Dear Women who make my Husband sorry he married me...

I'm sure you know who you are.

You’re the ones who make dinners like home made steak and kidney pie, or make your own pasta, or fill the house with the scent of baking scones and cakes. 

Or the ones who iron five workshirts for husband on a Sunday evening.  As well as the children’s school uniforms for the week.  And in some crazy cases, even the tea towels and the sheets.

Please stop.  Every time we’re in your house, chatting casually, being neighbourly or making sure our friendship doesn’t flounder, and you start whipping out flour and actual vegetables, and big lumps of meat from the fridge, you’re driving him mad.

It’s a bit of a letdown to go home to a takeaway or a pasta stir in, after that.

I don’t make dinners anymore. 

I did, for years, but found it a thankless sort of a task.  So I gave up. I wasn’t enjoying myself.  His Nibs had the same reaction to every dinner.  Whether it was a jar of red goo thrown at some pasta, or a home baked pie, with pastry made from scratch, which didn’t happen very often, he’d always say “That was lovely, love, thanks.”

Even when it was a plate of absolute scutter.

Eventually I gave up.  There was no glory, and I’d become fed up of spending the evenings mashing carrots, when I could have been watching the soaps.

After we did all the fighting over the housework, and got a cleaning lady, I gave up ironing too.  She, marvellous sweet angelic person that she is, does it.  His Nibs still irons his own work shirts, because he has a uniform and likes to be sure he’ll have enough for the week, and I won’t do it.

You wives who met their husbands twenty years ago, like His Nibs and I did, and have had three children, and don’t seem to have aged a day, you’re not doing me any favours either.

I’m at least three dress sizes bigger than I was when first we met, having had no children whatsoever.  And my hair now grows snow white, and is allowed to do so until a visit to the hairdresser becomes inevitable. Because I look like a skunk, with my white stripe. 

And I gave up all that caper I was so into when we met first, of putting on lovely makeup every morning.

I go to work, and pay half the bills.  And spend a fair part of the rest of my life on the laptop ranting and raving about everyone who annoys me.

I know that it’s not politically correct to say any of this.  I know that His Nibs is supposed to make the dinner as often as I do, and iron half the clothes and what have you.  The difficulty is that he is very good at dealing with all bins, and walking the dogs, and doing the “poo patrol” in the garden (dog poo, obviously, you foul minded articles), he keeps the cars oiled and checks tyres and changes plugs and other man type jobs. 

He’s not great at fixing leaky taps or hanging shelves. To be honest, he’s banned from using his own drill since he made the hole the size of his head in the wall when he was trying to hang a shelf.  But in the day to day stuff, he does all the traditional man jobs.

And in fairness, he does the laundry and the washing up too.  He used to clean all the bathrooms and wash the floors, on the days when I emerged victorious from the housework wars. 

And he has never once spent money on a recipe book, or on a random pan that we’ll never use.  That’s me.  I go into shops and when I see the meat thermometers and cake pans I feel a bit guilty and tell myself that if I had the necessary instruments, I’d probably cook my weekends away.

I don’t of course, and we never have space for the things we actually need in the cupboards. Like food and plates to put our takeaways on.

I’d imagine His Nibs, in his quiet way, knows that he’s been sold a bit of a pig in a poke.  You don’t have to shove it down his throat.  Try to look as if you don’t know what you’re doing the next time we’re in your house. 

Burn an onion or something.

Or I’ll make him stop being your friend, and you’ll have lost the person who believes you’re a hero.