Part 5

DOROTHY DIX.

Dorothy Dix—Her Book

Dorothy Dix—Her Book

HOW A HUSBAND LIKES TO BE TREATED

Altho marriage has been the chief business of woman since Eve pulled off the first wedding in the Garden of Eden, women have not yet mastered the first indispensable principle of success in their profession. Millions of women have been married. Hundreds of thousands of women marry annually, and yet, as a class, women do not know how to treat a husband.

Here and there is a shining exception to this rule, and the result is an inspiring picture of domestic bliss. But the great majority of women still go stumbling along into misery and divorce because they have not had the wit to find out how to rub man’s fur the right way, and make him purr under their hands.

In a word, women fail to strike just the right note in their attitude towards their husbands. Sometimes they treat them better than they deserve. Sometimes worse, but seldom do they treat the men just as the men would like to be treated.

Perhaps the real reason that women fail in this most important particular is because they make the mistake of treating a husband as if he were a rational human being, and the same sort of an individual inside of the home circle that he is outside of it.

Never was there a greater error. The John Smith to whom a woman is married is no more the John Smith of the business world than he is some other man.

The John Smith, who is a lawyer, or a doctor, or a grocer in the outer world, is a big, strong, broad, self-reliant man who looks at everything in a large way, and is just, and tolerant, and even stoical in meeting the vicissitudes of life. The woman who marries him has perceived all of these qualities, and loved him for them, and she naturally expects him to exhibit these characteristics in home life.

Fatal blunder. John Smith, the business man, may be dealt with on a plain, sensible, aboveboard platform, but John Smith the husband, has to be jollied, and cajoled, and petted, and wheedled along the road he should go, if there is anything doing in the domestic felicity line in the household of which he is the alleged head.

Now the majority of husbands average up quite as well as the majority of wives, but even when a man is really good, and true, and strong, experience teaches his wife that there are three ways in which he likes her to treat him. They are:

(a) Like a baby.

(b) Like a demigod.

(c) Like a good fellow.

No matter how big and strong a man is, nor how many other men he bosses, he wants his wife to treat him as if he were a delicate infant who had to be petted, and nursed, and dandled, and chucked under the chin. There isn’t a man living whose secret ideal of a perfect wife isn’t a woman who puts the buttons in his shirt, and lays out his collar and tie in the morning, who has his slippers toasting on the radiator when he comes home of an evening, and who cooks just the particular thing he likes to eat, with her own hands.

Talk about your women who can hand out intellectual companionship! Produce your living pictures! Exhibit your paragons of virtue! They are simply not one, two, three with the wise dame who pets and fusses over her lord and master. And it isn’t because the man really wants his wife to wait on him. That doesn’t enter into it at all. He’s just like the three-year-old who howls for mama to put on his shoes or butter his bread when there are seven nurses standing around to do it.

Men are babyish in wanting their wives to show them off. The expression on the face of little Tommy while his fond mother is telling the smart things that he said, is exactly the same expression that is on Tommy’s father’s face while his wife is bragging about how he organized a trust, or won a big lawsuit, or was elected judge.

Wise,—oh, a daughter of Solomon is the woman who puts her husband through his paces for the benefit of company. Matrimony is one long, glad sweet song in the household of the lady who acts as a showman for hubby.

Consider also a man when he is sick, or thinks he is sick. How does he want to be treated then? Like a baby. He wants his wife to sit by his bed, and hold his hand, and weep tears of sympathy, and if she doesn’t believe he is going to die every time he has a headache, he considers her a cold, heartless icicle and doubts her affection.

Therefore, the very first principle in treating a husband is to treat him as if he was your littlest baby, and if you do, he will gurgle, and coo just as your two-year-old does when you smother him with kisses, and asks: “‘Oose de most booflest boy on earf, an’ mudders itty, pitty wonder, and world beater?”

Secondly, every husband likes to be treated as if he were a demigod.

Men won’t admit it, but in his soul every husband feels that he has conferred such an inestimable boon upon his wife by marrying her that she can never really repay him, anyway, but that it is up to her to keep busy on the job. Therefore, the least she can do is to act grateful.

The real reason why there is a continual conflict in most families over the money question is not because husbands are stingy, but because a man likes to dole the money out, piece by piece, so that the woman who gets it may have a living exhibition of his generosity.

When a man complains about how extravagant his wife is, and how much her hat and dress cost, it doesn’t mean that he begrudges her a single garment or the price thereof. On the contrary, it is his way of boasting to the world of how prosperous he is, and how well he provides for his family. Stupid, indeed, is the woman who does not comprehend this, and who does not keep her glad rags hanging in public, so to speak, and continually beat upon the cymbal, and chant pæans of praise about how good her husband is to provide her with her lovely clothes.

Nor is this as silly as it sounds. The average man gets practically nothing out of his labor, after he has supported his family, but his board and clothes, and it is pretty discouraging to spend your life toiling for those who take all that you can give, and make no sign of appreciation in return. So it is not strange that husbands like their wives to treat them as a beneficent providence from whom all blessings flow.

Husbands like to be treated as good fellows.

If the average married man could put up one prayer more fervent than all the rest it would be this: “Lord, send me a wife who laughs, and a home that isn’t an understudy to a funeral parlor!”