The Rules for Marriage

Be thrilled if your fiancé shows this much interest. Go along with his enthusiasm even if you’re not as into it as he is. Some brides are not as fortunate …

If your fiancé shows little or no interest in wedding plans, he thinks it’s a woman’s thing and goes along with ‘whatever’ – just as happy to exchange vows with just your immediate families and a few close friends in attendance and a vase of flowers in his studio flat – do not force him to get involved. Don’t analyse his indifference or nag him to be more involved, just accept that some men are simply not interested in the intricacies of a wedding, even their own. They will show up at the altar, but that’s about it. If this is the case, plan the wedding with your bridesmaids, family and friends.

As for disagreements, try to take them in your stride. Suppose you and your fiancé have different ideas about the size of the wedding? You want a big do, he wants a small one. You want a band, he wants a DJ. You want to hire a professional photographer, he wants to ask his friend Joe to take snapshots … you get the idea! Don’t throw tantrums, act like a diva and insist on having your way. Maybe a small wedding isn’t such a bad idea, especially if he’s trying to save money for buying a house and starting a family. Whatever his reasons, we think it’s important to listen and consider his point of view. Don’t impose your fairytale images of a lavish Cinderella wedding on him. Cut him some slack – he pursued you, proposed, bought you a ring and has made a commitment to spend the rest of his life with you. If you demand a big expensive wedding and he’s not into it, neither of you will be happy. Besides, bickering a lot before the wedding is not a fun way to walk down the aisle!

Rule 2 (#ulink_e35548dc-c843-5796-9ec7-af6808688a48)

Continue to Be ‘a Creature Unlike Any Other’ (#ulink_e35548dc-c843-5796-9ec7-af6808688a48)

When you are single, being ‘a creature unlike any other’ is all about looks and self-confidence. When you’re married, it’s not about being self-absorbed, but exuding a feminine touch – i.e. the ability to turn a house into a home.

Remember how we told you to wear short skirts and get weekly manicures when you were dating? Well, now that you’re married you can relax a little! Your husband is not looking for a beauty queen every day, but a warm, loving partner. So don’t think you have to prance about the house in a negligée and cover yourself in perfume from head to toe. It’s perfectly OK to hang out in a T-shirt, shorts and sandals with your hair in a ponytail – everyone we know does! You don’t have to look like a Hollywood starlet to have grace and style. It’s more important that you maintain composure and are organized about your home, your life, your kids, your work; that you’re not a wreck every time your husband comes home late or things go awry.

You’re neat, clean, responsible, loving and nice – that’s sexy. You’re not trying to compete with his 25-year-old secretary. You don’t have to wear fake eyelashes or nail extensions. Two coats of mascara and short, clean nails are fine. No need to look into liposuction or breast implants. Maybe you have 5 or 10 pounds to lose? That’s OK too. Your husband is not looking for a mannequin. He would rather you be nice than a supermodel.

On the other hand, don’t let yourself go. Don’t pack on 2 stone after the wedding or walk around the house all the time in oversized pyjamas looking like you just got out of bed. You take care of yourself. Try to exercise two to three times a week, to maintain your shape and energy level, and try to wear clothes that flatter your figure.

Wear your hair long even though it would be easier to wear it short. Long hair reminds you that you’re a woman, and your husband likes it long and you want to please him. Don’t walk around with dark roots; touch up any grey in your hair. You believe in helping Mother Nature. Brush your hair and wear a dab of makeup before leaving the house even to go to the supermarket. You never know whom you’ll run into.

But being a married ‘creature unlike any other’ is more about attitude and character than looks. We told you how to act confident and hold your head up high to attract a man in our first book, The Rules. Now we are telling you how to apply this way of being as a married woman to the rest of your life. Exactly what do we mean? Here are some examples:

Maintain a positive attitude. It helps to be optimistic, not cynical – and to look at the glass as half-full. You still believe in love and marriage, even if some of your friends are divorced or this is your second marriage. You smile a lot. You’re easy to be with. You’re not a grievance-collector. You don’t hold grudges because you know that grudges hurt you more than the other person and add wrinkles and years to your life, so you don’t tolerate them for more than five minutes. You believe that good things happen to good people most of the time, so you try to be good. You don’t care if people think you are naïve. It makes you happy to think this way, and that’s what counts.

If you work, do your work and go home. Don’t make work your whole life. You are balanced. You believe in family first, business second. Your 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’.

Rule 3 (#ulink_dfcf73cb-6ed9-5c8f-93b0-5f7909eb8521)

Keep Your Own Life (#ulink_dfcf73cb-6ed9-5c8f-93b0-5f7909eb8521)

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 was furious. When she was running off to the gym, he wanted to do things together. Now that she was around, he wanted to sleep late!

When a man turns the tables on you like that, it’s easy to feel like a victim and make a big issue out of it. Don’t! He’s just human. We don’t always know what we want either! You’re better off resuming your activities and dropping the subject. Just realize that men are used to taking care of themselves, they don’t have to read books on co-dependence, they naturally put themselves first. Women, on the other hand, tend to be caretakers, wanting to please everyone else and putting themselves last, and then feeling like victims when they’re not appreciated.

