Don’t Marry For Love!

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1070, 6 September 1930, Page 18

Don’t Marry For Love!

DO not love my husband. [ and have never loved !rfr him. Y’et we have the illtKZli reputatioix of being the Wjw happiest couple in our kSskJ circle of friends —and, what is more, we are happy (writes a contributor to the “Sunday'Pictorial”). I have only loved passionately once; that was in the eai-ly days of the war, and he was killed just befoi-e the leave in which we were to get married. Need.l tell you that at first my heart was broken, and I voweil I should never love again? As for marrying, the thought was abhorrent to me. As time passed, however, I became more sensible. I saw liow tragically some of those war weddings turned out —to what a miserable end some of those glowing romances came. Yet I have no doubt that every bride loved as passionately as I did. Casual Couples I began to look around at my friends, and take stock. And I made a discovery that wiser people had made before me —that happiness after marriage is generally in inverse ratio to the love that precedes the ceremony. In other words, passionate lovers do not always find married happiness, whereas the casual couples almost invariably do. Then John came along, and we went out together to theatres and dances. He took me to his people; I introduced him to mine. We got on excellently, for our tastes were similar, and in every way we were good pals. Yet never once did I feel anything like the thrill that my war-time lover had given me by the mere pressure of his hand. When I told my mother that I was goiixg to marry John she was rather scandalised, because (as she pointed out) we were so unlike lovers. When I told lxer that we didn’t love each other she gave me a solemn lecture, which I ignoreil. I have never regretted tlie step. John and I, you see, went into-mar-riage with our eyes open. We had no

is the strange advice of a Happy Wife

illusions about each other. I knew him for a rather likeable sort of chap, with a tendency to be distinctly boi--ing at times. He knew me for—well, whatever he did know me for. Neither of us idealised the other. But I had regarded my war-time sweetheart as a young god, and I still like to think of him as such. He will always live iix my memory as a sort of supei’-being. Think how my idol would have been shattered if I had married him; it must have been shattered, for I should have leai’nt his faults, and been disillusioned. On his part, he probably regarded me as a perfect-woman. I hate to think of the look that would have come into his eyes the fii’st time I snapped at him. I had snapped at John dozens of times before 1 marxied liim, and he’d been grumpy with me. We each knew all that was in store for us, with the result, that instead of being disillusioned we found that we got on one another’s nerves far less than we had anticipated. More Than His Share I certainly wouldn’t change him for anyone else in the world, and I feel sure he regards me in the same way. As we had no hectic love-making in our courting days, neither of us can sigh because our passionate kisses have given place to mere pecks, and when one of xis feels a little more pally than usual, a different kiss comes as quite a discovery! We have been married for nearly eight years now, and there is one little boy. He gets the love- —there is no misundei’stauding about that. In fact, I think he gets more than his share, because we are not demonstrative to each other. I am sure I would never advise anybody to marry for love. Love is blind, and to enter iixto a thing like marriage—a lifelong contract —without being able to see where you are going, is surely the most foolish thing any person could do. If you want to know what real married happiness can be, follow my example—and don’t marry for love.