 Chapter 10 of the Good Housekeeping Marriage Book. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Aaron Tavano, May 2007. Religion in the Home by William Lyon Phelps. Chapter 10. During my forty years of teaching college undergraduates, if the lesson for the day was pertinent or an occasion afforded the opportunity, I talked to the men in the classroom about their careers. Not concerning vocational training, what I emphasized was the right mental attitude towards life itself, the perhaps inarticulate philosophy underlying all choices and all ambitions. I have always been able to speak more intimately to a group of young people than to an individual. The individual must take the initiative. I believe we have no more right to probe into the secret places of the heart than we have to pick a man's pocket. Whenever a student came to me alone and on his own, then I was willing and glad to discuss anything with him. But I believe every man's personality is sacred, and unauthorized or unasked for attempt to enter it is the worst sort of trespassing. In the classroom anything may be discussed without embarrassment. No teacher ever had a more intimate classroom than mine. For my main interest in literature, which I taught professionally, is its relation to men and women. Browning said his poetry dealt exclusively with the human soul, and it so happens that four poems of Tennyson's which, intentionally or not, are placed together, deal with four terrific passions. The poems are the first choral, rispa, the northern cobbler, and the revenge. They deal respectively with sex, mother love, drink, and patriotism. All four have produced happiness, and all four have produced murder. Life is dangerous. Students naturally wish to be successful in their chosen careers. I told them the greatest and most important career was marriage, that, unlike other careers, marriage was a career open to every one of them. For among the many and striking differences between male and female, we may observe this. Not every woman can be married, but every man can. There is always some woman who will marry him. The highest happiness known on earth is in marriage. Every man who is happily married is a successful man, even if he has failed in everything else. And every man whose marriage is a failure is not a successful man, even if he has succeeded in everything else. The great Russian novelist Terganev said he would give all his fame and all his genius if there were only one woman who cared whether he came home late to dinner. It would have been well if he had known this when he was young. I told my students, young gentlemen, although very few of you are now engaged to be married and not one of you is married, your wives are alive, they are living now. You do not know their names or where they live, but isn't it exciting to think that you are every moment drawing nearer to each other? She is half an hour closer to you now than when you entered this classroom. Some in California are sound asleep, for it is before dawn, some are eating breakfast in New York City, some are eating lunch in Europe, but all your wives are as real as if they were already living with you. What do you intend to do about it? Those preparing for the law or medicine take special studies. Those preparing for athletic contests take special training. If they did not, they would be idiotic. Those who are preparing for marriage should not leave success to chance, for while happiness is sometimes dependent on luck, in the majority of instances it is not, happiness usually follows the proper conditions. Thus, boys and girls, young men and women, will do well if they train their bodies and their minds to be successful husbands and wives long before marriage. It is worth it, for they are in training for the highest prize obtainable on earth, and yet one opened to you and one by millions. Not being a physician and being ignorant of physiology, I know little about the value of sex instruction, yet however important sex instruction may be to those about to be married, there is one thing more important, character. Two people unselfish and considerate, tactful and warm-hearted and salted with humor, who are in love, have the most essential of all qualifications for successful marriage, they have character. People about to be married need training and character much more than they need instruction in sex. From childhood boys and girls find out how children come, but the secret of a good character, temperament and disposition is not so readily found. The reason why character is the most important requisite for success in marriage is not merely that it happens to be the chief cause of happiness, but that those who have character can turn an unsuccessful marriage into a successful one, instead of taking the easy way out and acknowledging failure. No man or no woman is to blame for making a foolish marriage, it might happen to anyone. The test of character is not whether one has or has not made a foolish marriage, the test comes after the foolish marriage has been made. What a triumph then to turn that failure into a success, as a statement turns a minority into a majority. This article is addressed to young people. For those who marry late in life either do not need any suggestions or are already incurable. I am in favor of early marriages. I am delighted when either the boys' parents or those of the girl have money enough so that the young pair can be married at twenty-two, before they begin professional study or work. And when there is little money, but either or both have a job, then by all means they should be married. When young people marry, they take difficulties of housekeeping and privations as a lark, even as young people do camping out. When I was a boy, camping out was absolute bliss, now it would be absolute horror. Furthermore, in youth, neither of them has set. They can accommodate themselves to each other. The late President Harper of the University of Chicago was married at nineteen, not so young in his case, for he had already taken his doctor's degree. He told me that during the first five or six years there were times when neither he nor his wife could mail a letter because they did not have enough cash to buy one postage stamp. He laughed aloud as he recounted this and added, There was never one moment when either of us regretted our marriage. Marriage can be wonderful from every point of view when it is a combination of the highest physical delight with the highest spiritual development. It is indeed the sublimation of the senses. The great novelist George Meredith, who hated prigishness in all its forms, said in a letter, I have written always with the perception that there is no life but of the spirit, that the concrete is really the shadowy, yet that the way to spiritual life lies in the complete unfolding of the creature, not in the nipping of his passions. An outrace to nature helps to distinguish his light. To the flourishing of the spirit then, through the healthy exercise of the senses. Could there be a better description of the union of physical and spiritual development in marriage than his phrase, the complete unfolding of the creature? To his son, Meredith wrote, Look for the truth in everything and follow it, and you will then be living justly before God. Let nothing flout your sense of a supreme being, and be certain that you're understanding waivers whenever you chance to doubt that he leads to good. We grow to good, as surely as a plant grows to the light. Do not lose the habit of praying to the unseen divinity. Prayer for worldly goods is worse than fruitless, but prayer for strength of soul is that passion of the soul which catches the gift it seeks. What is love? From the age of six or seven boys and girls fall in love with a good many different persons. But this is not the same thing as married love, which grows by companionship and by sharing sorrows as well as pleasure. Many years ago, a college friend of mine, a splendid fellow with everything to make life worth living, was married to a fine girl. He died suddenly, during the first week of the honeymoon. I said to a man of sixty, Can anything be more tragic than that? Yes, he replied, unhesitatingly. It is more tragic when the husband or wife dies after twenty-five years of marriage. He was right. The loss after twenty-five years is more terrible, and in the instance I mentioned the shattered and desolate bride was in two years happily married to a second husband. The overwhelming passion of love is certainly rapture, and marriage is its most satisfying consummation. But true love is