nick manho

as i get older and sager (doesn't look quite right that... more sage?) people are always asking me this question: what makes a successful marriage?

let's face it, most marriages are a joke, but some stand out like shining steel things in a heap of dung. every wednesday i'll present a great successful marriage and try to explain what made it "click".

great successful marriages: #1



just one look at that wonderful photo and you realise what a wonderful successful marriage means. there has to mutual adoration, of course: great, profound love. then there has to be mutual respect. in fact, "mutual" is a key word. the closer you get to "mutualness" the better your chances are of "pulling it off".



look at that adoring love that john had for his children. this is a must. the father must love or adore (or both) the children and the wife equally. how many men can say that of themselves?



there they are in all their kodachrome glory on that sad last day together. and what does that tell us? that the wife must be forever supportive, forever willing to sacrifice her life for her "man". jackie had that ability. she was there at the end. and contrary to what many people have written, no, she was not trying to run away when she clambered onto the back of the car: she had just remembered that she needed to buy a new pack of cigarettes and had spotted a convenient automatic cigarette dispenser over by the grassy knoll.

so john and jackie were together till the end. of course john was a satyromaniac (medically speaking he suffered from satyriasis) and had sex with over 1,000 women in his short life. i guess that made the day to day slog a bit easier. which reminds me, a wife must also be very forgiving.

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pondering the kennedy marriage today i recalled the famous meeting between jfk and harold macmillan in 63. kennedy was on his way to berlin to make his historic, "ich bin ein berlinguer" spech, and had stopped over in london for a meeting with the aging and deeply conservative british prime minister. here he is:



after the meeting had finished kennedy said to mac, "can you fix us up with a couple of broads for the night?" mac was shocked, the last time he'd had sex was with his wife during the conception of their third child, thirty years earlier. since that day he'd taken comfort in his pipe. it was one of the great "culture shock" moments in history.