The Only Husband

Psychologists have converted the world to the belief that being born an Only Child is almost worse than being born deformed. Some psychologists go further and throw grave doubts on the probability that the Oldest or Youngest Child will ever grow up mentally normal. The parent who intends to do the best for his family should have only Middle Children, presumably killing off the first and last born. The Only Child gets too much of the parents’ love or hate. He is selfish, criminal, mentally unawakened, a bad father in his turn — and, since the growth of psychosomatic medicine, liable to more than his fair share of disease; any corporation that gets too many Only Children on its payroll will be heading for bankruptcy.

It seems to me that most of the dangers that threaten the Only Child are just as likely to threaten the Only Husband. Even though there may be areas of the world in which polyandry flourishes, even though there may be large numbers of eupeptic bigamists, even though in societies with a high divorce rate no husband of a popular girl need ever feel lonely, there is still a large number of Only Husbands and I think it is time that psychologists got round to investigating them. Like most things if you really sit down and think about them, they turn out to be pretty unhealthy.

The Only Husband is liable to have to sustain the full impact of his wife’s love-hate. If she is a very loving wife she may undermine his maturity. Instead of presenting him with a series of situations of increasing complexity, she is apt to solve his problems for him. For example, the Only Husband cannot find his socks. In many homes, instead of making him work out for himself where they are likely to be, the wife dashes off and finds them. If she is turning the hate on, the Only Husband feels unwanted. If he is receiving the full impact of her love, he determines to make no effort at all next time.

To carry the example of the socks a little further: if the Only Husband had other husbands in the home with him, he would find his wife’s cherishing care spread out among them and, while not finding himself in the dreadful position of being totally excluded and always having to find his socks for himself, he would learn by experience that only one time in four, perhaps, could he expect his call for help in dealing with a situation to be answered. He might eventually learn the satisfactions of helping his wife to find her stockings and even, provided he had it in him in the first place, learn the deep sense of achievement to be gained from helping the other husbands to find their socks.

The Only Husband is liable to want to draw attention to himself, to be the center of things instead of just one member of an integrated group. He may even get to the point of insisting that his wife leave the household chores to applaud his imitations of Frederic March. When he meets other husbands at parties he sulks at having to share the limelight with them. He is a bad listener and a bad audience. He becomes boastful and overbearing, though sometimes he goes to the other extreme and retreats into his shell and becomes paralyzed with a shyness that may easily turn to sulks. If there is such a thing as the opposite of a catalyst, he is it.

The Only Husband is apt to fuss over minor ailments in order to gain even more of the love and sympathy to which he feels entitled. He falls off things, low things. He suffers flesh wounds. He feels vague diseases coming on and demands such forms of preventive medicine as rest, hot drinks, and temporal massage. If his wife is a woman who takes her duties to her neighbor seriously, he will receive the news that she is going out to indulge in community service with wild claims that she ought to stay home and look after him. When his wife is ill he is apt to feel ill too, though in a more interesting way. He will do what he can to help her but he will expect it to be remembered in detail and he will, before long, be busy establishing himself as a more baffling patient than she has ever been.

The Only Husband tends not to progress from the Pleasure Principle to the Reality Principle. He becomes emotionally disturbed when things are as they are and not as he wants them to be. In acute cases the Only Husband will try to break them if he can get at them. If the trouble is something you cannot throw across a room, like a bank, he broods darkly on getting after those in control with a disemboweling knife. He is in the habit of appealing to his wife to agree that the nature of things should be altered in his favor. The overindulgent wife may well ruin his judgment and his capacity for adjusting to the world he lives in by agreeing; whereas the wise wife will point out that there are many other husbands in the world and their rights must be considered too.

The Only Husband must be encouraged to go out and meet others. Membership in community organizations can do wonders for him. So can participation in such sociable sports as golf. It is probably true that joining in the life of a golf club has saved many an Only Husband from mental disease, ulcers, uxoricide, grand larceny, and indulging in Art.

Except in rare cases, it is better that the Only Husband should not be sent away from home for long periods. At one time it seemed that such male companionship as would be afforded by being a drummer or the like would be valuable in helping the Only Husband to come to terms with the world — of course with periods of holiday at home. But nowadays it is thought that deprivation of wifely love and care may result in as serious deformations of character as excessive tenderness. It seems best that the Only Husband, while enjoying frequent short absences from home, should live within the family environment. The WifeHusband bond is, it is now believed, essential to psychophysical health, and where the courts sever it the services of a marriage bureau should be called in to ensure that the Only Husband does not feel deprived but is placed without delay in the care of a woman who will come to replace the wife he has lost.

I have no space to go into detail about all of the many pitfalls that await the Only Husband. It is unfortunately necessary to omit the problems created by the existence of children. The lines on which such situations can be resolved may be suggested by a consideration of the best way to treat the Only Child whose mother neglects him for dogs.