h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://www.bbc.co.uk/H2G2/guide/A654213
This was written as a tongue-in-cheek reply to an article in a woman's magazine of the 50's. It was entitled "How to keep your man happy" and would be guaranteed to cause a riot if written today. Women, thank God, have bounded out of slavery!(with minimum help from us)

"HOW TO MAKE A WOMAN HAPPY--"THE GOOD HUSBAND'S GUIDE."

Men are simple creatures with simple needs. If you read a woman's guide to making a man happy you will see that it concentrates on filling his stomach with good food, making him comfortable in his home, occasionally permitting him to go to the pub or a football match and from time to time letting him think that he makes a big decision which you, of course, have programmed. Nothing complicated about all that and it has been the simplest of things for the fair sex ever since she got herself created by procuring one of Adam's ribs and demonstrating her gratitude for his generosity by presenting him with a very doubtful apple.

But men beware, -it is no easy job to make a woman happy. You would find it less difficult and much less dangerous to try to keep five hungry lions jumping in turn through flaming hoops than to attempt to keep a woman's emotions under your control.

Women like to please and to feel that they are useful and needed. Not appreciating the obsessive depths to this psychological mechanism you may have the mistaken idea that from time to time you should offer to do some things in the house to help her. You may for instance attempt to prepare the dinner one evening with the idea of creating a romantic atmosphere which you hope could perhaps lead to romantic action. Fatal error. You will discover that there is more to cooking than throwing ingredients into pots and pans and that the question of timing is all important. So you will have your table set, your candles lit, your hi-fi playing soft music, your aperitif poured when you realise you are nowhere near ready to serve any food. This does not upset your little darling, on the contrary it will cause her to give you a superior smile which tells you that you should have known that the meals she is forever putting on the table are not the result of haphazard effort but of exquisite timing.

No, that does not upset her, but something certainly does and you divine that somehow you have offended her. She won't say anything about it, she will in fact talk for a time about inconsequential things but you will notice, not at first, but gradually as the evening progresses, that something has gone very badly wrong with your plan. The warmth and closeness which you had hoped to generate with your grand gesture never materialize and instead she becomes silent, sitting absolutely still, surrounded by a cold fog that gives you the disturbing image of the iceberg waiting for its rendezvous with the "Titanic."

"But why?" - you ask yourself and then her. But of course it's a complete waste of time asking her that question because you're supposed to know the answer even though she knows you can't possibly know it. There could be several reasons why she reacts like that and all of them are linked with the complicated thinking of women.

a) First possibility is that she takes your offer as a signal that you are getting fed-up of her cooking and are afraid to hurt her feelings by saying it directly.

b) She may think you are taking the first step towards independence and that she will soon find you seriously studying the operating manuals for the dishwasher, washing machine, tumble dryer and vacuum cleaner. She will begin imagining questions from you like,
"How do I interpret this label on the collar of my shirt with all the signs on it?" and
"Do you mix coloureds and whites?"
For her, her world of secret codes and man-intimidating pushbuttons is under siege. Her territory is being invaded so she reacts like a disturbed lioness.

c) Later in the early hours of the morning when everybody else is sleeping she will lie awake asking herself why you are doing all this and she'll come up with the answer that you are practising on her with the idea of performing somewhere else.

So you see it could be for one or for all of these reasons or indeed for none of them. Men suffer from the inconvenience of being logical when sometimes it would be better to metaphorically put on a Colombo style raincoat and stumble around hoping for some inspiration. However if we cannot know how to make our ladies happy we can consult a recipe of how to avoid making them unhappy.

* Never explain yourself if you are late or have to go out unexpectedly to dinner or with some business contacts. Women distrust explanations because for them an explanation from a man is an excuse disguised. So your wish to inform your dearest darling of your movements provokes the immediate suspicion that you are hiding something "pas très Catholique". It would be naive to believe that if you decide not to explain yourself all will be well. Far from it, she may indeed react to not being informed of the reason for your absence like a snake that has been stepped on. The consolation is that a snake has only a limited amount of venom it can spit at you but suspicion on the other hand is a deadly virus that poisons the very air you breathe and forms a smog that never lifts.

