Sayings About Marriage... Do You Agree with Them?

Pause a moment and reflect, and you will see that many of the sayings you hear about marriage bear no relation to the truth.

You may form in your mind whatever lofty opinions you please about the marriage that takes place on earth. The girl's imagination has been saturated with fanciful love on one side, and with the obstacles that cause separation on the other, until her head has become like a beehive in which the buzzing runs together!

What can marriage offer you? What are its powers and its limits? To what extent are your beliefs about it sound?

1 – The honeymoon is the happiest period of married life: No. This traditional period, spent in merriment and seclusion, is in truth the most difficult stage for the married pair, and during it may come the disappointment of both, if they have not acquired sufficient knowledge of married life and its demands. Put two people on the deck of a boat and leave its steering to them: they will shape their life by trial and error! We must not point our finger at a particular period as the happiest time in married life.

2 – It is hard to predict the outcome of a marriage: Wrong; the specialists who have tested this after reflection and experiment pride themselves that the outcome depends on personality and the influencing factors.

3 – Marriage is known only by experience: Yes, but if this is accepted to soften a shock or a sorrow, it is wrong; for marriage can be studied and its logical outcome understood, though like any venture in nature it may not match the test.

4 – Marriage solves emotional problems: No; especially if that means emotional immaturity or a nervous disturbance. But if the problem is one of emotional security through mutual love, then the answer is yes, provided the two persons are close and in harmony.

5 – Marriage matures the emotions: Wrong. Although ideal companionship helps bring feeling to the point of perfection, marriage is not the remedy, and it will not ripen the feelings of a person who lacks them.

6 – Through marriage the personality is completed: Yes, but there is a difference between completing the personality and curing it; marriage helps to fulfill the requirements of life socially and emotionally.

7 – Marriage is the best insurance for life: Yes. Statistics show that married people live longer than the single. And here we ask an amusing question: were the couple harmonious in personality to begin with, or was it marriage that brought them to this state?

8 – Marriage will reform you: No. It cannot erase your faults or cure the habits of weakness in you. The woman who marries a man intending to reform him will succeed no more than the man who marries for the same purpose. The reform that occurs after marriage rests on an individual, human basis.

9 – Love is the most important thing: Wrong. Though it is a bewitching thing to cling to this splendid fanciful phrase about love, real love is not a current that sweeps away the barriers before it; it is a natural growth of the personality over the years, and you can master it rather than have it be your leader. Wherever individual differences exist in temperament and ideas, this love cannot live, however strong the attraction between two persons.

10 – Nothing clears the family air like a small quarrel: This is true. An outburst is better than silence over an unsatisfactory situation, for total harmony is missing from human nature; these storms rage in order to cast the ship into the safe channel, if the captain steers her well.

11 – A sense of humor is the best of virtues for preserving a happy marriage: Yes, in a simple form that does no harm. For husband and wife to laugh at the same thing is a strong bond between them, and it is a measure of the strength of the friendship between the two — and what friend is better than a husband?

12 – Happiness is a gift of God Almighty: Wrong. Marital happiness is the product of the two, in return for mutual services and sacrifices; luck helps but little, if you do not spread the palm of wisdom over the situation.

13 – You can be happier in your married life if you grew up in a happy family: Yes, for besides your natural psychological growth, you have been taught the most important lessons in calm, settled living.

14 – When the fingers of poverty knock at the door, love flees through the window: No. The author of this theory did not mean it to be taken without qualification. Poverty can be a cause of drawing husband and wife together, if they think in terms of shared sacrifice.

15 – The birth of a child restores a broken marriage to its natural state: No. Children require shared material care, and they increase the size of the family, but they do not reconcile quarreling enemies. It is better to mend a failing marriage before the children come, or else they will fall victim to constant strife.

16 – A day will come when you regret your marriage: A grave error, for only those who live by their imagination believe such a saying. After years of marriage have passed, ask yourself this question and you will see that you have not regretted it — and she who says so does not mean it.