Lesson 17

dependence and pride who does not imagine a husband is necessary to make her magically complete.

    Whenever I get a letter from a woman who says she "cannot live without" the man who is breaking her' heart, I am compelled to tell her that successful partnerships are not between those who cannot live without each other, but bet.ween those who can live with each other. There is no room even in daydreams for the stupid idea that there is on earth only one mate intended for another.

    To my surprise I have found this antique misconception is still alive and it creates a lazy superstition that has caused more than one marriage to fail. How can anyone who believes her union was "meant to be", not equally believe it was "not meant to be" at the first sign of trouble? Whether or not a marriage was "meant to be" is beside the point; it is and therefore it requires patience and protection.
    Passion is great outside marriage, but not so hot inside it. So why do we marry? For love? Oh yes. Friendship? Certainly. Children? Why not? Money? Dodgy. Fun? Never.

    For most young people-and a lot of older ones-marriage is the first adult commitment, and if it is to succeed it must be undertaken in an adult way. It isn't a bad idea for engaged couples to write out the sort of contract any other working partnership would demand, specifying how many children they want to have and when, where they will live, how they will divide household duties, which in-laws might become liabilities and what to do about th.em, how much money will be coming in, as well as precisely how it will go out.

    I don't pretend any couple would abide by such a contract, but simply in drawing it up they would find out a great deal about each other's unromantic expectations, for these-not sex or fidelity or love -are tlne real marriage wreckers. It is alarming, for instance, how many women race into a lifelong contract with a man whose income and earning power they do not know. Do they still expect Daddy to find out for them?

    Of course, there is only one way to treat any problem inside marriage, sexual or otherwise, and it is the way to treat all the other problems: talk to each other.
    But how many times has a woman written to me--a complete stranger-of a deep misery that she could not tell her husband, or that she failed even to catch his attention? There must arrive an egly momcni between every husband and wife-maybe it's a quarrel or a disappoinrment or a hurt-and if that moment drops without discussion and sinks into brooding or resentment, then it will be the seed that comes in the end to bear bitter fruit.

    Admittedly, it is largely women who write to me and I do see marriage from a woman's point of view. But in this freezing of communication, I think it is often men who are the culprits. Men must talk about their feelings and men must respect the validity of women's feelings, or their marriages become just a way of getting their shirts ironed.

    " When agony aunts like me talk about "working at a marriage", listening is what we mean. Listening is hard work, especially when it is to something we would rather not hear. There is no such thing as a marriage of convenience. Marriage is a cumbersome, inconvenient alliance, but it. is the only way we have of making families and therefore anyone who undertakes it has a responsibility to it. Part of the wife's responsibility is never, never to expect more from "us" Chan she expects from herself.

　

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