Marital law

After hosting many a wedding reception, the distilled knowledge I have gained from a plethora of ceremonial toasts by my fellow Under de Sayas (USD) husbands dispensing advice to young grooms — aside from sacrifice, subservience and sexual servitude — is this:

• What is hers is hers, and what is yours is hers as well (no matter what the groom’s lawyers says).

• Happy wife makes for a happy life. (And no, happiness is not a relative concept).

• A good marriage requires a short memory. (I am unsure if this advice means being able to forgive easily or to medically induce memory less.)

However, the two golden rules of marriage that have stuck in my head like implants are these: 

Rule No. 1: The wife is always right.

Rule No. 2: If the wife is wrong, then refer to Rule No. 1.

There is nothing greater for any self-respecting USD to believe than the infallible self-referential logic of these two rules. It does not require rhyme. It does not require reason. It does not require a Supreme Court ruling. Because — just like Atty. Oliver Lozano filing an impeachment complaint — it just is.

So for all the heathen bachelors and No Girlfriends Since Birth (NGSBs) out there who wish to enter into the blissful throes of domestic incarceration, remember this: Do not attempt to argue with your wife. And, if you value your family jewels for more than just purposes of ornamentation, do not argue with an angry wife.

Arguing with an angry wife is like arguing with a force of nature. You cannot find a way to confront it head-on. Instead, you run to the nearest emergency shelter and hope that all your pink parts are still intact.

You see, my three female readers, whenever my wife is angry with me (and note, my wife is only angry with me for justifiable reasons. And no, my wife is not looking over my shoulder as I write this column), the Hindu goddess Kali comes to mind.

In the Hindu mythological text Markandeya Purana, Kali springs forth from the forehead of the goddess Durga while Durga was in a fit of divine feminine anger. (Is there any other type of feminine anger?) The goddess Kali sports a hideous countenance and is often depicted in a fit of absolute rage. Her eyes are bloodshot red with intoxication, her hair is disheveled, she has a gaping mouth and small fangs, a lolling tongue, pendulous breasts (NGSBs swiftly go online to Google to find out what the word “pendulous” means), she is dripping with blood and encircled with snakes (And this is Kali on her good days).

On top of that, Kali has a drop-dead sense of fashion: a skirt of human arms and a garland of human heads. (I wonder who her stylist is?)

Whenever she is depicted in this aspect, Kali is known as Bhairavi, “The Terrible.” Thus, whenever my wife gets divinely angry with me (which happens give or take several hundred times during the day), it takes a lot of emotional intelligence on my part not to argue back lest any more of my limbs become part of her skirt.

For all the heathen bachelors and NGSBs reading this column who are planning for their eventual incarceration and do not want any of their extremities to be turned into a fashion accessory, here are some rules of divine anger management secretly passed on by USDs through subliminal message during ceremonial toasts:

• The Angry Birds Rule. Your wife can get mad at you about absolutely anything because everything is always your fault. Her work issues, her quarrels with her girlfriends, her lack of sleep, her lack of fiber in her diet, her weight gain, her wrong shade of lipstick, even a run in her stockings. All of these problems can and will be traced back to you. No impeachment court is necessary. So just be stoic and take it like a man or else you will take it like a dismembered man.

• Angry With the Bird Rule. Complementary to the angry birds rule, anyone born with the aforementioned appendage does not have the authority, nay, the luxury, nay, the audacity to even get angry right back at his wife (and you will be constantly reminded of this as you see the garland of shrunken human heads swinging from her neck). Instead, what you can get is an aneurysm. If you’re lucky.

• The Amnesiac Rule. She has the divine right to hurl scornful, scandalous, hurtful and venomous things about you (during which she may include many colorful and malutong adjectives that will offend across any demographic). However, you are directed to ignore all the scornful, scandalous, hurtful and venomous things she said about you (even some of the adjectives) because she didn’t really mean them. Really.

This is because whatever she says in a bout of anger is probably forgotten by her after about 15 minutes later (or after she has placed her garland of human heads back in her jewelry box). However, if you feel that you have been emasculated by her venomous tirade, don’t be ashamed to curl up into a ball and bawl yourself to sleep. You get used to it after the first several hundred times.

• The Delete Forever Rule. If ever your wife sends you any form of electronic evidence that contains scornful, scandalous, hurtful and venomous things directed at you (including the colorful and malutong adjectives), you are supposed to rid yourself of any such text messages, e-mails and Facebook messages immediately. You are not, I repeat, you are NOT to keep a record of those messages in your inbox where you can easily retrieve them and show it to your wife during the next time you attempt to argue with her. That is unless you want said electronic device lodged into your large intestine. Not even colonic irrigation will get rid of that device. You can tell by the way I walk.

 While my prosthetic hands were being installed, I browsed through my dog-eared relationship bible, Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps, and found the dogma behind divine feminine anger. The book says that because of our biological software, the meaning of words that are uttered isn’t as important to women as they are to men. A woman relies more on voice intonation for meaning and on body language for emotional cues. Women feel that the precise definition of words isn’t that relevant, which is why they take poetic license with their words and why they don’t shy away from exaggeration simply for dramatic effect. Unfortunately, men take words at face value and respond accordingly and unwittingly (which explains the millions of shrunken heads on Kali’s neclace).

Knowing this, men should realize that arguing with an angry female will be as successful as arguing against a typhoon. A woman will use words she doesn’t really mean when she’s divinely angry, so men shouldn’t worry about taking her words too literally or even defining them. So, my former fellow heathens and NGSBs, you needn’t worry when she says she wants to kill you. She will just come very close enough to doing it.

But there is an upside to her divine anger that doesn’t involve any loss of limb. You can always take comfort in the fact that she is angry with you because it is her way of bonding with the one person in the world she would love most to impale on a stake and roast to a crisp. Remember, fellow heathens and NGSBs, she is merely using her voice intonation and body language — expressed through her words — as a way of building your relationship.

The key thing is to recognize that she wants you to respond to her anger; however, she doesn’t want you to get angry with her in turn. This may sound rather counterintuitive to men, who would much rather remain impassive during an argument (for fear of bodily harm). But, men, keep in mind that she wants you to mirror her emotions because this serves as an indication that you are bonding with her. In other words, she wants you to care about what she feels. 

In reality, she isn’t angry with you. She just wants to love you. To pieces.

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RJ’s newest humor book, It Only Hurts When I Pee: RJ Ledesma’s Guide to Bodily Gases, Hair Loss and Pink Parts, is now available in National Bookstore, Powerbooks and Best Sellers nationwide.