RULE 59

Treat your partner better than your best friend

This is actually a trick Rule – have you spotted it? If you’ve got a good relationship, your partner already is your best friend, and it would be hard to treat them better than themselves. However, for the sake of argument, let’s say you should treat your partner better than your next best friend.

If your best friend accidentally spilt their drink all over the table, you’d forgive them and quite possibly even laugh about it. Would you do the same if it were your partner? I hope so. I also really hope you’re already skipping on to the next Rule thinking you don’t need to read this one because you’re already doing it. If you’re already a fully paid-up Rules Player, that’s what you should be doing, and if so well done. But I’m reluctantly including it here because sadly I know all too many people who don’t treat their partner as well as they deserve.

Why are you with this person? Because you think they’re the most wonderful person in the whole world and you’d rather spend your life with them than with anyone else. So why would you not treat them accordingly? Why would anyone speak rudely or abruptly to their partner, ignore ‘pleases’ and ‘thank yous’, abandon common courtesies?

I’m not talking about the occasional lapse here. Of course there’s no excuse, but we all have bad days when something comes out a bit brusquely or offhand and we didn’t mean it. I’m talking about people whose normal interaction with their partner is impatient, thoughtless or offhand.

I knew a couple where the woman did this constantly. The man was a lovely guy, but she treated him like dirt. I remember them coming to stay for weekends. ‘Haven’t you brought my bag in from the car yet?’, ‘Get me a cup of tea’, ‘Come on, it’s bedtime – I’m tired and I need you to come up now or you’ll wake me later.’ I know she had manners tucked away somewhere because she used them on the rest of us. But he never got the benefit. They’re divorced now, needless to say.

This is about respecting your partner, treating them kindly, giving them the benefit of the doubt, disagreeing with their viewpoint with friendly interest rather than antagonism, and being able to laugh off mistakes or accidents. So if you ever find yourself getting really irate with your other half over something, think, ‘How would I react if this was a close friend in the same position?’ If the answer is, ‘I’d laugh it off or not mention it’, then you know what to do with your partner.