Hints to Husbands

Recounting Twenty Infallible Signs by Which a Wife's Infidelity May Be Detected

FERENC MOLNÁR

MY dear friend;—I have to admit, your request is not an ordinary one. You ask nothing less than that I describe twenty signs by which a husband may safely and justly deduce that his wife is not behaving herself, or rather:—let us speak more plainly—that she is definitely unfaithful. If you were married yourself, I should politely but firmly decline to reply to your letter—partly, because I do not wish to ruin your own prospects for a happy marriage, and partly, because I am afraid to show other husbands how naive and inexperienced I am. It is highly probable that you, too, will marry one day. I hope the day is so far away that by the time it actually arrives you will have quite forgotten this letter of mine. For I beg of you to burn this as soon as you have read it. I wish to emphasize that the following twenty indications of infidelity are not intended to serve any practical purpose at all. They merely attempt to prove that—in spite of your highly flattering respect for me—I am no wiser than any other man in the world. And one more thing: you are rather modest when you ask me to outline only twenty indications (twenty signs, that is, from every day life) by which a woman may betray herself. I am convinced there are at least 1,427,000 such omens. And if one does not love one's wife, there are even more. But the more one loves his wife, the fewer signs there are. (And if one loves one's wife very much, I don't think one can discover even as many as twenty.)

But here is my answer. A woman discloses that she is unfaithful—

1. If she, who has never before been prompt in all her life and has never arrived home in time for dinner, suddenly commences to be as punctual as a clock and greets her husband with words such as these: "I've been waiting for you for nearly an hour; why do you come home so late?"

2. If her lips and cheeks are rouged and powdered more conspicuously, more daringly when she comes home than when she leaves the house. The difference between the two methods of make-up is about the same as the difference between the expressionist and impressionist schools of painting. When she goes out, she is an impressionist. When she comes home: the rouge is hastily applied, not every colour is in its place, the hues and tints are Isold, not to say, savage in their application—in short, she is an expressionist.

3. If she is not merely more affectionate to her husband than usual, but even more tender than he expects her to be, more gentle than she actually should be. Characteristic of her under the circumstances are sentences such as: "You seem to be tired, dearest heart, you've been working too much lately."—"It's about time for you to rest up a bit." If her husband is taken ill, she immediately mistakes the mildest cold for pneumonia and nurses him wildly and ambitiously. This she does in order to appease, to a certain extent, her stricken conscience. On many occasions, she positively regrets that her husband is not any sicker than he really is, for, if he were, she would have even more possibilities to be penitent.

4. If she complains that suddenly she has a great deal of work to do. She can hardly find time to attend to it all. Gowns, shoes, lingerie, dentist, hairdresser, charity meeting, bridge class, visit to a sick friend—end everything just this week!

5. If she begins to persuade her husband to go to a certain summer resort as early as December or January.—This she does in order to frustrate his attempts of proposing another watering place.

6. If she suddenly discovers a hitherto hidden sympathy for the poor working people. She begins to feel sorry for her chauffeur because he must drive the car in such terrible weather all day long. Now she often sends him home to take a rest and she hires a taxi for herself.

7. If she forgets one of her jewels, usually her bracelet or her wrist-watch, in "a shop somewhere". She happily reports the next evening that an honest man has found it and returned it to her.

8. If she begins to describe a friend of hers, of whom she has rarely if ever said anything, as an infamous liar and slanderer. (She does not wait until the friend begins to spread, gossip about her. She insures herself against all possible attacks so that when the friend finally launches her campaign no one will credit her reports.)

9. If she cannot speak indifferently enough of the suspected man. She often commits the mistake of exaggerating her indifference. She often falls into such "extremes as: "Mr. X? I couldn't care for him if the two of us were marooned on a desert island!" (According to Professor Freud, this exaggerated statement is an expression of suppressed desire; she would like very much to be exiled with him to a desert island.)

10. If she ceases to make up the lists of guests herself. Until now, it was always she who did this whenever they gave a party or a dinner—now she leaves the task to her husband in order that he include the man whom she wouldn't have the courage to invite herself. On the other hand, she is sometimes reluctant to go to parties her husband wishes to go to. Of course, she finally permits herself to be persuaded and goes. (Whenever this happens, it is quite certain that "he" will he there.)

11. If, whenever she receives a valuable present —jewelry or a fur-coat—from her husband, she is extravagantly grateful for it, although she cannot be so freely happy about it as she used to be. Her remarks: "You spend too much on me."—"Did I really deserve such an expensive gift?" (This is undoubtedly a sign of honest loyalty—or, at least, a sign of a troubled conscience.)

12. If she goes to have her picture taken very often—but never twice by the same photographer.

13. If she discovers new truths. As, for instance: "Happy is the woman who has many children."—"I should have been born a man." —"Life is unjust."—"Women are bad, but men are even worse."—Her most amazing and most frequent discovery is: "Oh, life is so short! "

14. If she begins to love one of her women friends, with whom she has hitherto been on rather lukewarm terms, most conspicuously. She frequently telephones her—but it is always the wife who calls up the friend. She goes to visit her repeatedly—although the dear friend comes only very rarely to her own house. She speaks thus of her friend even without her friend's name anenting in the conversation: "I have only now realized what a dear soul and what a true and faithful friend she is."

15. If her stationery is rapidly diminishing, although she never writes a single letter.

16. If she eats less but smokes more.

17. If to her husband's fortuitous and quite theoretical remark that the number of divorces are increasing amazingly nowadays, her answer is: "I shall never divorce you! I am happy I've found a husband like you!" or words to that effect.

18. If she, who has hitherto picked a quarrel with her husband every time he accidentally opened one of her letters, asks him to open her morning's mail for her because she pretends to be too lazy to do it.

19. If the wife, provided she likes to read the evening newspaper in bed before falling asleep, stops reading the paper on the very page where the account of a murder prompted by jealousy is printed. (This feature may be easily verified by a casual glance at the paper next morning.)

20. If light and fashionable music does not amuse her any longer, but only the more serious kind. Facts regarding this phenomenon, tested by experience, are as follows: Chopin: suspicion; she is seriously interested in some one; husband had better look out. Grieg: she is in love. Schumann: indubitably, she is madly in love. Richard Strauss: climax. Massenet: she is suffering. Chopin again: the end.

I have deliberately omitted the most natural sign of them all: she begins to be formally jealous of her husband. I believe, however, my dear friend, that this trait is so well known and of such ancient origin that you know of it without my calling attention to it.

And with this last, I have finished my epistle. I have but two more short remarks to make. First, not one of the above enumerated signs is an infallible indication of a wife's unfaithfulness but rather we should grow alarmed at any phenomenon her husband has not previously observed in her. Secondly, the signs most telling are those which the husband does not want to notice. We may safely say these are absolutely the most damning ones.

With a little sadness in my heart and with sincere sympathy, I remain your faithful friend,

F. M.