How to be a Husband

by Tim Dowling

  4. Paperwork and administration. It seems to me that this particular chore should be taken on by one person, because two people chipping in will only lead to confusion. But a marital home requires a preposterous amount of record-keeping, which is probably too much for one person to handle.

  My wife rules over this sphere, because she’s organized, although she lacks my ability to panic, and one of her chief organizational skills is throwing important paperwork away. I may be disorganized, but every bit of paper that has ever entered my office is still in there somewhere, and I can locate anything within a fortnight. In principle this mix of efficiency and hoarding should mean we’re covered. In practice it means I shouted at her for binning a tax demand last week, and I’ve just found it under my desk.

  5. Cooking. Some people possess both a talent for cooking and an ability to derive pleasure from exercising their skills to feed others. Whenever possible you should try to include such a person in your holiday plans, whether you enjoy that person’s company or not.

  But it’s not uncommon to marry someone for love alone, even if that someone can’t cook at all. My wife did, and so did I. Almost everything we know about cooking, we learned together, through a series of hideous culinary accidents.

  Although I am normally reluctant to pass judgment on people’s abilities or priorities, I will say this: not being able to cook is stupid. It just isn’t that hard. You can even continue to dislike cooking, provided you learn to produce a palatable meal that can be thrown together using ingredients from the store cupboard or the corner shop in under an hour, and ends with the kitchen as clean as when you started. Then learn another one. Then learn . . . actually, two will probably do it, to be honest.

  My wife and I pooled what little knowledge we had, and between us we developed a repertoire that spanned a seven-day meal cycle, if you included a takeaway on Sunday. These are not recipes as such, just dishes that have evolved over years of trial and error, including one which is simply called “Mexican” (it is not remotely Mexican, but it does call for four tins of refried beans), and a weird, paprika-tinged collection of odds and ends which in our house is known, with no great affection, as Spicy Ricey.* These two meals still remain in the rotation after fifteen years, but they are rarely served to outsiders.

  Dinner parties are a different matter.

  “I hate having dinner parties,” says my wife.

  “You’re not supposed to say that while everyone’s still here,” I say, indicating our guests.

  When we were first married there were only three requirements for a successful dinner party: a big ashtray, a bottle of wine per person, and a nearby shop that would sell you more wine after eleven p.m. The food was always, thankfully, an afterthought. Over the years, however, we grew weary of presenting meals we had to apologize for. We bought cookbooks, we took some culinary risks, and we learned to show off a little. At some point I even discovered a recipe for chocolate éclairs shaped like swans, but I’ve only ever made them for people twice, and I was drunk both times. You have to be a bit drunk to think it’s a good idea.

  6. Driving. My wife and I have split this chore across national boundaries: when we’re going somewhere in the car together, I drive only in America and on the Continent. The right side of the road is my domain. My wife is a very good driver, but she’s not a great passenger; she refuses to accept that it is, by definition, a subordinate position. I, on the other hand, am an excellent passenger, which is just as well, because my wife has certain esthetic objections to my driving which she feels unable to keep to herself when I am at the wheel. This particular division of labor suits us both, although I am aware that it is unusual (apparently, when partners get in the car together, the man is four times more likely to drive) and I know that even if it doesn’t feel particularly emasculating, it probably looks a little emasculating.

  The only time I ever minded was on long car journeys with three children fighting in the back. As the free-handed passenger seat occupant, all in-car discipline fell to me, and as everybody with small children knows, there is no such thing as in-car discipline. Most of these trips adhered to a similar template:

  “Make them stop fighting,” says my wife.

  “Right!” I say. “If you don’t stop right now someone is getting out.” It’s my only in-car sanction—the out-car option. I’ve issued it countless times, without once following through on it. The only person I’ve ever met who actually left a child by the roadside was my mother.

  “Dad is very angry,” my wife says into the rearview mirror. “He’s going to do something in a minute.” The fighting does not even pause.

  “Right,” I say, wheeling round to point at the middle one. “You’re getting out.” He begins to laugh uncontrollably.

  “Pull over,” I say to my wife.

  “I’m not pulling over,” she says. “The traffic’s only just started moving.”

  “If you want me to discipline them, you need to back up my hollow threats.”

  “We’re late as it is,” she says.

  “I’ve run out of ideas,” I say. “You discipline them.”

  “I can’t,” she says, “I’m driving.” She’s trying—preposterously—to make driving sound like the more unenviable chore. She might as well say, “I can’t—I’m queuing for another go on the Ferris wheel.”

  “Pull over, and I’ll drive,” I say.

  “Oh no, you won’t,” she says. The fighting in the back has turned nasty; the younger two are reaching across the older one to punch each other.

  “Then pull over,” I say, “and let me out here.”

  7. Shutting down. I am the person who runs through the nightly checklist that puts our house to bed: front door double-locked, front window bolted, old dog offered option of last-minute piss, garden door locked, lights out, taps closed, TV off, dishwasher on, fridge door shut, children asleep, kitchen demonstrably not on fire. It’s not difficult, but it’s a tremendous responsibility which I am pleased to assume. I only resent the reporting procedure that follows.

