LOVE THAT LASTS TOO LONG.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19375, 10 January 1925, Page 11

LOVE THAT LASTS TOO LONG.

By Jobs Araaram. Two of the best friends I faarre ever had are drifting on the codes of matrimonial shipwreck, for what seems, at first sight, the most absurd of reasons. None of the usual canoes of married discord are at work. These two have never had a seriota quarrel, there is no “incompatibility of temperament" to be blamed, and, too all appearances, they are perfectly suited to one another. These are the facts of the case. They have been married for several years, and have, therefore, reached and passed tha point where love of the senses is uooonecientionsly transmuted to tranquil and ever-deepening affection, born of troubles and pleasures shared, and mutual selfrevelation. With the ordinary couple this fundamental change in the nature of love takes place surely, slowly, and without any deliberate attempt on the part of either husband or wife to maintain the romance of courtship and early married life. But of these two friends of mine, one —the woman—K»nnot endure tranquilly the thought of the inevitable change. She struggles to maintain the romance that must fade, to be replaced by something stronger. She is bitterly loath to merge her lover in her husband, •** • / In fact, she is trying to extend - the rapturous period of love-making over the whole of her married life. As the result, she is making both herself and her husband unhappy. It is because she is still in love with her husband in the primary sense of the expression. He, on the other hand, though she remains and- always will remain all that a wife shonld be to him, is no' longer passionately in love. Therefore he resents her wish and expectation that he should continue to play the lover. He argues, quite reasonably, that the bright happiness of lovemajnng can, in the nature of it, last only for a certain length of time, and that to attempt to prolong it must merely cause unnecessary heartburning. He thmks it absm-d that she should complain because his kisses are perfunctory. Perhaps he is unduly prosaic and tmro* mantle. But ho is right in saying that to avoid tragedy love must not last too long—-that it must give way at length to a less emotional emotion.