Engaged Couples Should Marry within 12 Months.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 1 May 1914, Page 2

Engaged Couples Should Marry within 12 Months.

HOW LONG ENGAGEMENTS INJURE A GIRL'S HEALTH, EXPLAINED BY A DOCTOR. (By WM. LEE HOWARD, ».D.) Nothing in a girl's life .will use up nervous force with such sad results as a long engagement. There are physical as well as psychical reasons for this fact. The physician, knows of the nervous wrecks due to this latter cause alone. These are one of our secrets which we are only too pleased to let the public know. We have not had opportunities before to take the public into our confidence. From the day a girl becomes engaged to marry, life to her changes in many things. First there are joy and happiness, with which go anticipation and healthy imagination. Then she is more or less confined to the companionship an 1 pleasures of the man who promise) to marry her. She sees life through his eyes and thinks only of the future as associated with her futurt husband. This is as it should be if all goes well, and when the preparations for married life are made she steps into the matrimonial state a healthy young woman. ' The girl's mind r.nl soul have developed, her life expanded, the nervous strain and psychic excitement have reached their height, and altogether she is' fit to wed. But prolong this state and reaction sets in, the continuation of uncertainty, the little and big di»app ointments affect the nervous system and indirectly the physical. Loss of sleep, poor and capricious appetite follow her anxious state. She is, in fact, weakening in her nervous strength and her psychical balance is upset. If from the start there is a decieied uncertainty of the far-off wedding-day,' the strain becomes in time too great, and it is only a matter of weeks when the young woman merges into some form of neurasthenia. Disappointments in love are never so fatal to a girl's .health" and happiness as prolonged and uncertain engagements. I have known ir!any girls who could throw off memories of early attachments and love, but seldom one who could recover from the strain of a long engagement. A marriage engagement naturally keeps a girl from that freedom to associate with male acquaintances other girls have ; men know she is confined to certain social limitations, and so she is left alone. After a girl has been in this position for two or three years and.the engagement is broken, she suffers intensely, deeply ; she is an outsider and she knows it. All this is cruel, unendurable for a sprightly girl, and she suffers in mind and body. The man is free to come and go .at will ; he mixes in the liVaround him and physically is not affected. When the man's life work keeps him many miles apart from the girl, and he is working to make his condition such as to give the bride comfort and happiness, the matter is not so grave. She waits and he works : contentment keep both physically and mentally well.

But daily contact under the uncertainty of a prospective wedding day does irreparable harm to the girl ; injury which later on in life will be very pronounced. Nature throughout all life, from the flowers to the human species, goes regularly at preparation for mating. When her laws are disobeyed or neglected she punishes— and thoroughly, too. No girl should be kept under the nervous strain of preparation and anticipation over a year ; six months will tell upon the nervous system of most average girls. Snap engagements with hope deferred are responsible for many wrecked girls, morally and physically. True, genuine love will overcome all obstacles : fickle fascination will raise a heap of objections which are only subterfuges for procrastination. This attitude of the male is only to snow possession of a girl without the manly determination to be responsible for his actions. There ought not to. be many excuses for long engagements. The young man should never propose first and then wait to build up his fortunes to meet the necessities oi matrimony, as it is unfair to the girl. And the excuse that short engagements do not give couples sufficient time in which to become acquainted is absurd, for there should have been no engagement until the couple were thoroughly acquainted, and, such being the case, a long engagement would ba foolish. The" young man demanding a long engagement is unfair to the girl, and the girl making such a demand is unfair to herself.