HUSBAND SCHOOL GRADED ON CURVE

Husband school, if you want to know, has one major problem:

The teachers.

With such poor examples leading class, who are they to judge?

Start with the fairy book life of this former prince.

If you stream enough ‘mocumentary’ history of earlier regimes you learn how important the husband is.

Young royal needs to find a wife to keep the line moving; Old king needs to marry his daughter off to support his own regime.

There it is, a perfect match.

That’s Prince Charles with his wife on the left and King Charles with his wife on the right.

Note that they are not the same woman.

If you’re not an obsessive celebrity royal fan that detail may have slipped your attention.

Did the prince pass husband school? He did not.

You can’t pass if you get married and still see your girlfriend, who is also married.

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The guy on the left is the ex-husband with the new or future husband on the right.

Before their divorce, the man on the left had to know the man on the right was doing his wife.

Didn’t he?

If he did, do you think he blamed her for stepping up?

Would you?

More importantly, would you take husband school advice from him?

Teacher: If you’re wife is banging the man who would be king, and you knew what happened to his first wife, you need to live with it.

Student: So it’s okay to keep humping away even if she’s riding the royal rod?

Teacher: Think of it as a royal honor to share the face of the United Kingdom.

Student: Are we looking at the same grimacing face?

Teacher: We’ll have none of that here. She’s simply being human and taking on the characteristics of her master.

Student: You’re confusing her with dogs.

Teacher: Am I?

Husband Material vs Wife Material

Wearing blue is the twice divorced woman who married the former king of England.

That she was divorced once or twice was not an issue with the royal playboy who had a strong penchant for married women.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I also have a strong penchant for married women, like the one I married.

Did the husbands of the married women Prince Edward grinded on mind his royal interference in their relationships?

Or were they proud possessors of a royal mistress while they played the role of royal cuckold?

If they were to teach a class in husband school, what would it be called?

‘How To Accept The Royal Protuberance In Married Life’ sounds about right.

That’s where you’d learn about prima nocta.

The phrase prima nocta, based on the Latin “first night,” is a shortened and corrupted from jus primae noctis, “right of the first night.” It generally names an ancient tradition in which all noble lords, whether kings or dukes, had the right to have sex with any of their female subjects—regardless of their will and even with a virgin bride—on her wedding night.

Let’s agree that the royals here would be poor teachers in American husband school with their cultural weirdness.

Not Much Better Here?

Another young women marries an older man.

He was thirty-six, she was twenty-four.

Did she know she would live with someone as needy as he said he was?

“If I don’t have sex every day, I get a headache,” John F. Kennedy would remark to anyone who would listen, from British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to a lowly senatorial aide.

Even in the pantheon of sexual narcissists drawn to politics, Kennedy’s obsessive conquesting remains the gold standard for bad behavior. Here, a gallery of some (but almost certainly not all) of his most notable trysts.

I’d say yes, and she went along to get along.

Jackie was not in the dark about any of this, Flanagan says: She once gave a tour of the White House to a Paris Match reporter and, when passing Wear’s desk, remarked in French, “This is the girl who supposedly is sleeping with my husband.”

Husband School For The Rest Of Us

Being a husband is not a calling from the Lord. But if that’s what you need to hear to keep from being a jackass husband, go for it.

Like being a father is more than a sperm donation at the right time and right place, being a husband takes practice after proper instruction.

Hence husband school. There’s a book of the same name but it leans more toward the idea of a ‘calling.’

This post is more about paying attention to husband influencers, good and bad.

Charles, Edward, and Johnny? Bad, bad, and worse husbands.

(By the way, did you know the Church of England frown upon divorcees remarrying while their former spouse is still alive?)

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Good husbands help wives understand their life together, which is hard to do if there’s someone at the door, on the phone, on the computer longing for the husband’s time and touch.

A good husband knows how to manage themselves in their marriage. If not, things become unmanageable and no one’s got time for that.

Be a good listener, not the kind that says, “You told me this five minutes ago. Are you all right?”

Explain things that need explaining without, “I told you this a hundred times. Let’s go for one hundred and one, one hundred and two, one hundred and three. Tell me when to stop.”

If a wife is too frightened or intimidated to say anything, I’ll help:

“Stop.”

If you’re running your mouth and see that your wife is upset?

Stop.

If your wife is upset, find out why and talk it out. Make suggestions. Be helpful.

Divorced baby boomers in the audience have either been to Bad Husband School, or married women who went to Bad Wife School.

Older folks on their seventh marriage? What can you say but they must like a good wedding party.

They all have something to say about what they’ve learned over the years.

Ask one, but be sure you block some time out because they may never finish the story of their sad life reclaimed by a good woman, then another, and another, and another.

And none of it’s been their fault. Trust them at their word?

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Long married people can’t be trusted any more than the frequent flyer.

They are enablers, ignore each other, or hate each other in the name of love.

Or, and this eventually surfaces, they are religious fanatics who take their wedding vow as the Word of God Almighty, even if they wrote it themselves.

Good work if you can find anyone who agrees, especially if they take your Husband Class.

But Davy Oolala, tell us about your long marriage. Which one are you?

Well, I was thirty-one, wife was twenty-nine.

By then my record was clean. Didn’t get married the day before I graduated from high school; no Army wedding in uniform; no college bride; no lingering relationships from my travels.

There was great potential, but I was a poor husband prospect to settle down with. In a world of abusive, cheating, fucksticks finding each other time after time, I took a longer view.

In my girlfriend’s car at a stoplight and some shady character on the sidewalk starts making gestures.

Who was it?

“That’s my old boyfriend.”

I scheduled our breakup after that.

“I want you to meet my family.”

So I did. Broke up soon after.

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“Someone’s at the door trying to smash their way in. I’ve got to open it.”

It was my girl’s ex-boyfriend. It was two in the morning.

Ask me how that turned out.

But we didn’t break up.

I met her family. After a few days the dad said, “If my girlfriend talked to me the way she talks to you I’d be on the bus out of town.”

He was a much-married step-dad with adult kids he didn’t raise sprinkled around the country.

I figured he’d bussed out often enough that he still knew the schedule.

The day of my wedding he offered me money to call it off. I felt the love, not the money.

As a young father my now father in-law said, “I don’t like the way you treat your wife and talk to your kid.”

The guy was taking me to Husband School and Father School?

Nice try. Many years later I took him to Caregiver School when the medical establishment gave up on him and Parkinson’s.

Class lasted five years.

Ask me how that turned out.

The short version: Be an uplifting man, not a beatdown man. Your wife and kids don’t need the treatment visited on you.

Yes, it’s harder to uplift, but not when you start early. If you were raised in a beatdown house, find someone strong and work it out.

And be willing to listen.

Husband School is adjourned.