CHAPTER XX
HOW CAN WE KNOW IF WE ARE IN LOVE
Here is a question which is a very pertinent one: "How can you know when you are in love enough to get married?"
The young woman who asked the question evidently recognized the fact that people often think they are in love when it is only a counterfeit of the real thing.
Someone piques our interest. We like them. We have nothing especially against them, but we are not sure that we want to live with them forever and ever, or even at all in marriage. And yet, since many people marry in such a case and seem to get on well, may it not be that love will increase until it is sufficient for all practical purposes?
The fact is that the argument often used with young girls who are persuaded by their parents to marry a man of the parent's choice, and not particularly of the girl's choice, is just this one that if you like the other person a little at the first love will grow. But will it necessarily grow?
I do not believe it will grow enough when there is a strong reluctance to go forward into marriage. I know that many people marry under such conditions and seem to get on fairly well, but I believe they are people who are steady-going and reliable and apt to get on pretty well with anyone they like fairly well.
A woman after she is married and has begun to have children is likely to develop an affection for the man who is the father of her children. The marriage may lack the perfect understanding and sympathy which come when two people are ideally mated. It may lack a great deal more.
My answer to the question is that the way to test yourself as to love is to picture to yourself the other person under all conditions.
For example, how would you like to spend every evening at home alone with the person you have in mind? Do you get a little bored now? Have you anything to talk about after you have discussed the weather and the neighbors and topics of general interest? Do you find yourself at last without topics of conversation?
When you talk do you agree in your conclusions? Do you enjoy each other's company so much that you can sit together indefinitely and be happy without conversation?
Are you conscious of any thrill when you touch hands? Is the other person's handclasp always a source of pleasure?
Do you feel an interior congeniality when you come face to face? Of course you have sex-consciousness and if you are given to petting you may find a thrill from sex, but you might find the same thrill from numberless others.
As you think of the other one would you be willing to have him as the parent of your children.
When you are together do you fall into misunderstandings because of different points of view?
Do you object to certain ways the other one has with members of the other sex? If you are jealous, why are you jealous? In a reasonable way or an unreasonable one? There is a jealousy which is a matter of self-respect, because of actual unwise or untrue conduct on the part of your sweetheart. And there is a jealousy which is unreasonable. And there is a jealousy which is a sign of love. Which kind is yours?
Taking up the question again, How can we know when we are in love enough to get married, I would say, When you feel that you cannot live without the beloved. And yet many a man or woman has had the experience of feeling that it would be impossible to live without another, and has failed to get that particular one, and has later been profoundly grateful that he or she was unsuccessful.
One is sometimes carried away by the passion of love or stubbornness and makes a mistake, but nevertheless I hold to my answer, namely, that you love another well enough to marry when you are sure that he or she does not bore you, and never will, that you could spend eternity together and not be bored, when you feel an interior congeniality as to the other's person and views and character, when you can welcome gladly the thought of having the other the parent of your children.