The Truth about Marriage/Chapter38
CHAPTER XXXVIII
IS LOVE BLIND?
Someone asks: "Don't you think that love is blind?"
Yes, too often so. Many girls see in a young man their ideal. They do not see the qualities that really exist in him. They are blind to his defects and sometimes glaring faults. They see a hero instead of a very imperfect youth, often silly, often vain.
And young men are just as blind to girls they meet. They fail to see the obvious silliness and vanity of such girls, and even far worse faults. Other women could open their eyes. At the same time there is in true love often the power to see the really splendid qualities underneath the appearance.
A wife sometimes recognizes wonderful possibilities in her husband that other people do not see, and sometimes, like the sculptor working over the block of marble, is able to carve out a hero that others never suspected to exist.
Men when they attribute their success in things they undertake to their wives are proving that in the case of their wives love was not blind. She saw what was in her man and helped to bring it out in his development.
I read this statement the other day which strikes me as useful in this discussion: "Love should be always blind, or to read the saying aright, should keep so keen a vision for perfection hidden to other eyes that it can never ponder on the imperfections that do exist, should never accuse but always excuse defects, faults, failures. Yet a man should learn to call his wife an angel not because of her hazel eyes, but because of the pure soul that looks through them, be they hazel or iron grey."
In other words, the writer is trying to say that love should be blind to faults if people are once married and have eyes wide open to see qualities that make for perfection.
But before marriage I would urge young folks to keep their eyes open, open to see glaring faults as well as open to see possible virtues. For if we are not honest with ourselves before marriage we may plunge into a swamp.
The eyes of our mind are given us to see our pathway through life just as surely as the eyes of our body are to help us walk safely on the ground.