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Show Family Weekly / February 28, 1971 Married Love in the Middle A marital counselor tells how one couple renewed Gonsider the case of John and Jean. Just four months after their last daughter had goneoff to college, John came home on: evening and found Jean crying. Jean had had high hopes for what she would do when their children were gone. She had always wanted to write and had set off for a local junior college and enrolled in a writing class. She had many friends her age whom she liked, and she was determined to renew relationsihps with them. She had bravely told John that she was going to take goif lessons and that one day a week she hoped to play golf with him. But noneof these activities had materialized very well. Her English teacher was not enthusiastic about her short stories; her friends had their own. lives and their own problems; her golf drives curled out into the rough. She recognized that all of these plans were not very substantial anyway. She had too much time alone and there was no sound in the house. But beyond that there was a void in her emotional life which neither writing, nor friends, nor golf would fill. She became more and more depressed, and finally could not conceal it from her husband. When John heard her sobbing in their bedroom, ne climbed up the steps two at a time, took her in his arms, and comforted her. Then he asked her to tell him what was wrong. As the story of her failure to adjust came out, he was patient and understanding. The next day hecalled his office and said he would not be in to work that day. I was springtime, and although he lived in a semidesert area in California, he knew where the spring creeks were swollen and flowers blooming. He drove Jean there, and they walked by the creek and recalled the flowers of the Midwest in the springtime. That weekend he canceled his goif gamewith his regular foursome and,in- stead, took Jean to a driving range and helped her with her bad drive. Afterward, they went out to a restaurant and danced. On Sunday they stayed home, had a late breakfast together, and spent the day talking—and planning for the years to come. Jean's depression immiediaiely disappeared. Her depression was gone, but some- |