It’s important to find a happy medium. You should not be so busy that you have no time for your husband, but there is no reason you can’t pursue your career, see your girlfriends once a week or take exercise classes and still have time for him. Your husband should be the most important person in your life, but he should not be everything or nothing. Strive for balance.

Regardless of what he thinks or says, he will be happier when you are fulfilled and busy. But the main reason you need to keep interesting is for you, not him. Why stop growing as a person just because you are married? We know women who used to keep up with the news religiously and followed politics with fascination when they were single, but now that they are married they don’t even know who is Deputy Prime Minister. You should not become brain-dead just because you are married.

Miranda’s problem was a little different, but you can probably relate to it. She didn’t want to take a decision without her husband’s input. When she was single she was very decisive. She ran an executive-recruitment firm, decorated her own flat by herself and travelled the world alone. But after being married a few months, she lost her initiative. She didn’t want to think for herself.

When she felt the kitchen floor needed re-tiling, she wanted Andy, an accountant, to help her pick the colours. When she had to choose curtains for the sitting room, she wanted Andy to go to with her to look at fabrics, during the middle of his busiest time.

‘I just can’t take off any time. Figure it out yourself or go with your mother. Whatever you decide is fine with me. Really!’ Andy told her. Miranda was so afraid to make a mistake that she wanted to put off decorating until after the end of the financial year. She would rather sit in a half-furnished house for six months than take a decision. It wasn’t bad for Miranda to ask her husband’s opinion, but once it was clear he wasn’t interested, she should have persevered on her own.

This kind of fear and co-dependence is quite common among married women. If you’re anything like Miranda, you need to be told that being married doesn’t mean being joined at the hip, that all decisions don’t have to be made with your husband especially if he shows no interest, that if you keep doing nothing while waiting for your husband’s approval you will have no backbone or self-esteem, and that it’s OK to make mistakes. Women like Miranda sometimes need to ‘act single’ – just go out and buy the tiles etc. – or nothing will ever get done.

Being happily married means finding a balance of togetherness and independence. Women who stop living their lives or depend too much on their husbands for companionship or decision-making end up feeling unhappy and unfulfilled, and their husbands know it. Don’t let this happen to you!

Rule 4 (#ulink_1d2e2321-5c35-54e8-82c8-af85b85811a3)

Lower Your Expectations in the First Year (#ulink_1d2e2321-5c35-54e8-82c8-af85b85811a3)

For some couples, the first year of marriage is a continuation of the honeymoon. For others it can be quite an adjustment period. He wants things his way, you want things your way, and you can’t believe he won’t change for you. If he really loved you, he would change, right?

Welcome to the first year of marriage, where arguments about where to live, what kind of furniture to buy, how to spend money, how high or low the thermostat should be, how his snoring keeps you up half the night and so on can take their toll on a relationship.

Unfortunately, sometimes there is just no answer to your differences, no right or wrong. For example, you want the heating off, he likes it on all the time and tells you on a mild day, ‘Why don’t you take your jumper off if you’re too warm?’ Meanwhile, you think he should see an asthma specialist about his snoring. He thinks you’re over-reacting and accuses you of being a light sleeper. You like to watch films in utter silence as if you were all by yourself. He likes to watch them as a couple, explaining the plot as it unfolds and commenting on the actors (‘She looks familiar … wasn’t she in …?’), causing you to miss bits and pieces of dialogue. You tell him to be quiet, he gets offended and you feel guilty, and now this little friction makes you miss bits and pieces of the film.

You envision your flat with a minimalist look – black leather sofas, white shelving units and coffee table, a couple of nice modern paintings and silver art work on the mantel above the fireplace. He wants to put his 15-year-old tartan armchair with the stuffing coming out of it in the sitting room, a gaudy bronze trophy he won in secondary school on the mantelpiece and antique family heirlooms on the coffee table. You can’t believe you married someone with such bad taste, and tell him so. He gets angry and sulks in his broken armchair. In your wildest dreams, you never imagined that your first year of marriage would be about this!

Relax. Most first-year marriage differences can be simply solved by lowering your expectations. Don’t expect to see eye to eye on everything. Just because you love each other it doesn’t mean you’re going to think and feel the same way about everything. Some of the most happily married couples don’t! So don’t compare your marriage to films or fairy tales showing wedded bliss, or to your friend’s ‘perfect’ marriage. The stories are not real and your friend’s marriage is not perfect. In some cases, just agreeing to disagree can take the edge off; in others, somebody has to adjust and see the other person’s point of view. In those cases, why not give it a try?

Here are some true first-year marriage stories and the advice we gave the wives. Perhaps you can relate and apply the answers to your own situation.

‘Bait and switch’ is a very common first-year problem. Your husband behaved one way when you were dating and now he behaves another way.

For example, Don was incredibly generous with money when he was dating Peggy. Fine restaurants, flowers, expensive gifts and lavish holidays were commonplace. When they got married, Father Christmas turned into Ebenezer Scrooge. Don only wanted to eat Chinese take-aways, scrutinized Peggy’s credit card bills, and talked constantly about investments. Most of their rows had to do with Peggy’s spending. One of the worst was when she came home one cold Saturday afternoon in January and took off her socks and shoes to relax. Don noticed that she had got a pedicure and blurted out: ‘Why do you need a pedicure in the winter? Who’s going to see your toes? You’re wasting money. Why can’t you do it yourself?’ A two-hour argument ensued.