not so expressive in desire for possession, as it is in consideration for the welfare of the beloved object. Oh, how I love you, may not mean as much as don't go out without your rubbers on. Do you remember that passage in Guy du Mopassant, where the husband said just that to his wife, and they were astonished when the maiden aunt, who had lived with them for years without a word of dissatisfaction, who had gone in and out of the room as unremarked as the family cat, who was thought to be incapable of emotion, suddenly burst into a storm of weeping and cried, no one has ever cared whether or not I had my rubbers on. But expressions of love and passion, embraces and caresses, are also essential. I told my students, after you are married, never leave the house, even if only to post a letter at the corner, without kissing your wife. This very simple act is a tremendous preservative of married happiness. I also advise them during the first twenty years of marriage to occupy the same bedroom. Chorals and even insults given in the heat of anger are certain to happen in nine marriages out of ten. It is supremely important not to let these flames of resentment become a fatal conflagration. They must not last. Never go to sleep with resentment in your hearts. And blessings on the falling out, that all the more endears, when we fall out with those we love and kiss again with tears. Although happy marriages are common, unhappy ones are still news. The only ideal, flawless marriages I ever heard of were those of the Brownings and the Hawthorns. In both instances, the husbands were men of genius and the wives positively angelic. Since the greatest of all the arts is the art of living together, and since the highest and most permanent happiness depends on it, and since the way to practice this art successfully lies through character, the all-important question is, how to obtain character? The surest way is through religion, religion in the home. All that we know for certain of every person is that he is imperfect. Religion imperfection means a chronic need for improvement. The most tremendous and continuous elevating, purifying, strengthening force is religious faith. My parents neglected my social training. I am sorry they did. They were careless about my clothes and my personal appearances. I am sorry for it. But I am supremely grateful for their religious and spiritual training. Every day of my life I am grateful. I would rather belong to the church than belong to any other organization or society or club. I would rather be a church member than receive any honor or decoration in this world. It amuses me when I read novels written by those who never had any religious faith or who have lost it, novels that describe religious training in the home as producing unhappiness and hypocrisy and morbidity, the atmosphere one of thick gloom. As I look back on my childhood, it seems to me that our house was full of laughter. Table conversation was enlivened with mirth. If there ever was a merry household it was ours. Our daily existence was full of fun and Christmas, New Years, Fourth of July and birthdays were delirious. This is normal and natural and logical. Religious faith is essential heating plant. It warms and energizes one's whole existence. It gives a reason for life itself, for development. It gives a philosophy for conduct and, far more important, it emotionalizes conduct even more strongly than athletics or patriotism. Of all essential things, the most essential in married life and in the bringing up of children is religion. When two people are engaged and are making plans for living together, they are sure to discuss religion. You remember how suddenly Marguerite turned to Faust and asked him point blank, do you believe in God? A chief reason why bringing up children is so difficult is that example is so much more important than precept. I am a qualified literary critic, although I never wrote a novel. I am a qualified drama critic, although I never wrote a play. I am a qualified baseball and lawn tennis critic, although I never was a first class player. But when parents endeavor to bring up children to reflect honor on the family and be useful members of society, the parents must set a good example. A man once wrote to Carlisle, asking him if he ought to teach his little children to say prayers. The severe Scott replied, Yes, but only if you pray yourself. Don't teach them anything in which you yourself do not believe. The Scott was right. To teach little children to say their prayers when their parents never say them themselves is like teaching a dog to say his prayers, a trick that seems to amuse many people. To have little children say grace at the table when no adult in the room has any faith is again only a pretty trick. But to send them to church and Sunday school when the parents stay away is far worse, it is culpable. Then the children regard churchgoing, praying, and religion as one of the innumerable burdens and penalties of childhood from which they will escape as soon as they reach independence. When Overton, the great Yale athlete who was killed in the war, left his Tennessee home to go to college, his father told him that he would not give him any advice as to morals or behavior. But Johnny, will you promise me that you will never go to sleep at night until you have said your prayers? John promised and afterward told his father he had kept his word. If both young husband and wife share a similar religious belief, it is an enormous asset, an immense help to permanence in married happiness. Now, one cannot believe in God and in our Lord merely by wishing to do so. Yet, I often think that many who do not believe do not really wish to with passionate earnestness, with as strong a wish as they have for money or good looks or popularity. There are many who say and more who think without saying, if only I had the faith I had as a child, then I believed in God and in Jesus Christ and in heaven. One might almost as well say, if only I had the knowledge of algebra I had as a child. Why do small boys and girls know algebra and why in later years do they not know it? Because when they were at school, they gave their attention to it. They studied it. They thought about it. But after leaving school, they may never have opened an algebra book or considered the subject again. What does one expect? If one expresses regret for the lost faith of childhood, it is proper to ask, how long is it since you read the Gospels? How long is it since you prayed? This religious faith is such an asset to happiness, such a foundation for character and for married life and bringing up children, one might make an effort to recover it, or at least to consider it. I believe Sundays should be a day of joy and happiness. Sunday afternoon games and recreation are fine, but one enjoys them more if one has been to church in the morning or spent part of the day in either solitary or community worship. Those parents who selfishly seek only their own pleasures every weekend, who do nothing but amuse themselves, are they likely to bring up their children successfully? To those who have no faith, and to those who have lost it, let me recommend some wise words by Dean Inge. There are those who are as explosively and suddenly converted, as was St. Paul, but there are those who cannot have such an experience, and many, many are the ways to God. Give the matter serious attention. It deserves it. It is the most serious of all things. Being educated means to prefer the best, not only to the worst, but to the second best. It means in music to prefer Beethoven not only to jazz, but to Brahms. So it is in all forms of art, in athletics, in politics, in everything. Now, the person celebrated in the Gospels is the greatest personality in all history. He knew more about life than Shakespeare. He was the greatest nerve specialist you ever lived. Come unto me, and you shall find rest unto your souls. His way is incomparably the best way. It is the way to peace of mind, to courage, independence, fearlessness, to joy. If we find faith lacking, try his way. Listen to Dean Inge. He is discussing the illumination of the mind that follows recognition of the master. This illumination must be earned, or rather prepared for, by a strenuous course of moral discipline. The religious life begins with faith, which has been defined as the resolution to stand or fall by the noblest hypothesis. This venture of the will and conscience progressively verifies itself as we progress on the upward path. That which began as an experiment ends as an experience. We become accustomed