When I wrote my latest book—detailing a few of the many, many ways our otherwise lovable husbands drive us apeshit crazy—naturally I hoped it would resonate with people. What I didn’t expect was to be accused of polygamy.
“Wait a minute. Are you married to my husband, too?” demanded one gal who saw the video trailer for If It Was Easy They’d Call the Whole Damn Thing a Honeymoon: Living with and Loving the TV-Addicted, Sex-Obsessed, Not-So-Handy Man You Married. Soon afterward, similar notes of support and commiseration began to pour in.
“The snoring. Dear God, the snoring.”
“Seriously, what the hell is it with guys and refrigerator blindness? I guess I must have x-ray vision.”
“Story. Of. My. Life.”
“They really are all the same.”
Allow me to set the record straight: Mine is not a man-hating book. Quite the contrary. I adore my husband and occasionally he happens to drive me up the wall. (I think one time I irritated the hell out of him, too. Ahem.) My book—and the subsequent hit sitcom, which has yet to be developed—aims to illustrate how those two things (adoration and wall-driving, specifically) can co-exist, mostly peacefully.
Honeymoon (the book) features twenty chapters organized by area of potential conflict: Sleeping, driving, traveling, television, date night, injustices unique to the bathroom, sex, trying to have a simple conversation, and a dozen more. Clearly, each area could fill an entire sitcom season! In the sleeping chapter alone, you’ve got the aforementioned respiratory torture, blanket tug-o-war, the soft-or-firm mattress debate, nightlight-or-pitch-black, thermostat battles, how many s%$@*!& pillows do you really need for crying out loud, TV angle issues, restless legs, the godforsaken alarm clock and in some cases ongoing animal-turf wars. (Seriously, this is a big one: Do dogs and cats belong in the marital bed or not? What about ferrets? Discuss. And try not to throw things. We’re all adults here.) That’s ten episodes right there!
Here’s some sample dialog you might see on the show:
Her: “Oh my God I am sick-to-death of picking up your filthy socks every bloody day! You can do your own laundry from now on!”
Him: “Okay. Want to get naked?”
Seriously. Think of all of the crap that’s on TV right now. You want “real” housewives? Forget the bronzed, styled society babes that come to mind when you hear those words; Honeymoon has actual real housewives—ones like you and me who are holding down jobs and make hotdogs and Kraft Mac-N-Cheese for dinner and occasionally wear our PJs to drop the kids off at school and don’t have a stylist following us around all day with lip gloss. You want desperate housewives? Forget those skinny bitches who are forever trying to kill their husbands or get in the pants of yet another hunky neighbor. The gals of Honeymoon would never kill their husbands. We love them too much. Plus we need them to kill spiders and pick up dog poo and stuff.
Honeymoon, the sitcom, is about finding the funny in the day to day madness of marriage. It is going to sweep the Emmy Awards (after it’s written and produced, of course) for one simple reason: People can relate to it. They’ll see themselves in every scene and spat and sigh in solidarity. They will laugh until they cry at the absurdity of the things we married folks bicker about. Afterward they will feel less alone and maybe stop bitching at their spouses so much, both of which theoretically could lead to a reduction in global alcohol consumption, so maybe I’ll win a Pulitzer to keep all of those Emmys company.
If you are (or know) Larry David, call me.
Written by Jenna McCarthy.
Jenna McCarthy is the author of If It Was Easy They’d Call the Whole Damn Thing a Honeymoon: Living with and Loving the TV-Addicted, Sex-Obsessed, Not-So-Handy Man You Married (Berkley Books, October 4, 2011). (Please note it says the blah-blah-blah man you married, not the one she married. Her husband likes it when she points that out.) You can find out more about Jenna, her books and how she survived tanorexia on her website.