Who’d be a husband?

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HAPPINESS: Does true bliss lie in marriage or in singledom? Credit: Shutterstock

WITH some amusement, I recall our ship rolling to the ocean wave and the tilting mess room table emptying our breakfasts on the deck.  

Despite water lapping around our ankles we were a good humoured bunch. Such upsets were treated as storms in a teacup, which of course they were. More recently, before the break of dawn, I reached for my bedside glass and a little drink was spilled. Oh, the counterblast from my awakened wife was a sight to be heard.

What followed was a stream of oaths that would have brought a blush to a sailor’s face; toxic invective accompanied the mopping up process.

Now you know why women are not welcome as sailors. Forget the nonsense about their presence on a vessel being a bad omen. Such so-called superstition was a ruse dreamed up by a Jack Tar who, having suffered his wife’s hysteria over a glass of spilled milk put that rumour around.

Wives often complain that they are not loved enough. The usual mantra is, “you never say you love me anymore” or “you don’t cuddle me like you used to do.”

Well, perhaps if women were more cuddlesome they might be. I recall a friend who as a husband ticked every box. Yet, he was often left desolate by his being treated like he was something his spouse had discovered on the sole of her shoe. Later, he did find solace in a girlfriend and of course that too was his fault.

A wife, being human, will occasionally err. She forgets things and on occasion either loses utensils or breaks objects d’art. The husband’s response is usually, “It’s alright, love. It is hardly the end of the world.”

But, it is the end of the world if we do it and the minor sin will stigmatise our characters for evermore and a day.

On occasion, our friends drive whilst we two take a backseat. The seatbelts are on and the scold’s tongue is trussed too and during the drive there isn’t a word of instruction or criticism uttered. This is when I think to myself, “Would my driving friend enjoy such peace if he instead of me was married to my wife?  I very much doubt it.

Darn! I should have taken my dad’s belated advice: “Son, why get married and make one woman unhappy when you can stay single and make them all happy.”

To all those henpecked husbands out there, “cheer up, mate”; you’re not on your own by a long whiskey shot. Grin and bear it until you’re the one whom she bears – with five other good men and true.