to breathe the atmosphere of the spiritual world. Young people about to be married, young people recently married, young fathers and mothers, should give religion the utmost consideration. To neglect it, to be indifferent to it, is worse and more foolish than to be antagonistic. Religion is not a frill or an ornament or a luxury. Still less is it a thing to clutch at only in danger or in heartbreak. Religion is the greatest creative force in the world. It has made thousands of saints and thousands of heroes. It has revolutionized innumerable individual lives. It has changed people from selfishness to unselfishness, from cowardice to courage, from despair to hope, from vulgarity to decency, from barrenness of life to fruitfulness. When religion can change the lives of millions, when it can produce supreme creations in art, it is a force worth serious consideration. Religious faith has produced the finest architecture, the finest painting, the finest music, the finest literature in the world. The late John Philip Sousa, the famous composer and bandmaster, said that the reason why there was not so much great music produced in the 20th as in the 19th century was that religious faith had declined. According to him, creation is based on faith. This may be claiming too much, but his testimony as a composer is interesting. The American philosopher Paul Elmer Moore, who died in 1937 and who was one of the most profound scholars in the world after prolonged thought and study and observation, came from agnosticism into a complete and passionate faith in the Christian religion and in the incarnation. He said that while love was the main principle in religion as a way of life, the most important contribution to humanity made by religion was hope. Hope in the destiny of man and the superlative value of the individual in the personality of our father in heaven. I might add that if hope deferred maketh the heart sick, hope destroyed maketh the heart dead. The most unfair last word to describe religious faith is the word anesthetic. Religious faith is a comfort to the old, the sick, and the suffering, but in general it is not ascetic, it is a tonic, it is a dynamo, it is a driving force. Henry Drummond, the most effective speaker on religion I can remember, said to a group of students, I ask you to become Christians not because you may die tonight, but because you are going to live tomorrow. I come not to save your souls, but to save your lives. Religion adds an enormous zest to daily life. It makes everything interesting. It keeps alive the capacity of wonder. I myself am interested in everything in the world, from a sandlot ball game to the nebula in Orion. The mainspring of my existence, the foundation of my happy and exciting life, is Christian faith. I suggest to those recently married and those about to be married that they are entering into a relationship that can bring them the highest and most lasting happiness or the most crushing disillusion and despair. Such a relationship is particularly remarkable because of its intimacy, an intimacy far transcending that of friendship, love of parents, or any earthly emotion. As Thomas Hardy said, marriage annihilates reserve. In this amazing intimacy, every care should be taken to ensure success. A common interest in religion, saying prayers together, will help enormously towards increasing and preserving happiness. For a true belief in the Christian religion will improve daily matters. Husband and wife will not take each other for granted, they will not become stodgy or commonplace or stereotyped. Tennyson gave in The Princess, a real kind of marriage which one of my students described in the vernacular, I'm going to be married. It won't be much of a wedding, but it will be a wonderful marriage. Listen to Tennyson. For woman is not undeveloped man, but diverse. Could we make her as the man sweet love were slain? His dearest bond is this, not like to like, but like indifference. Yet in the long years, like or must they grow. The man be more of woman, she of man. He gain in sweetness and in moral height, nor lose the wrestling thieves that throw the world. She mental breath, nor fail in childward care, nor lose the childlike in the larger mind, till at the last she set herself to man like perfect music unto noble words. A wife may be a civilizing force, this is well, but she may be far more than that. She may be a revelation in daily intimacy, more unconsciously impressive than a professional saint. This is what Kappensaki said of an imagined union with Pompelia in Browning's The Ring and the Book. To live and see her learn and learn by her, out of the low obscure and petty world, or only see one purpose and one will, involve themselves in the world, change wrong to right, to have to do with nothing but the true, the good, the eternal, and these not alone in the main current of general life, but small experiences of every day, concerns of the particular hearth and home, to learn not only by a comet's rush, but a rose's birth, not by the grandeur God, but the comfort Christ. CHAPTER 11 OF THE GOOD HOUSEKEEPING MARRIAGE BOOK This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. CHAPTER 11 IT PAYS TO BE HAPPILY MARRIED Business believes that the happily married man will occupy a bigger position in the business world than will the man who is unhappy at home. The young men and young women in Good Housekeeping's Marriage Relations course have a right to know this, to know precisely the interest which business has in harmonious marriage and the extent to which home life is a factor when men are considered for promotion, employment, or transfer, any one of which means more income, more responsibility, and an opportunity to live more fully. Business might very logically take another view. It might believe that the single man is the better employee because single men are free to travel, are not burdened with the expenses of a family, do not run the risk of going home to trouble. It might believe that the home experiences and environment of the people that hires are not its concern. But business is concerned with these aspects, and young people should know in what way and why. While business negotiates with the husbands, it has long since learned that both husband and wife are entitled to consideration whenever one is being employed or promoted. The more important the job, the more important it becomes to determine whether husband and wife have tried to keep pace with each other or whether there is a discord at home. Business can afford to place responsibility upon the mentally capable, energetic, and tactful man if his marriage relations are harmonious. It cannot afford to gamble with the man who is in trouble at home, not necessarily vicious trouble, but trouble arising from carelessness, maladjustment, and misunderstanding. As a business consultant advising corporations upon their major objectives and policies, I attend several times each week, conferences during which men are discussed for promotion, transferred to new work or new territory, salary adjustments, and sometimes demotion. The business consultant prefers to limit his counsel to such objective matters as plans and operating policies. The business consultant prefers to limit his counsel to such objective matters as plans and operating policies, but this cannot be done actually because all business situations must be resolved into the persons in them. Hence, our discussion is necessarily devoted to men, to what we can do to make them more effective, to how soon we can promote them safely, to how much responsibility they can assume, to what they are best fitted for doing and the like. During the past 15 years, I have discussed such lowly functions as clerkships at $85 a month and such exalted positions as vice presidencies at $20,000, with the average running between $4,000 and $10,000 a year. The judgment of executives is not infallible and some of the men we pick are unable to measure up to the increased load we place upon them. We try to analyze these failures even more carefully than we analyze the successes. Here is what we find. In the majority of instances, men do not fail because they do not know enough or because they are lazy. They fail because business cannot always depend on them. They break at the wrong times. We can find men who know their work and who are capable of learning the requirements of a better job. We can find plenty of men who are willing to work and who will work even harder for the promise of a better job in the future. But we cannot find enough men whose emotional mechanism is