How to be a Husband by Tim Dowling Page B

costly leasehold agreement.
    I stand on the front step for a moment, breathing hard and basking in the hot glow of my righteous anger, until it dawns on me that I have no money and don’t know anyone in London who would automatically take my side in this or any othermatter. I toy with the idea of going back upstairs to pick up the fight where I left off—as if I’d just thought of another point worth making—but I don’t have any keys. The hot glow wears off. It’s cold and windy, and my dramatic exit did not afford an opportunity to grab a coat on the way out. I look up and down the darkening street. Wherever the moral high ground is, I think, it ain’t out here. I quickly realize that the only decision left to make is whether I count to thirty or sixty before swallowing my pride. I settle on sixty, give up at forty-five, congratulate myself on my willingness to compromise, and push the bell.
    â€œHello?” she says.
    â€œCan I come back in?” I say.
    â€œSorry, who is this?”
    Since that day I’ve gradually learned to be more cautious about sticking my flag on any summit of self-righteousness. Claiming the moral high ground is, in the end, just a tactic, one that trial and error has demonstrated doesn’t work very well on my wife. If, for example, I were to leap out of a vehicle my wife was driving during a heated argument—ostensibly because I, a man of quiet sense, could no longer share such a confined space with someone so unreasonable—I know she would not creep along the pavement with the passenger window down, begging me to get back in while conceding that she may have spoken rashly. I’ve tested this, and experience has taught me that she will actually speed off before I’ve had a chance to shut the door. She will not come back, even if it’s raining, nor will she subsequently ring me to find out how I’m coping with my choices.
    A relationship expert I once interviewed over the phoneabout argument techniques (I was looking for shortcuts and cheats, to be honest) asked me, “Do you want to be right, or do you want to have sex tonight?” At the time the whole idea of ceding one’s claim to the moral high ground in order not to jeopardize the prospect of future intercourse struck me as highly unethical, although I had to admit it also sounded like the sort of thing I would do. Still, it wasn’t fair. Why can’t I have sex
and
be right? In a perfect world, my wife would want to sleep with me
because
I’m right.
    The relationship expert, much as it pains me to say it, had a point. In the context of marriage, a moral victory is something you’ll invariably end up celebrating on your own. If you’re going to get on in married life—if you’re going to have sex ever—you’ve got to learn to lose an argument. And to do that, you’ve got to learn how to be wrong. I honestly don’t know where the work of being a good husband finishes, but I have an idea where it starts. It starts with counting to sixty, giving up at forty-five, and pushing the bell.
    Unfortunately being wrong does not come easy to men, even when they are very, very wrong. A man will go to great lengths just to avoid being put in a position where he might be obliged to express uncertainty.
    â€œWhy don’t you just say ‘I don’t know’?” my wife will sometimes shout after I’ve just spent ten minutes trying create the opposite impression. What does she expect? If you don’t want my impersonation of expertise, don’t ask me questions I can’t answer.
    In the company of other men, being wrong is almost impossible to live down; that’s why we spend so much time debatingpoints that can’t be settled one way or another—the hypothetical and the unknowable: the outcome of future sporting events, alternative tactics that might have affected the outcome of past sporting events, the true