When I first got married, I naively assumed that my husband would be my front line of communication. It didn't take me long to realize that if I want sympathy, understanding, enlightenment, or reassurance, I am far more likely to get it by talking to another woman than to my husband.
Should you moan "I feel like I'm getting a cold," another woman -- any woman -- will immediately grasp the subtext: You want permission to slow down. She will say something soothing like "Why not skip the gym and curl up on the sofa with a cup of tea?" A man either will pretend he didn't hear you (if I had a dollar for every time I wondered if my husband had gone deaf, I could fly all my girlfriends to Paris) or come up with a reassuring gem like "Yeah, you know, my throat has been hurting for a week, and I'm afraid it might be walking pneumonia."
Recently I polled some friends and experts and came up with a handful of general and specific things a wife hoping to avoid complete exasperation should tell her friends, not her husband.
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