Is Your Marriage Still at the Height of Happiness?

If coldness and listlessness threaten your married life, set the matter right before it is too late.

For a building to stand firm against earthquakes and thunderbolts and violent, sweeping currents, it needs solid foundations on whose cornerstones it can rest — and that is the inert, outward building; how much more, then, the living building, the building of nations and peoples? ..

True marriage is the one that lifts the two spouses toward the highest ideal, toward a goal from which one may hope for the raising of the nation's level and its advancement, in addition to preserving happiness — its appointed task — within the atmosphere of the marital home. Yes! Marriage is the building of society upon which the nation's coming life depends. How, then, shall a nation rise if it does not prepare for its ascent foundations sound against every flaw?

When I speak of the difficulties facing marriage in these days of ours, many people think that I mean divorce, which in my view is only a symptom. The anxiety over the present state of things runs deeper than some suppose, and divorce cannot rightly be counted the sole measure of the failure of marriage, for many couples live in constant misery, and in a state of complete estrangement, without any feeling for the sanctity of this lofty union.

A faction of the adherents of the sensualist school has threatened us with terrible visions of what will happen in the future if the divorce rate is not checked, and certain prophets who look at the future through dark glasses have insisted that a day may come when the contracting of the lawful bond of marriage among human beings will cease altogether, and that if it is contracted, it will be with levity and recklessness. This conclusion has filtered down to us from the latest statistics; and yet our sight is too short to see the pain lurking behind the maimed marriage whose end is divorce.

A lady visited me some days ago, in bewilderment and dismay. She sat sending forth one sigh after another, then said: "No, I cannot believe it... Only a week ago I was at the height of happiness with my husband, and just as fog melts away, he melted away from the path of my life without my feeling it or knowing it.

Yes! He has set off on a new life with a girl who works with him at the office. It is dreadful.. I do not understand him.. Can such a thing happen, and so quickly? .."

The woman was sincere when she explained to me that the news fell like a thunderbolt upon her head; but I did not believe that she had been happy up to that moment, had she looked at the matter inwardly. So I asked her tactfully to make the story clear to me, and she went on recounting it until she brought me to the very point I was after...

For a long time the relations between them had been coming apart, but she had not possessed courage enough to face them, in the belief that matters mend themselves with the passage of time. In plainer terms, their marriage had begun to dissolve before the complete separation, because it was a maimed marriage, and that is what led to those crises, and finally to divorce.

And the story reaches deeper still: the marriage, then, stands upon the ruins of cracked foundations, and divorce is the last act after a chain of decay. It is like death, which comes only after the living atoms of the body have wasted away and the ember of life in its veins has gone out.

Thus the sacred flame of love is extinguished, and the friendship dies, and with it the bond that joins the two spouses in mutual responsibilities and respect, so that these relations no longer mean anything to either of them.

It is well known that the preventive treatment of diseases is not found in hospitals; rather we must wage a fierce war against diseases, teaching the ways of health to the woman in the kitchen and to the man in the workshop, so that vitality, renewal, and daily growth may continue on both sides. For marriage is a living thing: it must breathe pure air, be nourished with wholesome food, receive its share of complete rest, and be kept clean so that the germs of decay do not creep into it. Happiness does not lie in material things alone but in the things of the spirit as well; and after the need for food comes the need for love. The two spouses must set out into the battle of life, in order to win, side by side, for division breeds ruin and misery, and sometimes death; and if the care comes from one side only, the other becomes a burden weighing on the partner's shoulders and sapping his strength.

And the wife plays an important part, for she sends into her husband's soul the resolve and the drive to carry out his work; however successful he may be at his labors, he is counted wretched if he loses the domestic comfort he desires. He wants her affection, her tenderness, and her companionship in crossing the hardships of life, just as she needs his strength and his protection in her own life.

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What is the middling or maimed marriage? It is a raw marriage whose obscure problems have gone unsolved; its rent widens and deepens until the curse falls not only on the two spouses but on the innocent children and on clamorous society. Spouses in such a state feel no safety or stability: in their depths there is a pent-up storm, and they pass the nights on live coals awaiting its blast and the explosion of the atoms latent in their breasts.

