Don't Slap Your Wife , livre ebook

Random House Publishers India Pvt. Ltd. - Sunil Vaid

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149 pages

English

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Men trying to be better husbands through trial and error will welcome the wisdom, humour and aphorisms of Don't Slap Your Wife. The book demystifies some of the tribulations married couples face, including day-to-day interactions with each other, adjustments during and after the honeymoon phase, and even pent-up resentment. It asks married men to delve into the innermost workings of relationships to get the best out of the women they have invited into their lives and families. Don't Slap Your Wife deals with a serious subject lightly, and in an inimitably honest and irreverent way. Amusing and thought-provoking, this is an entertaining book that will help husbands navigate the sometimes confusing territory of marriage.

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Publié par	Random House Publishers India Pvt. Ltd.
Date de parution	21 juin 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9788184004465
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0480€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Published by Random House India in 2013
Copyright Dr Sunil Vaid 2013
Random House Publishers India Private Limited
Windsor IT Park, 7th Floor, Tower-B
A-1, Sector-125, Noida-201301, UP
Random House Group Limited
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road
London SW1V 2SA
United Kingdom
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author s and publisher s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
EPUB ISBN 9788184004465
For my mom, Shahni,
perhaps the first mother ever to say to her only son a day before his wedding, From now on, your wife s word should mean more to you than ours.
To answer the question she knew this raised in her son s mind, she added, I will be happy ONLY if you keep her happy.
Contents
Prefaces
1. The Story of the First Night

PART I THE STATUS REPORT
2. An Institution under Siege
3. The Story So Far-the Very Poor Track Record of Men
4. Historical Perspective: Why Have Women Been Universally Oppressed?
5. The Libber s Call

PART II THE PROBLEM
6. Why Is Marriage under Siege?
7. Birth, Propagation and the Boom of Discontent
8. Expectations and Assumptions-the Bane of Marriage
9. The Empire Strikes Back
10. False Sense of Competition and Its Consequences
11. Reactions, Reactions-the Huge Consequences of Inconsequential Reactions
12. Transformation of Perceptions
13. Infidelity, the Marriage Breaker

PART III THE SOLUTION
14. The Choices We Make-the Need to Choose Wisely and Resist Our Inherent Attraction to Wickedness
15. Praise but Don t Appease
16. Don t be a Wimp-or a Dictator
17. Conflict Resolution in the Early Phase
18. Sex versus Love
19. What Wives Really Want and Need-Seeing from Her Perspective
20. Fight the World Together-Marry Early
21. Communication and Apology-a Mighty Weapon Whose Swoosh Can Amputate Your Own Nose, if You Are Not Careful
22. Golden Oldies-Concepts That Have Come a Full Circle
23. Pretence-the Magic Marriage-saver
24. Time Out and Personal Space
25. Don t Expect Justice-It Just Doesn t Exist
26. Legal Issues and Divorce

PART IV A DIRECT WORD OF ADVICE
27. A Word for the In-laws
28. A Word for the Husband
29. Catharsis-a Word from the Wife
30. The Last Word from the Author-For the Wife
Epilogue
A Note on the Author
Preface
I know, I know, I know
I know the portrayal of marriage that I m setting out to draw, where the wife is the perpetrator of injustice, is true of only two out of ten urban homes in India. I also know that in more than double that number of homes, it is the wife who is suppressed, manipulated or tortured by the husband.
But two out of ten is approximately 20 million men, in India alone. Their Western counterparts are not faring much better. Many of these men are suave, urban and well-read. This is the segment in which the malady of the exploitation of husbands is catching on faster than the lure of the smartphone. The problem is compounded by the silence around the subject, just as female exploitation festers when the fear of speaking out against it keeps women silent.
The reason men keep it all bottled up is the ignominy of being considered not man enough . This book is the voice of these men and advice to other men who are thinking about marriage.

