Advice to the Love-Lorn

Why Adventures Into Matrimony Should Not Be Taken Too Seriously

HEYWOOD BROUN

THEY say this is a Renaissance age, that falkways are crumbling, positions of races, peoples, climates, females, etc., are either up-ending or tilting, and that in the drabber ages to come, we will be looked back upon as having lived in a golden ether, blessed of God, and free and hopeful and happy beyond all reasonable human expectation. That's as may be—we are certainly doing an enormous amount of talking, and it is probably true that nothing that is thoroughly talked over is ever quite the same again. And of all the things, barring Prohibition, which have been talked about till the very hermits of the Andes must have heard, there is marriage. Of course marriage is changing, and 1 myself heart and soul behind the project. In fact, I am among those who hope that what are roughly called its worst faults arc upon the point of becoming even more pronounced.

From sermons and editorials and interviews I gather that there is a growing body of opinion which holds that marriage in America is suffering from an excess of freedom. And it is said that young people are taking this grave step too lightly.

I dissent in my diagnosis. Marriage is still marred chiefly by those who take it too seriously.There is small hope of happiness for any young man and woman who gaze at each other mournfully and say before they embark upon the adventure, "This is a terrible responsibility."

Mind you, I am now making happiness my test of the success or failure oi any given marriage. Communities grow enthusiastically sentimental every now and then about some dear old couple who are about to celebrate a golden wedding. I do not think that there should be public dancing in the streets over the anniversary, unless there is reason to believe that the dear old lady and the dear old gentleman have achieved something more than a feat of infinite patience.

I THINK a reckless gusto becomes marriage. II Romeo and Juliet, I should say, made a success of theirs, although they never did reach so much as a wooden wedding. Their only anniversary was moonlight, which is, to all spiritual intents, more weighty than wood. Not even the wisest of the world can tell how any marriage will end, but the beginning is within the fashioning of those who voyage. And so let them make the first stage of the journey without misgiving, good resolutions and heavy vows.

In particular, vows arc clumsy luggage and they are not apt to grow lighter. A young man and a young woman arc pretty sure to promise each other a number of things which arc not likely to be kept. No great harm is done by that. People of any shrewdness know that there arc moments when men and women are ready to promise anything. I do think it is monstrous that the community should sit in on the exchange of vows and be ready in later years to shake accusing fingers at the two who broke them. Properly speaking, marriage is nobody's business except that of the two people concerned and, incidentally, of the minister or Magistrate. If there must be an additional witness he ought to be blind and dumb.

In so far as it is possible, marriage should be kept secret during the first year at any rate. Or even if it isn't precisely secret, why on earth does everybody for miles around have to know about it? And this is not Greenwich Village or the Younger Generation speaking. Nature has sanctioned discretion and privacy for animals of a lower order who are not supposed to be any more sensitive than human beings. Again and again in "advice" columns I find young husbands and young wives informed that they must not do something or other because "it will cause gossip among the neighbors." Now there is no reason why man or woman should assume new and complex responsibilities to the whole community the instant they marry.

I even think the responsibilities they assume toward each other should be rigorously limited. Marriage is not a miracle. Neither party is transformed by the ceremony and so there should be no expectation in any quarter that the lives ol the two concerned will be radically different from their previous course. The man who enjoyed poker before he fell in love will discover, unless 1 am much mistaken, that the urge remains. And if he swears of (poker 1 mean) he does a foolish thing. By so doing he makes his wife a stymie instead of an adored object. Marriage to be any good must not be allowed to become a symbol of duty.

And it should stop short of complete communism. Let us consider this formula: A, a man, falls in love with B, a woman, and they get married. The result of the equation remains A plus B and not Ab. This is important. Before marriage A was very fond of three friends whom we shall call C, 1) and F. Marriage is not going to alter this fondness and it by no means follows that B is going to like C, 1) and E simple because A does.

THIS is one of the most common fallacies JL concerning marriage. 'The world in general holds that people who are in love with each other must necessarily be fond of the same things. It just isn't so. The effort to act as if it were so caused 19.865 per cent of all the divorces issued east of the Mississippi in the year 1922. It is impossible to present a ratio for the whole country, as South Dakota and three of the northern counties of Texas have failed as yet to file their statistics.

If, by any long chance, two people should discover, soon after marriage, that their interests arc precisely the same they will do well to invent some divergence in taste and inclination. Marriage cannot endure without a reasonable amount of dissonance. Personally, I believe that a wide scope should be allowed for the pursuit of individual interests. A husband really ought to have a few friends whom his wife hates, and she deserves the same privilege. This is practically the only way they can arrange to be invited out separately.

The custom still persists that if you want a woman to come to dinner you've got to have her husband too, if she happens to have one. Some inroads have been made in the practice, but it endures. My feeling is that the rule ought, in all reasonableness, to apply only to the Siamese Twins.

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As Chesterton might put it, there can be perfect union only where there is perfect separateness. No two people may thoroughly understand each other until they know that there are things which they will never understand. It is not glamorous for a man to be understood by some one else up to a complete 100 per cent of his mental content. If any two people were so well acquainted as all that, conversation between them would languish and the. There would be no element of surprise. A rational being must inevitably flee from anybody who agrees with him completed. Some sharp edge of dissent is necessary to keep a mind awake and in action.

A man will love a woman who knows him a little better than the rest of the world and sympathizes with him a little more. The world, perhaps, misjudges and misunderstands him two out of three times. And she, the adored one, comprehends him at least half the time. That is enough. It should not be much more. He hardly knows himself any better than that. There are little kingdoms in his mind through which he has never traveled, or, if at all, only after twilight. These must not be found and charted before the time comes. It is only because of these shadowy lands that any man may cling to hope. From out of these undiscovered fastnesses will come, some day, the forces to lift up his visions and make good his dreams.