I’m with Prince William. Every woman I know wants a wife to run the show

Behind every average man there’s an even better wife,” said Prince William this week. He was visiting a youth centre in Wales and talking to a young man who’d overcome some life challenges with the support of his good woman. Oh, how the two chuckled together about their lovely ladies – and it really wound me up.

Not because it was patronising, or a bit of a sexist, old-fashioned thing to say, but because I want one, too. You no longer have to be a straight man or a lesbian to see the advantages of having a wife: all the single women I know would prefer one to a husband any day. And most of the ones who are married to men, too. Forget sex: what we’re after is more of a platonic lifestyle arrangement; a logistical, day-to-day domestic solution to the problems of being alive, in which a woman not only brings money into the partnership but also does all the emotional labour.

Alright, so the desire for men is also there among my friends and me, but expressed in far less swooning terms. “Yeah, I’d like to meet someone,” we say, when discussing the possibility of a nice man on the horizon. But, “Ohhh, I’d love a wife,” we sigh.

One married friend with enough on her plate has a policy of simply hiring a woman to do every job her husband has promised and failed to do around their house. She’s given up asking him and is paying skilled females instead. “And I’m loving it. But it almost feels like cheating on him.”

I just want to be able to constantly use the classic excuse, “You didn’t ask me to do that!” along with a surprised face, when there’s something that needs to be done that hasn’t been done. Thereby putting my wife in the role of household manager, with the further role of organising and nagging about the work, as well as doing most of it. Unpaid, of course!

Richard Branson’s beloved wife, Joan Templeman, who has sadly died after 50 years of marriage, was the endlessly supportive and loving glue that kept the Branson home and family together. “Everybody needs a Joan,” he said – and he was right. You don’t have to fancy women to feel that you’d really like to take a turn at being an average man, as Prince William himself put it, rather than being pushed into all the additional, relentless effort of being the “even better” wife.

I think about how much time I’d have if I were the parent the school never phones; who isn’t contacted even if their child is in hospital, not until the school have at least tried the mother, the grandmother and the woman who lives next door. Or if, by simply making macaroni cheese one night a week and doing a Saturday trip to the swimming pool, I could get praised for being “so hands-on”.

I want to have the ability to think how strange it is that sometimes the bathmat is dirty and sometimes it is clean, without stopping to wonder whether someone, somewhere, might be putting it in the washing machine. Maybe there are even two bathmats? Remarkable! That’s surely some even better woman business. That’s not on me!

In fact, I want never to spend any of my money on nonsense like towels, cushions, or other nice house things that magically appear, so that instead I can buy things I want, like a really expensive bike with 46 gears that I will use approximately twice. And then tell my wife that she really needs to overcome her shopping habit.

A recent headline about the city’s new mayor in the New York Post read: “How Zohran Mamdani’s aloof wife, Rama Duwaji, quietly steered his campaign from behind the scenes.” Women online started responding with things like, “If you’re a good-looking, kind and hot guy and want an aloof wife who can quietly steer you to success from behind the scenes – I am available.”

This was entertaining, but not my own thought process, and I say this as someone who finds Mamdani extremely appealing. My instant reaction was: so how can I get an aloof wife for myself? Someone who steers my career, encourages me when I’m down but provides endless advice on how to get myself higher? Yet stays behind the scenes, so all the fame belongs to me?

Clearly, I’m still a little hazy on the details of where to find such a wife, or how the recruitment process would work, but that can be ironed out at a later stage. (By my future wife, with her ironing board.) And I’m not entirely sure what would be in it for them, these wives we’re looking for, but that doesn’t seem to have stopped the patriarchy thus far. So let’s make this system fairer. Even Better Wives for all, I say!