Dear Daughters, A Word About Husbands

– (adapted from and credit to BARBARA TONER)

Dear daughter, from Mom and Dad,

There are many things we must tell you about husbands so that you can find a good one.

There’s a single very good reason for taking and keeping a partner for life and that is this: to share is a fine and companionable thing and it wards off excessive worry and fatigue, especially if you have kids.

You might think we’re in no position to talk about husbands in general when our experience is limited to ourselves. Well, at least 30 years of marriage to the same man is precisely what we want you to think about, and we intend to generalise from our experiences in the particular.

FINDING MR RIGHT

Put out of your head the drippy belief that there’s only one man for you. Given a willing spirit, the ability to compromise, enough in common and a stubborn streak, you could marry, and stay married to, just about anyone we thought was right for you.

 Choose a man whose values, hopes and dreams are more or less the same as yours, whose temperament more or less complements yours, who is kind, energetic, does his share and doesn’t speak with his mouth full.

By far the safest thing is to marry someone from within your circle of friends. Dreary though this may sound, you at least have the advantage of many years of background information. The more you know about his family, the wider the picture you will have. Look hard at his parents, since people become more of what they are as they age. Look at how he treats his brothers and sisters.

 Never marry a man unless you’ve seen him with a cold, which he will call flu or possibly pneumonia. If you can live with his groaning, suppressed whimpers and deathbed expression, don’t say we didn’t warn you.

TAKING THE PLUNGE

The minute you agree to marry, you set in train a series of events designed to drive you apart, if not insane.

During the engagement, everyone who counts locks horns. It’s now that he my show an unhealthy loyalty to his mother. If he says of the wedding, “But it’s what she wants,” call it off… Some time between the engagement and the wedding you’ll get cold feet. Your fiancé’s response is a big clue to the future…

The wedding is your day. But you will want him to be happy. Who he wants to ask and what he wants to eat will say much about your compatibility. If you’re both happy to have his football mates and skimp on the venue so guests can eat and drink more, brilliant.

Look earnestly at your husband-to-be for these signs:
Bossing the arrangements - forget sharing, hello bully boy.
No idea what he really wants - forget sharing, he’s a complete idiot.
Hating what you like - if you don’t share taste, make sure you share plenty of something else.
Fighting his corner by shouting and finger-pointing - goodbye!

FIRST FLUSH

Your honeymoon will be your first holiday as man and wife, so you should be prepared for him to behave oddly. If he whines about the cost of food, the hotel or the poor weather, shrug. It’s normal. Almost certainly you will have a lovely time. You’ll have a laugh, a cry, a shout, wander off on your own and feel bitter if he doesn’t follow. This is the stuff of the honeymoon. You will return tanned and happy to your love nest. Now you must get used to living together. You’ll find yourself on a steep learning curve.

In every couple you will find one person is an optimist, who will look at life’s solutions and sees a happy way forward. The other sees life’s problems and anticipates awful outcomes. One of you will be more prudent about money. Our guess is that this will be the pessimist. He or she will keep a sharp eye on income versus expenditure, while the other will say, “Shut up, you mean miser.”

In early married life, shouting may be guaranteed if, say, you are too untidy or, say, he makes a more-than-usually pointed refusal to discuss anything complicated. It soon becomes plain that you’ll have to confine your bedroom mess to a single chair and he’d have to accept that you’ll find other people to talk to.

As for the kitchen, mostly one will cook and make a mess, the other will relish what is cooked - and cleans up. I urge you to press for something similar. You’ll work out your own rules. We’re only telling you some of ours so you get the hang of it.

HUSBANDS AND BABIES

Sooner or later you may decide it’s time to have children. Curious jostling in the relationship now goes on as you get into position for the next bit of your life. Get it wrong and you’ll find the balance of power all over the shop.

Expect to fight spectacularly, mainly about precedence. In most parents’ minds there is a baby, then the wife, then the father. This may initially not go down well with him, who will think since the baby’s needs are minimal; he and you could have a life.

Deciding what to call the baby can turn out to be your own dynastic war. The usual thing is for the husband’s choice to prevail for the first child and the wife’s for the second. Family names should only be second names, unless both of you are devoted to them.

Then there is the funny noise situation. Babies don’t just cry, they make snuffling, gasping noises that could be death gurgles.
You will be married to one of the following: a) a man who says, “Stay calm” when you say, “I think that’s a death gurgle”; b) a man to whom you must say, “It’s normal” as you scour your books for “noise” under “dying”; or c) a man to whom you can say, “Let’s call my mum.” Husband c) is a man to be encouraged. He’s shown you the courtesy of not going nuts when your parents are mentioned in a crisis.

There is nothing more bonding than the shared experience of sleep deprivation. Take our advice. Although every fibre is urging you to deal with the baby’s distress yourself so you can get some sleep, make him get up. If it’s his turn, it’s his turn.

Of course, he won’t always do things the way you do them. Then you should shout, “That’s not how you do it,” and he will probably shout back, “It’s exactly how I do it,” and in this way the balance of power is maintained.

Maybe you are going back to work. Most families now need two incomes. But full-time? Part-time? Whatever you choose, the minute you go back you become a mother who must worry about child care. Most fathers are only moderately interested in child-care arrangements. Usually the mother finds the carer, tells her what she wants and tears her hair out when it goes wrong. The husband might then say, “I thought she looked unreliable.”

THE GROWING FAMILY MAN

After a while, the love nest will be feeling small and you will long for a playroom, maybe a garden.

Wherever you live, the only rule must be that you agree on it. If you want to move somewhere that isn’t acceptable to your husband, the onus is on you to find a house that you can make completely acceptable to him in the long run. This will be a bit like hoping to find the Holy Grail and getting it for a good price; but you’ll get there.

Once you have a baby and a new home, life will be unrecognisable from the one you had in your honeymoon period. You will lose a few friends, do different stuff, and think a lot about sleep and money. Your husband will be turning into the man he’s going to become. When they say solid family man, they mean solid. You will see his father in him. Or his mother.

Your relationship will also have taken on a kind of solidity. Self-containment comes with children. Familiarity, comfort, trust.

By baby number two you are on to the second flush of love. Many people think their marriage is on the rocks as they change flush. No, it’s just a healthy adjustment. By now you will know your main areas of disagreement. Occasionally they will become so raw that you’ll wonder how you could go on. Then the moment will pass; you’ll decide your husband’s good points outweigh his bad and you might as well soldier on.

THIRD FLUSH

By the time you enter the third flush of love, somewhere between 10 and 20 years of married life, your trust in each other to act in each other’s mutual interest is pretty well absolute.
This third flush, tinged with impatience, amused acceptance and a bit of hate, brings comfort, delight and genuine relief to find yourself with person who really cares about how you feel.

US, THE PARENTS

We look at each other and find we are pleased to be married to one another; even though we continue to have lively discussions about life without each other. We know that we would do anything for each other. What we’ve described are broad strokes that will alert and prepare you. All we truly wish is that, if you want a husband, you find one with whom you can go the distance.

The first flush might feel like the best, but the others are as lovely and we’d hate you not to discover that for yourself…

Your ever-loving parents xxx.