By Editor,Jilly Cooper

Copyright dailymail

More than 40 years ago, I wrote a piece for a newspaper about the screaming domestic chaos of my first months of marriage.

I told of how my husband Leo and I made love all night, and I spent all day, except for a scurrying shopping lunch, at the office, then rushed home to wash, iron, clean the flat, cook and eat supper, make love all night, go to the office. A pattern that was repeated until one died of exhaustion and our flat was so dirty I found a fungus growing under the sink.

This led to a little book called How To Stay Married, published in 1969, in which, even though I had been married only seven years, I merrily laid down the law on everything from sex to setting up house, from in-laws to infidelity.

In 2011, How To Stay Married was republished to coincide with our golden wedding anniversary, with a new foreword written from a 50-year perspective. This entailed re-reading How To Stay Married for the first time since it was published, whereupon I nearly died of horror.

What a smug, opinionated, proselytising little know-all I was then. For a start, I announced sternly that men detested seeing women slaving in the house, so their wives must arrange to work from 8.30am to 4.30pm, so they could rush home and clean, iron and cook before their husband returned.

‘If you amuse a man in bed,’ I went on, ‘he’s not likely to bother about the mountain of dust underneath it,’ or, even more hubristically, ‘be likely to stray’. How could I have insisted that ‘a woman should be grateful her husband wants her’, and suggested that if a wife refuses her husband sex more than two days running, then she has only herself to blame if he’s unfaithful. Ouch, ouch!

More shamingly, I have never practised what I preached.

I advocated total honesty about money being essential in marriage, and that ‘couples should always know what the other is spending’. That from a wife who regularly smuggled new clothes into her wardrobe, ripping off the price tag, lying: ‘This old thing.’

‘No wife has the right to go to seed,’ I thundered, when I myself become a positive hay field when I’m trying to finish a book – not washing my hair for days, hairy ankles sprouting out from ragged tracksuit bottoms.

Yet not a word did I add urging husbands to exert self-control to avoid a beer belly. Back in 1969, of course, men were expected to be masterful. ‘If a man is married to a slut,’ I pronounced fiercely, he must remonstrate with her, adding that ‘women like a firm hand’.

‘They’d probably prefer a farm hand,’ Leo observed.

In mitigation, I suppose I was writing in a different age. No one had dreamt up ‘new men’ or paternity leave, and two-career marriages were a rarity, particularly if the couple had children.

Despite the arrogance and the bossiness, I think there is good sense in much of How To Stay Married. What, I wonder, is the secret of a good marriage? My secret was to marry a really sweet man who’d been married before.

Thus, after a cataclysmic row when I was tearfully packing my bags, he would reassure me that such tempests were normal in marriage and would blow over.

Then he would make me laugh by saying we mustn’t let Michael, our black cat, be the victim of a broken home.

Throughout our marriage he has constantly been funny. ‘What does Jilly wear in bed?’ asked one journalist, to which Leo replied: ‘Dogs mostly.’

We have now reached a stage in our marriage when we worry much less about screwing than unscrewing the top on the Sancerre bottle or on the glucosamine pills.

I still believe a happy marriage is the best thing life has to offer, cemented as much by the moments of irritation as of tenderness. Marriage, for all its limitations, makes people try harder.

It is extremely easy to get married. It is much harder to stay married.

We have had marvellous patches, and patches so bad that they rocked our marriage to its foundations. But I’ve come to realise that if you can cling on like a barnacle during the bad patches, your marriage will survive and, in all probability, be strengthened.

SURVIVING THE WEDDING

For the bride, this is blast-off – the day you (or rather your mother) have been waiting for all your life. It will pass in a dream and afterwards you won’t remember a thing about it.

Don’t be disappointed if you don’t look your best. Far more likely, you’ll be scarlet in the face and piggy-eyed from lack of sleep.

Coming down the aisle is tricky. You never know where to look, that radiant smile can easily set into a rictus grin and there’s bound to be one guest you know too well, whose eye you want to avoid.