dependable, at least not in sufficient numbers to carry on the responsibilities which business would like to place upon them. Peculiarly enough, the results of emotional instability are complex, but the chief cause may be defined simply. Trouble at home causes more emotional upsets, more instability in business than any other single factor. By the same token, lack of progress in business causes trouble at home. No home can be run successfully without a degree of financial progress, and such progress cannot be made, except by a negligible few, without harmony at home. All wives have, by and large, an equal stake with their husbands in their husbands' material progress. The increased income is a major consideration, but it is only the beginning in a chain of useful consequences. Business progress means mental growth, added intelligence to be applied to both working and living. Personal growth means a fuller home life, a finer environment in which to bring up children, an opportunity to become a respected member of the community. Business progress means greater responsibility, and this breeds the ability to take on still more responsibility, both at home and in business. Progress eventually brings more leisure, more culture, and more of the other refinements of living. Progress is accelerating, feeding upon, and multiplying itself. No one would deny the truth of all this, yet only a search and few have actually created at home the degree of harmony which has been the aim of this series in Good Housekeeping's course on marriage relations. If effective contributions from home to the consistent progress of breadwinners or universal rather than rare, half of our troubles in finding men for added responsibility would be over. The majority of men dissipate their energy in wishing and wanting, but restrict themselves to wishing and wanting the result rather than the cause. These insist that they want to better their situation, but insist also that business is a thing of heart, something to be shut in the office, something which need not to be understood or supported at home, and certainly something over which a wife at home has little influence. These two points of view are not reconcilable, hence everyone loses who tries to hold both at once. If you say to a business executive, business is a thing of heart, he will point out at once that your theory is true only in the least important job. The management does not worry much about the home environment of the beginner upon whom no real responsibility rests, but it frequently goes to unbelievable ends to get its more important employees back onto the track if they have lost their heads over a home problem. Again, business does this for no humanitarian reasons. It takes this attitude because its employees produce better when there is harmony at home. The capable, intelligent, and progressive worker is almost invariably married to a capable, intelligent, and progressive woman. Each acts and reacts upon the other. Men are not so versatile that they can fill $5,000 jobs during the day and then go home to husbands of $15,000 women in the evening. Neither are women so versatile that they will remain in contented harmony with husbands who are not their mental equals. Some look negatively at the problem, feeling that I could have done better if I had had the advantages of so and so. The facts are that these envied couples were growing up together, keeping pace mentally, long before the promotion came, which is given the credit for their present condition. When a wife falls down on her part of the job, neglecting either harmony or her personal development, her husband's first natural reaction is to separate his business from his home life, to grit his teeth and go on, hoping to achieve the impossible. This usually sets up a vicious cycle of events. Being handicapped in personal effectiveness, he spends more and more time at business. His home goes to ruin. He suffers the most dangerous emotional upsets. His work fails and conditions get worse and worse. He breaks, in short, at the wrong time, a time inconvenient to business to put it brutally. It is dangerous to generalize here because there is a fine distinction between harmony at home and bringing business into the home. Hasty thinking is likely to confuse the two. The man who takes petty troubles of the routine day home to his wife is a weakling and business cannot consider him for increased responsibility. The husband who takes none of his problems home is frequently a mystery to his wife, but he probably feels that she is not sufficiently informed to be useful in helping him make decisions on purely business issues. Wives sometimes rebel against this because they do not make the essential distinction between respect for them as individuals and respect for their information about a specific business question. The soundness of the belief that wives have a specific and clearly defined responsibility here is verified by the fact that husbands want and business demands one and the same thing. The approach is different because the husbands of America are asking primarily for harmony at home while business is looking for an efficient producer, yet they are both seeking the same thing. The husband asks his wife for harmony at home and a progressive instinct so that she will grow concurrently with him. Business when evaluating men for promotion asks whether there is harmony at home so that this man will be free from the greatest single source of emotional unbalance and whether this man and his wife have demonstrated the ability to grow in the past, the best available indication of their ability to grow in the future. These two questions take in a lot of territory but the ground must be covered so long as business in effect employs or promotes both husband and wife. Do not be misled for a moment respecting the importance of these two points merely because businessmen do not talk a lot about them. Their sense of good taste makes them hesitate to inquire bluntly into so personal a problem and so their investigations are conducted quietly. Numerous confidential sources of information are used and superiors take their own means to meet husband and wife together generally under some casual pretext. If we could look behind the scenes we would find that emotional stability, that elusive product of a satisfactory home environment is regarded just as highly as knowledge, experience or any of the other orthodox considerations. We would find executives saying we can count on Jones for Chicago now that we have seen his wife and determined to our satisfaction that she will measure up to the promotion or it's too bad we can't give this job to Smith but you know how hard it is to succeed without support from home. Another would be saying Brown flew off the handle again yesterday. It must have started at the breakfast table. Wives, if you can be the Mrs. Jones of these examples and avoid being the Mrs. Smith or the Mrs. Brown you will be removing for businessmen the greatest hurdle to promotion which we encounter. You will be doing your part as the wife of a man in business. You may determine the extent to which you are doing these things now by testing yourself in the light of these 10 questions. One, did my husband start for work this morning in a better frame of mind for having married me or would he have been happier as a single man or married to someone else? Remember as you ask this question and apply your own answer that we are talking about business, hard practical business where intentions do not count. You may love your husband dearly but if the results of your love are not constructive you must write the word failure across the record. Two, do I always treat my job just as seriously as if I were working in an office for a monthly salary? Some wives feel that it makes no difference if they linger so long over bridge or cocktails or shopping or whatever in the afternoon that they are unable to prepare a suitable meal for their husbands in the evening. Three, have I grown in poise and interest like the wives of my husband's associates and superiors? Wives who keep up with the procession are an asset. Those who fail to grow are a liability. Four, can I talk in the same terms as his associates and their wives? This indicates how carefully you have maintained your interest in the source of your income and how accustomed you are to expressing yourself. Five, do I dress and act like the wives of the business associates and superiors of my husband? You place a heavy handicap upon your effectiveness if your husband cannot be proud of you in