  “Is the front door locked?” says my wife.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “What about the garden door?”

  “Yes,” I say. It’s good she has the checklist in her head, because she will have to take over the role if I die, but still.

  “Are the children all asleep?”

  “Yes,” I lie.

  “Are the lights in the kitchen . . .”

  “I do all of these things,” I say. “Every time.”

  “Except for last week, when you left two gas rings burning all night.”

  “That was not my fault,” I say. “And I’ll be right back.”

  8. Standards enforcement. At some point you must decide whether, as a marital unit, you comprise the sort of people who bother to put sugar in a bowl, or butter on a dish, or tea bags in a dedicated earthenware container that says “TEA” on the front. You must set a standard for the lowest form of cheese allowed in your fridge, and an agreed method for making coffee. Do you care whether your car is clean, or do you use it as a mobile skip? Do you mind being a couple known for turning up late to everything? Are you minimalists? Are dogs allowed on your sofas? Is smoking allowed in your kitchen? Do you make people take their shoes off when they visit? Does a guitar on a stand count as furniture?

  Our own standards—a loose mix of esthetic obstinacy, misguided principle, family tradition, resistance to change, latent snobbery, and squeamishness—were reached by consensus over a number of years, although enforcement is generally undertaken by the person who in each case actually gives a shit one way or the other. My wife is the one who makes sure there are no potted plants in the house. It is only at my insistence that we do not pour sugar into our tea straight from the bag, even though I don’t take sugar, or tea.

  From time to time household standards must be revised, either because of nat
ural slippage, changes in taste, or a feeling that you’ve both reached an age where it’s unacceptable to drink wine from old Nutella jars. Generally speaking, the fewer standards you can get away with maintaining, the better. After your tenth wedding anniversary, you should try to rid yourself of a couple every year.

  9. Finding things. You may think the world is simply divided into finders and losers, but these roles are more often thrust upon us by the people we live with. I’m not a natural finder. It’s only my wife’s bottomless capacity to make stuff go missing that has forced me to become observant, methodical, and at ease going through the bins with a pair of Marigolds on. Most of all, I have become psychologically astute—you have to teach yourself to think like someone who wasn’t thinking.

  10. Speaking to tradespersons. This is my job, but it’s not because I’m good at it. When I converse with plumbers or electricians I’m always desperate to make it sound as if I have a basic grounding in the mechanics of their profession. I never ask any pertinent questions, for fear of sounding stupid. Instead I nod grimly, misuse jargon, and offer my own fanciful suggestions regarding the nature of the problem, all of which contributes to making me a very easy person to rip off. My wife, on the other hand, makes no pretense of understanding anything. She treats the field of heating engineering as if it were a branch of witchcraft, and all its certified practitioners with naked suspicion. She really should take over the role, but she’s almost never home when these people turn up.

  11. New stuff. From time to time, while wrestling with a malfunctioning or outmoded kitchen tool, I will look up and say, with exasperation, “We really need a new one of these.” I say this because it is not my job to decide that a new thing is required, or to secure that new thing. It’s my wife’s job. This is probably left over from the early days when she had all the money, but I have to come to accept that this responsibility should remain hers. I know how much regret a poor or unnecessary purchase can cause, and I want that regret to belong to someone else.

  When it comes to the subject of buying replacement items—from potato peelers to sofa beds—I am like a lawyer arguing a case before a judge. If I do not prevail, then I may feel I have presented my case poorly, but ultimately it’s not up to me. I don’t mind. The stupider acquisitions that I argued so eloquently against—like the second dog—sit around all day serving as examples of what happens when my wisdom is not heeded. The stupid ones that I insisted upon, I hide.

  12. Nameless dread. I retain sole charge of nameless dread: lying awake through the small hours, freaking out about things that haven’t happened yet, but might. It’s demanding and unrewarding, but if I didn’t do it, it simply wouldn’t get done.

  In the tit-for-tat labor market of marital chores, nameless dread is a difficult commodity to trade. You can’t get out of a trip to the supermarket by saying, “But I was up half the night worrying about interest rates!” It will be pointed out to you, again and again, that nameless dread is irrational and serves no earthly purpose. Some spouses will even go so far as to claim that it doesn’t deserve its place among the Twelve Labors of Marriage, because it’s really more of an illness. Such a spouse may even lobby for nameless dread to be supplanted in the list by DIY, in a bid to trick you into putting up some coat hooks.

  But DIY is not one of the Twelve Labors of Marriage. DIY is a separate sphere, a territory that increasingly goes unclaimed by anyone. For the sake of your own continued relevance, mate, I’m going to suggest you make it your own.

  6.

  DIY: Man’s Estate, Even Now

  It is a function of our increasing dependence on technology that each new generation has a more tenuous connection with how stuff works. When my Wi-Fi starts performing poorly or patchily, I don’t really understand the nature of the problem. I just resort to a sort of self-taught voodoo, wandering through the house with an iPad in search of a spot where the air is thicker with Internet.

