Comfort and Joy Read Online Free PDF Page A

extraordinarily eager for the mighty husbandly front bottom,
     and you’re improving the chances of your
marriage succeeding – whatever that means – by about 300 per cent. Do the whiny thing about being tired and how you were up
     half the night with X or Y child, and you’re doomed. The whiny thing, which starts off as a temporary measure based on the
     simple fact that you are, actually, broken with child-exhaustion and cracked-nipple agony, segues seamlessly, over the months
     and years, into ‘We are lovely friends’. It’s insidious. When you are lovely friends – and it’s lovely to be lovely friends,
     I’m not knocking it – sex slips down the list of stuff to do. And there is no man alive who wouldn’t like more sex. Ergo,
     there is no man alive who would like less. So. Put out. I know it sounds simplistic, but I’m not making this stuff up: I learned
     it from my first marriage and from all of my girlfriends. It’s very crude and very effective.
    The thing is, even if you give a good impression of being permanently up for it – if you came top of the class at RADA, say
     – the petering usually comes along anyway. It does for me, at any rate. I don’t see how it can’t. Perhaps it’s different if
     you don’t have children. But I have children: three of the blighters. I love them to pieces, but children do stuff to relationships,
     or maybe just to mine – there’s no point in pretending that once they sleep through the night or start getting their own breakfasts,
     or going to school, you slip magically back to where you were to start off with: madly in love and dizzy with longing. You
     don’t. You reinvent the relationship to incorporate Mr Muscle and cooking and nits and arguments and in-laws, and all the
     claustrophobia that brings with it. And because you’re an adult, you crash through it. You say to yourself, ‘It’s like this
     for pretty much every married couple in the world. You get through it. I love him. He loves me. It’s fine.’
    And it
is
fine. It’s more than fine, and besides there are compensations. Many, many compensations, which it behoves me to remember.
     You may no longer live with Mr Take Me Now,
but you’ve acquired a new best friend, someone who knows you intimately in the way that your girlfriends never could, someone
     who truly loves you, warts and all, though hopefully not literally. You never have to do anything on your own again. You have
     a permanent ally, someone who’s always going to be on your side, someone who winks at you at parties and whisks you home,
     lying about babysitters, because he knows you’re not enjoying yourself. Someone to cook for (I love cooking) and save up your
     jokes for, someone to communicate with in shorthand, someone to laugh with and hug and sleep with – that lovely comforting
     sleep, like two peas in a pod, all cosy. Someone, more to the point, who loves the children you have together as insanely
     much as you do. That’s no small thing, is it? That’s maybe the most important thing of all. There are literally hundreds of
     compensations for the death of passion. Thousands. Millions, I expect. It’s just a question of persuading yourself, as other
     people seem to have no difficulty doing, that this bit – companionship – is in fact
better
than what came before it. And I’m a horrible person, because I want both. I want companionship – obviously, who doesn’t?
     – and passion. And I don’t think it’s possible for them to co-exist. I’m forty: I don’t want just passion, like some sort
     of super-slag, hopping about for the hot rumpo for all eternity. On balance, I’d rather have companionship. And I do, plus
     the hottish rumpo as often as I like. So. I don’t really know what I’m moaning about. Except, you know a really beautiful,
     huge roaring fire? I wouldn’t trade the beautiful roaring fire for cosy central heating in every room. I’d rather be cold,
     and then go and sit in front