The Truth about Marriage/Chapter10
CHAPTER X
EDUCATION FOR MARRIAGE
Marriage ought not to be a lottery, only a few people drawing prizes. Everyone ought to draw a prize.
We have tried to analyze unhappy marriages and see why they are unhappy. We have made up our minds that the way to take the element of chance out of marriage is to learn about it and about ourselves and about the one in whom we are interested before we marry. After marriage we invariably learn about these things, but then it is too late to prevent trouble.
Can it be done? We believe that not only ought young people to be educated for marriage, but that they can be educated in this matter successfully, successfully enough to avoid a large percentage of the trouble that comes after marriage.
Certainly the subject is more important than almost any other that young people now study in high school and college.
Some one here asks, Who will do the teaching? Will it be a teacher who has had no experience of marriage? Or someone who had had too much experience of an unfortunate kind?
Naturally it will require expert teaching by people who have trained as psychologists are trained to teach their special subject.
We have expert teachers of chemistry. Why not have expert teachers of marriage? The science of marriage is not unlike the science of chemistry, it is learning how to make proper combinations of people, and avoid improper combinations.
The trouble is that our educators have not yet thought seriously of the matter. It may take a few years yet to direct their thought to the problem. New ideas enter slowly into people's minds, even into the minds of educators. But they are making progress.
Is it possible to train the younger children to look forward to a happy marriage? Yes, I believe so, to a limited extent. How? By telling them how married partners should treat one another, what an important institution marriage is as the fountain from which all other relationships in life proceed, how marriage can be made happy, how necessary it is for married partners to treat each other with respect and consideration.
I once knew a boy whose mother had not had an ideal marriage in some respects. Her husband was a man of splendid character and had great respect for her character and virtues, but he was not at all demonstrative. In fact he had come of a long line of ancestors that taught men folks that they were not to make any show of affection. They were thus austere in their bearing, although not at all unkind. The boy's mother was probably starved for the show of affection. Not being able to receive from her husband the demonstrations that most women love, she saw to it that her boy should understand their importance.
So she told her little boy about some distant relatives whose example was a very unusual one but very pleasing to the womenfolks. The husband and wife had no children, much to their sorrow; but the husband made up for their mutual loss by the most remarkable gallantry and kindness and consideration. He treated his wife always as if she were a sweetheart. He helped her to dress, to take care of her household so far as help could be given by a busy man, to do the thousand and one thoughtful things that a loving husband can do for a beloved wife.
They were ideally happy. The boy's mother told him of the many courtesies shown the wife by this model husband, and said, "Now, John, when you grow up I want you to treat your wife like Dr. Porter treats his wife. Make her happy. Be thoughtful. Be appreciative. Don't hesitate to tell her that you have been thinking of her during the day. Tell her that you love her. Say sometimes the nice things that lovers say to their sweethearts."
Children can be trained in the home as nowhere else, but mothers will have to have the usefulness of such training impressed upon them. Children will be powerfully impressed by what you tell them of the ideal nature of marriage.
But they will also be more powerfully impressed by the example they see in the home. It ought to make fathers and mothers ashamed of themselves to give such horrible examples of married infelicity.
Fathers should learn to be pleasant in the home for the sake of the children, and mothers should try to stop nagging and being temperamental and otherwise disagreeable. They are teachers in the art of making home unhappy more often than they know.
Parents are often responsible for passing on mental pictures of unhappy marriages that are later worked out into the lives of their children. There seem to be special little purple devils that take delight in stirring up maliciously the passions of married partners and make them forget decent behavior with each other, and above all else forget the children who witness such behavior.
Now as to training young people as to marriage. It is too late for myriads to get the instruction they need from high school and college. Can the truth be told them successfully through the movies?
Of course, it could be done, if those who write scenarios were interested in making happy marriages instead of exploiting sex in unwholesome ways.
By and by someone is going to do this work of educating young people through the movies in the art of making happy marriages.
Of course, it will not be done by uninteresting, abstract presentations of dry facts, but by real flesh and blood stories of real people.
Possibly one of the most useful things for young people to learn to do is to analyze character—first their own and then that of a prospective mate. It is hard to analyze character when it comes to the one who interests us with a view to marriage.
What is character? It is made up of three things. And they are all important. They are inheritance, environment and our personal reaction to situations that arise. Inheritance, environment, and personal reaction. That is easy to remember.
Here is John Jones before us. Or Susie Smith. John and Susie both had parents and grandparents and ancestors from the beginning of time. These ancestors bring them their inheritance. They may not have brought them much, if any, money, but they have brought them lots of other things.
For example, they have brought them racial inheritance. Let us say that John Jones, in spite of his name, came of ancestors that lived in Russia, or let us say, southeastern Europe. In the veins of those ancestors flowed the blood of races now almost forgotten, but John is the result.
John may have been born in Russia or southeastern Europe. He may have traits and tendencies and qualities that are so foreign to Susie Smith, or to lots of other girls, that she would never understand him, nor would he understand her.
Well, should Susie Smith marry him? On general principles, I should say, No. He would be happier with a girl of his own race. She would be happier with a young man who had her ancestral background.
Now if a young man comes before a girl with a view to marriage, or a young woman comes before some young man, the first question to ask is. What is the inheritance? That is, what is the race background, the national background, the family background? Would they understand each other?
Then there is the question of previous environment. What kind of early surroundings have influenced the young man or the young woman? Socially, educationally, culturally, religiously?
If you do not belong to a similar social stratum so that you will be mutually at home in your surroundings, if you do not have approximately the same degree of education so that you will understand the other's background of knowledge, if you do not have about the same degree of culture, if you do not have the same religion, or one near enough for you to agree in your religious beliefs, your marriage will be apt to go on the rocks.
Then there is the question of personal reaction. By personal reaction I refer to the way one acts because of his inherited background and his early environment and training. You may be of the same race and nationality and social stratum and education and culture and religion, and yet be thousands of miles apart on everything that makes for mutual happiness.
Here we are treating of what is after all actual character, our way of reacting to life and its situations.
You want to avoid selfishness, coldness, hardness, cruelty, roughness, brutality, bad temper, nagging qualities, jealousy, impurity, envy, deceitfulness, dishonesty, insincerity, and some other similar qualities.
Do not marry to reform a man or a woman. Do not pity a man so that you feel you ought to have a chance to make him over. I have seen many failures, and never a success.