This kind of marriage is like an apple that exactly resembles its fellows on the outside, except that the worm is eating its heart; and one day the winds of misfortune are bound to blow and shake its roots, find it weak, and cast it to the ground — and the tale ends in the divorce court!

The shock is a thunderbolt to the souls of the children at that early age, when they need constant affection and care. And even if divorce never takes place, a marriage like this makes anxiety and doubt two companions walking beside the children, and the burdens fall on innocent members who understand nothing of what goes on around them; and if they do glimpse something through the fog, it is only to take it up for comparison between their own bleak, arid life and the happy, merry life of the neighbors' children. And when the children grow, there arises in their depths a violent loathing and hatred, born of that coldness between their parents, and the home turns from a seat of safety and peace of mind into a refuge of misery and turmoil for those young souls, who are drawn like lightning to other quarters of society, where they give free rein to the youthful impulses pent up in the dwelling.

So the children go out to where they can breathe the fragrance of life and refresh themselves in its radiant light, leaving their parents in an uproar and confusion ruled by the thought of their failure to build a family whose parts hold together. The effect of this failure passes into society, where it spreads until it overwhelms the minds of whole groups, not of individuals only, and they allege that marriage is an absurd thing, inadmissible, and lifeless. How many times have we heard talk of a couple who failed in their marriage, and people hold them up as the general example of marriage — their conduct repugnant and their treatment of each other harsh; and this spectacle works upon the mind and spirit of the onlooker, who concludes from it that marriage is a paltry thing deserving no reverence!

The time has come to do away with this kind of marriage, which exhausts the living forces of society, paralyzes the movement of life, and casts a confusion from which it is hard to rise. For marriage is the nation's leader on the road to life or to extinction!...

If we look at marriage as a living element, let us remember that it must change and renew itself. If you had met a man, say, ten years ago, and then saw him today unchanged, you would be perplexed at his case, and it would seem to you that some event had prevented his changing and had stood between him and the hand of nature, which changes every living thing.

The insistence that leads many couples to divorce is not reprehensible in itself, for some end their marriage because they are not content with it, and because they yearn for something better — and certainly that is true; it shows ambition, and souls that will not be satisfied with a meager pittance of living. But many fall into the error of abandoning a former companion to seek happiness at the side of another, when what such a case requires is a change of circumstance and of conduct. Thus we find that their idealism has turned in a wrong direction and lost the road that leads to the result they sought. Had they put into solving their marital problems efforts equal to those demanded by running away from facing those problems, they would have reached what they desire. But if they lack the capacity to create the atmosphere suited to their condition in their new marriage, they pass a pleasant time at first, then the newness of the relations fades, and the waters return to their former courses.

The story of the couples just mentioned is like the boat that was carrying sailors from a ship wrecked on the open sea: they were nearly dying of thirst, not knowing that they were at the mouth of a river of sweet water. This parable applies to the failed marriage whose parties allege that the solution of their problems lies outside, while all the time it dwells with them and stands beside them at every moment.

I noticed a sentence that came from the pen of one writer, to the effect that after long trial it was found that nothing helps a marriage to endure and keeps its bonds safe except the resolve that it shall stand firm in the face of any storm, however stubbornly it blows. This is an omen that makes us reflect that the fate of marriage is in our own hands, and not in the hands of luck or of destiny.

The lukewarm marriage is a deadly destroyer of personal happiness, of the security of tomorrow, and of the safety of society; yet it is not so dreadful as we think, for any two partners possessed of solid learning and sound knowledge can solve this problem however tangled it becomes, and there is no cause to despair of overcoming this coldness and replacing it with a harmonious life that pulses with warmth and renews itself in love...

So beware of the lukewarm, maimed marriage, for upon you two depends the happiness of the children and of society — which, if you do not raise it up with your own arms, will fall prostrate, and hard indeed will be its rising!...