the inevitable comparisons with other wives in his organization. Six, do I entertain with reasonable frequency the people who are in a position to help my husband in business or is our social life planned wholly for my own amusement? Perhaps this question should read, how long since I have entertained so and so? You may be surprised to find that months have slipped away without you having done a single stroke of good for your husband socially. Seven, do I limit our social engagements during the week to those which will not take essential energy from the job? Or do I feel that my husband owes me constant amusement when he is not actually at the office? As employers pile responsibility upon your husband, more and more care must be used in the allocation of time to social affairs. You may be able to rest the next day, but business does not permit husbands to rest on the job. Eight, do I act as a balance wheel cheering him intelligently when he is tired or discouraged? Or do I rub him the wrong way on such occasion? If your husband does not share with you his disappointment, it is almost invariably because you have not qualified yourself to share them. Nine, do I try to smooth things out after unpleasant discussions? As I would if a new dress or theater party were at stake. Many married persons have an uncanny ability for making miserable the objects of their affection. It is said that the course of true love never did run smooth, but the wise husband or wife will not unnecessarily roughen it. Ten, do I carry my share of responsibility? Or do I save up all the petty annoyances for our dinner table conversation? Wives who complain that their husbands are silent during dinner usually have good reason to overhaul the quality of their own conversation. Don't bore him with your fight with the grocer or the catty things Mrs. X said at bridge or afternoon tea. Here are some actual examples of the way wives affect their husband's business. We selected Blake for a branch manager ship at Chicago, and we thought that his wife could measure up. We took him out of a job where he had reached his limit and placed him in one where his developed ability might enable him to earn twice his salary he failed. We who appointed this man took the blame for his failure because business recognizes no alibis. As usual, it wasn't that he didn't want to be a branch manager or that he didn't know enough or that he wasn't willing to work hard enough. We found that the trouble was within his emotional mechanism. He was losing his head and his temper at the wrong time. At last, he wrote to his firm. This town takes the heart out of my wife. She is terribly lonesome, refuses to make new friends and reminds me continually of the good times we used to have back home. Her mother misses her and threatens to come live with us here. I appreciate this opportunity and I know that we have more of everything here than we had back home but I want my old job back. I can't stand it here. Business doesn't work that way and so we persuaded another employer to hire him away without his knowledge, thus saving his face and helping to maintain his courage. He would have been branded for life if we had permitted him to crawl back to his old job. Blake will never go as far as he is entitled to go because Mrs. Blake places her own feelings above any other consideration and her husband is not strong enough to control his emotions where his wife is concerned. Few men are. We do not in any way blame Mrs. Blake for the part she played in her husband's failure. She merely attaches more value to staying in her old groove in the constant companionship of her mother and in the regular contact with old friends then she attaches to promotion for her husband. We have no quarrel with her choice. If only she realizes that she has chosen something for herself and is now living under conditions dictated by her own choice. Take Smith in the language of business. He is a whipped puppy. Again, there is no question of his ability, his desires or his willingness to work. We have in a certain corporation a job for Smith which would mean a 50% increase in salary, a place of notice in the community and a wider acquaintance among substantial people. We have considered him for this job a dozen times but each time we have decided to postpone action because we are afraid of the influence of his wife. On his present job, it does no great damage for her to be so possessive, demanding all his time outside of office hours, ordering him around like a child. On the new job, such a performance would ruin him before he was fairly started. There we depend on her ability and willingness to grow quickly into the person she would have been training to become. We dare not, for we are held responsible for results. Just as I thought, some will say, business is inhuman. One who takes this attitude has an incomplete view of the facts. If business were to tolerate a repetition of mistakes, its general level of productivity, which in turn means income to its employees would be lowered immediately. This would operate against the very thing we are trying to sponsor, increased responsibility and more full living for all as soon as they earn it. This point of view frequently gives women no end of mental trouble because they are more inclined than men to think subjectively rather than objectively. Business employs a man for what he can produce, other things being equal. So long as he is morally sound and honest, business cares little about his attitudes on other subjects. Wives measure their husbands by their helping with the housework or their thoughtfulness and little things around the home. All of these have their value, but not in the scale of production on the job. Sentiment counts heavily with the feminine mind as it should, whereas business is more realistic. Business buys results rather than intentions. Business did not have an inherent desire to consider marriage relations. Its interest in them began with the many examples of maladjustment to which it was compelled to give attention in line with its age old policy of believing that everything is all right until it is proved otherwise. When the negative consequences were brought to light and business really became interested, a constructive attitude was developed which gained its momentum from the countless examples where wives have been major reasons for the success of their husbands. Fortunately, for ever failure, there are a dozen successes. The Mortons, for example, are a couple who have found that it pays to live both harmoniously and progressively at home. Mary Morton is the convert to the constructive attitudes brought out by the 10 questions outlined earlier. They have made it accustomed to entertain at least one evening a week, always having in mind that certain people can be both good company and helpful in business. They try to reach up rather than down in the people with whom they mingle. When they were to be transferred to another city, the news was broken to them together in their home by a superior. Mary's first and genuine reaction was it would be fine to make new friends and to have the children see a new part of the country. When they arrived at the new city, the old process so successful in their hometown was begun again. New friends, new interests, new growth. If they were ever homesick, the firm never found it. But I am inclined to believe that they were too busy on constructive matters to get homesick. Morton's salary is three times what it was 10 years ago and most of the credit goes to his wife. Likewise, she is the chief beneficiary. Another illustration of the extent to which business recognized the principle of harmonious development of both husband and wife is shown by the experience of Parsons. He was a junior executive, capable in every direction but one. When a vacancy occurred higher up, he was the logical candidate but the president of the company refused to promote him until he had had a chance to demonstrate his ability to meet the social requirements of his position. He conceded Parsons' brilliance, his energy and everything but his capacity to become genuinely interested in the people who were both above and beneath him in the organization. Inquiry revealed that he was making the best of a situation in which neither he nor his wife had realized the importance of social activity. Bear in mind that we do not mean a playboy temperament or a mercenary attitude but rather a genuineness in human contacts. When the problem was laid before them, a program was laid out for them to follow. Parsons and his wife called on