How to Have
an
ALMOST
PERFECT
MARRIAGE

Introduction

 

Reader, I married him. Or e-reader, I married him, if you prefer. For after many, many years of marriage and many, many children, I’ve decided it’s only fair to share my unparalleled expertise and deepest secrets with you in this invaluable guide.

Of course, the ‘him’ to whom I refer is my current husband, Stephen. You may be aware of his numerous books, his countless television shows and his enormous intellect. You probably know he spends his time travelling endlessly, attending operas, meeting famous stars of stage and screen and visiting tribespeople in the remotest corners of the globe. That’s if you read all that rubbish he writes on Twitter, anyway – honestly, that man’s imagination!

If you frequent the Dog & Duck, however, you’ll know the truth. Or the Red Lion. Or Kevin’s kebab van. Because that’s where you’ll almost certainly find him. Not dining at the Ritz or filming something about wizards in New Zealand and certainly not at home helping me take care of our children!

Of course, someone like you can’t realistically expect to have a marriage as perfect as ours, which is why I’ve called this book How To Have an Almost Perfect Marriage, but whether you’re a husband-, wife- or divorcee-to-be or just simply Fry-curious, you’ll learn everything you need to know, and quite a lot you don’t, about the most wonderful years of your life as these nine chapters guide you through every aspect of marriage from proposal to divorce.

WHAT IS MARRIAGE?

According to Vaguelytruepedia.com, marriage as an institution has been around for centuries. The word itself harkens back to Medieval times, when any couple declaring eternal love for each other were ritually transported through the streets, exposed to ridicule and scorn in an open coach known popularly as the ‘mad carriage’. Over the years, this became shortened to ‘mad rage’ and finally lengthened again to ‘marriage’.

Marriage as we know it (i.e. with wedding dresses and confetti as opposed to straightjackets and rotting vegetables) was invented in 1963 by the writers of popular US situation comedy Behitched as a narrative device to create conflict. Up to that point, if a couple appeared in a television show they were almost certainly living in sin, gay or at the very least, mixed race (interestingly, the first inter-marriage kiss ever broadcast occurred in the long-running science-fiction series, Star Trek, when William Shatner married Mr Spock’s rather hairy half-sister in the episode The Stubble with Sybil).

WHY GET MARRIED?

Statistically, 100 per cent of divorces start with marriage. And yet there are still hundreds of thousands of weddings each year – why?

Well, people get married for all sorts of reasons – security, social convention, pregnancy, boredom, fear of being alone, even love. Personally, I fancied a new hat and Stephen was nearby. Of course, we all hope to have a string of marriages to increasingly attractive and wealthy partners, but the reality for many couples is that their marriage will endure for the rest of their lives – a chilling thought and one worth considering before entering into what is, after all, a legally-binding contract (see section on how to get out of legally-binding contracts). While this can seem daunting, it’s equally important to remember that compared with being systematically abused in a nursing home or dying alone in a skip, spending your twilight years with your spouse can be relatively acceptable. Personally, I think it’s always good to see an elderly couple walking down the street hand in hand – it stops them falling over.

There is also the question of money. The tabloids are full of warring celebrity couples for whom the rather unseemly battle for financial remuneration has muddied the marital waters and allowed them to lose sight of the reason they were getting divorced in the first place.

And it can be easy to get carried away with the romance of a wedding – the church, the dress, the horse-drawn carriage, the free bar. People even use the phrase ‘fairy tale wedding’ although very few use the phrase ‘fairy tale marriage’ – unless they’re referring to the original, traditional fairy tale which was generally a pretty gruesome adventure without a happy ending.

This book is intended as a guide not only for those couples about to enter into a state of holy matrimony but also those couples already in a state. If you and your spouse are sitting there, cosily imagining that you have nothing to learn from the following pages, I recommend you attempt the following short quiz and I’m quite confident that you will feel differently by the time you’ve finished.

Right, now that’s all sorted, let’s proceed, shall we? Pop the kettle on, put your feet up, turn the page and let’s begin your seemingly unlikely journey to an Almost Perfect Marriage…