Yes, you CAN teach your man to stop being cold and distant
Kate did — and it saved her marriage
MY wife Kate’s ultimatum was a profound shock. i never saw it coming. An hour earlier, i’d been at work thinking that life was good. Now my world was falling apart.
Harry, she had told me, you’re a good man and i love you. But we’re not the friends i need us to be. Unless that changes, our marriage will be over in a year and we will be divorced.
i remember a physical flash of panic blurring my eyes. My marriage was in deep trouble and i had no idea why.
But the very nature of that panic should have given me a clue about what had gone wrong, had i been sufficiently aware to see it. it wasn’t the fear of losing Kate that made me desperate to preserve my marriage. if she left, i would lose the children i adored and the comfortable life i’d built for the family. My priority wasn’t Kate. it was me.
Dinner with wise married friends a few nights later exposed the deep fault lines in our marriage.
‘what did i like most about Kate?’ one of them asked. All i could think was that Kate was an accomplished cook who had edited a food magazine before the birth of our two daughters.
‘i like the fact that she understands the chemistry of cooking,’ i said.
Looking back on that mortifying scene now, my answer seems unimaginable. ‘You’re so buttoned up and unemotional. You’re almost psychotic,’ said my friend, incredulously.
At the time, eight years into our marriage, i simply couldn’t understand why my answer provoked such a furore. it didn’t occur to me that my gorgeous, vivacious wife needed to be valued as the lovely person she was, far more than for her technical competence as a cook.
However, the fact that today we have an unrecognisably stronger and happier marriage — we celebrate our 30th anniversary next summer — is evidence that i did undergo a radical change.
The shift was not instantaneous, but it began with a decision to put Kate first. for the first time i started to cherish and adore my wife, and our hopelessly unhappy relationship became a flourishing, contented one.
The turnaround in our marriage, it emerged last month, echoes a national trend. New research that i conducted myself as the research director of the Marriage foundation records a sharp fall in the number of women seeking divorces: just 4.2 per cent want to end their marriages in the tricky first five years — the lowest level since 1973, and almost half the 7.9 per cent recorded in 1986, the peak year for marital breakdown and actually our own wedding year.
i am heartened by these statistics. And there is one overriding reason why fewer women today are seeking divorces in these crucial early years. Men have, quite simply, raised their game and shown more emotional maturity.
Men’s commitment relies on buying into a shared plan for the future, making a decision to put our spouse first. As social and family pressures to marry have receded, fewer men are ‘sliding’ into married life because it is the ‘right thing to do’. Those men who do marry mean it and are much clearer about their commitment. The result is a lot fewer disillusioned wives filing for divorce in the early years.
As oUr own marriage teetered perilously close to the brink, i knew i had always been wedded to the idea of marriage itself as a lifetime commitment.
what i hadn’t understood — as stupid as it may sound — is that you can only achieve that through real emotional intimacy. in fact, i’d come to see being emotionally reserved and having a stiff upper lip as a badge of honour.
on the advice of my friends, admittedly with great reluctance, i sought help from a counsellor who helped me open up and realise how i’d become the way i was.
so much of who we are is formed by our family background. My parents undoubtedly loved me. But the combination of Dad leaving home when i was three and Mum sending me to boarding school at the age of seven proved toxic for me. i coped by closing down and becoming introverted and independent.
single-mindedly, i pursued a path that would lead to a success-ful career. After school i joined the Navy and, aged just 21, flew into battle in the falklands war as a commando helicopter pilot.
soon after my return i met Kate, then 19 and a cookery school student, at a Valentine’s Day party in 1984. My job as a Navy pilot was exhausting and demanding. Kate doubtless attributed my lack of communication when i was home on leave to tiredness. But she must have seen some potential in me because we were married two years later.
when i left the forces and we moved to Asia, where our children rosie and Polly were born, my focus on work and children, and detachment from Kate, became entrenched. even six months on from our confrontation, i was hopeless. i thought i’d developed an awareness, but singularly failed to put it into action.
once, when we were talking about it to my counsellor, Kate burst into tears. i still had not recognised that the appropriate reaction was to hug her. instead, i just sat there, mute and frozen.
Later that day, i found a letter on my pillow. it was from Kate, a ‘job spec’ setting out the terms and conditions of what it meant to be Harry’s wife. she began with the perks: the nice flat where we lived, the holidays and travel, the family car, and the comforts of life. Then she went on to tell me about the responsibilities of being parents together, of being a mother, of caring for our children and keeping our home organised.
Kate’s letter ended on a note of despair. ‘But what i really need from our marriage isn’t a job, but a friend,’ she wrote. ‘will i ever get that? who knows? who cares?’
Her question was rhetorical, but the answer implicit: i didn’t care; not about Kate, at least — although i did care about the impact her leaving would have on me. As i sat on my bed reading the letter, those last few words struck me to the core.
‘what on earth have i done?’ i thought. i went to find Kate in the next room and got down on my knees. ‘Kate,’ i said, with genuine contrition, ‘you have no reason to believe that i will change. But i will.’
it was as if a physical switch had been turned on in my brain. for the first time, i knew that i needed to make our marriage work not ‘for the sake of the kids’ — which really meant me. i needed to make it work for Kate. she deserved it.
PUTTiNg Kate first meant wanting to get to know her. it sounds mad after so many years together, but i barely knew what made Kate tick. we went on a weekend marriage course where i learnt how to hear things from Kate’s perspective.
Previously, for example, if she asked me to pick my trousers off the bedroom floor, i might have taken it as criticism and reacted defensively. it was all about me. Now i heard that keeping the bedroom tidy was important to her and made her feel valued.
it also meant choosing to lift responsibilities from her shoulders whenever i could. initiating things and being proactive made her feel like i was caring for her.
After a particularly frosty Christmas — because of my disastrous last-minute half-wrapped purchase — friends suggested i ask Kate what she wanted ahead of time.
Asking her felt odd at first, as if it might spoil the surprise. But, of course, it made Kate feel loved because i’d thought about her. Today i’m often thinking of the next big event months in advance.
My best ever present was a 40th birthday party with all her friends, followed by a weekend away for the two of us. The whole thing was a surprise. i’d cleared her diary and organised childcare without her knowledge. it blew her away.
Today, after almost 30 years together, our marriage is unrecog-nisable from that terrible day of confrontation. we are now in england again, where we live in somerset on a smallholding.
Besides rosie, now 24 and married, and Polly, 22, we have four more children — grace, 18, sizzle, 16, Charlie, 14 and Johnnie, 12. our marriage is robust: full of laughter, occasional healthy bouts of contention, and above all, love.
i do not find it hard to tell Kate i love her; neither do i fail to cherish her and celebrate our relation-ship. i am profoundly glad that our marriage has endured, just as i am that the divorce rate in Britain is also declining.
My work is for all the Harrys and Kates who needn’t get into the mess we did. i’ve since taught thousands of couples how to have strong and happy relationships.
These latest statistics showing that more couples are riding out the turbulent first five years of their marriages; the years when, typically, children come along, fill me with optimism.
Men, it seems, are not behaving as badly as they used to. And i am proof that even the most intransi-gent of bad habits can be broken. i have my beloved Kate to thank for my transformation. it was her letter of resignation that proved how much i wanted her to stay.