W HY THIS BOOK?
One question at the top of the minds of most bachelors (after sex, of course), is-will his would-be wife be compatible with him and his family?
For those of you who are already married: have you ever caught yourself wondering, Do I have a good marriage?
If you have never pondered over this question-that is great! You have as close to a perfect marriage as is possible. You and your spouse have accepted each other as unquestionable parts of your lives. Congrats! However, if you have frequently wondered or, worse, worried about the state of your relationship and about its future, then you are part of the majority of couples who have compatibility issues.
While talking to many of my long-standing male patients who ve got married recently or are planning to get married, I learned that most of them were desperately seeking advice on marriage. Some, seeing the plight of others who were suffering the consequences, were afraid to bite the unforbidden apple. Others had bitten it already but were nibbling at it noncommittally, not sure whether they liked the taste. And a large number had bitten more than they could chew and were now literally choking on what had first seemed a delicious, rejuvenating elixir. As one of my patients, Abhishek, put it, I never realized that the wife I took home as the solution to all the problems of my life would turn out to be the cause of all of them.
Abhishek, like most men of his ilk, won t go to a counsellor because he is shy/ashamed/scared/prejudiced/afraid of social stigma- What kind of a man is he, if he can t even manage his wife? Men like him also somehow feel that though the apple is bitter, it is not YET rotten enough to require a marriage counsellor.
Why don t you refer to a good book on marriage, then? I asked Abhishek.
Which book? he asked.
Any good book-I m sure there must be more books on marriage than there are matrimonial advertisements in a Sunday newspaper, I offered in my know-it-all voice.

My wife suggested I read a book to improve our relationship. It is titled Women Are from Venus and Men Are Wrong.
There are books, replied the burly Haryana lad, but they are all so politically correct that you feel they stop well short of addressing the main issue, leave alone tackling it. They all tell you what should be done ideally-not what can be done in real life. And most address issues purely from a female perspective. They don t have any advice for the decent, non-tormenting husband, about how to cope with a demanding wife.
This seemed unlikely, so I decided to check it for myself. In the end, I was surprised at the veracity of the young man s comment. Even some of my favourite authors who had written extensively about the male-female equation preferred to steer clear of the advice that would have befitted today s changing paradigms of the husband-wife relationship. Their books, though interesting and conceptually spot on, just didn t address the issues foremost in the minds of disillusioned urban males, especially regarding how to balance their modern wives aspirations vis- -vis their own perceived mindsets or, worse, their conservative family s expectations.
So, dear friends, here are my two bits of advice-consider them and keep it at the back of your mind even if you disagree with some of them. It might prove to be a marriage-saver. For, if the source of a person s greatest happiness and biggest pain is one and the same thing-marriage-then it makes sense to invest in it to make it blissful.
Let the journey begin.

This book is dedicated to you, dear reader, for you are the reason for my existence.
I m grateful to you from the core of my heart and assure you that any feedback or communication from your side, whether by mail, e-mail, a bouquet or a slipper thrown at my head, will be given due attention, even if I don t agree with you.
Dr Sunil Vaid
1
The Story of the First Night

While creating women, God promised men that they would find good and ideal wives in every corner of the earth. He then made the earth round.
T o phir, kal billi kisne mari? (So then, who came out tops on the wedding night?)
The statement pulverized the veneer of courtesy between the three newlyweds. All their Helloji, what-a-nice-day, lovely-evening -type statements were suddenly pointless.
They had met the day before at Mumbai airport, which was flooded because of the early rains. Flights had been cancelled. What had brought the group together was that they were spending their respective honeymoons in the same resort in Goa and had travelled together from Mumbai in the mini-bus that the travel agency had arranged. Now, they were meeting after their respective first nights as they ventured out to the beach.
The reclining chairs in the shack opposite the resort were inviting and Saloni was the first to settle down under the netting strung up on poles by the shack owner to keep the leaves and the occasional coconut from landing on the guests. Except for a single bearded person sitting at the makeshift bar, the shack was totally deserted. The beach and the sea formed an idyllic backdrop and the solitude and rhythmic whoosh of the waves had lulled Saloni to near-slumber. Parminder and Savitri spotted her and joined her to chit-chat.
There was a momentary hush because of the brashness of the question, followed by blushes on the faces of other two ladies. This was something they had all wanted to know but didn t know who to compare notes with.
Registering their predicament, Parminder, a buxom, tall, Punjabi lady in a stylish, white chiffon top and see-through capris, who had asked the question, decided to take it forward.
Brushing her fashionably styled shoulder-length tresses, she said, curling her painstakingly painted, blood-red lips, In our case, I made it clear who the boss is in this marriage and who will always be! To emphasize her statement, she snapped her carefully manicured fingers and raised her index finger as a mark of triumph.
The other two took a collective deep breath of disbelief.
Yes! I refused to cow down to his sexual demands.
Really? Savitri was aghast and her face seemed to have absorbed the crimson colour of her salwar-kameez. Her widely parted eyelids and dilated pupils pointed to her small-town simplicity. Thick, coarse mehndi appl