everyone they felt should not be neglected. Later, inviting to their own home, those who seemed in a position to help them. During these second visits, the conversation was turned to what might be done by people like ourselves to prevent getting into a rut. Dozens of helpful activities were recommended and they made it a business to explore the most valuable so that they could tell others about forthcoming meetings of discussion groups, plays, lectures and the like. Within six months, they had entirely overcome the president's objection and a year later, Parsons was promoted to the other position at a $2,000 increase in salary. Two facts will occur immediately to anyone who is an intelligent observer of such things. First, Parsons and his wife had a better time after the change than before and second, business expects people to discover these things for themselves. This couple were more than usually fortunate to be led by the hand up to this new experience. Business gave Parsons his chance when it permitted him to demonstrate his ability. Quick jumps in business are not made available to people upon the basis of their belief that they can qualify. Business would be guilty of rash speculation with its funds if positions were given to any except those who had demonstrated their qualifications in advance. Business has no time for or patients with those who do not recognize the importance of these things. We have no license to give responsibility to those who say, I didn't know that this was important. Give me a trial and I will do my best to learn quickly. The answer to that is, we have another man who has been qualifying for many years. He saw the place of these things in a business progress. We'll risk our money on him. When a young man brings to business a reasonable amount of ability and energy reinforced by the emotional balance which comes from the right kind of home life, he is likely to surpass both his own expectations and those of his employers. Business wants him to succeed. Business wonders, as a matter of fact, why more people do not succeed with the incentives for success so generally open to public view. It realizes just as you will realize when you analyze the situation that the incentives have been understood but the ways and means have been missing. This is a common mistake in human progress. We have all aired in making someone else want something thinking that the process of arousing desire would ensure intelligent action. Most humans realize that they lack the ways and means of realization which accounts for the interests shown everywhere in better marriage relations and in the methods for achieving them. The desire to succeed is not enough. Desire has its place, however, once the ways and means are understood because strong desire sustains interest in the ways and means. Does this seem an idle theory? Not to business, the instrument through which most men and women work out their economic security. Business says you must show a harmony at home and mental growth before we will believe that you are a safe candidate for promotion. Give us these along with the ability you have always brought us and we will make it worth your while. We will increase your salaries, we will put you into jobs where you may live in better neighborhoods, mingle with more capable people in business and at home, give your children advantages you may never have had and provide you with all the creature comforts for successful living, a base upon which you must build your own philosophy of happiness but without which no genuine happiness is probable. Being composed of realists, business does not paint these rewards and glowing colors. It merely says without question or qualification, the happily married man will occupy a bigger position with us than the man who is unhappy at home. End of chapter 11. Chapter 12 of the Good Housekeeping Marriage Book. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Dennis Sayers. The case for monogamy by Ernest R. and Gladys H. Groves. Chapter 12. If we put off examining the case for monogamy until we had personal questions about it, most of us would never get around to studying it. For most people, no more doubt that monogamy is the best possible program than that good health is better than bad. To argue such a matter seems strange. But there is much loose talk about on the other side of the case, crying up the non-monogamous program practiced by a few and publicized by more. The adherents of this group are so vocal that their ideas are constantly being aired. Knowing themselves a small minority with a burden of proof against them, they excitedly attack the existing order. Their arguments are likely to interest the average person, however, only when he or she is momentarily thrown off balance by an emotional upheaval of one sort or another. And right there is the danger. It is hard for anyone, particularly a young person, to make a rational decision when his thinking is colored by his emotions. His tendency is to use his intellectual processes merely to justify what he wants to do at the moment and not to search out the truth. If he is unprepared for the anti-monogamy arguments, ready and waiting for him, he is likely to accept them without question. Before we have occasion to doubt it, therefore, those of us who take monogamy as a matter of course should understand why we do and what it's significant is to us. Then, if ever the occasion does arise, we shall be better able to let our minds, not our passions, decide the issue for our greater happiness. The question is, shall I, having given myself to one man or one woman, abide by the till death do us part vow, or shall I be free to change partners at will? The natural mood of most men and women entering marriage is deeply monogamous. The one thing husband and wife crave is to depend only on each other forever. Yet later on, some of them will suddenly desert the standards of monogamy without giving themselves time to think and others will pass through a period of turmoil before making up their minds to go or to stay. What has happened in the marriage experience to change these individuals who were strong for monogamy into men and women either dead set against it or very doubtful about it? The answer lies both in the particular temperament of the person's concern and in certain characteristic features of the early, middle, and later stages in married life. Sometimes a young man or woman bolts from the tenets of monogamy in a late adolescent panic when marriage responsibilities begin to be irksome. Sometimes it is the older man or woman who married in good faith only to lose sight of the values of monogamy. Not having the backbone to accept what comes and do something about it, this type of person wants to give up as soon as the going gets rough and daydreams about making a better start elsewhere. What are the parts of the marriage experience that bring out this disposition of wanting to run away in order to try again? The romantic love that marks the early part of marriage is a characteristically youthful attitude. Each spouse idealizes the other and pictures their life together as something almost unique in its perfection. Stimulated by the mate's expectations, each one rises above his or her previous habits of behavior. And for a while, the two seem indeed to be finer and better than the general run of humankind. In time, the first flush of enthusiasm wears off and the husband and wife gradually get to see each other more nearly as other people see them. For those who flinch from reality, this is as bitter an experience as any of the other hard parts of growing up. For nobody is it easy. But for all who face it squarely, it is a big step toward emotional maturity. Without hastening the process and thereby losing most of its benefits, you can learn to accept it little by little as it comes. The wife who seemed the most beautiful or most gracious woman imaginable, the husband who was looked upon as the strongest or cleverest man in the world slowly loses this impossible glamour and shrinks to the life-size proportions of a real man or woman. When one catches a glimpse of oneself in the estimation of the newly married spouse and realizes how far the idealized picture is from the somber reality one has grown up with, it is easy to think, I am made different by this love that expects so much of me, and if I am not yet quite so wonderful as my beloved thinks me, I shall soon become so, for this expectation spurs me to hitherto unimaginable efforts. Something of this improvement does take place. But then, to the chagrin of the one trying