MARRED MARRIAGES.

Cromwell Argus, Volume LXI, Issue 3168, 22 June 1931, Page 8

MARRED MARRIAGES.

•y • Woman Writer.

It Is by no means the most spectacular and dramatic tragedies between men and women wbicb are the most poignant. A woman said to me the other day, speaking of a mutual friend and her matrimonial difficulties: "I don't know what she's got to complain ot Her husband is as nice a man as anyone could wish to meet. Now, if she had a selfish, inconsiderate brute of a husband like mine "

Well, it was true enough; the husband of the woman of whom we spoke is a charming person. She is a charming person, too, and a dare say his men friends wonder why he is not perfectly bappily married. I expect they say of her, as her woman friends say of him, that she is as nice a woman as any man could wish to be married to It is perfectly true; they are both delightful people, and neither of them hankers after anyone else. And yet, somehow, their marriage is a hopeless failure, and I can't see that it will ever be anything different unless they do something about reorganising their lives. It is one of those cases in which husband and wife don't get on. There is no specific reason one could lay one's finger on, because they do not quarrel about any specific thing.

I'm not sure that they quarrel very much, anyhow. It's just that both have a sense of having been cheated, anw neither quite knows why. And there are so very many marriages like that. The most pitiful tragedies of married life are those that never come into the divorce court. They are just sorrowful little stories of heartache and disillusion and disappointment, and men and women who in themselves are decent, lovable folk, but who are just not "right" for each other.

A further tragedyk is the fact that though they are so charming individually, in double harness they spoil each other's tempers, fray each other's nerves, and generally tend to "destroy" each other. But as they have no specific reason.for going apart, and have, moreover, a wholesome and decent regard for the importance of holding the home together so long as it is humanly possible, they do nothing about it.

They just drag on, missing the best in life, feeling disappointed and cheated and hopeless, and missing fundamental satisfaction all along the line. Not married to each other, they would probably be the best of friends, but married, the alliance simply doesn't work.

Now it is an elementary scientific fact that just as certain materials by a law of nature cannot resist each other, and we say that they have a "magnetic" attraction for each other, so certain other materials simply cannot be. brought together. There is the law of magnetic attraction, and the law of anti-magnetism. Not long ago, I saw that fine old scientist, Sir- Oliver Lodge, demonstrate this on a talking picture. He bad two pieces of steel which, when laid side by side, instantly flew together. He had two other pieces of metal which, laid side by side, instantly flew apart, and, forced together in the fingers, clicked and resisted furiously, struggling to get apart, the whole of a natural law being outraged by their being forcibly held together. The demonstration was a moral object lesson of the folly of attempting to fly in the face of natural law. It is natural for some people to come together. It is natural for some people to stay apart, and highly unnatural for them to attempt to come together. Bu what is to be done with these unhappy people who, though magnetically opposed to each other, are nevertheless clamped together by matrimony? It seems to me the first thing they should do is to abandon pretence, stop blundering on, and face the fact of their temperamental incompatibility.

They have to say to each other, in effect: "My dear, you are a good sort; I like and admire and respect you in lots of ways. But we can't disguise the fact that we don't bit it off. -

"We're opposites, and never the twain shall meet. What we've got to do is to make up our minds to the fact and stop all the pretence which results in friction and irritation." Where there are children, the parents will always, in such cases, have to be prepared to sacrifice full satisfaction in life. But usually, I think, it works out that what they lose on th« roundabouts of personal satisfaction they make up for on the swings of their children's happiness. The satisfaction they lose in one direction they make up for in another.