Advice for young women contemplating marriage

Caitlin Moran nailed it when she said "Don't marry a c**t"

How do you know if your intended is a potential c**t ? In all likelihood you'll find out too late. The early years of marriage are a doddle, it's when you plan for children that the waters start to muddy. And by 'muddy' think sludge-brown, chemically contaminated river silt.

Despite their insistence that the workload will be shared, quite simply, it never will. Trust me on this. No matter how liberated and woke they claim to be , men will always resort to hiding behind that kevlar barrier called Male Pride. Actually it doesn't even deserve this capitals. Who even coined that phrase ?

I've seen it described as 'The definition of something like masculine pride would come across as something like the following: an innate sense of aggressive pride in one’s maleness.' However, the synonyms for this could easily fall under machismo, chauvinism, or manliness at the most vague. What I have learned about masculinity is it defines itself by what it isn’t, not by what it is.

Any dictionary will tell you that pride can de defined as the belief that you are better or more important than others. Stick male in front of that and it explains itself.

But I prefer the Urban Dictionary's take - Some dickhead excuse to give your girlfriend/partner/wife grief . This is usually preceded with 'you wouldn't understand - it's a male thing'.

When it comes to that discussion about who is going to bear the brunt of childcare, male pride struts itself in all it's false glory and becomes an excuse to dodge the graft, loss of financial dependence and utter mind numbing tedium of the gargantuan task. In other words they are scared.

This so-called male pride is actually just the manifestation of fear. So let's call it out for what it is and accept that when the chips are down it's the women that have to step forward to compensate for what men seem incapable of accepting by dressing it up as a machismo trait and to what it really is - fear.