to improve, it becomes increasingly clear that the original expectations of the mate are being lowered in the direction of one's actual present level of attainment. Surprisingly enough, by the time one is sure of this, it is not disturbing in the way one would have expected, for one's own impression of the mate is also coming down to earth. At first this descent from the clouds of fanciful exaggerations of the loved one to the lesser status of everyday life seems more or less tragic, as both fear that the supreme quality of their marriage is vanishing. The more a couple have been lifted up by their romantic attachment for each other, the more they can be hurt when the wearing off of its unreal element drops them down to earth again. The ones who are stout hearted enough to count their own hurt a small matter, if they can still help the partner to have something to look forward to beyond the present difficulties, are matured by this part of their marriage experience and later come to look back on what went before as a dream-like time when they lived on nothing more substantial than hopes. This is the testing period of the marriage. Each partner must continually get used to the new outline of the other's personality as it is showing itself without losing sight of the essential quality that persists. Of one thing both can be sure, each still has need of the other. In today's mail comes a letter from a businessman who admits that he had got out of the habit of showing his wife how he felt about her in the rush and worry of trying to keep his head above water financially. Now that she, in her loneliness, has lost her heart to another man, the husband almost breaks into poetry in telling of his feelings. Not vindictive, he is just hopeless. If the wife could have had imagination enough to realize the strength of his need of her, she would never have wrapped herself in loneliness away from him. The drop from the temporary bliss of the beginning of love to the lasting burden-sharing of the rest of life offers many a chance for hurt feelings. Those who lose confidence in their own or their partner's ability to keep on trying to live together on a reality basis are generally the ones who want to keep one foot in the dreamland of immaturity. If he drinks and she sulks, both would rather think themselves martyrs and talk over their troubles with sympathetic friends than get down to business and do something about their problems. Chorals are intense in proportion to the depth of tender emotion in the background. Not understanding what is happening to them, the husband and wife think it is the end of love, and he may be tempted to accept comfort from another woman, she from another man. Then they need desperately to know what is the case for monogamy. History shows that monogamy has always been accompanied by increasing vigor in the society or group practicing it and that its opposite, freedom from social restraint in the relationships of men and women has always been associated with social or group decay. But modern young people are interested in the meaning of monogamy for them personally. Monogamy is a going on in the healthy spirit of reading what life brings, not running away from it. Escape into a substitute relationship is a going back to the dream-like stage of late adolescence, putting new promises ahead of present performance and attempting to make life stand still so that one may continue the threshold of maturity without ever stepping over into the place where one must make good one's promises. No human craving from infancy to death is stronger than that for security of affection. What misleads people into thinking of going outside their marriage association or wanting to break it for a new one is their failure to understand the slow growth of permanent affection. Looking back at the intensity of its beginning and romantic love, they suppose it is dwindling when it is really taking root. As a child that has been spoiled at home has a hard time getting used to the lesser attention he receives away from home, the married person who believes that courtship love is the essence of marriage finds it hard to come down to the quieter affection that can endure. This is the person who, unable to stand being valued only for his or her real worth, complains to an outsider, nobody understands me. The outsider flattered murmurs, I do, and romanticizes about this fine, unappreciated person only to discover when it is too late that person was only too well understood by the unfortunate first partner. One may not be able to make oneself grow up suddenly and all at once, but one can hold on to the principles one knows to be worth fighting for by the simple process of refusing to let go. All kinds of wonderful qualities needed in marriage may seem to be conspicuous in oneself chiefly by their absence, but one can always play for time. Even if infatuated with another person one can hang on to what one knows is right until time, the mighty leveler of passion, comes to one's help. An exceptionally happy married woman after going through this ordeal said that at the time when she was almost carried away by an unexpected infatuation for a business associate of her husbands it seemed as if nothing was real but the lover. Neither the memory of past happiness with the husband nor the thought of his future misery if she should leave him was able to mean more to her than so many words. Only in her half-stupified condition she had the wit to remember as one might recall the multiplication table without caring anything about it she had always previously despised people who acted on impulse without trying to find out the probable consequences. Therefore she stuck to her self-imposed rule that she would have no contact with the man even by letter until she could get over the strange numbness of her emotions toward her husband. Then gradually but thoroughly she came out of her trans-like infatuation until she found it hard to remember that it had ever happened. The time to put on the brakes in checking runaway emotions is before they gain momentum while the feelings aroused still seem harmless. The person can redirect his or her energy toward a more desirable object such as finding new grounds of communion with the spouse or sublimating its expression by turning it into constructive artistic or social channels. To wait until disaster threatens before taking oneself in hand is to pile up at best a guilty feeling that one has not done one's best to meet the needs of the mate. Those who step out in the frantic forties and foolish fifties complicate the picture for their younger observers. What they are trying to find is not so much a new thrill as the reliving of an old glow the hopefulness of their lost youth. Not content to live over in memory the high hopes that were theirs when life was new because of the gap between expectation and realization and their eyes to the new disillusionment they are heading for and think only to shut out their sense of inadequacy in their present association by steering full steam ahead for another encounter in which the odds are even more against them. One may think one doesn't care much but tired of listening to the same old jokes the same set of worries the same reminiscences but let there be a misunderstanding and one finds that one must care tremendously or one could not be so devastated no association is so humdrum that it cannot be quickened into life no matter how long it has been meagerly taking its course. Certain types of people whom we may lump together as a restless, discontented lot enjoy shopping around for doctors, for jobs, for friends, for lovers never staying long enough with any one doctor, job, friend or lover to have to take any back talk as soon as the first signs of a candid relationship appear they are off bag and baggage to newer hunting grounds we may suspect that what they really want is to outrun their own personality this appears in their willingness to slough off even their children in an adolescent impatience with any barrier to an immediate desire so contrary is this to nature that regret follows closely their decision the children, however are laden with a burden put on them by their parents instead of joyful confidence they experience a divided affection driven to a choice of loyalties or caught between competing rivals who attempt to win their love they are thereby denied security the one gift every home owes a child depending as he must upon his parents for this it is a shattering experience for him to find that the twofold support of his existence is no longer holding