A HAPPY MARRIAGE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16542, 28 September 1921, Page 9

A HAPPY MARRIAGE.

Among my notebooks is one in which I have c ollected a number of affirmations and reflections upon modern marriage, written by living men and women. A glance at the pages is sufficient to convince the reader that th© majority of the writers approach the subject in a pessimistic spirit. One of my authorities asserts that at least 80 per cent of women are strangers to domestic felicity. Several declare that affection between man and wife is somewhat rare after a few years of matrimony. Now a happy marriage is the best fortune that life offers, but there is no royal road to success in love or in any other great adventure. A candidate for conjugality may read such text books as “ How to bo Happy though Married,” “ Love’s Coming of Age,” and the volumes of Ellen Key, and take every word of counsel to heart, but still encounter disappointment in married life. 1 suppose about eight persons in every ten admit that matrimonial good fortune is largely a question of chance. But devoted investigators of the springs of human behaviour and the making of character are beginning to throw a new light upon the problems of love choice. According to these, inquirers, success in marriage is not a simple matter of luck. Apparently there are definite signs which should enable a lover of either sex to determine whether his or her attraction is genuine or of the nature of a transient infatuation. The initial test is a knowledge of one’s self. It is a remarkable truth that very few men and women know themselves. Alost of us are led into all kinds of tangles and mazes because wo believe stubbornly that “ instinct ” is an unerring guide. “ Instinct ” serves extremely well in the cas© of blackbirds in love, but in human pairing it is, in itself, insufficient, and often entirely misleading. The typical marriage in haste which is repented in leisure is an instinctive union. In my younger days I had a chance meeting with a perfectly contented married man, whose words I have never forgotten. My mentor was a journeyman carpenter who was "working in my father’s house. Young as I was, f had learned that a large number of people were unhappily married, and I had formed the view that married happiness was chiefly a poetic dream. But here was a grreyhaired idealist who, speaking with heartfelt sincerity, said: ‘‘l have been married twenty-six years, and I love mv wife better every day of my life!” What was his secret? You may call t sheer chance. But there is no manifestation, physical, mental or emotional. without a cause. And as I prow older I am convinced that the factors of successful marriage are discoverable in every case. But you will not discover them if you place all your trust in “ instinctive feeling.”—(By January Mortimer in 11 The Daily Mail.”)