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Read Ebook: Happiness and Marriage by Towne Elizabeth
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Then there are Adams who are careless from petty spite--with shame I say it. And with greater shame I say, you will find their Eves are spiteful, too; probably more spiteful than the Adams; for Eve, you know, is generally smart enough and ambitious enough to outdo Adam in any line of endeavor--especially in the use or misuse of the tongue.
Is Adam kicking, Eve? Take a hint before he kicks harder. Is Eve making things warm for you, Adam? Take care you jump not out of the frying pan into the fire. Are circumstances plaguing you, Everybody? Take the hint lest worse plagues arrive; learn wisdom and avoid the Red Sea.
The proof of foolishness is unrest and friction.
The proof of wisdom is peace.
THE HEART OF WOMAN.
"My wife has fallen in love with another man. She keeps house for me and I am trying to show her all the love I can but it seems to have no effect upon her. I love her dearly and desire to win her back. What should be my attitude toward her and toward the man?" A.J.
On the other hand it may be wrong, as it has been oft before. Many a woman has jumped out of the frying pan of one marriage into the fire of another.
It is said that Robert Louis Stevenson fell in love with the wife of his best friend. He told his friend frankly, intending to leave the city. His friend questioned the wife and found she reciprocated Stevenson's love. Stevenson stayed with his friend in Paris and the wife went to her father's home in California. A year later, the attachment between his wife and Stevenson still remaining, the friend applied for a divorce. Then he and Stevenson journeyed all the way to California together, where Stevenson was married to the ex-wife. The ex-husband attended the wedding, and that same evening announced his engagement to a girl friend of Mrs. Stevenson.
If I were a man in such a case as A. J.'s I should treat my wife as I would a daughter. I would treat her as an Individual with the right of choice.
Many a daughter has rushed headlong into a marriage which her relatives opposed and she regretted at leisure.
A man's "mental attitude" toward the other man in such cases as A.J.'s should be the same as toward other men--the attitude of real kindness toward an Individual who, like the rest of us, is being "as good as he knows how to be and as bad as he dare be."
This does not mean that the husband shall allow himself to be used for a door mat, nor held up for the ridicule of the neighbors. A sensible father expects his daughter to observe the proprieties. The daughter of a sensible father is more than willing to meet these expectations. In the same way a sensible husband will expect his wife to see no more of the lover than "society" permits her to see of any man not related to her. No sensible American woman will jeopardize her good name under such circumstances. She will control her feelings until she has proved her new attraction and been duly released from the old. If a woman will not conduct herself in a self-respecting manner the sooner she leaves the better for the husband. As for herself, she will learn by experience--as Princess Louise did.
THE LAW OF INDIVIDUALITY.
The gratification of desire, good or bad, leaves always one imperishable residue of wisdom. The rest of the experience goes with the chaff for burning.
Desire points invariably according to the individual's intelligence. In proportion as this is faulty his desires are "bad."
But aside from these personal standpoints which are legion there is an immutable Law, to which intelligence is conforming all action and thought--the Law of Individuality--the Law recognized and expressed by Confucius and Jesus in negative and positive forms of the "golden rule"; "Do not unto others what ye would not they should do unto you."
"You cannot know anything of the sources or causes of the crisis you are judging, for no one who knows will tell you, and you would not know if you were told. The depths of elemental immortality, of self-deceit and revenge, lie in our eagerness to judge one another, and to force one another under the yoke of our judgments. When there is the faith of the Son of man in the world, life will be left to make its own judgments. The only judgment we have a right to make upon one another is the free and truthful living of our own lives." George D. Herron.
The Law of Individuality is absolute, and in due time husbands will know better than to imagine they own wives; wives will know better than to be owned; and the other man will not imagine he can gain great pleasure from "running away" with anything. Each will be free and leave the others so.
It were better for the individual to follow his desire and afterward repent, than to crush his desires and repent for a lifetime under the false impression that the universe unjustly gives to another that which should have belonged to him.
HARMONY AT HOME.
"I have recently married for the second time. My husband is a splendid man but his grown up children are not in harmony with me. Good people, but a different point of view. I make no pretensions to perfection, of course, but I do try to do the best lean."
This is the gist of several letters I have received from as many different women. I will answer them together.
A MYSTERY.
"I desire to come face to face with the person or persons who are controlling and influencing my husband against his home and children and myself. He has been estranged from us all for several years, although sleeping under the same roof. Once I can find out the person or cause of his actions I can remove the effect, for I shall know just what to do. I want to solve the mystery."
