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.
Clothes
CLOTHES AND APPEARANCE
‘THE REASON WHY so few marriages are happy,’ said misogynist Swift, ‘is because young ladies spend their time in making nets not cages.’
No wife has any right to let herself go to seed after she’s married. She bothered enough to look pretty while she was trying to hook her husband, so it’s a poor compliment to him if she slackens up immediately after he’s hooked.
Remember that the world is full of pretty girls who are not averse to amorous dalliance, and if you want to keep your husband, you’ll have to work hard to go on attracting him.
It’s a case, of course, of shacking-up ô son goût. Some men prefer their wives au naturel, others are like the husband who said to me: ‘The marvellous thing about old Sue is that she always looks as neat as a new pin. I’ve never seen her without make-up or slopping around in jeans.’
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.