  You’d think that in such bewildering times we might seek refuge in the baldly mechanical, in nuts and bolts and nails and wire. In fact the age of the Internet should be a boom time for DIY—there are people out there whose only passion in life is posting online videos showing you how to change the drum belt on your tumble dryer—but it isn’t.

  DIY sales have been falling 4 or 5 percent a year on average, for a decade. And this lack of purchasing seems to be related to a general decline in skills. Surveys have shown that a majority of modern twentysomethings do not know how to change a fuse or unblock a drain. Are they not embarrassed? Do they call in an electrician when they need a new plug fuse, or do they just buy a whole new toaster?

  It would be marvelous if women were to achieve equal footing with men in the DIY department. It would be pretty good if we were even heading that way, but it’s more likely that the sexes will only draw abreast on the downhill charge toward total incompetence. Men are losing their DIY skills, and women aren’t taking up the slack. If you think ceding this ground has no consequences, think again. These days less than half of all adults—and only 17 percent of women—know how to change an automobile tire. One direct result of this national deskilling is that only about half of the new cars sold in the UK actually come with spare tires. It saves on cost and weight, and if nobody can put one on anyway, what’s the point? By increments, your helplessness will be enshrined, and you will be left standing by the side of the road.

  DIY may not be an inherently male thing, but it is sort of manly. Being handy remains a key component of What Women Want in a Man. Sensitivity is also good, but you can get away with being pretty emotionally stunted as long as you know how to put up a curtain rod. No one is suggesting you need to build an extension or reslate the roof, but at the very least you should be able to take the top off a toilet tank and not be surprised by what you find in there.

  As a husband, you’re not only in charge of all the DIY jobs your wife can’t do, you’re also in charge of the ones that you can’t do either. You just have to learn how, because your wife will come to think less of you for not being able to fix a leaking tap. It’s not her fault. It’s the way she was raised.

  You might say to yourself: Who cares what she thinks? As a man living through the End of Men, busy coming to terms with my own irrelevance—why should I bother with DIY now?

  There are two reasons: first, I’ve already tested this excuse, and it doesn’t go down very well at home; second—and you must imagine I’m whispering this—DIY is empowering. Competence is addictive. Contrary to what you may have been led to believe, life is not too short to countersink a screw.*

  Getting to grips with DIY is not just a simple question of saving money, or making do instead of buying new. Actually, in many cases you’ll find the economics are against you—replacement is often cheaper than repair. This is about taking control of your stuff, gaining a little mastery over your machines, and taking a hammer to the parts of your house that are pissing you off.

  Like me, you may not be very good at DIY, but that just makes it all the more thrilling when things inexplicably go right. Don’t worry about your lack of skill. One must proceed with the bold assumption that all there is to know about tiling is contained in the two-hundred-word instruction panel on the back of the tub of grout. Everything else comes from within.

  Expertise is not your goal. You certainly don’t want to get a local reputation for being good at stuff. Anyway, at its best, DIY is a voyage of self-discovery. For the professional installer, the laying of a rubber floor is not an epic fourteen-hour struggle of man versus glue. It’s just another day at work. Personally, I lose interest in a DIY technique almost as soon as I’ve mastered it. That’s why one of the cupboard doors under our stairs opens so smoothly, and the other still comes off in your hand. Repositioning hinges? Been there, done that, never again. But you know what? I just bought a new chisel and I’m keen to try it out. Show me something that needs gouging.

  When embarking on a chal
lenging repair job, never ask yourself, Will I make it worse? You cannot make the problem worse; you can only move it forward to a stage where professional intervention becomes urgently advisable. Bear in mind that before you started trying to fix it, it wasn’t broken enough to justify a huge emergency call-out charge. Now it is. That’s progress.

  That said, there are some jobs where the risk/reward ratio makes ringing a qualified professional a better bet from the outset. Before you get stuck in a complex and daunting DIY project, run through this checklist of questions:

  • Does the manual expressly forbid amateur installation or repair?

  • Show your spouse the relevant wording, and call the experts.

  • Does the prospect of attempting it make you feel like crying?

  It’s not that you can’t do it, but perhaps you’re just not ready. If paying someone else to do it will make you stop crying, then it’s probably money well spent.

  • Has the object in need of repair presently got flames shooting out of the back of it?

  Strictly speaking, that’s one for the fire brigade.

  • Are you missing a necessary tool that costs more than £100?

  A DIY project should not be an excuse for reckless shopping. Of course, once you’ve got your own personal diesel-powered compaction plate, you may end up using it all the time.

  • Is it one of those jobs that requires you to know where hidden pipes/wires are/aren’t?

  These days pipes and wires are installed at a depth beyond the reach of the average shelf screw, but you do not want to find out the hard way that yours aren’t.

  • How high off the ground is the site of the problem? Would you die if you fell from there?