tand your mate._ Set about that job as though your life
depended on it. Your married life and its happiness _do_ depend on it.
Understanding one's wife or husband is far more important than earning a
college degree--and even more thrilling and absorbing, if one goes about
it in the right way. Spend time alone, quietly, affectionately, and
dispassionately thinking about your mate. What have been his great
emotional experiences in life? What are the main drives that determine
his ways of acting? What are his deepest aspirations and longings? What
are his unrealized possibilities? What are the things that have most
thwarted him and kept him from achieving what he has hoped to do?

Sometimes the process of understanding oneself and one's mate calls for
expert help. Skilled marriage counselors are available increasingly in
our larger cities (but be sure to go only to those who have demonstrated
their skill and training by helping other people whom you know and
helping them over a considerable period of time).

Sometimes magazine articles will help. Excellent books on marriage and
family life are available at public libraries.

_6. Discuss your vital family problems_ with your mate frankly, but do
not argue endlessly. If there are tensions in your married life, bring
them into the open, honestly and courageously. Don't try to convert your
mate to your point of view; try to understand his point of view. Try to
understand each other. But after you have cleared the air and shared
your ideas and your problems do not rehash and repeat and go back over
and over again until you are both weary and rebellious. Marriage is a
partnership, not a debating society.

_7. Discover areas of agreement_, and develop together joint programs of
action on which you can work together enthusiastically. The projects and
purposes of a husband and wife often conflict even when their desires
and motives are in harmony. Very well, go back of the purposes to the
underlying desires, and build new projects and purposes on which you can
unite. Suppose that one of you wants to go to the movie down on the
corner and the other just hates the idea. Very well; that is a conflict.
But if you search open-mindedly, you will probably find some underlying
agreement. Perhaps, though you disagree about this particular movie, you
both are craving to see _some_ good movie; and if you look up the
advertisements, you can find one that will delight you both. Or perhaps
th