“THE MEN WE LOVE AND THE MEN WE MARRY.”

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3411, 30 December 1911, Page 4

“THE MEN WE LOVE AND THE MEN WE MARRY.”

ROMANTIC IDEALS AND THEIR DISILLUSION.

(London “Daily Mail.4’)

I heard a woman respond to the toast, “The men we love and the men we marry.” Wile began like this : “The men we love and the men we marry are no more alike than the lives we live and the lives we dream.” There is here . a strong commentary upon the evil of dreaming, which is certainly on 6 of the great ’ mistakes of womankind.

We have no right to “dream.” Life is before us full of beauty, full of suffering, full of joy, full of sorrow —if we are not big enough to cope with it we must not lay the blame upon the other fellow. True, the other fellow may be in a sense “to blame,” but the deficiency of a fellow mortal, even though that fellow mortal be our nearest and dearest is never a valid excuse for our failing, too.

Often that which a man has to offer to the girl he marries is only “love”; and the girl declares that she will he satisfied with it, then discovers that love was not like she had imagined it, and that life has cheated her into a bad bargain. THE SIGN OF LOVE.

It would be very well for girls if they were taught from infancy something about their real station in life, what they may expect, what they have a. right to hope for, and that in marriage they take up a profession r’or which they needl a special training. I know a number of women who are merciless in their demands upon the men they have married—and then, too, L know a lot of men who are merciless in their demands upon the wives; it is, perhaps, about evenly divided. 13 ut let us take the ease of a woman who is suffering through thinking wrongly about the man she has married. Maybe she is a little ashamed of him. Many women are ashamed of their husbands. This is a pretty good sign that they love them. There is a great humiliation m seeing the object of one’s affection fail short of one’s ideal. THE HARD STRUGGLE. If a woman is going to live with a man at all she might as well he the wife of whatever he is. You are called to be the wife of the man you married, not the wife of the man you thought you maried when youth and the little god had somewhat blinded your eyes. No tare ever grew faster in a field of good grain than does the thought, once admitted, that may be after all we do not love the man we married. There is a sort Of literary twang to such a thought that tickles the fancy and seems to chime with the last novel we re'ad. Here indeed is food for thought! Pernicious thought, that should at once be banished in favor of plans for winter bazaars or children’s wardrobes, or the work that lies nearest. Of course, you love the poor fellow, though lie spoke unkindly to you, though he seemed selfish with his money and unreasonable in his demands upon your strength. Life is a hard struggle. You may not know just how hard—for woman’s life is sheltered when she has a “man,” even if only poorly, and she may not know when he is staggering under his load. HER ROMANTIC IDEAL, I grew up with my romantic ideal of love, and I married. The pathetic part of my romantic ideal was that I believed fully and firmly that there was some mysterious power in love that would henceforth glorify every moment of my life. True, some of my friends had tried to explain to me that- there was a “glamor” which, would “wear off,” but I laughed at them. 1 insisted that I was not at all sentimental, that I knew we were poor, that I was quite willing and anxious to work —and that I was going to the happy 1 Well, I have been happy, strangely happy. Possibly I may be wrong, but it is a theory of mine that few men spend much time and thought on the business of making their wives happy. The wife, more than any other creature, has to make her own happiness. Her world is made by her way of thinking, and her wav'of thinking about the man she marries is the keynote of their mutual happiness. The great failing of some women is their dissatisfaction with the things they have. A woman has a longing and a desire for something beyond her reach, and she frets because the man she lias married cannot give it to her. Then begins a general dissatisfaction all along the line, and finally she comes to regard herself as a fine creature full of high tastes, yet wedded to an inferior who can never satisfy those tastes. This is a. very unjust attitude on our part, and one that, after a few minutes’ thought, we should relinquish. WOMEN WHO HAVE GREAT TRIALS. In the first place it is not good taste that makes us long for tilings; it is bad taste. Good taste is the quality that enables us to make beautiful and harmonise the things we liave. It is probably mere incapacity, that leads us to the discouraging conclusion that in other circumstances we might have “shone.” There is never anything but personal lack of fineness to keep one from being fine. Remember this. Do not set it clown to the carelessness or lack of energy or unkindness or injustice. None of these need affect your personal fineness. To be sure there are many women who liave great trials in the men they live with, and vice versa. The story of the man who lias a great disappointment and trial in the wife lie marries is not so common only because men do not talk. With true manly philosophy they try to make the disappointing wife “do”—and they succeed very often. I know lovable men who have simply loved their wives into seeming what they should be, and wives who haye clone the same for their husbands.