A COUPLE’S LEISURE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 July 1938, Page 8

A COUPLE’S LEISURE

ONE OF TRICKIEST PROBLEMS. OF MODERN MARRIAGE. One of the trickiest problems of modern marriage is the correct dispensation of a couple’s leisure. Single persons may waste or enjoy their free time as they please. When another person has to be considered, however, it is surprising what trouble an illmanaged leisure time may bring. Surprising, too, the beauty the same time will foster, when it is used with wisdom. In other words, evenings at home become one of the important considerations of married life. This article discusses their use and abuse. A modern age, whose machine-gods have dropped much leisure into unaccustomed hands, has created a pretty problem here. People will become frenzied at the mere sight of spare time looming ahead; it is not a common privilege to have an intelluctual interest to pursue in such time. For married people, in particular, if leisure time does not take on a certain character of play, it becomes a mischief-maker. The most horrible disuse of leisure at home arises when people are saturated in boredom with one another. Actually, evenings at home should escape that menacing familiarity and go on to adventure, but here familiarity has been encouraged until it has turned pirate. Selfishness is a byword, and leisure becomes sheer guilty laziness, a stodgy passing of priceless hours. That two should be tied together for such a time is counted an evil necessity, and so the hours are passed with the least effort possible. The husband slumps and hides behind a newspaper. He will stay behind it for an hour or two and then throw it down without a word, as if news was no fit matter for discussing with wives. He may then read a book, play patience, bludgeon his wife into a quarrelsome game with him, or go to sleep, or simply slip out to join his pals. It would be a miracle if he ever thought he had some responsibility towards his wife in the way of offering her entertainment after the routine of her day’s work, which is in some ways a moreinsufferable routine than that of a man. The woman may be as ingenious as the man at this dumb preoccupation. She will knit or sew with all the impassivity of France’s famous guillotine women. And never a word of interest or appreciation. Married people will occasionally make that dreadfully significant statement that they know the remarks of their partners before they are ever spoken. An insignificant use of leisure time makes such an apprehension more devilish still. In their cogitation, their indifference leads to an indifferent summing up of the qualities of the mate. It is surprising how the worst thoughts can be more entertaining than the best. Hence a mutually selfish evening at home will often end in a leisure time given up to quarelling, always more violent because of the need for distraction.Yet it is scarcely necessary, for there are people who take their leisure with similar quietness—the same hunchback attitude behind a newspaper and the same slide and click of knitting needles—but all the difference in the world can be seen in the manner in which, at the end of the silence, they look with enlightened eyes to one another and talk and discuss their work intelligently. You see, they still think something of one another, and they are stirred into talking and giving of their best in that talk.

It is strange, perhaps extraordinary but the question of spending one’s evenings at home becomes one of expenditure of love and consideration. It is not necessary that every hour should be shared among married people. The human soul always demands its hour of inviolable sanctity but in marriage there must be some deliberate sharing of leisure hours, a deliberate building up of spare time enjoyments, with not a little of the element of self-sacrifice. It is worth a week’s happiness to give up your own particular interest if your mate has a sudden enthusiasm worth following up. If you refuse, the enthusiasm may not appear again for months.