Jilly Cooper - How to Stay Married

On a Lolita kick

Once a year

HOW OFTEN

This is entirely up to you. Everyone lies about it if you ask them. I read in one book that the average man of thirty has sexual intercourse 2.8 times a week. When I told my husband, a rather smug gleam came into his eye, but he was curious to know what they did on the.8 occasion.

On the other hand, one Indian sex manual says that during the first year of marriage couples should have intercourse three times a night for the first three months, twice a night for the next three months, and every night for the rest of the year. After which I suppose you die of exhaustion.

There’s no rule. Sometimes you may get a jag and have each other a dozen times in a weekend, sometimes if you’re both tired you may not feel like touching each other for a week or so.

HOW NOT TO LOOK IN BED

Curlers and great blobs of face cream are grounds for divorce — no woman need wear them. If you want curly hair, get a set of heated rollers. If you want a soft skin, put on face cream in the bath.

People should wash and clean their teeth before they go to bed, and have at least one bath a day. This may sound elementary, but it’s amazing how many people don’t, and, sweat fetishists apart, most people would rather make love to someone who smells and tastes good.

Have separate beds if you must, but not separate rooms. Once you get on to the separate rooms kick, it’s so easy to shut yourself in every night and grow further and further away from your partner. If one of you snores, or is a bad sleeper and wants to read, have a bed made up in the spare room, so you can slip into it if you get really desperate about three o’clock in the morning.

Don’t, however, get out of the habit of making love. Quite often if you’ve been snapping at each other you will find that once you sleep together everything will be all right again.

I met a girl the other day who boasted she only gives herself to her husband once a year on his birthday. A woman should be grateful that her husband wants her, and any woman who keeps on saying ‘I don’t feel like it tonight’, unless she’s ill, pregnant or recovering from a baby, deserves to have an unfaithful husband.

Equally no man should deny his wife, if she obviously wants it. There’s no excuse for the sort of career man — an American, as it happens — who will only sleep with his wife on Friday and Saturday, so he’ll be fresh for work on the weekdays.

Another of the great myths about sex is that for the first year you glut yourselves like someone working in a sweet shop, and after that the glamour wears off and you settle down to pastimes like bringing up children and gardening. In any good marriage, sex should get better and better as the years go by, even if you indulge in it marginally less often.

ANOTHER GREAT FALLACY is that marriage stops you falling in love with people. It doesn’t. One of the most happily married men I know says he was riddled with guilt because he developed a violent crush on a blonde staying in the same hotel while he was on honeymoon. If you were the sort of person who was always falling in love before marriage, you’ll probably go on doing it afterwards. Don’t panic — nip it in the bud early. Refuse to see the person concerned. It will tear your guts out for a few weeks, but you’ll find you get over it, just as you got over the crushes you had before you were married.

If you fancy someone, and you know they fancy you, don’t try and rely on mutual self-control. These things if allowed to develop invariably get out of hand and can escalate into nasty things like divorce. The most shortsighted remark ever made at the beginning of an affaire is: ‘You’re happily married and I’m happily married, and if we have an affaire, we’re both adult enough not to let it get out of hand or anyone get hurt.’ This is rubbish. Someone always gets hurt, and it’ll probably be you. And remember, once your husband or wife finds out you are having an affaire with someone else it will cause them appalling unhappiness, and your marriage will never be the ‘glad confident morning’ it was.

MUTUAL INFIDELITY

‘Husbands are such a bore,’ said a friend of mine. ‘They always want to know who you’re dating.’ Some couples manage to go their own way, making a pledge of mutual infidelity, but I cannot help feeling that one of the partners must be enjoying it more than the other.

If you must have affaires, be discreet. The cardinal sin is to be found out. And when it’s all over and you’re feeling a louse and you want to clear your conscience, don’t indulge in tearful confessions to your husband and feel you’ve cleaned the slate. It will upset him quite unnecessarily.

DISCOVERY

If you do discover your husband is having an affaire with someone, and he doesn’t know you know, play it cool. It may blow over. Remember, ‘the robb’d that smiles steals something from the thief.’

If you find out, and your partner knows you know, the only solution is to raise hell, and insist that it stops immediately. Once you start condoning something like this, you’re lost. Usually the jolt of your finding out and minding so much is enough to make him give up the other person, in which case welcome him home like the prodigal son, and never never reproach him again.

People often have affaires as a bid for more attention from their partners and purposely leave clues so that their partners will find out and be jolted into loving them more. So if you discover your husband is having an affaire with someone, have a look at your own behaviour before you blame him to see if it’s you who’s at fault.

A FEW PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS

If your wife seems like a bolter, put her on the same passport, then you won’t waste a fortune in air tickets getting her back.

If you suspect your partner is having an affaire with a particular person, go into howls of immoderate laughter every time that person’s name is mentioned. When they ask why you’re laughing, laugh some more and say no one takes that idiot seriously. Nothing douses passion quicker than ridicule. I really fancied a man once, until someone pointed out he looked like Dracula.

DETECTION

There are a number of indications that your partner is having an affaire with someone:

If your husband insists he’s been lunching at the local with the boys, and comes home reeking of garlic, gets out a packet of matches with the Mirabelle printed on it, and lights a king-size cigarette when he normally smokes Woodbines.

If he starts a pointless row at breakfast, so he can storm out of the house, and needn’t come back until late.

If he suddenly starts working late consistently and comes home smelling of scent.

If he looks happy on a Monday morning, and miserable on a Friday night.

If he suddenly starts having a bath in the morning.

If the distance between the ends of his tie is different in the morning from the evening.

If he keeps making ridiculous excuses to buy more cigarettes during the weekend when there are plenty of packets in the house.

If there’s a spate of wrong numbers, it may not be burglars …

If your wife after always dressing scruffily for the office suddenly starts smartening herself up, shaving her legs, buying new underwear, and getting home late.

If she doesn’t look dismayed when you say you’re going to America for three weeks.