Marriage
BY SIR BRUCE BRUCE-PORTER, K.B.E., C.M.G., M.D. ARRIAGE has been described as a ceremony due to the insane desire of a man to maintain another's daughter! There can be no disputing the fact that many marriages are ghastly failures ; nor can we be surprised that this is so when we consider how this contract is approached by the average young couple of to-day.
The average young man still retains the idea that obtaining a wife is a matter of winning her, hand and capturing her heart, but these cave-man ideas are a delusion fostered by females. The younger the man, the more convinced he is that he knows all there is to know about woman : not for a moment does he imagine that he knows just as much as she wishes him to know, and will never know one scrap more. He does not understand that the average young woman has made up her mind about him a long while before he actually proposed, and, unless he seemed good to her eyes, that he would never have reached the stage of proposal.
There are, of course, the fools who rush in with pro. posals without giving the object of their affections any chance to head them off ; and these young men return again and again to the attack until, sometimes, alas for them, they are accepted as a means of getting rid of the bother of arguing ; but these are a small group.
Falling in love at sight would be all right under con- ditions where natural selection could obtain, but not otherwise. Our lives are series of actions and reactions, and the method where the young man falls in love, and, having done so, sets out to obtain the lady's consent to enter into a contract for life, is a gamble. He will be prejudiced in favour of his interpretation of her character and manners, and the more his friends and relations try to point out the unsuitable phases of her character, the more determined he will be to go through with his wish.
Amongst the well-to-do section of the community the young couple have little or no chance of studying each other. Just as nature has failed to turn out two people with the same markings on the skin of their finger-tips; so no two people have the same minds or brain, and cannot view any problem from exactly the same angle.
This means, in the thousand and one contacts of life, that their opinions may not agree, and they must agree to differ. There is much, therefore, to be said for the custom of "walking out." The poorer members of the community wander in and out of each other's homes at odd times, and see what sort of atmosphere exists, and if they decide they don't suit, they part none the worse for their experience.
Amongst the well-to-do, on the contrary, the young man is profoundly ignorant of the psychological make-up and physical health of the young woman.
For example, men and women who are what is called "highly strung," all go through times when "God doesn't love them, their skin won't fit, and their dog won't follow them." While in this mood their society is good for neither man nor beast. The clever mother does not let the young man see her daughter during these moods, and when, after marriage, he comes up against them, he wonders what is wrong and what he has done to give offence, and starts to enquire ; whereas all that is necessary is to let the poor thing be till the phase passes, as it will if her nervous system is given a rest. And when after marriage the man comes home tired out, in a corresponding mood, she, poor soul, starts to fire off questions meant to show interest in his affairs, and wonders what is wrong when he snaps her head off.
The temperament I refer to is one which is possessed by a group who attain great distinction in life : its possessors have a restless, imaginative streak, and are not content to remain in the ruck. If a man of this type happens to mate with someone similarly endowed, life's journey will be rough going if their depressed periods synchronize. When fates are kind, and their cycles are reversed, the one who is up can comfort the one who is down.
The successful man depends for the achievement of his success on a companion who will bear with him when his skies seem very dark, as well as rejoice with him when he is glad. A man should have someone to whom he can tell everything, and when that companion happens to be his wife so much the better ; but com- panion he must have, and this fact stands out repeatedly in history. Every great man has had some such woman friend, and when he has failed to find the quality in his wife, he has found it outside.
Is there a recipe for a happy married life ? I once heard a father ask his daughter, who had been married for a year, what she had found most helpful in dealing with her husband. Her reply was : "To get my own way and let him think it is his." In this power lies the whole secret of a successful wife. Men are always children and the women who try to make them grow up are fools.
A school for husbands and wives would save many disasters in marriage.
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