WHY GIRLS GO UNLOVED

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 283, 10 September 1938, Page 4

WHY GIRLS GO UNLOVED

JV VERY girl yearns for the day when she will walk down the wedding aisle to the sweet strains of Lohengrin. It’s her day of days, in which all her cherished dreams come true. Yet many a maid never knows the joyous thrill of saying she will “love, honour and obey.” She never knows the delight. of shopping for a wedding trousseau and planning a home for two. She has everything that it takes to attract the boys, but somehow love never comes her way. Not only are her friends mystified by her unwedded state but the girl herself is just as much bewildered. She is likely to blame it on her luck, or her looks, or that she lives on the wrong side of the tracks. She thinks that the other girls have had more money, beauty, or clothes, or perhaps better opportunities to hunt romance. Now we all know, and history bears us out, that many girls who are minus these assets have managed to walk away with the catch of the season. So there must be something else about the girl which keeps the boys from popping the magical question. So the thng to. do is to look into the matter scientifically. The problem was taken to Dr. "Margaret Daniels, wellknown consulting psychologist in New York, whose work it is to help people untangle their love lives or to help them find love when they’ve missed it. She’s a woman of charm and understanding, warm-hearted and very feminine. It’s easy to relax in her presence and discuss matters of the heart. “Usually, when a girl doesn’t find love,’’ she said, after hearing the question, “it’s for one of several reasons of which she may be totally unconscious. “In the first place, it is woman’s natural birthright to desire love and marriage. All her inner forces are continually driving her towards that goal. If you ask a little girl what she wants to be when she grows up she says she wants to marry and have lots of children. That’s the innate woman in her speaking. “But by the time she gets to college she has had implanted in her strong

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ambitions to be a lawyer or a doctor .or a copy' writer. She begins to regard with disdain such feminine tasks as home-making, cooking, sewing and rearing children. “After she has spent four years in college she has to reorient herself when she gets out. She is faced with the problem of getting a job or a husband. Here begins a conflict between her mental desires and her basic instincts which she is unable to solve. “The chances are that, due to economic pressure or family responsibilities, she takes a job and throws all' her energies into it. Her feminine instincts begin to be overlaid by masculine traits, which she acqurfes in her business life, and soon she loses the secret of releasing them. “She may have a brittle surface charm and her clothes may be feminine and smart, but she can’t be the coquette. She can’t get a man stirred up romantically. She’s self-reliant, efficient and independent—and she lets him know it. “I know a successful woman lawyer who is wretched and lonely because she has missed out in what she now considers her dearest wish—a husband and children. Men to whom she might be attracted look askance at her because she can out-argue them. She can’t play the coy female because the habit of years prevents any but simple, straightforward behaviour. • . “She said to me: ‘Men who like me always compare me to their sisters.’ “She’s an example of a deep desire for motherhood repressed and covered over by more worldly ambitious desires. The emptiness of these desires becomes apparent to this type of woman, alas, often too late.”

Every girl, Dr. Daniels pointed out, must recognise this danger. She must realise that first of all she’s indebted to her feminine nature to fulfill herself and that everything else must be incidental. If she doesn’t neglect her woman’s life she will find that she will do her job much better. The frustrated girl is likely to be inefficient after a time. “If she has the sort of job that takes everything from her she must say, Tm not going to let the job wear me out,'” advised Dr. Daniels. “She must give less to it so that she can lead her own life. She shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that by working hard she will make herself irreplaceable, if she wears herself out she will only be more easily replaced by some vital young girl than if she had taken care to lead her woman’s life.”

In other words, the job must never come first. This doesn’t mean that a girl should be inefficient and do her work haphazardly. But she must never let it be a substitute for the real business of living her life. She must learn that a job is a job which demands mental efficiency and discipline, but as little emotion as possible. She must regard it impersonally, just as a man does. Another reason a girl may be unloved, according to Dr. Daniels, is that she demands so much of a man that no mere male can ever measure up. “This comes from a romantic false picture which she has acquired out of novels and the movies of the perfect man” said the psychologist. “She compares this ideal with the boys she knows and finds them lacking. It never occurs to her that in the course of years these boys may develop into attractive, desirable men. She mustn’t overlook the bov who is simple to-day, but . see his future possibilities and be willing

help him along. “Many a girl remains a spinster because she didn’t realise this until too late. “Another common reason why a girl doesn’t win love is that she may be suffering from some blight in childhood which has unconsciously made her afraid of men or hate them. We all carry into our adult life patterns which have been formed in early years and many an unloved girl has been preconditioned long before she entered college. An unhappy home relationship may be the cause of it, or the fact that she was kept from normal contacts with boys. “Perhaps college may help her to rationalise her escape, but it doesn’t help to make her face her fear. She’s afraid that she will be unpopular or be a wallflower, so that she makes it a point to have only girl friends. Such a girl can only be helped by psychological treatment. “Being spoiled by an indulgent father isn’t so good for a girl. She is likely to get a fixation on her father and reject every young man who doesn’t come up to the father ideal. This girl has to look at a young man with clear eyes and try to dissociate him from the virtues of her father. She must remember that her father may not have been so imoortant when he was young, and that

now she’s reaping the benefits of his success. She must not allow her adoration of him to keep her from falling in love. “There are many girls who choose careers because they fear the responsibilities of marriage and childbirth. We are likely to condemn such a girl as a coward or shirker, but there may be some reason for her fear. If she can get psychological help, this fear will disappear. “In the category of girls with inferiority feelings, we have a vast range from fancied to real defects of face or figure which plunge a girl into an impossible social pattern. She feels certain that she’s unable to compete with other girls for the attentions of men. “I find that the girl with the fancied defect is a much more serious case and she often lets it ruin her life. Once she’s convinced that she is unattractive or hasn’t social ppise it takes all the king’s horses and all the king’s men . to have her get over the idea that she isn’t desirable to men. “A man gets the whole impression of a woman. If she has a charming smile, a warm personality, a sympathetic manner, and a sense of humour, she can be as desirable to him as any raving beauty. You’ll often find that the most popular

girls aren’t the least bit pretty.” The one sin a girl must never commit is to assume a superior attitude. It is this, more than anything else, which is likely to keep a man at arm’s length, thinks Dr. Daniels.