XXXVIII
HOW TO BE A GOOD HUSBAND
A young man said to me the other day: “I am going to be married, and I earnestly and honestly desire to make my wife happy, but beyond a vague and rudimentary impression that I must not beat or starve her, I haven’t an idea of how to go about the good-husband job. What should a man do to keep a woman blessing her lucky stars that she married him, instead of wondering what on earth the fool-killer was doing that she survived her wedding day?”
“Well, son,” I replied, “your theoretical ground work for being a good husband is a sound foundation on which to build, tho refraining from beating your wife is not the matter of course thing that you seem to think it is. There will be plenty of times when you will want to do so, and bitterly regret that no perfect gentleman can lay his hands upon a woman save in the way of kindness, no matter how much she needs a thrashing or he yearns to give her one.
“While as for giving a wife sustenance and raiment, believe me, that to be a good provider is one of the brightest jewels in the crown of a good husband. No matter what other charms and virtues a man may have, he is a poor makeshift of a husband if he cannot give his wife a comfortable living. And, on the other hand, no man is a total failure as a husband if he laps his wife in luxuries. Jewels, and motorcars, and fine houses, and fine clothes are a consolation prize that takes the curse off many a woman’s disappointment in marriage.
“Having, then, accorded your wife considerate treatment and given her a good home, the next step in being a good husband is to play fair with her on the money question. Get off on the right foot there and you will save yourself endless bickerings and prevent her from feeling a bitterness toward you that will grow and grow until it will kill out all of her affection for you. The first disillusion that many a bride gets is when she finds out that the prince of her dreams is a tightwad, who haggles with her over the market money and who is so stingy that he never gives her a penny of her own. There isn’t a woman in the world who is enough of a worm of the dust not to resent having to ask her husband for the money she knows she earns as a housewife. So go fifty-fifty with your wife on the money proposition. Give her as big an allowance as you can afford and be decent enough not to ask her what she does with it.
“The next item in being a good husband is to be affectionate to your wife. Don’t expect her to take it for granted that you still love her because you haven’t applied for a divorce from her. You handed her a fine and convincing line of love talk while you were courting her, and there is no excuse for your cutting it off and becoming as dumb as an oyster just as soon as you’ve got her. No normal woman can live without love and be happy. It is just as necessary to her well-being as food and drink, and if she is deprived of it she suffers all of the agonies of soul starvation, which are worse than those of the body. When you marry a woman you isolate her from the love-making of other men, and so you are in honor bound to provide her with an ample supply of soft talk yourself.
“Therefore, make it a rule of your life to give your wife at least one kiss every day that has in it some thrill of love and passion, and that isn’t flavored with ham and eggs like the perfunctory peck on the cheek or the back of the ear which is all most men hand their wives in the osculation line. And, for heaven’s sake, don’t neglect to pay your wife compliments. When she has on a new dress tell her how pretty she looks and how becoming it is, instead of grunting or demanding to know how much it costs. If you have eyes enough to see other women’s pretty clothes and intelligence enough to say the right things about them, why not about your wife’s, when it will please her to death and make her think what a wonderful man she has married?
“The next point in being a good husband consists in doing something actively to make your wife happy and showing a human interest in her. Many men think they have done their whole duty as husbands when they furnish their wives with food and shelter and plenty of money. I have heard men excuse themselves for never remembering an anniversary or giving their wives a little present by saying that they didn’t know what Mary or Sally wanted, and that they had charge accounts at the best jewelers and department stores and could buy themselves whatever they wanted.
“That kind of thing doesn’t make a woman happy. There isn’t a wife in the world who wouldn’t get more thrill out of a dollar string of blue beads that her husband bought because they matched her eyes than she would out of a pearl necklace that she bought herself on her wedding anniversary because her husband had forgotten they were ever married. It is the personal touch that counts with women. The sentiment. The knowledge that her husband is concerned about her, that he notices when she is tired, that he appreciates all that she does, that he tries to make her happy and wants to give her every pleasure that he can.
“If you want to be a good husband, son, remember to do the little things, and the big things will do themselves. Be affectionate, be kind, be appreciative, jolly her instead of finding fault with her. Be liberal in the use of flattery and take her to some place of amusement at least once a week, and she will thank God on her knees for having given you to her for a husband.”