FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   >>  
Cosmos." Marriage, to be successful, is based on a graceful recession of the ego in the cosmos of each of the partners. The prime difficulty is this; people do not like to recede the ego. And the worst offenders are the ones who are determined to stand up for the right, which usually is a disguised way of naming their desire. One might speak of a thousand and one things that every man and every woman knows. One might speak of the death of love and the growth of irritation, the disappearance of sympathy,--these are the hopeless situations. But far more common and important, though less tragic, is the disappearance of the little attentions, the little love-making, the disappearance of good manners. Men are not the only or the worst offenders in this; the nervous housewife is very apt to be the scold and the nag. Perhaps the neurasthenia of the husband arises from his revolt against the incessant demands of his wife, but that's another story. At any rate, there is what seems to be a cardinal point of difference between men and women, perhaps arising from some essential difference in make-up, perhaps in part due to difference in training. An essential need of the average American-trained woman is sympathy, constantly expressed, constantly manifested. The average man tends to become matter-of-fact, the average woman finds in matter-of-factness the death of love. She acts as if she believed that the little acts of love and sympathy are the more important as manifesting the real state of feeling, that the major duties were of less importance. On this point most men and women never seem to agree. The man gets impatient over the constant demand for his attention. He thinks it unreasonable and childish. Intent upon his own struggle he is apt to think her affairs are minor matters. He thinks his wife makes mountains out of molehills and lacks a sense of proportion. He forgets that the devotion of the husband is the woman's anchor to windward, her grip on safety,--that his success and struggle are hers only in so far as he and she are intimate and lover-like. And women, even those who trust their husbands absolutely so far as physical loyalty goes, jealously watch them for the appearance of boredom, or lack of interest, for the falling off of the lover's spirit and feeling. After marriage the rivalry of men expresses itself in business more than in love. Even where a woman does not fear another woman as a rival she fears
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   >>  



Top keywords:
disappearance
 

sympathy

 

average

 

difference

 

thinks

 
important
 
constantly
 

essential

 
struggle
 

offenders


feeling

 

husband

 
matter
 

Intent

 
affairs
 

matters

 
constant
 
importance
 

duties

 

attention


Cosmos

 

unreasonable

 

demand

 

mountains

 

impatient

 

childish

 

safety

 

spirit

 

marriage

 

falling


interest

 
appearance
 

boredom

 

rivalry

 

expresses

 
business
 

jealously

 
anchor
 

windward

 
manifesting

devotion
 

forgets

 
molehills
 
proportion
 

success

 

absolutely

 
physical
 

loyalty

 
husbands
 

intimate