Lessons for a happy marriage - Independent Online
September 29 2011 at 11:09am
By SANDRA PARSONS
AP
British chef Jamie Oliver and his wife Jules.
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The Sixties were just swinging to an end when Jilly Cooper wrote her book How To Stay Married. By then shed been married to her husband Leo for eight years - and now, 42 years on, its been reissued to mark their golden wedding anniversary.
Jilly doesnt need me to tell her that today marriage is in a truly parlous state. Couples today are five times more likely to divorce than when her book was first published, and many dont bother marrying at all.
True, as she herself points out, some of the advice she doled out in 1969 sounds preposterous today - for example, she advises working wives to leave the office at 4.30pm in order to do the washing, cleaning and ironing before their husbands arrive home as men detest seeing women slaving in the house.
For all that, it seems to me that the rules for a successful marriage are, in the main, probably timeless and are worth thinking about now more than ever.
Only this week, Jamie Oliver broke the cardinal rule of never criticising your other half in public. Without pausing to reflect on the impact his words would have on Mrs Oliver, the celebrity chef blithely informed the world that he and his wife of 11 years are caught in a bit of a rut and that she doesnt always get what I do.
He added that Jools - a full-time mother to their four children aged between one and nine - worries too much, and despite being an amazing mum doesnt delegate enough and as a consequence is ****ing knackered.
There cant be a wife in the country who read that without wanting to see him stew, slowly and painfully, in a cauldron of rotten tomatoes. Which is not to say he hasnt got a point. Because many of todays women believe its so important to be a perfect housewife and mother that they forget two other rules of marriage: dont always put the children first - and dont neglect your husband.
For my part I cant pretend for a moment to have reached any sort of marital competence. Its taken me 17 years of marriage, for example, to come even halfway close to biting my tongue, to leave things unsaid - to understand, rather late in the day, that its almost always better to say too little than too much.
I cringe when I recall the prolonged state-of-our-union conversations I inflicted on my poor husband in the early days of our marriage. Cant we just watch something funny on TV? hed plead, to no avail: I bored on relentlessly, like a drill.
I realise now that such conversations are usually pointless. A marriage is organic. It develops slowly and naturally if you let it, so save the intense talking for a crisis.
What else have I learned? To complain less and compliment more. And the value of the little white lie. Every wife should master: No, of course Im not bored and You are clever! Id never be able to do that; every husband, You look amazing and Mmmm, this is delicious.
Ive learned the value of small daily compromises, usually revolving around what to eat or what to watch, and the importance of romance.
Or, as rock star Alice Cooper (who says hes never been unfaithful in 35 years of marriage) put it at the weekend: The secret is keeping romance in the marriage. Men are microwaves and women are pressure cookers. Sex is the whole thing for men: bang, ready, lets go. Women want romance beforehand, or they feel theyre not appreciated.
Ah yes, sex. A key piece of Jilly Cooper advice that will never date is that sex is a cornerstone of any marriage - and far more important than housework. Keep a man happy in bed, she says, and he almost certainly wont notice the pile of dust underneath it.
On the other hand, dont invest sex with too much importance, either. Last weekend Sting - who famously enjoys tantric sessions with his wife Trudie Styler - attempted to enlighten the rest of us as to what it actually involves.
He was at pains to point out that it does not mean seven hours of intercourse - a blessed relief - but that it does mean using every aspect of your life - whether walking, breathing, eating, speaking, making love - as an act of gratitude. It sounds terribly hard work and no fun at all.
For if sex is one of the four corners of a marriage, the other three are showing each other respect, being kind to each other, and - most crucially of all - making each other laugh.
As the permanently giggly Jilly Cooper says, these days she and her husband worry much less about screwing than unscrewing the top on the Sancerre bottle (or the glucosamine pills).
And her marriage has survived not just 50 years, but infertility, infidelity and infirmity - so theres hope for us all. - Daily Mail
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A good marriage is like a piece of precious porcelaine, no matter how many years it's lasted, if you don't take care of it one careless move can break it so cherish it every day.
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