The Other Side of the “Jilt”

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 62, 6 December 1930, Page 17

The Other Side of the “Jilt”

4 S ITT 7 HENEVER I hear a lad condemned as a ‘cad,’ or a girl VV / condemne(l as a fOr breaking off an engagement, I % / wonder at the sanity of the people who pass that verdict. V V There are cases where it is deserved, but there are many where it is not. Do the people who pass judgment want to swell the increasing numbers of married couples who find their way to the Divorce Courts?” writes Dr. Sidney M. Berry in the “Yorkshire Observer.” » “That is the Inevitable result of making engagements so binding that they cannot be broken without a sense of .guilt. There are engagements which, lightly made, are lightly broken, but even those butterfly relationships are much better broken before than after marriage when a break may spoil the life of a child as well as a man and woman. “But it is not this kind of engagement of which I am thinking now. They will always provide a problem of their own, whatever schemes may be devised either by Church or State. I am thinking of engagements which are entered into seriously, but where fuller knowledge of each other and a wider experience of life leads to changed opinions. It 1# madness for any social or

religious code to encourage a couple in that state of mind to go on with their engagement “What is called fidelity then leads to infidelity later on. The mischief is that so often it is one party to the engagement who wants to change, but not the other. Then in addition to the fear of what others may say, there is the natural fear of hurting one’s partner or, to put it in an old-fashioned way, of breaking someone’s heart. “Anyone who has ever been, faced with the issue of acting on a deep instinct at the cost of inflicting suffering will realise what an agonising .situation it is, but there is little doubt what is the right thing to do. To refuse to hurt now may inflict the deeper hurt later. The old idea that after marriage these warnings of instinct will be silenced, and that ‘things will work out all right when you are settled down,’ is the most mischievous lie ’ which can be uttered. . “The idea of betrothal is to give men and women a chance to know one another better before they become life-long partners, but if in that period feelings change, the change ought be acted upon,"