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Show Kathleen Norris Says: Happy Marriage Demands Character (Bell Syndicate WNU Service.) ' My husband began telling me of a pretty girl in an adjoining office. All the men were crazy about her. When I expressed the hope she would soon marry he said gloomily she had admitted she loved him. By KATHLEEN NORRIS WHEN a man is mentally mental-ly defective, girls perceive per-ceive his affliction, and nobody wants to marry him. But when he is morally deficient there seems to be no way of seeing it in time. There ought to be. There ought to be questionnaires and tests for the husband-to-be, simple questions as to whether he respected the truth, knew anything about the responsibilities of marriage mar-riage and was prepared for its inevitable concessions and sacrifices: For the happiest marriage is a matter of generous adjustments, and is bound to have its dark, difficult and bewildered moments. Successful Success-ful marriage is no accident; it is a lifework. It demands courage and character. From his very early days a boy ought to be trained to think of his marriage. He ought to be told that he will owe his wife honesty and faithfulness. To be sure, the wed ding service stresses this, in the words "for better or worse, in sickness sick-ness and in health." But if back of that pledge there is no home influence, influ-ence, extended over years and years, to implement that promise, it means nothing. Don't Forget Marriage. You mothers who are so anxious about your small boys' teeth and manners, the schools they attend and the friends they make, don't forget to include in your education and care of them an occasional serious talk about marriage. If men were schooled to simple decency in marriage I could not receive such a letter as came to me this week from "Daphne." "I am in real trouble and I honestly hon-estly don't know what to do," writes Daphne. "I have been married three years, and am 23. Billy, my husband, is 27; he is steady, works in an automobile-parts shop and makes a good salary. We have a little boy 15 months old, and I am expecting another child in February. My parents live 700 miles away in a small village, I am the only child. We knew Billy for some years before be-fore I was engaged to him. I have loved him from my sixteenth year. "After Alan was born he acted rather queerly, seemed quiet and went out alone a good deal, and finally confessed to me that he had 'fallen hard' for a woman some years older than he. a divorced woman who had worked in the office. of-fice. She had, however, married again, and Billy's infatuation had cooled. He explained his straying away by saying that at home it was all 'dust, didies, dishes and babytalk,' and no man liked that. Shuns Responsibility. "Well, after that I did all I could to be interesting and keep the house pleasant, and our baby was, and is, an angel, no trouble at all, and almost al-most no crying. Billy says he likes the baby, occasionally throws him about or brings him a toy, but he assumes no responsibility for him. We employ a colored girl of 15, who will sit with Alan evenings and help me after school hours. "We decided that Aian must have a companion; we both wanted a girl baby. I love children and always al-ways have wanted them. At first Billy was nice about it, saying that we would have our family young and enjoy them together, but about three months ago he once arrain began to I MESSAGE FOR HUSBANDS Most of Kathleen Norris' messages are addressed to ivives, but here's one for their husbands. A girl who wouldn't think of marrying a man who is mentally or physically defective, de-fective, will not hesitate to marry one who has never learned to accept the moral responsibilities of marriage. Perhaps she is not to be blamed for that. It isn't easy to judge a man you have seen only at his best. So it is really up to the mothers and fathers of future husbands to give them the moral background they need, so that they will bring to marriage the decency, courage and sense of responsibility responsi-bility without which that marriage mar-riage has no chance of being a happy one. seem absent-minded and depressed, and I recognized the symptoms of another affair. "Pretty soon he began to tell me about Marian, a pretty saucy girl in an adjoining office, who had all the men crazy about her. I hoped, as in Carmen's case, that she would soon marry, too, but when I expressed ex-pressed the idea Billy told me gloomily that she wouldn't, she had admitted that she loved him. She is just 18, has a flighty three-times divorced di-vorced mother, and I suppose thinks that handsome Billy is fair game, babies or no babies. "This was a terrible blow to me, for his manner indicated that he was well-pleased with the idea; but worse followed. Yesterday, Monday morning, I received in the mail a letter from him saying that he is not coming home again; he is staying stay-ing with Marion and her mother in an apartment hotel. He says he has never really loved me, that it was all a mistake, that his mother will take Alan and I must go to my mother moth-er until the new baby comes, and that a lawyer has told him that all he need allow me is $15 a week. He says he will send that only if I agree to a divorce. "The shock of this nas made me frightfully nervous and I don't know what to do. I don't believe his mother moth-er would take Alan, for she lives with a married daughter who is not strong. But what arguments can I use to bring Billy back, and what is your opinion of him?" Refuses to Divorce Him. My opinion of Billy could hardly be printed in a family paper. The writer of this letter lives in Sacramento, Sacra-mento, Calif., less than a hundred miles away from me, and my answer an-swer was to drive up and see her and have a personal talk. Shortly afterward she stored her furniture and went with her small boy to live with her mother and father, and the courts have told Billy to send her $75 a month. She intends never nev-er to grant him a divorce, and so . the matter will stand at a deadlock for a long time. But the misery of it, the heartbreak heart-break and tears and loneliness and sense of failure can't be cured by any such solution as that. Daphne took all a girl's dreams and hopes into her married life. She loved her little home, her husband, her first baby. There's no cure for a man like that. If this had come after 12, 15 years of marriage there might be He might then have lost his senses for a while, only to recover and be gin to realize the value of what he had tried to throw away. i |
