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and outs of all of them here would be to cause this book to break your coffee table with its enormous weight.

      Sticking with the tree analogy for a moment—it kind of works if you try hard enough—then just as big trees make little trees, so families go on to create new families. The idea of breaking free and starting your own New Family can be very daunting and take years to get used to, so don’t worry if you sometimes feel you’ve taken a leap too far from the trunk and want back in: it’s normal. It’s been ten years since I started my own New Family and I still feel utterly unqualified sometimes and expect somebody to knock on the door at any moment to take me ‘home’ again.

      Here’s how it happens: you spend the first major part of your life dangling happily somewhere towards the topmost branches of your family tree, waving in the breeze, getting a little older and hopefully wiser with the passing seasons and trying not to fall off due to excess cider drinking. Then, one wonderful, sunny day you rub against the leaves of a nearby tree, and—whoosh! The course of your life changes forever: you fall hopelessly in lust with a particularly handsome, sexy, clever piece of foliage and decide to spend the rest of your days with him, all going well and assuming no pert, tempting little variegated or evergreen ones get in the way and wreck everything. And so, you jump! Into the exciting world of cohabitation you go.

      Things go pretty well for a while—lust turns to love, you blow along with the wind, travel together, work your way up the career ladder a bit and rent a tiny flat that almost puts you on the breadline but leaves just enough spare cash for Ikea tea-lights and the occasional curry. And then, just when you thought things were ticking along very nicely, thank you, you arrive at an unforeseen crossroads, and find yourselves having to decide where to go next without so much as a map or a compass.

      To Have, or Have Not?

      For most couples there comes a time, after they have investigated and familiarised themselves with every nook and cranny, fiddled with all the knobs and dials and got to level twenty, when they ask themselves, or each other, if they are very brave: ‘Where now, Captain?’ Should they take a left turn into Spousedom, or run for the hills and shack up with the Next Bloke to Come Along?

      Well, it’s a hard decision, and one which can become so agonising that it splits strong couples apart, because one or the other of them isn’t brave enough to take the plunge. I am a great believer in the personal benefits and social importance of marriage and I hang around reasonably happily married people most of the time. Over much wine and cheesy nibbles we gathered together the following bits of advice for anyone not sure of which way to go:

      

Don’t wait for the Perfect Man and the Perfect Moment. If you do, you will be waiting forever. No man is one hundred per cent perfect, and neither are you, so work out if you can live with his faults and love him despite any mistakes he may make on the way. Of course things may change, but you have to go on what you see before you now.

      

Is he your best friend? People always say you should marry your best friend, and they are right. Don’t marry the most beautiful, rich or sexy man: marry the guy you can’t live without—whom you trust and who makes you laugh, feel completely at peace with yourself and who you would always choose to be with in a crisis.

      

Are you, as a couple, greater than the sum of your parts? If you always become a stronger, nicer and happier person when you are with this guy, then you could be onto a good thing.

      

Don’t focus on potential failure. Yes, lots of marriages fall apart, but to approach yours with a ‘how long will it last’ attitude is to pave the way for failure. This is why prenups are such a distasteful idea. Decide to make it work ‘come what may’ and you stand a much better chance. (If you are the proud owner of a shitload of cash, then prenups are possibly worth considering, but as you are probably not quite in the £200 million bracket let’s push on…)

      

Are you equals? A marriage requires absolute equality and respect for it to be a happy one. This doesn’t mean having the same level of job, doing equal amounts of childcare and housework or being as good at something as your partner is, but that neither one of you feels or acts superior or more important than the other.

      

Do some research. It’s best not to jump into something as big as marriage without checking a few things out first, as it’s a little late once the ink has dried. Using your expert female intuition, and some cunning questioning, see if you can find out:

      1. What he expects of a wife. Someone to be there when he gets home, with a smile, a four-course dinner, and a gin and tonic for Monsieur? Or has he grasped the concept that women might like to have, like, you know, a job or something as well as hoovering and plumping up the cushions?

      2. When, or if, he imagines you will have kids. If you are thinking of ‘some time in your thirties, once your career has reached a certain level’, but he had something more along the ‘as soon as we’ve consummated our marriage’ in mind, then there will be big trouble ahead.

      

Is there complete trust and respect? If there is, then you can both criticise and laugh at yourselves, and at each other, without getting upset. Yes, even jokes about your bum being huge should be well within limits.

      

Very Important Questions: Will he take the bins out without moaning about it? Can you live with his inability to put wet towels in the laundry basket? Will he look after the kids when you need some extra time to work or to have a break, without feeling emasculated or hard done by? Does he think your work is an unnecessary distraction from your more important roles of cooking, cleaning and making yourself look real pretty? Will you wash the bath after him? Will he after you? And so on. If you don’t ask yourself the questions, and get answers you are happy with, you are taking a leap into the unknown and the fall is usually rather messy, and expensive.

      The ‘kids’ issue is massive, by the way, and not even talking about when or whether you might have children before deciding to marry someone is a bit like chopping your left arm off before you’ve thought whether you might like to be a concert pianist or not. You don’t need to scare him off with persistent baby talk or spending Saturday afternoons in Baby Gap, but if you can’t even raise the subject then what does that say about your relationship?

      Ah, it’s hard to find the Right Man, but, contrary to what you may have heard, not all men are bastards. Some are absolutely bloody fantastic, and do believe in equal rights, sharing the remote control and opening the window after they’ve made a bit of a smell. Seek, and ye shall find him.

      Popping the question: On your knees, ladies!

      Once you’ve decided to take the road towards Married Life then somebody is going to have to pop the question.

      But who, and how? In a moment of ‘anything men can do I can do better’ madness, fuelled by a growing fear of losing the man I wanted to grow old with and a large streak of impatience, I decided to don some Woman-Trousers and ask him to marry me.

      It was a terrifying experience, and I sometimes wonder how I managed it without forgetting what it was I wanted to say, backing out in favour of chewing my right leg off or just throwing up right in front of him through nerves. (Never a good move, that.) But, hideous and frightening as it may be, popping the question is actually no more

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