The Rules for Marriage. Ellen Fein

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      ‘The pedicure cost £15 and I’m going to see my toes in the winter. You spent £15 on appetizers when we were dating. Why are you making this a big deal?’ Peggy then launched into a 20-minute speech about how she worked just as hard as Don and was entitled to some pampering. Don wanted to know how they were going to save for a house and kids if Peggy was throwing money away in salons, on long phone calls to friends around the country and endless pairs of shoes. Peggy said ‘You’re over-reacting; £15 isn’t going to make or break us,’ to which Don replied, ‘It adds up. Besides, you can’t spend money like you’re single any more. We have to build a nest egg.’

      When Peggy contacted us, we explained that Don’s behaviour was not so unusual. When a man is dating, he’s trying to impress you, but when he’s married he’s thinking of other things like paying the mortgage and saving for school fees. Peggy needed to lower her expectations – to not expect Don to be oblivious to finances and not to feel offended if he questioned her spending. We suggested she even appreciate that Don cared so much about their future security. We did not tell Peggy to cut back on her spending – that is her business – but to see Don’s point of view and allow him to worry and make comments about money without getting defensive or self-righteous. We suggested that the next time Don scrutinized her spending, she calmly reply, ‘I know, you may be right, but I really like pedicures. They make me feel good.’

      Maybe your husband’s ‘bait and switch’ is that he used to want to go out a lot and have fun and now he’s glued to the telly and a little boring. Perhaps your husband’s change in behaviour is that he ran marathons when you were dating and now he snacks constantly, let his gym membership expire and has gained 2 stone. In this case, there is nothing you can do but live with it. It is unrealistic to expect a man to act exactly the way he did when he was dating you. We would venture to guess that you probably don’t exercise as much, wear as much makeup or those uncomfortable high heels and padded bras now as when you were single. The same goes for men. Once they’re comfortable with you, they tend to relax in their own ways, be it spending less or eating more or not shaving. They’re not trying to impress you every waking moment. Don’t expect them to. However, if your husband has blown up to, say, 22 stone and you are seriously concerned about his health, you can try stocking the house with healthy treats, cooking non-fattening meals and buying him an exercise bike for his next birthday. But no lectures, please – these rarely work! Unfortunately, sometimes a man has to suffer a heart attack mowing his front lawn or stuffing his face at a buffet to learn his lesson and go on a diet.

      Different schedules and habits can also wreck havoc in the first year of marriage. Here is another true story.

      Cindy knew Steve liked rock music when they were dating, but didn’t notice until they were married that he played the stereo loudly every day when he woke up at 6 a.m. She didn’t have to wake up for work until 7 a.m. and preferred the gentle sounds of birds chirping in their back garden. Every morning she woke up with resentment – not only was she up an hour earlier, but she had to listen to deafening music. She asked Steve if he could stop playing music in the morning, and just listen to the radio in the car on the way to work?

      ‘I’ve been waking up to music my whole life. I need it to help me get started in the morning. Why don’t you wear ear plugs or something?’ he objected. Cindy tried ear plugs but it only cut the sound in half. More upsetting than the music was Steve’s refusal to compromise. If he loved her, wouldn’t he care about her extra sleep and serenity? ‘How could I have married someone so inconsiderate?’ she asked us.

      We told Cindy that she couldn’t expect her husband to change a life-long habit, and asked if there was anything that could turn her earlier waking time to her advantage, like going to a morning sessions at a gym. She now takes a 6 a.m. aerobics class and leaves Steve alone to enjoy his music, and she is thrilled to have her workout out of the way before her work day even begins.

      Theresa also had to learn to adjust, rather than insist on her fantasies about the first year of marriage. She had always assumed that newlyweds ate dinner together, at least most of the time. A teacher, she was home by 4 p.m. and usually cooked a gourmet meal for her pediatrician husband, Robert, to eat at 6 p.m. Yet almost every evening he would ring to say he would be late. First he would ring to say he would be 10 minutes late, then half an hour, then ‘go ahead, eat without me’. There was either an emergency or paper work or a stop he had to make on the way home. He would come home around 7 or 8 p.m. and she would have to reheat his meal and just watch him eat. It was not what she’d had in mind.

      We advised Theresa to be realistic about the nature of her husband’s work and to assume she would be eating alone Monday to Friday, so she’d be pleasantly surprised if she didn’t have to, or to invite a friend over or find something to do between 6 and 8 p.m. so she just wasn’t waiting in the kitchen for Robert’s call and fuming. Now they have turned their weekend dinners into special occasions, cooking together or splurging on romantic dinners out. Both of them look forward to these dinners all week.

      Some first-year marriage dilemmas are more serious than eating dinner together. Here is Viv and Barry’s story. Giddy in love, Viv did not think twice about leaving her friends and family and career in the city, where she had lived her whole life, to move to the countryside where Barry owned a house and business. She just assumed that love would conquer all. But by their second month of marriage, Viv realized that she could not stand the sight of deer, missed the city, and was bored and lonely. She complained morning, noon and night. ‘If you loved me, you’d move to London,’ she would tell Barry. Her husband refused to relocate. ‘You’ll get used to it, everyone does,’ he reassured her. She found his answers cold and callous; easy for him to say, he’d lived there his whole life!

      After arguing for another six months about where to live, Viv contacted us. We told her that if she wanted to stay married to Barry, she had to accept their living situation and that it was unrealistic to think he would relocate. We counselled her to stop telling Barry how unhappy she was and put her energy into finding work and meeting people in her area. Sentences beginning with ‘If you loved me …’ or ‘I hate the countryside’ should be removed from her conversation. The plan took time. But after a few months she found a part-time job in her neighbourhood and made a few friends by taking a night class and joining a gym. Suddenly, country life didn’t seem so bad.

      Plus, Barry was so pleased by her adjustments that he suggested a weekend trip to London, and liked it so much that it became a frequent weekend activity.

      If you are sparring with your husband over a serious or petty issue, try lowering your expectations СКАЧАТЬ