MARRIAGES BETWEEN OPPOSITES.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3134, 11 September 1922, Page 7

MARRIAGES BETWEEN OPPOSITES.

(By Eustace Pountney.) I sec that the old idea about marriage between opposite* being the most successful is being revived. You know, I expect, what is meant. The tall man is supposed to be happiest with a little woman. A girl with fair hair is supposed to dream invariably of a dark man. The rough tyrant must have a soft, clinging creature, ever ready to perform the behests oilier lord and master. On the otherhand, the rather masculine "practical" woman is supposed to find her ideal mate in the shy, unassertive, meek little fellow who, according to kind friends, "was obviously born to be hen-pecked." In the same way male brains need little more than feminine beauty, and—well, and so on But, of course, it is all

the sheerest nonsense. That is not to- say that marriages between opposites are necessarily unhappy. Very often, indeed, they will turn'out well, but in no greater proportion' you will find, than other marriages in' which the contracting parties —to use that jolly legal phrase—arc not too different from each other. I know, for instance, a tiny man with a lace like a bulldog who has been honeymooning these last fifteen years with a statuesque beauty who ought to have been a princess. And I know a professor of chemistry with the; most deplorable habits who is most happily mated to as good a housewife as ever was born. But I also know many married couples who might almost have been brother and sister. How. then, has this idea about happy marriages between opposites arisen? 1 fancy it must be due to the factthat one happv marriage of the kind i,s more apt to lie noticed than a dozen ordinary ones. A little man leading a tall woman is: far more noticcabc than husband and wife of neary equal heights'. A virile, masculine woman with a poor little human squirrel traiin" inconclusively at her heels is far more, likely to attract attention than an ordinary woman with an ordinary man.

Moreover, if in imagination you go through a list of your married friends, attempting to separate the "opposites from the "likes," you will not find a division very easy. . "Most married couples have something in common, whether it he physical chnvacteviaticK «c mental et\ra\m\ent, or milv a. love of "the pictures." ion may describe this man as dark and that woman ns fair, but how often m it the. \wv\. tWt \.\\e Vmsbawdi }u«t \\ap\>«v\s to he rather darker (or fairer) than his wife! . , .., , It nil comet, T am convinced, or mat oAd love of raaktug general statements, of drawing up important-looking tables and statistics. It is easy to prove that 70 per cent, of fair girls' marry fair men. You can do anything you like with figures, if von are clever enough. And to say that the most successful marriages are those between opposites is just its foolish as to say that all men are brave and all women beautiful. You can't generalise about these things l , for the (simple reason that no two contracting parties, and consequently no two marriages, are exactly the same.