The Rules for Marriage - Ellen Fein

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priorities are straight, and you’re not jealous of what other people have or do.

       Don’t make mountains out of molehills. For example, if you trust your husband and he talks to an attractive woman at a party, don’t spend the entire car ride home grilling him about her. ‘So did you think she was pretty? If you were single, would you have asked her out?’ Leave him alone. Your husband is allowed to talk to another woman or find her attractive. It just means he’s a man and has eyes. Sometimes a married woman will call us to complain that her husband’s ex-girlfriend calls every few months or once a year just to say hello. She wants to know how she should handle this. We tell her to do nothing – the less you care, the better. As long as your husband is not the one calling his ex, there’s no problem. Some single women have a hard time letting go of a relationship and continue to call old boyfriends out of friendship or loneliness, but these men’s wives really have nothing to worry about.

       Be organized. When your child is sick, it’s better not to have to look in five places for aspirin and a thermometer. You have a medicine cupboard and it’s amply stocked. At this point in your life, your husband would rather see you wearing a T-shirt and gym shorts than high heels, so long as there’s plenty of Calpol in the house. Keep a pad of paper and pen next to every phone in the house, so you don’t have to leave people on hold every time you have to write something down. Don’t be a hoarder. After you read a magazine, throw it away. Things don’t fall out of your cupboard when you open the door. There is no rotten cheese in your refrigerator or stockings with ladders in them in your drawer. When a friend or your in-laws ring your door bell unexpectedly, you don’t have to pretend you’re not at home because the place is upside-down. You’re on top of things. You don’t have to frantically try on 15 outfits every time you go out because ‘nothing fits’. You stay in shape. You’re in control.

       Make an effort to be calm. Whether you practise yoga or meditation, the 12 Steps, read the Bible or go to temple on Saturday or church on Sunday, try to figure out a way to rise above the daily craziness of life, the trivialities, the petty annoyances. Stay centred, know that the daily discipline of exercise or prayer or whatever it is you do will give you the strength to get through everything, so you set aside the time to take care of yourself in this way. Hence, you don’t live from crisis to crisis. Your life is not a soap opera. You don’t let people or events ruin your serenity. You know that happiness comes from within.

       But you’re no evangelist. If you are into some self-improvement programme, are anti-fur, a vegan, an ex-smoker or ‘born again’, you are not trying to convert everyone you come into contact with. (Nobody likes zealots. They’re boring.) You know that you just have to live your life and not try to change anyone. You believe in live and let live – beginning with your husband and your children – and you are serene.

      In the rest of this book, you will find ways to help you continue to be a married ‘creature unlike any other’.

       Keep Your Own Life

      Some women make their husbands their whole life when they get married, and drop many of the things that made them interesting in the first place. Some lose interest in their careers or stop working altogether, some see less of their family and friends, and others cut back on interests and activities, including exercise. This is a mistake that we would like to help you avoid. We spoke to several women who became half a person in their marriage, only to regret it.

      For example, Amy quit her job as an estate agent straight after she married Phil to concentrate on getting pregnant, learning how to cook and decorating their house. She also dropped some of her single friends. For years, she had met five friends every Wednesday night for a girls’ night out, but once she was married she decided to skip it so she could eat dinner and watch telly with her husband. Phil didn’t discourage it. In fact, he seemed flattered that she preferred his company and was happy when Amy told him she couldn’t relate to her single friends anymore.

      After a few months, though, Phil started to tire of so much togetherness. When he came home he wanted to read a book (alone) instead of watch telly with Amy. He started making plans with his mates once a week to go out for drinks.

      Amy was hurt and angry. She had dropped her friends to spend every evening with Phil, and now he was bored with her. Realizing the mistake she’d made, she went back to her girls’ nights out and took on a part-time job. Amy learned an important but painful lesson.

      Many men will be flattered or even encourage their wives to drop friends or activities for them, only to lose interest in them when they do. Despite what they say, men like women the most when they’re busy. They love coming home to women who lead exciting lives, who are chatting on the phone, exercising or writing a novel on their computer, who will tell them an interesting story about some friends or co-workers, or who actually can’t talk because they don’t want to miss their yoga class… They like it when you’ve got other things going on besides them and have to fight a little for your attention.

      Have you ever noticed that your husband wants to talk to you the most when you’re on the phone or in the middle of something? Have you noticed that he rarely wants to talk to you when you’re eager to talk or just sitting around doing nothing or waiting for him to come home? If you listen to what a man thinks he wants, and make him your whole life, he will get bored and pull back and you will feel hurt and regret it.

      ‘Husbands get bored when women only concentrate on them,’ says Nancy, who made this very mistake in her first year of marriage. She got busy in the second year by getting a job and taking ballet classes twice a week. ‘The more things I do, the more interested he is in me. I feel better about myself and my personality is more interesting, so he’s more attracted to me and now when we’re together he really appreciates me,’ she says. ‘You need to have a life apart from your husband.’

      Andrea, a former book editor and now stay-at-home mum, who has been happily married for five years, concurs. ‘I have activities and friends apart from my husband. I have been on a tennis team for four years and we practise and play twice a week all year round. I also belong to a monthly book club. I have taken classes at a local college and I have participated in different church functions. I think married women must have outlets away from their home or else there’s too much strain on the husband – wife relationship. And I must say it is nice to see how much my husband misses me when I’m away spending a Sunday afternoon playing tennis. Sometimes he even comes to watch me play without my asking him to. He says he doesn’t want to be away from me too long …’

      Of course, another reason to have a life when you are married is that you will be less likely to break rules. Women who are bored and restless are most likely to call their husbands a lot at work, nag, complain, find fault with them, or try to change them because they have too much time on their hands or are not happy with themselves. When you are involved in something, be it an interesting career, meeting friends for dinner or the pictures, exercising, taking night classes or doing charity work, you are busy, focused on yourself and less likely to bother your husband.

      Maybe you can’t relate to Amy because her case is so extreme, but here is a more common scenario.

      While Joan didn’t make Tom her whole life, she found it hard to put herself first at times and got hurt. When she was single, she loved to take exercise classes early Sunday mornings, her only day off from her retail clothing business. Tom thought it would be nice to spend Sunday mornings in bed together, eating breakfast and reading the newspaper. She agreed that it would be romantic too, so she stopped going to her favourite 9 a.m. class. After a few months, Tom started to sleep late on Sundays – sometimes until noon. An early riser, Joan would potter around the house for hours waiting for Tom to wake up. She finally asked him one Sunday, ‘What happened to breakfast in bed? I’ve been up for hours.’ Tom said work was exhausting and he needed to catch up on his sleep. ‘Why don’t you go to the gym?’ he asked.

      Joan

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