Relationship trouble? Forget therapy and learn to love again ...
A FEW years ago, the journalist and stand-up comic Andrew Clover was arguing with his wife. Following the advice of relationship experts, the couple decided to take a break.
“We ended up at Luton airport at six in the morning,” says Andrew. “Livy was angry because I’d forgotten to print out the tickets, and I was angry because she expected me to stand in the queue while she roved the terminal looking at scarves. We had a huge row, and came home to debts. It made me realise that most love rules were wrong, or easily misinterpreted.”
So what other things do the experts get wrong?
“They’re always saying, ‘Talk about your feelings.’ Some time before, I’d been asked to write a pamphlet for new Dads. I wrote it, but they returned it saying, ‘You haven’t talked about a dad’s feelings.’ When you are a new dad your feelings are, ‘I’m really tired. I don’t think you love me anymore, and we’re never going to have sex again.’ I would contest that saying that brings couples together.
“In reality, women talk about their feelings. They say, ‘I’m fed up finding your socks on the floor,’ and the man retreats like a snail. Experts say, ‘You should air your feelings,’ but the opposite is true. Appreciate each other. Be grateful for what you have. Don’t expect a soulmate. Expect a housemate with occasional love. Then you won’t be disappointed.”
Clover had previously written a column called Dad Rules for The Sunday Times and it struck him that if he could rewrite the rules for love, in a humorous way, he’d have a great basis for a novel.
Choosing advice and then fitting a plot around it proved complicated in the extreme. But with his new novel, Learn Love in a Week, he’s pulled it off brilliantly. Divided into days, each chapter explores one love rule, and begins with an exercise of the day. Yet the following narrative, about a couple in crisis and the love tangles of Emma, falls naturally into place. It’s a laugh-out loud novel, and is highly readable, yet wise.
It’s written from the viewpoints of three people; Arthur, his wife, Polly, and a mutual friend, the singleton Emma. How did he capture the female voices so well?
“My wife’s friends are endlessly sitting in our kitchen drinking white wine, wittering on about the men out there. They’d say, ‘Go for an older man it’s like getting a rescue dog, go for a younger it’s like getting a puppy.’
Before completing the book, Clover tried out some of the scenarios at his stand-up comedy show Love Rules — and it went down brilliantly, particularly in Edinburgh.
“I had great fun there,” he says. “I met this women, Morag, who said she’d been married for 48 years. She said her husband was really good to her. I asked what was the best thing he did, and she said, ‘He brings me a cup of tea, every morning.’ Then I asked her what was the worst thing, and she said, ‘He never puts sugar in.”
Clover and his wife Livy have three daughters aged ten, nine and five. The family in his book is pretty close to his own, he says. Has his advice to others changed how his own relationship works?
“I ought to be able to say, ‘I now have a great relationship,’ but we still have our ups and downs. I think we’ve learned how to cope with each other much better. We’ve learned there is no magic cure, but that you can develop habits and a discipline that, practised day by day, can change you.
“I found if I go running in the woods, as Malcolm, in the book, advises his friend Arthur to do, and if I stretch by a tree for five minutes, it changes my outlook. I’m calmer. I get on better with people. They want to give me more work. And, yes, my missus and I seem to agree better.”
*Don’t go to couples therapy. That implies that your relationship needs more work. I say, couples need more play.
*Don’t talk about your feelings. This generally means women talking and men, like snails, retreating, hurt.
*Magazines are always giving hot tips for a better sex life. The secret of love is to have bad sex often.
*Work out why you’re angry. You’re probably blaming your partner for your anger.
*Many relationships are killed by myths. ‘I will be happier when I move to Spain.’ Examine your myths. Work out if you really want this new life.
*Be aware that you can’t feel love all the time. But you may for a few moments. Notice those moments and be grateful.
Learn Love in a Week by Andrew Clover is published by Century at €18.75. Kindle: €9.18.