If you look solemn, people will think you’re having second thoughts. Best policy is to settle for a cool smirk, with your eyes on the door of the church.

At the reception, you will get so tired of shaking hands, trying to remember faces and gushing like an oil well, that you will begin to have a real sympathy for the Royal Family.

Don’t worry when you circulate among the guests afterwards if none of them will speak to you. They’ll all feel you’re far too important to waste time talking to them, and you’ll wander round like a couple of wraiths.

Also, try not to get too drunk. You may feel like it, but it will cause recriminations later.

One of the great myths of marriage – heavily fostered by television commercials featuring smiling young couples up ladders – is that home decorating is fun when you do it together.

It isn’t. It’s paralysingly boring and caused more rows in our marriage than anything else.

During our first attempts at wallpapering we lost our tempers, the measure and the scissors.

I had bought enough paper to do two rooms, but we had to scrap so much we only managed three-quarters of one room.

ANNOYING HABITS

Everyone has some irritating habits. The only thing to do when your partner draws your attention to them is to swallow your pride and be grateful, because they may well have been irritating everyone else as well.

I have given up smoking and eating apples in bed, and cooking in my fur coat. My husband no longer spends a quarter of an hour each morning clearing the frog out of this throat.

Don’t worry too much that habits which irritate you now will get more and more on your nerves.

A tame psychiatrist told me: ‘Those quirks in one’s marriage partner which annoy one in the early days often become, in later years, the most lovable traits.’

END ROWS WITH A LAUGH

Never be too proud to apologise after a row, but do it properly, none of that: ‘I’ve said I’m sorry, haven’t I?’ followed by a stream of abuse.

Try not to harbour grudges. Never send someone to Coventry.

A sense of humour is all-important. My husband once, mid-row, put both feet into one leg of his underpants and fell over. I went into peals of laughter and the row was at an end.

FLIRT WITH YOUR IN-LAWS

The ideal is to marry an orphan.

However hard you try, you will probably have some trouble with the in-laws. As my mother-in-law once pointed out to me, nobody is ever good enough to marry one’s children.

The husband’s best tack is to flirt with his mother-in-law – few women can resist flattery.

Wives can flirt with their fathers-in law, but don’t overdo it, or you’ll have your mother-in-law branding you a fast piece.

BE A WILD LOVER

Call it what you like, but bed/sex/intercourse/making love, is the cornerstone of marriage.

If the sex side of a marriage is really good, you seldom hear of it breaking up.

The first essential is to be honest. Don’t pretend to be in ecstasies of excitement if you are not, or your partner will assume he is doing the right things to please you.

Don’t be too fastidious. Nothing that two people who love each other do for their mutual enjoyment in the privacy of their own home can be wrong.

In any good marriage, sex should get better as the years go by, even if you indulge in it less often.

WEAR A BRA TO PARTIES

When I was newly married I went to the Author’s Ball at the Hilton in a party of my husband’s grandest business colleagues.

Very brown from the South of France, I wore a white, strapless dress which was so tight I didn’t need a bra.

The five-course dinner was too much for it. As I stood up to dance with one of the directors it split, leaving me naked to the waist.

DON’T BECOME A CABBAGE

I would like to say a brief word about Cabbage-itis, which is my name for the slough of despond a wife goes through when she has two or more very young children to look after.

She and her husband can’t afford to entertain much, and when they are asked out she finds she is so used to saying ‘No’ and ‘Don’t’ to children all day, she is unable to contribute to the conversation.

If you are going through this stage – and I think it is one of the real danger zones of marriage – remember that it isn’t going to go on for ever.

The children will grow up, go to school, and you will have acres of free time to go back to work, to take up hobbies, and to make new friends.

Remember that your husband must always come first, even before the children.

He probably isn’t having a very easy time either: pushed for money, harassed at work, coming home to a drab, fractious wife every night. So don’t catalogue your woes: concentrate on giving him a good time.

SPOT A CHEAT

A great fallacy is that marriage stops you falling in love with people. It doesn’t.

