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Show Kathleen Norris Says: Your Marriage Is Worth Saving Bell Syndicate. WXU Features (MP "Dorothy is a completely changed creature, and I dont want to take on a stronger for my wife. She and my mother are like two girls together. . . By KATHLEEN NORRIS IT MAY take you six months, it may take you a year to rebuild, when that man of yours comes home, but marriage is worth six months or twelve months of doubt and pain. True marriage mar-riage is a miracle, and to cheat yourself out of wonderful wonder-ful years of companionship and planning just because things are difficult now, is an expensive mistake. "I'm completely bewildered," writes William Martin, in a letter that illustrates this point. "I've been two years overseas. When I left her my wife was a sweet, shy girl who had no friends in my home town and cried bitterly when she eame to join my mother for my absence. ab-sence. Just before I left Dorothy had the sad experience of losing a new-born baby, so that my memory of her is of an exiled, scared, tearful, tear-ful, bashful little thing who assured me that she could not hold her head up at all until I came back. Completely Changed.' "Well, I got back six weeks ago, and If you ask me, I'd just as soon return to France. Dorothy Is a completely com-pletely changed creature, and I don't want to take on a stranger for my wife. She and my mother are like two girls together; laughing all the time. They play cribbage every evening, gabble at every meal, and trot off to work still chattering. They work part-time in the same foundry. Dorothy has picked up a lot of friends, most of them daughters of my mother's old crowd; she wants me to go on week-end parties, where he is a great favorite, and she wants to have them in for impromptu im-promptu suppers and games. She's perfectly amiable about everything, anxious to make me happy, says she'll give up work the minute I'm established, hopes we'll have a lot of children someday, this doesn't sound so bad. I wonder if I'm getting get-ting over to you what I mean? "I mean that a man likes to be Important in his own house, he likes to have the say. If I suggest this, Dorothy is all attention; what would I like to do? Well, the truth is I don't want to do anything, except sit around. I don't even want my mother or wife near me, part of the time. I always wanted to take a forestry course, but after two fears of college I quit, and got a job, so I could marry. Then the war came. I have no money now, and I'll be darned if I want my women to support me. Shall I just get out of their lives, go off somewhere, and work it out myself?" No, by no means do that, BilL Your marriage is worth saving, with such a woman. Instead of running away, as so many of our people do, work It out yourself but at home. I think- you'd make those two women supremely happy if you announced an-nounced that they had to support you until you finished your forestry study. Your government will help you, and all it will amount to will be that they take care of themselves them-selves for another year or two. Then go to work with a vengeance, ven-geance, and see how fast you can beat the regular term time. The moment you're hard at work the whole world will change for you. Work is the supreme panacea. Finish your forestry court. . . . HOLD ON A LITTLE WHILE Another returning soldier has found his wife changed. When he left she was timid and shy, and depressed by the death of their first child. Dioiv she is gay and happy, interested interest-ed in parties and entertain-mentSf entertain-mentSf and quite a social fa-orite. fa-orite. She lives with his mother moth-er and works in the same foundry foun-dry on a part-time shift. The two women get along very well, and are always laughing and "gabbing." While Dorothy is affectionate affection-ate and ankious to please, she is no longer dependent and clinging. William feels somehow some-how that she is a stranger . . . not the woman he thought he married. He wonders if he should try to "make a go" of this marriage . . . maybe, he thinks, he had better get out of it for the benefit of both himself and Dorothy. He left college in order to marry her, and now he wonders if it were the sensible thing to do. The separation and the experiences ex-periences of war change both husband and wife, replies Miss Norris. One will mature more than the other, but when there is no fundamental disagreement, disagree-ment, time will harmonize the differences, and the original happiness can be regained. There isn't going to be a household in America, in the next year or two. that doesn't face this or some more serious problem. The problem of our physically maimed and wounded isn't going to be the worst of it; it'll be the mental, the nerve, the psychopathic cases that put a heavy burden on us all. Lift your burden off the great total by accepting the unexpected gaiety and independence independ-ence of this wife of yours; add to her capability, her completeness, a new capability and completeness of your own. Normal Pattern Will Return. Once you're well started, and the first baby likewise, the whole pattern pat-tern will fall into normal lines, and this restless, dissatisfied, resentful phase of home-coming will seem only a dream. You have the materials mate-rials for an unusually happy marriage mar-riage here; don't throw them away. Postwar marital problems present pre-sent every variation of trouble to which human hearts are heir. The returning husband who grows beyond be-yond his wife, and finds her unexpectedly unex-pectedly dull, less pretty, less dear than he remembered her. The wife who hardly knows the boy with whom she danced so merrily into wedlock, and who doesn't like him much, on later inspection. The returning re-turning soldier jealous bf his baby. The waiting wife all ready with plans for divorce. The criticisms of her because she lived with his mother, or because she didn't. The discontent because she worked, or else she didn't. The wounded problems prob-lems and the problems of the maimed and the blind. Make a fresh start. Bill, and solve yours yourself. |