TITTLE-TATTLE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 29 November 1933, Page 7

TITTLE-TATTLE

BY “TATLER” MATRIMONIAL MISFITS In Loiulon, ii lew days ago, Dr. Leiniinl Hollander, the psychologist, analysed tile reasons lor the failures in life ot men and women. They ranged from sheer laziness and over-weening ambition to the handicap of a had marriage.

“A man fails," said Dr. Hollander, "if his ideas are larger than his purse; if he trusts unworthy people; if he puts pleasure before duty and has too many or too expensive amusements; it he does not do to-day what he can possibly put off until to-morrow ; and if he risks all his eggs in one basket when lie is uot m si position to watch or control it.

It was at that point that Dr. Hollander criticised partners in wedlock. Success or failure in life depends, lie mamtains, to a great extent, upon the kind of partner a man or a woman chooses. “There is,” he said, "the nagging wife, the clinging wife, the domineering wife, ami tho" dull-witted wife who is something of a millstone round Her husband s neck.” There is another kind of wife, but Dr. Hollander had not anything to say of her. I would add to his catalogue of unsuitable wives the untiring talking wife —the non-stopper. There arc wives whose tongues do not seem to stop wagging from early morn to late night. 111 vow that this class of wife has wrecked many homes and been responsible for the failure of many husbands, driven to distraction by the daily spate of words and the eternal dish of "tongue.”

That there is a large number of matrimonial misfits is certain. They are always in evidence, in one way or another, in the courts. It may be a case of divorce, of bigamy, of desertion, of cruelty. Were one to accept them as criteria, it would be to regard all marriages as failures, and that, of course, yvould be an absurdity and a travesty of fact. There have always been a giving and a taking in marriage, and there always must be and will be. Life itself would be a nightmare, a tragedy, if marriage, as an institutiou, were gauged by newspaper reports of connubial conflicts and failures.

Of the host of happy unions in wedlock wo do not bear or read anything, for the reason that they do not, and would not, "parade” their happiness, though, happily, it is there for intimates to see and admire.

It seems to me that two of the causes of unhappy marriages are that many young men and women do not view matrimony sufficiently seriously, and that too much is expected of marriage. Illusion speedily follows the union of a couple who rush to the register offico with as little thought and as unconcernedly as they would if they were about to attend a romp; and it is likely also to be the experience of a couple who seem to imagine that when they are wed the sky of their lives will ne’er be overcast, that the sun will ever shine, and that their voyage to life’s end will be as along an unruffled sea. ° * * * «

Not long ago I met a young women who, with the brightest of hones, had been wed a year or so before we chatted. “Well, how are you faring?” I asked her. “Oh!” she exclaimed, with tears in her voice, as it were, “if only I could recall the past—if only I had avoided marrying the man I married.” Ail unhappy confession, to bo sure, but how many other women could confess similarly if they would ! •' # ' * * *

-Tim fact is that there ore heaps of men and women, who are utterly unsuited, by social position, by education, by age, by morals, by habits, by temperament, to become tile wives or the husbands of the partners they choose. Such unions are doomed, almost from the first,' to bo failures. When a, man and a woman who ought to have chosen differently marry they cannot eVeii agree to differ. The laws of attraction and repulsion frustrate every endeavour to “understand” each other and every effort to live on terms of amity.

Why, one may ask, did such people, for almost every reason unfitted to become partners, marry? What did the one see in the other to mesmerise him or Her into matrimony? In many instances it is impossible to offer any explanation. In other cases there are reasons which appear to the outsider to be amusingly trifling. A film star has married a. man because lie is, she says, a wonderful photographer and a charming golf partner ; and Dr. Hollander says that ho has known a girl marry a man because lie danced divinely! * * * #

'A young man’s proposal and a young woman’s acceptance of which I have read ran thus: — He: “Let’s many.” She: "Let’s.” And it was so ! “How to be Happy Though Married” was tho title of a book which aroused m,uch attention and comment in my young manhood days. Its clerical author —the Rev. E. J. Hardy—declared that it is more difficult to say. what men like in women than what women like in men. “Women,” said ho, “are more conventional, more afraid of public opinion than men. If a woman gets a husband who does not mako her ashamed of his nppearanco or his manners, she is thankful for small mercies. A man is not so easily satisfied. Ho wants a face which may not he classically beautiful, hut which appeals to him. All men, too, want grace and tact in their wives. They admire grace all tho more because they seldom acquire it themselves.” # * # #

The quality in main which, I consider, exercises the greatest power of attraction with women, is manliness. Similarly, the average man is attracted to a particular woman by Her womanliness, because tho chief characteristic of womanliness is sympathy. * -k- -x- ’ * Another writer Madame Sarah Grand, authoress of “The • Heavenly Twins”—can bo quoted usefully:— “1 should say that there is seldom a marriage which might not be happy if only the pair would look at life from each other’s point of view on occasion, and agree to make it so. Happiness in married life is tho outcome of compatibility, character and principle; our characters we develop ourselves, our principles wo choose, and compatibility can be cultivated; therefore tlie matter is in our own hands. The will to be happy, working on tho right lines, is tho power to be happy. But the married pair must will in the same direction and will together; that they do not do so is the cause of most of their troubles. As a rule, each is not for the other, but eacli for him or herself.”

The Tlev. E. J. Hardy asked an old Scotsman what qualities ho considered that men desired in women. The Scot’s reply was: “Silence, common sense, thrift.”