The chances are you will never find that out, and if you did it would do you absolutely no good. Your husband is no dumb fool to be "influenced" this way or that by two women! He is a man with ideas of his own. If he was disappointed in you as wife, he has possibly turned to some other woman. If so the more you pry and suspect and hint around, the more positively he will turn away from you. If you "found out" and made things warm for him or another he would simply hate and despise you and be the harder set against you. This is the Law.
The thing for you to do is to recognize your husband's RIGHT to make and answer for his own mistakes. Then drop the whole thing from your mind and calculations.
Then treat your husband as you would any man who came to visit you. Make yourself as attractive and cultured and agreeable as possible, and look out for his comfort, but never get in his way nor question his doings. Stand square up on your own feet and be as fine a woman as you know how to be--as gracious a one. If he does love some other woman it may be but a temporary infatuation and if you are attractive and kind and sensible and independent enough he may return to his first love in his own good time.
If not, why, no matter. Just you get interested in life on your own account and let him do as he will. If he does care for another woman he deserves credit for not deserting you, as many a man would have done. Just respect and honor him for the good that is in him, instead of condemning him mentally because the good does not show just according to your ideas of how it should.
It may be that you are simply a sentimental goose who imagines her husband is "influenced" away from her, because, forsooth, he does not pay her the attentions he used to.
I was once that kind of a goose myself, and it widened a breach that did not then exist except in my mind; widened it until at last it became a real breach--my husband went elsewhere for his companionship. I was too morbid and finicky and exacting for a healthy man.
THE FAMILY JAR.
"If a man and woman love each other and are every way suited to marry should they yield to the opposition of his grown daughter?" M.A.
This question in varying forms comes to me often. It always stirs within me something I used to call "righteous indignation." And incidentally it makes me smile. Translate the question into Plain English and anybody can answer it without hesitancy. Put it this way: When two Individuals know what they want and the whole world approves, should they go away back and sit down because a third Individual tries to interfere with their inherent right to the pursuit of happiness?
Let her leave her father to a renewal of youth and happiness; or let her gracefully and kindly accept her rightful second place and use her loving energies in helping to make bright the home.
A sensible, well trained, loving daughter will do one of these two things.
If daughter and parent are not sensible, well trained and loving, it will be a case of frying pan or fire either way.
The recognition of individual rights to the pursuit of happiness according to individual desire, is the only basis of happiness in family relations.
The way out of the Family Jar is often labyrinthine; but the Loving Individual can always thread it.
THE TRUTH ABOUT DIVORCE.
All of which is the very superficial view of the world at large, and has no place among new thought, "occult" teachings. It is entirely too obvious--to the old-fashioned sentimentalist, who is blind to the real facts in cases of separation.
The sentimentalist gets just two views of the family, and draws his hasty conclusions therefrom. He sees first a happy family, a charming, clinging little simpleton of a wife, with half a dozen or so infants clinging to her skirts and bosom, and her round eyes lifted in adorable helplessness to the face of that great, strong lord and master, her husband. In his second view of the family he beholds this strong man turn his back upon this adoring family and walk deliberately forth to self-gratification, leaving them to perish from hunger and grief. Fired with these pretty and entirely fanciful pictures the superficial observer burns with indignation and calls down anathema upon the head of the deserter.
Of course there are other reasons why women hate to be left by their husbands. One is that their support is apt to go with the deserter.
The dread of having to take care of herself keeps many a woman hanging like grim death to a man she knows she does not love, and who despises her.
A man is an Individual; a woman is another Individual; and neither can make himself or herself over to please the other.
The family is an institution of man's own making. It is a good and glorious thing so long as it serves to increase the happiness and health of its members. But whenever the family institution has to be maintained at the expense of the life, liberty or happiness of its members it is time to lay that particular institution on the shelf.
What God does not hold together by LOVE let not man try to paste together by law.
One great cause of the increase of divorces is the financial emancipation of woman. Women can now get out and take care of themselves, where a few years ago they had to grin and bear it; or bear it without grinning.
Marriage is a partnership, subject in the eyes of Justice to the same rules which govern other partnerships. Let us be just to the deserter, be he man or woman, before we are sentimentally generous to the deserted.
Has any one told you it is lucky to be married?
I hasten to inform you it is just as lucky to be divorced, and I know it.
THE OLD, OLD STORY.
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