred round one person, it is very easy to become obsessively jealous. Try and keep your jealousy in check: it will only cause you suffering, and make things very difficult for your partner.

If you marry a very pretty girl, or a very attractive man, the fact has to be faced that people will still go on finding them attractive.

Give your wife a certain amount of rope, let her go out to lunch with other men, but start kicking up if it becomes a weekly occurrence with the same man. Never let her have drinks in the evening unless it’s business or an old friend, and draw the line at breakfast. If you are married to the sort of man who’s always humiliating you by running after women at parties, you’ll have to grin and bear it. He’s probably just testing his sex appeal, like gorillas beat their chests. Before I was married, a girlfriend and I used to divide men into open gazers, or secret doers. You’ve probably got an open gazer, so thank your lucky stars you’re not married to a secret doer.

If you have an ex-wife or an ex-lover, destroy all evidence before you get married again. Nothing is more distressing for a second wife than coming upon wedding photographs of you and your first wife looking idyllically happy.

However much you may want to reminisce about your exes, keep it to a minimum, and if you ever have to meet any of your wife’s or husband’s exes, be as nice to them as possible. No one looks attractive when sulking.

BOREDOM

It was not my intention in this book to deal with marriage in relation to children, but I would like to say a brief word about Cabbage-itis, which is my name for the slough of despond a wife goes through when she has two or more very young children to look after. Invariably she’s stuck in the country or a part of town where she has few friends, her husband is going out to work every day and meeting interesting people and she isn’t, and she feels dull, inadequate and so bored she could scream.

The family budget won’t stretch to any new clothes for her, so she feels it is impossible for her to look attractive. On the occasions when friends bring children over for the day, it seems to be all chaos and clamour. She spends days planning a trip to London, which invariably ends in disappointment: her clothes are all wrong, she’s worn out after two hours shopping, the girlfriend she meets for lunch can’t talk about anything except people she doesn’t know, and if she attempts to take the children she’s exhausted before she’s begun.

She and her husband can’t afford to entertain much, but when they are asked out she finds she is so used to saying ‘No’ and ‘Don’t’ to children all day, she is unable to contribute to the conversation.

If you are going through this stage — and I think it is one of the real danger zones of marriage — remember that it isn’t going to go on for ever. The children will grow up, go to school, and you will have acres of free time to go back to work, to take up hobbies, to make new friends. Whatever you do: don’t neglect your appearance. Looking pretty isn’t new clothes, it’s clean hair, a bit of make-up and a welcoming hug when your husband comes home in the evening.

Remember that your husband must always come first, even before the children. In your obsession with your domestic problems, don’t forget that he probably isn’t having a very easy time either: desperately pushed for money, harassed at work, buffeted back and forth in a train every day, coming home to a drab fractious wife every night.

So don’t catalogue your woes; when he arrives in the evening, concentrate on giving him a good time.

Try and go out at least once a week if it’s only to the pictures. Try and read a newspaper, or at least listen to the headlines while you’re doing the housework, so you won’t feel too much out of touch.

If possible find something remunerative to do even if it’s only making paper flowers, typing, or framing pictures. Nothing is more depressing than poverty and if you can make the smallest contribution to the family budget it will be a boost to your morale.