How to Be a Husband. Tim Dowling

COPYRIGHT

      4th Estate

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

      1 London Bridge Steet,

      London SE1 9GF

       www.4thEstate.co.uk

      This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2014

      Copyright © Tim Dowling 2014

      Tim Dowling asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      Seven of the Forty Precepts of Gross Marital Happiness made their first appearance, in slightly different form, in an article in Guardian Weekend magazine from February 2013

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      Cover photographs: (man) David Levene/© 2010 Guardian News & Media Ltd; (wallpaper) Hudyma Natallia/Shutterstock

      Chapter illustrations © Benoît Jacques 2014

      Jacket design by Keenan

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780007527663

      Ebook Edition © June 2014 ISBN: 9780007527670

      Version: 2017-03-08

DEDICATION

      To Sophie; who else?

      CONTENTS

       Cover

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Dedication

       Introduction

       1. The Beginning

       2. Are You Compatible?

       3. Getting Married: Why Would You?

       4. How To Be Wrong

       5. Am I Relevant?

       6. DIY: Man’s Estate, Even Now

       7. Extended Family

       8. The Forty Precepts of Gross Marital Happiness

       9. Bringing Home the Bacon

       10. A Very Short Chapter About Sex

       11. The Pros and Cons of Procreation

       12. Alpha Male, Omega Man

       13. Coming To Grief

       14. Staying Together – For Better and Worse

       15. Do I Need a Hobby?

       16. Fatherhood for Morons

       17. Keeping the Magic Alive

       18. Head of Security

       19. Misandry – There’s Such a Word, But Is There Such a Thing?

       20. Subject To Change

       Conclusion

       Acknowledgements

       Also Available …

       About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION

      In the summer of 2007 I was asked out of the blue to take over the page at the front of the Guardian Weekend magazine. I say out of the blue, but I’ll admit it was a possibility I’d considered long before the invitation was extended. I therefore received the news with my usual mixture of gratitude and impatience – shocked, thrilled, immensely flattered, and not before time. There was no question of turning down the offer; just tremendous apprehension at the idea of accepting. If I’d thought about wanting it a lot over the years, I hadn’t really given much thought to doing it. What would my weekly column be about?

      ‘I don’t want you to feel you have to write about your own life,’ read the only email I received from the Editor on the subject. Perhaps, I thought, she doesn’t want me to feel constrained by a particular format, or maybe she was wary because the only time I’d ever stood in for my predecessor, Jon Ronson, I’d written about an ordinary domestic event, and the magazine subsequently printed a letter that said, ‘May I suggest that the mystery smell in Tim Dowling’s house is coming from his own backside as he emanates his natural air of smugness and pomposity?’ Whatever the reason, I felt I had my instructions: write about anything you like, except yourself.

      The Editor promptly took maternity leave, and I heard nothing more. The only additional information I received was a date for the first column, in mid-September. As the deadline approached