How to Be a Husband - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

TIM DOWLING is an American journalist for The Guardian. He writes a weekly column forWeekend magazine. He lives with his wife and three sons in London.

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***This copy is from an advance uncorrected proof***

Copyright © 2015 Tim Downling 

8.

The Forty GuidingPrinciples of Gross Marital Happiness

Successful cohabitation requires a couple toaddress many disparate and competing aims, but it may help to think youroverall strategy as being analogous to Bhutan’s mandated objective of GrossNational Happiness. First proposed by the fourth Dragon King of Bhutan in 1972,the concept of Gross National Happiness alloyed living standards, physical andspiritual well-being, environmental impact, and stability to develop an indexto measure the nation’s progress. And it works pretty well in Bhutan (the landof Gross National Happiness), as long as you’re not a member of the 20 percentof the population— mainly Hindus of Nepali origin—who were expelled from thecountry in the 1990s.

In marriage you and your partner must work togetherto construct a domestic operation that will make both of you as happy aspossible without sacrificing the collective health, security or long-term stability of thepartnership. I realize that put that way it sounds boring, which is preciselywhy I coined the catchyterm Gross Marital Happiness.

When I said this wasn’t a self-help book, that was becauseeverything I know about staying married can be boiled down to forty prettybasic insights. Actually, only thirty-seven—three of these are bollocks—but I wanted around number.

1.   Go to bed angry if you wantto. It is often said that a couple should never let the sun set on an argument,but this isn’t practical. Some arguments are, by their nature, two-day events: too much is atstake to set an arbitrary bedtime deadline. Faced with a stark choice betweenclosure and a night’s sleep, you’re better off with the latter in almost everycase. I’ve gone to bed angry loads of times, with no particular deleteriouseffects. You don’t actually stay angry. It’s a bit like going to bed drunk; youwake up feeling completely different, if not necessarily better.

2.   Not liking cats isn’treally a good enough reason to put your foot down. You have to be properlyallergic, or weirdly phobic.

3.    Marriages and other long-term relationships have asignificant public element. Like an iceberg, the bulk of a marriage is hiddenfrom view, but the top bit, the bit that you take out to parties and show off,should appear exemplary to outsiders: charming without being cloying; happywith- outbeing giddy; entertainingly spiky, but also mutually respectful. Above all, thewhole thing should look effort- less. Everybody knows marriage is hard. No one wants to watchyou do the work.

4.    The question of whether a woman should adopt herhusband’s surname after marriage (or whether some doubel-barreled compound ispreferable) is politically freighted, but what no one tells you before marriageis that changing your name is a huge drag. You’ll need to pay for a new passport(£72) and you can be fined for driving on your old license. You’ll have toinform your bank, your employer, HMRC, the insurance company, PayPal, and theNectar card people. You’ll need to take your marriage certificate to the bankto cash checks in your old name. Complications resulting from the switch willplague you for years afterward. And the benefits? There are no benefits. It’s acomplete waste of time. Forget principle and tradition: refuse to change yourname on the grounds that you can’t be arsed.

5.    Even a marriage with healthy levels ofcommunication can’t make a dent in the huge stockpile of things that simplynever get said. If the pair of you spent all day every day trying to expresswhat’s in your soggy little hearts, you’d never manage to get through a box settogether. For purely practical reasons certain of your partner’s desires,ambitions, and motivations will have to be guessed at. You should also learn tobecome an efficient curator of your own inner life: display the importantstuff, shove the rest in storage, and rotate occasionally to keep thingsinteresting.

6.    The time-honored debate about leaving the loo seat up ordown is not a genuine source of friction in marriage; only between roommateswho don’t like each other anyway. The real rule, simple and inarguable, isthis: don’t piss on the seat. If you have sons, it is your sworn duty as afather to impress the importance of this rule upon them. When it comes tomaintaining a happy marriage, I can’t tell you what my failure to do so hascost me.

7.   The marital bond is also akind of codependency. The stronger your marriage, the harder it is to refrainfrom alcohol for two days a week if one of you thinks it’s a stupid idea. It’srather sweet that you feel your spouse’s refusal to join in amounts topermission for you to backslide, but it’s not good for you.

8. When your wife carries onthe next morning on as if yesterday’s argument never happened, you shouldinterpret her behavior as a willingness to forgive and forget, and not as asign that she actually has forgotten. The benefit of the doubt is a key aspectof Gross Marital Happiness, and even if she has forgotten there is nothing tobe gained from guessing right.

9.   If there is a single,immutable difference between men and women, it’s that women will almost neverpretend they didn’t see a heap of cat sick on the stairs.

10.Or at least I used to think so. It turns out anyonecan learn this tactic, and quickly become better at it than you.

11.Think of the work of your relationship less asnegotiation, and more as navigation. Marriage isn’t an ongoing dispute to besettled; it’s a lifelong course to be plotted. Also, you should really try toenjoy the journey, because the destination sucks.

12.When it comes to questions such as “How do I lookin this?” “Do sideburns suit me?” “Are these trousers all right?” and “Do youlike my new hair?” everyone, male or female, appreciates something that soundslike an honest answer. This is not necessarily the same as an honest answer.

13.There is no good rejoinder to the exclamation “I amNOT your mother!” but among the especially not good ones is “Then stop buyingme ugly sweaters!” Take my word for it.

14.Spending time together is an important component ofGross Marital Happiness, but it shouldn’t seem important; you don’t want tofeel undue pressure to enjoy yourselves. One of the most solemn promises I havemade to my wife is that I will never, ever take her on a minibreak.

Doing normal, everyday things as a couple counts asrelationship maintenance, in the same way that housework counts as exercise.Walking the dog counts. Eating breakfast together counts. Wandering aimlesslythrough a deserted shopping precinct together counts. Watching TV togetherdoesn’t count, unfortunately, although I’m currently appealing this.

15.One of the easiest ways to make a spouse feelneeded is to seek their counsel on a particular subject, as if your spouse wereyour line manager. Remember: you’re just after a bit of guidance or wisdom.Don’t present yourself as a mess to be cleaned up, which you also shouldn’t dowith your line manager.

16.Buy the second-biggest bed you can afford.Even if you are now happy sleeping stacked like cordwood in what is known as a“small double” (that’s four feet across) you should think...