Carol’s Column

Adultery, boredom, cold feet . . . take your pick

WHAT do you think causes more broken marriages than anything else.

Adultery, mother-in-laws, boredom, bad breath, lack of communication?

Forget it.

Cold feet.

And they grow on you. Before you realise it, they're there and your marriage is on the rocks.

I hadn't realised how serious it was until the other night when my husband of many years issued an ultimatum to me.

We'd retired to our bedroom, pushing the wardrobe against the door with the broken lock to keep out the neighbour's kids. Not to mention our own.

It was a typical, happily-married scene, so I thought. He lay sleeping peacefully while I crunched an apple under the blanket and read "The Happy Hooker" — to broaden my horizons you understand — by torchlight so as not to disturb him.

The sound of peaceful chomping was shattered by a bellow and I nearly choked on my apple.

It was obvious something was bothering my spouse. In 16 years of marriage I'd never before seen him so excited — other than the time he won R7,39 in an office sweep and of course, the time he'd sliced the tip of his digit finger off with the salami and lost it among the sandwich filling.

"This is it!" he announced loudly enough to cause the Indian Mynahs under the roof to croak with disappointment at being so rudely awakened.

I also lost the place in my book.

"I have had enough," he shouted.

I smiled smugly. So much for all those that reckon there's no fun in a more mature marriage.

Wrong tack. He was on to something else.

"This bed is not big enough for the three of us. You, me and your cold feet.

"Besides which — I'm becoming a nervous wreck. Every time you place your icy feet on me, I get the fright of my life. My blood chills, my heart starts pumping — the adrenalin rushes around my body. I can't stand the strain."

He was almost in tears. "Sleeping with your feet is like being stranded in the Arctic on a winter's night."

Could this really be the quiet, gentle, even-tempered man I'd married for better or for worse?

It was and he was serious.

"I can't take the strain of lying there, hour after hour. Waiting, waiting. Not knowing when those blocks of ice are going to pounce.

"They're turning me into a gibbering idiot. The tension is terrible. They've got to go."

Now there comes a time in every marriage when the situation has to be re-assessed. And there was no doubt this marriage was worth fighting for.

Besides, I rationalised, who else would have me? I mean there are not many men who would take on a pair of middle-aged cold feet and four children.

It was then I discovered my problem was far from unique.

In fact, as you are reading this, throughout the country are lying hundreds of thousands of cold feet and marriages that are potentially on the brink of divorce due to incompatibility of body temperatures.

Everyone was helpful.

Try a hotwater bottle, they said. I did. It wasn't satisfactory. The temperature was never even. I burnt my toes and scalded my ankles and anyway, it kept leaking from the leak-free neck causing much damp distress at the foot of the bed.

Then came bedsocks — mohair, wool, fleece-lined, acrylic. I even spotted the ultimate in living at one Johannesburg furrier — endangered bedsocks in the form of wild fox sox designed for the woman who has everything.

They all had the same problem. They looked quite cute but never stayed on the offending feet.

I was desperate.

My doctor diagnosed a faulty circulation — a common problem after the age of 13.

"It needs stimulation," he said. "Try skipping."

So I did. Fifty skips each night and then I'd quickly jump into bed, out of breath and gasping from the unaccustomed effort.

Not only did skipping fail to stimulate the circulation — but there is something distinctly undignified about skipping with a nightie flapping round your feet and hair curlers flying in all directions on the down bounce.

It is not the stuff that Van der Velde talks about in that authoratative tome "The Ideal Marriage".

Things were tense on the home front.

And then it changed overnight.

I saved my marriage. I bought an electric blanket.

Oh what bliss. What warmth, regular, constant and sizzling at the touch of a switch.

And what warm feet.

The past two weeks things have never been better and my marriage has a new lease of life.

That was, until last night.

Retiring to bed, I noticed a familiar shape under the continental-mixture of down-and-feathers duvet, which is how it should be after so many years.

Except all was not well in the marital bed. The shape had usurped my position. There was no doubt it was lying on my side — the left-hand side of the bed.

There, sizzling away, lay my spouse on my electric blanket.

I prodded him. In vain.

Eventually, defeated, I climbed into the cold side of the bed, my feet clinking like two ice cubes.

This is the end, I thought to myself. And then I heard his voice. "Just put your feet on me, you'll be warm in a minute."

My mother-in-law can say what she wants — we've got a good thing going.

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