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Show Kathleen Norris Says: Your Marriage Is Worth Saving Bell Syndicate. WNU Features. "Dorothy is a completely changed creature, and I don't want to take on a ttranger 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 tills 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 came 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, ba-shul little thing who assured me fat s 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 crlbbage 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 she Is a great favorite, and she wants to hnve 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 years of college I quit, and got a Job, so I could mnrry. Then the war came. I hnve 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 mnrrlngo Is worth saving, with such a woman. Instead of running away, ns so mnny of our people do, work It out yourself but at homo. I think you'd make tlioso two women supremely hnppy If you announced an-nounced that they had to supixirt you until you finished your forestry study. Your government will help you, and nil It will amount to will bo thnt they take care of themselves them-selves for another yenr or two. Then go to work with a vengeance, ven-geance, and sco how fast you can beat tho regular term time Tho moment you're hard at work the wholo world will chnngo for you. Work Is tho supremo piinacen. Hntth your ftnpMliy cmr. . , a 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 cnpnbllity and completeness of your own. Normal Pattern Will Return. Once you're well started, and the first baby likewise, tho whole pattern pat-tern will fall Into normal lines, and this restless, dissatisfied, resentful phase of home-coming will scorn oidy a drenm. You hnve the materials mate-rials for an unusually hnppy mnrrlngo mnr-rlngo here; don't throw them away. Postwar marltnl problems present pre-sent every variation of trouble to which humnn henrts arc heir. The returning husband who grows beyond be-yond his wife, and finds her unexpectedly unex-pectedly dull, less pretty, less dear than ho remembered her. The wife who hardly knows tho boy with whom she danced so merrily Into wedlock, and who doesn't like him much, on Inter Inspection. Tho returning re-turning soldier Jealous of his baby. The wnltlng wlfo nil ready with piling for divorce. Tlio criticisms of her becnuso she lived with his mother, or becnuso alio didn't. The discontent becnuso she worked, or elso slin didn't. Tho wounded problems prob-lems nud tho problems of the maimed and the blind. Mnlto a fresh utart, 11111, mid solve yours yourself. |
