The husband trap

Around 25 years ago it became clear that there existed only two groups that could still be bullied by journalists without fear of public backlash. These were the upper classes and husbands. Female ramblings about how annoying men are began, and continue, to go down well and strike a chord of recognition among wearied women. (Men, by the way, have never been allowed to write columns about how annoying women are.)

From my perspective, it can be both helpful and unhelpful to have a regular ‘gig’ attacking my own husband. I wrote a weekly ‘Family Life’ column in the Sunday Telegraph (from 1994 to 2000). The main positive is that the annoyance of domestic life can be monetised; but, on the other hand, the wife is looking out for, and almost requiring, the husband to commit irritating acts for ammunition.

I’ve never gone so far as to entrap Giles into bad behaviour for a husband-bashing article, but the dimples in his cheeks as I rise to his everyday provocations remind me that he himself has pointed out that ‘at least these little spats partially pay our bills’. We’ve both admitted that being on Gogglebox saved our marriage, but it disturbs me that our on-screen appearances sometimes seem to celebrate my scolding him on a weekly basis.

A friend who was at the forefront of the anti-husband writers found that her marriage fell victim to the tension between her public and private lives. Her books about her hopeless husband were so popular that she was given a series deal; but she was so good at eking out annoyances that by the fifth book she had divorced him.

Now the well-informed literary reviewer Melissa Katsoulis has decided to join in the debate about men as social stereotypes in her addition to the husband-lit canon.