This Is Why You Marry!...

"Here a young wife answers the girls who think it better for them to wait until the right person comes along."

This is why you marry while you are still young. In the days you spend between the university halls and the business offices, your knowledge is confined to those places and does not go beyond them; and the reason you stay there is that you think with dread of entering worlds new to your senses — a real world — preferring to it a walk with no fixed goal. You will counter what I say with scientific or philosophical answers; but you have much study before you, for you stand upon a new stage, and it matters greatly that you turn your deepest thought and your whole attention to it.

You are easygoing; you believe in your own impulses and capability, and so you have not changed those opinions of yours which need a fresh "coat of paint" to restore their newness; and your soul is full of enthusiasm and of energetic zeal to cure this world of its ills. That is why no man will satisfy you, and you remain on the watch for the knight of your dreams — without knowing that you are setting up barriers between yourself and the world, and losing your capacity to love another person besides yourself.

Meanwhile you are not only attractive; your own attraction toward marriage grows too — which does not mean that you will content yourself with the first man who crosses your path. No: you are intelligent, sharp-sighted, and above doing that. But the truth is that the person whose picture you have drawn in your imagination is very near at this stage. Suppose you are twenty-five, or a little more, still unmarried, waiting for the suitable man, who may come at twenty or at thirty. We all wait, though the periods of waiting differ.

Do not forget the difficulties that face a girl if she does not marry at an early age — hidden from her sight by fleeting, superficial pleasures, such as spending the weekend where she likes, advancing in her post, or buying a new suit, and other such material things which she will soon enough give up in her new married life. Are you prepared, then, to be content with a husband who cannot give you everything you ask? That will be hard for you, of course!... You said that a girl possesses a freedom and an independence that a wife does not enjoy. But have you considered that a young man hesitates to come forward and ask for your hand when he sees you driving your own car, while he cannot provide you with its like? Your independence of spirit frightens him too; and as the days advance upon you, a rigidity appears in your ideas and your looks, so that he no longer feels at ease with you — and thus melts away the favorable opportunity

of making friends with the suitable person.

You are now thirty, and in your circle are men of various ages and situations. Choose the most suitable, and be content — for you stand before two courses: either refusal, and then you remain perplexed — what will you do? — or marrying someone who does not please you completely. At this stage you feel, alongside the pleasures I have spoken of, a mental unrest and an inner struggle, so that your nerves are never at ease about your future.

Now picture yourself married, and without children yet, so that you and your husband are free to enjoy life instead of looking out for the companion to come. You can wear what pleases you whenever you wish; you spend your leisure hours listening to music, or writing poetry, or in sport and philosophical discussion; and you pass the weekend with your husband between the theater and visits to friends who differ in age and station.

In marriage there is a meaning deeper than you can touch, for there is a twofold exchange: you find one who shares your joys and your sorrows and does not change, just as you are the only one in his life. As for the sharing of possessions, that is the least part of our subject, for the moral values surpass the material ones. Watching the sunset, or reading "Gibran" on a stormy evening while the two of you nestle in a corner of your quiet home, and the memories of your first meeting — all these create a shared delight, for the bond between you is strengthened by recalling memories gone by, memories different from those you share with your girl friends, buried in the folds of a diary or in a corner of the memory. For these are part of you and of the one you love, and they stay with you all your life. Nor is it any secret what meaning there is in his nearness and his company: your feeling of loneliness melts away, and a wave of hopes, and of longing to keep your mate, sweeps over you. This ideal understanding that marriage creates — the mutual sharing, and the union of body and mind, of society and spirit — can be reached by no other road.

In all human relationships there are likenesses and differences between two companions; and when the former prevail, without the latter standing as a barrier, there kindles the spark we agree to call love. If you turned away a man of these qualities at twenty, you will do so again at thirty; but if you were awake, and tried to understand him and to draw closer to him at that time, then you reach thirty with your heart brimming with tenderness, warmth, and love, which you shower upon him in your glances as he sits in the corner of the room before you, reading his daily paper. And you send up a prayer of thanks to God for having brought you to this blessing.

Review your life now: do you not find that marriage was the highest fulfillment of your hopes? For you give — and woman's part is to give — your sweetest days to the man who makes of them the happiest of days. And you feel all this, yet you confide it only to a friend whose life resembles your own. Still you are certain, in your heart of hearts, that you are the happiest of wives. As for your unmarried friends, I have nothing to say to them but this: "Whoever loses her life shall find it."