* Women complain that men don't understand them. This is true but gives rise to the question
"How can this be?"
Your average man is as intelligent as your average woman. He can appreciate the Arts and understand the Sciences. The laws of Nature, the Quantum Theory, the Theory of Evolution and Pythagoras' Theorem once fed into his brain are quickly assimilated and absorbed so how is it that he can't understand women?

The answer is really simple. All theories are presented in a way that is designed to make them understood. By contrast a woman's blueprint is drawn to be confusing because the very last thing a woman wants is to be understood by a mere man. They believe the workings of their minds should be a mystery and utilise all their skills to preserve this primordial trait in their system. This does not, of course impede them from throwing at you in the middle of a little difference of opinion the bitter words,
"You don't understand me anyway...you've never understood me ...you've never even tried."
At such moments men there is only one thing to do, sit quiet and console yourself with the thought that though you have to listen to thunder, it eventually passes. Above all do not make the mistake of saying,
"But I do understand you!"

This absurd presumption on your part will make her so angry that you will find yourself caught up in the eye of a tornado.

· So what are we to dot o make our women happier?
· There was a time at the dawn of human history when the female of the species was happy just cleaning out our caves for us. There were no disputes or arguments as communication took place by grunting and if the woman grunted in a dissatisfied manner then a little tap of a club soon put that right. Joy could be dispensed by throwing her the skin of some furry animal to wear and ecstasy by allowing her to see us clubbing to death our rivals for her favours. Something went badly wrong over the centuries and the woman of today is no longer so passive and so malleable and so easy to please.

So to the question of what effort we can make to bring back the smile to the female face the simple and dreadful answer is -we don't know. There would be some hope if the level of difficulty was no more than was required to combat the Y2K bug in our computers but the software which the good God programmed in Woman is so sophisticated that it automatically changes the moment she suspects some hacker of a man is cracking her code.

*If you can't avoid being in the position where you have the responsibility of making a woman happy then the only piece of useful advice is,

"Remember that living with a woman is like living your life in a revolving door. Don't fight it, just let yourself turn with it. Above all keep your chin up, or as the French say "Bon Courage", remember you have millions of other men in a similar Chaplinesque condition."

'Oh no' I thought when this appeared in my conversation list. This is going to be a tough one. I was delighted to see you had written it, Gaston, though it does need the disclaimer at the top. Unfotunately too many of your fellow martians would take it literally and say 'right on'!

A suggestion about wording: '"But why?" - you ask yourself and then her' might read more easily if it said 'you first ask yourself and then her'

And a typo: '· So what are we to dot o make our women happier?' - 'do to'

But it made me smile. I'd have thought any erring and straying would be 'tres catholique' in every sense, myself. But I am a Brit and was raised a protestant, amd therefore prejudiced.

Personally, I would love to find a man who could cook and would do the ironing. I once had a lodger who did both, but alas, he drew the line at ironing anything for me. And I tried everything I could to get him to do it.

Keep it up!

Ben

Hello again Ben,

Hmmn - that rhymes!
The article really was just a bit of fun I had with a class of "a certain age" with whom I had discussed the original 'serious advice' to wives. Someone suggested sarcastically that it would be a good idea to do a similar article for men so I did so in a manner which was deliberately provocative. It is the best way to get them to speak English without thinking.
You're right about the changes you suggested. There's always something to learn which is a great advantage in AWW.
If you want to amuse yourself I suggest you go to this American site,
[URL Removed by Moderator] and click on to the message board. There you will find a lot of rubbish but look for,
"Need your opinion about the wedding" posted by Michael Bradshaw.
Now he'd be a fine catch for you if you are sincere about the kind of man you are looking for!
I'm going to post one last thing before getting back to work preparing for a heavy schedule in January. This piece is a dialogue created around a mini-story I saw in an English teaching book.
All the best for 2002,
Gaston

Hi Gaston

The mods remove links in posts but not in Guide entries. If you put it on your home page I'll follow the link.

Have a great 2002, and keep writing.

All the best

Ben

Editorial Note: This conversation has been moved from 'The Alternative Writing Workshop' to 'Who am I?'.

No such article.