together he wants and needs not his mother or his father nor just his mother and his father but his two parents love linked together as the one source of steadiness in a universe which otherwise is in flux and turmoil the child who finds his parents have given up trying to maintain their affectionate interdependence is hurt beyond any other hurt that can come to him precociously matured by being denied that security of encircling affection which is his right he is forever cheated of his childhood and therefore can never become fully mature emotionally but must have great gaps in what should have been the slow development of his emotions before they hardened into adult form the monogamic fellowship normally encourages the coming of the child neither husband nor wife can awaken in the other the strong normal urges that come to expression in love fellowship without bringing forth the desire that seems rooted in human nature for a child of their own in any case when the child does enter the home experience soon makes playing his need of security where there is no monogamic commitment he is forced into family life that is confused incomplete and uncertain in such a situation open as he is to first impressions he suffers most and not infrequently so deeply as to carry emotional scars for life the friend of children recoils from the thought of any sort of transient motherhood or fatherhood monogamy provides a stable home in which each member husband wife and child although they are co-partners in love has an indispensable unique and satisfying role monogamy is not a fettering of human impulse but a registration of the deepest yearnings of men and women the laws that define and support it are merely man's efforts to express the common opinion that has taken form out of the experiences through the centuries of a great multitude of persons who like ourselves have sought success in marriage those who think of monogamy as something imposed on human nature through external authority a sort of straight jacket of emotional restraint are obtuse to the overwhelming testimony of human nature monogamy is not established by a thundering edict from Mount Sinai but by the quiet persistent inward speaking of human need the one man, one woman craving is so deeply laid in the structure of all of us that any other way of mating and establishing a home is alien to desire the thought never arises except when the one-time expectations have been lost through personality failure monogamy is not something that suddenly and finally takes shape a petrifying of emotion that for a season in courtship flourishes it gets its vitality through a growth process continues with life a spreading of an affection towards forward looking anything else is an indication of a faltering marriage in the beginning love announces the awaking of mutual need then the feelings flow swift and strong and carry each toward the other the impulse to possess, to annex, to have possession of the beloved is a consuming hunger it is a covetous grasping a recognition that the other is indispensable out of this comes a union and from then on the two grow not only together but also their common fellowship grows becoming their way of life the passion to possess the other one who seems external fades away and in its place comes the joy of mutual sharing the security of an exploring fellowship it is thus that monogamy offers love its fulfillment there must be this welding of self with self if the emotionally awakened man or woman is to escape loneliness self expansion in power, distinction, or pleasure does not suffice any by one self fulfillment only brings home the profounder need of a different achievement not in separation but through union diffusion of two persons in a constant intimacy this growing together comes from no deliberate effort making program it grows out of the affectionate living together it is a day by day consolidation not only of interest or experience but of satisfactions it is this that led Plato long ago to say that the man or woman apart from the other is incomplete a partial person hungering for the needed lover monogamy is however not a mere getting together it is a growing together it furnishes the opportunity for continued unrivaled intimacy and its ongoing not only strengthens the life together makes it pregnant with the forces that lead to character growth monogamy is therefore a preference usually so much a matter of course as to seem the natural way of living this explains its supremacy among the schemes of human mating it is a product of love ties not only as these flourish in a maturing intimacy it asks no more than that each member of the fellowship grow with the other monogamy is indeed a test of character but not in some extraordinary aristocratic way that would put it out of the reach of most of us although its benefits cannot be had the mere asking it is denied to no one who in sincerity lives in love with the person of his choice it is an achievement but not in the sense that one eventually awakens to discover that he has at last arrived at a monogamic relationship it is rather a hand in hand walking through life of a man and woman each having chosen the other and offered his every possession it as surely adds to character as it demands character the vitalizing union provides incentives that enrich both character and ambition the two sharing a common life add more, do more and feel more than each found possible in their one time isolation this in turn strengthens the union and makes each more indispensable to the other they do not attempt to duplicate each other but knowing that their love is secure each gains through the life contact of the other it was thus that Robert and Elizabeth Browning each affected the quality of the other's work both being able to write deeper and more human poetry as a result of their marriage it is most important for an understanding of monogamy that it not be thought of as a monotony a petering out of the energy of love until the high hopes of the confident lovers disappear in a drab, toilsome existence this fading out does come to married people just as it does to those who have never married rightly used, however monogamic fellowship protects by making adventure in life more zestful because it is shared however hard and dreary experience becomes it is more so if one walks alone and less so if its testing is met by two who travel onward in love monotony is always a reflection of inner losses so long as we are alive to what is so long as we have the feelings that uncover the zestfulness of things we keep out of the desert monogamy cannot guarantee enthusiastic living but undoubtedly by encouraging mutual love it protects the roots from which most of all each of us draws vitality when the relationship becomes monotonous there is the same confession of failure as when day by day happenings grow stale and repellent the difference is that when love goes the fortress has been taken and all life flattens out the exclusiveness of monogamic fellowship the outcoming of the deep hunger for a unique experience and affection can be greatly misinterpreted by failing to see that it is human nature's effort to keep to the golden mean as one is driven by tremendous impulses toward the supreme man-woman comradeship in all such relationships there is on one side the extreme which shows itself when one member of the intimacy crushes and destroys the personality of the other this eventually spoils the union by making it a conquest of one by the other the opposite disaster appears when there is no fusion at all but merely an alliance of two independent self-centered persons who come together in the spirit of temporary self-interest and refuse to develop a common life even when they maintain the letter of the monogamic code they lose its spirit in contrast with these unfortunately victims of will to power and self-centered passion those in monogamic fellowship enlarge the life they share one often notices as did Hudson the naturalist in his description of the English Shepherd's home that husband and wife reach such understanding that they share feeling without recourse to words and gather so much in common that as they travel through the years they do indeed seem to grow even to look like each other they winter and summer together and when time sends the children to their own adventures we hear these life-tested lovers hand-in-hand saying grow old along with me the best is yet to be the last of life for which the first was made end of chapter 12 read by Dennis Sayers for LibriVox in Modesto, California August 12, 2007