The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands

OK, no I don't have any breaking news for you — I clearly don't have a husband. But I found a book in my roommate's room with such an interesting title that I had to read it. It's called "The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands," and I'm only partway through it. But the advice in it is so different from most of the things that people tell women about marriage that I am really enjoying it.

The author (yes, it's the famous Dr. Laura) basically attacks women for nagging their husbands and being selfish, and she attributes these attitudes to the feminist movement that has made women feel like any submission to their husband allows him to be domineering and controlling. Wrong. I see so many women come into the store and complain about their husbands — or, even worse, they make their husbands feel stupid and belittle them by insinuating that they're dumb and can't even do anything right paying for groceries.

I have always told myself that I want my husband to wear the pants in our family, because that's how it should be. A husband and father should be the patriarch and the leader of the household, although that doesn't mean that the wife should be cowering behind him. It's supposed to be a partnership and a relationship where two people have found their best friends and are clinging to them forever.

At what is more frightening to me is that there are a lot of men who just put up with abuse from their wives because they feel like that's just "how it is." There are TV shows that make the husband look foolish and that all they have to do is apologize to their wife for buying the new lawnmower without permission, bring home a dozen roses and admit they were wrong — and the wife reluctantly accepts it but still plans to bring it up when something else bothers her.

Why do the women never compromise at all, either on TV shows or oftentimes in their actual marriages? What ever gave us the idea that we are perfect and that the men we're in relationships with are the ones with all the problems? It really does look pretty horrible when you realize that neither person in a relationship is without flaws — and there are probably things you're doing that are just as annoying as what he's doing.

I have no husband. I don't even have a date most of the time. But I do know that when I find Mr. Right, I want to treat him like Mr. Right — and I hope that he'll forgive the little quirks about me that might make me Mrs. Wrong at times. That's all we can really hope for, isn't it?