There was an excellent article in the Sunday Telegraph the other week (OK, I’m slow with this - I’ve had this post in draft for ages) by Julian Fellowes: Secrets and wives.

His conclusion is that the secret of marriage comes down to loyalty.

Now, that’s a word I wouldn’t immediately associate with marriage. The words I would most readily associate with a good marriage are words like love, compatibility, communication. But the more I think about it the more appropriate the word loyalty seems to be.

And perhaps disloyalty is the major cause of problems in marriage these days. In fact, come to think of it, perhaps that is one of the problems with society today - we’ve forgotten how to be loyal.

In the city where we used to live we invited a couple we knew to dinner one evening. The wife spent the entire evening criticising and belittling her husband. By the end I was desperate to get them out of our house. As soon as they’d gone I said to Sue, “Phew, I’m so glad you don’t ever speak to me like that.”

I would never dream of saying anything negative about Sue in front of anyone. Not in front of friends, nor relatives, and especially not our children. A little bit of light teasing perhaps or some light-hearted banter, but never anything serious. Never anything genuinely critical.

If there was ever anything that I thought I needed to bring to her attention I would wait until we were alone - not that there ever is. To criticise her, or be in any way negative about her in front of anyone else would be disloyal.