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
‘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 nicoise.’ 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 pate 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
