CHAPTER XXXIX
MARRIAGE WITH A FLOURISH, ENDING AS A FIASCO
Here is another question that ought to interest many people: "Ought one not to expect that marriage shall begin with a flourish and end as a fiasco? Is it not the fact that the beginning of marriage is apt to be about all there is to it so far as happiness is concerned? Can one reasonably expect the honeymoon to continue very long? Is your high ideal of marriage anything more than a tame friendship after the honeymoon is past?"
This is my reply: Of course, people who enter upon marriage with delight look forward to a lifetime of joy. The first joys of marriage, however, begin to pall, oftentimes because those joys are too often largely animal. Then comes a waning interest. Then possibly comes mutual adjustment.
Too often each finds the other totally different from what he or she expected. Little by little, or sometimes suddenly, the conflicts develop, and quarrels begin. Each begins to see in the other faults that were never suspected.
Possibly politeness is forgotten and the real roughness of soul stands out in all its ugliness. Possibly life glides along smoothly and little attention is paid to the rocks.
But almost universally the joys of the honeymoon time disappear. Life becomes more or less commonplace and sometimes, as faults in one of the other develop, vexatious.
Now I have tried to picture fairly the course of many marriages. It is true, as my questioner says, that many a marriage that began with a flourish ends as a fiasco. It is also true that in many marriages, if actual conflicts and quarrels do not develop, a critical spirit does; and oftentimes the best that follows the honeymoon is a tame friendship, rather pale after the vivid honeymoon.
But the beautiful honeymoon ought to be a delightful portal to an even happier married life. That is the ideal. The joys of the honeymoon too often pall because they are apt to be so largely animal and mere animal delight must sooner or later come to an end.
What I am arguing to prove is that true marriage is not animal, but it is of the spirit. Because so many people entering marriage are animal in their natures and development, and satisfied to be animal, so many marriages fail of true happiness.
Now the advocates of trial marriage and companionate marriage urge us to believe that we can find happiness by trying out new mates and thus in going from one honeymoon to another. In other words, to enter marriage with the idea of getting one out of many who will enable us to keep on with a perpetual honeymoon.
But we are not made spiritually to go through marriage after marriage. If we are only seeking honeymoon after honeymoon, but necessarily with a different persons, we are only selfishly trying to get animal pleasure.
Our spirit is that of getting, always getting. Inevitably it is selfish, self-seeking, and the selfish, self-seeking person cannot be happy in marriage or out of it. There is no happiness for the selfish soul anywhere in the universe. It is the spirit of exploitation. The man or the woman who exploits another for his or her own selfish gratification is never going to be satisfied.
True marriage happiness results from the spirit of giving, from love that desires to benefit the beloved. There is happiness only in the spirit of giving. Therefore, if the marriage is to stand the strain that follows the honeymoon it must have on both sides the spirit of giving to the other, of seeking the happiness of the beloved. Now, for such, marriage is heaven itself. The honeymoon becomes a portal to an even happier married life.
An engineer builds a bridge that will stand the strain of the worst weather and the worst possible conditions, not merely the best conditions. So marriages must be built, with forethought and careful consideration of all the conditions. Therefore education for marriage is indispensable for the human race.