FLIRTATIOUS HUSBANDS

Wairarapa Age, 25 March 1920, Page 2

FLIRTATIOUS HUSBANDS

"Once a flirt, always a flirt," say the wiseacres. Without us.rig the exact words that was what most people—especially my femin.ne frienas—meant by the wagg.ng ot their heads on the daj 1 announced my engagement to Jim. Jim was, is, and always will be, a flirt. And that's partly why I married him. It sounds mad perhaps, but wtien I've explained, maybe you'll agree with me. To begin with, I'm one of those women who can't live w.thout attentions and compliments. 1 should hate to be married and treated as if I were a bit of nee chiffa, put safely into a cabinet, and looked at and adm.rod now and again. Some men treat their wives like that. - These men are not flirts; they're such dry-as-dust types that they couldn't flirt. They don't understand woman—how she starves when she's expected just to settle down and be content; how she longs for fire and life—for little bits of courtship although she's married ; for a stray compliment and an unexpected caress. Now maintain ia that a flirt understands women, therefore. the emotional type of woman ia far more j likely to be happy if she marries a flirt. She'll be appreciated, paid court 1 to, given her fill of "pretty talk," and, what is best of all, to a woman, she'll still be made love to. And there's another point about marrying a flirt. A man who has been one is more Lkely to have sown his wild oats and to be content to settle down to the role of husband and father. When he has flirted with many girls, a wife knows that Bhe must indeed be the chosen one if he pro*poses to her after having had so much experience. You may say that the thought must cross her mind as to whether he flirts with others when away from her. He is so charming a husband-lover that, doesn't. She believes in him because he satisfies her woman's vanity. Possibly, being a fl : rt, he does carry on harmless flirtations with one 1 and another, but, so long as she* doesn't see, what matter? "What the eye doesn't see the heart never grieves over." Somehow a woman doesn't suspect a man of being untrue, so long as he gives her adoration. And now for my last confession. I was a flirt myself before I married Jim. I'm a flirt still, but I Art with my own man. We both think we've solved the problem of married boredom. If wives and husbands would flirt with each other there'd be no chance of boredom. At any rate. Jim and I have never known it yet.