There are indications that your partner is having an affair:

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

FOR HIM: 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.

If she suddenly gets sexually revved up.

If you have a man friend to stay – and he knows where to put things away when he’s doing the drying up.

TRY TO FORGIVE AFFAIRS

Infidelity is awful, but for the person committing it, it’s often just a frolic. Forgive, is my advice. It will blow over.

I am also very much against friends who think they are doing you a good turn by telling you your husband is knocking off someone else. Lots of people are at it and if you are, keep your trap shut. You’d be insane to confess.

We had a lovely house in Fulham and there was always a couple in the spare room sleeping with someone who wasn’t their wife or husband. One couple had such vigorous sex that the ceiling came down.

How can anyone even commit adultery any more? You haven’t got a hope! You can say you’re in the office but your husband/wife knows immediately, if they’ve got one of those tracking devices on their mobile phones, that you’re in a hay field. Hideous!

And they can find out all the numbers you’ve rung. These days you have to be much more furtive if you want a secret affair.

IF YOU DON’T FANCY SEX, TALK ABOUT IT

I think I was completely wrong to suggest that men had the right to demand sex, but I still think they should be able to talk about it and say, ‘I love you and I’d like to have it.’

These days, poor men practically need a legal consent form before they touch a woman.

Men ought to be conscious and proud of their sexuality but they’re so insecure they are even afraid to say if someone looks beautiful. I do think it’s a tragedy that they’re so diminished now.

They are terrified of making a pass at a woman.

I love being wolf-whistled. I am honoured at my age. I don’t see why you wouldn’t be unless you’re a very young girl who might be embarrassed by horrible leering. It all depends on context, doesn’t it?

SHARE THE CHORES

Share the household chores.

Fifty years ago I was telling wives to get home early from work to clean the house. Actually, Leo did most of the tidying and was such a wonderful cook he was known as the Escoffier of Putney.

A chap I know is nicknamed the Iron Man – I’d assumed because he was so strong. Actually, it’s because he does all the ironing. Wonderful!

Every marriage should have room for a dog or cat.

Animals cheer you up and you can laugh through them. After one particularly acrimonious row, I was packing my bags when Leo said, ‘You don’t want the poor cat to be the victim of a broken home.’

We started laughing, and the argument was forgotten.

SALUTE HOUSE HUSBANDS

House husbands and shared parenting were unheard of in the Sixties, but today, if you’re lucky enough to have a stay-at-home husband who looks after the kids, be eternally grateful. It’s a tough job and not to be underestimated.

IGNORE SEX SURVEYS

Take sex surveys with a very large pinch of salt.

They usually talk to 20 people in Ealing, then generalise about the whole world from the findings.

I read one recently that said it takes the average woman 13 minutes to achieve an orgasm. That sounds like a long time to me.

Surely it depends on the context and how aroused you are.

LOVE AND CHERISH

Hold these words close to your heart, and your relationship will prosper. I hate it when couples put each other down. Celebrate your wife/husband’s achievements and tell them when they look lovely.

ALWAYS SHARE A BED

Never share razors, have separate TVs if you need to – but always share a bed.

Sex is such a lovely, cheering thing, and if couples stop sleeping in the same bed, it’s the first step towards stopping having sex.

Laughter is key, too. Marriage, I’ve always believed, is kept alive by bed-springs creaking as much from helpless laughter as from sex.

ROWING AT BEDTIME

I have never agreed with the adage, ‘Don’t let the sun go down on your wrath.’ Why try to resolve a row when you’re both exhausted at bedtime? Far better to go to sleep and everything will seem better in the morning.

THE LAST WORD…

Marriage is not a battlefield it is a partnership, and married people should be partners, not rivals.

And although it is important to be a reliable wage earner, a splendid cook, a good manager and magnificent in bed, the most priceless gift one married person can give to another is a merry and loving heart.

Adapted from How To Stay Married by Jilly Cooper (Penguin £9.99). © Jilly Cooper 2018. To order a copy for £8.99 (offer valid to 23/10/25; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.