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Show Kathleen Norris Says: Don't Look for an Angel Instead of a Husband (Bell Syndicate WNU Service.) v Ukes th best teat$ at shows, always comes for ma in a taxi, sends ma orchids. By KATHLEEN NORRIS A TROUBLED girl writes me from -a Kentucky town to ask just how she can be sure that she loves her young man enough to marry him; just what tests of heart and soul and mind he should pass before she will know that he is the one and only love of her life. "Should I think he is absolutely abso-lutely perfect in everything?" asks Nancy. "Because, while I love him very much, I do see his faults! They're not very serious, but suppose they grew more serious after we were married? I can't imagine myself liking another anoth-er man better, or indeed liking lik-ing another man at all, but at the same time Kenneth does fret me in certain little ways and I'm wondering how important they are. "For example, he's extravagant; he likes the best seats at shows, always al-ways comes for me In a taxi If the family is using his car, sends me orchids and gardenias when there's really no occasion for them. Then he takes everything so lightly; I love books, poetry, art, but if I take him to an exhibition or concert he only goes to please me, and I know it Also I never knew such a man ..,,ti n,,u .., v.... i..i, 1UI OUl bl Dcaauu, UU39 uaiiuig, perhaps going to Florida or Catalina for marlin, tennis, golf, bridge, dominoes; dom-inoes; he plays everything and he will bet on anything. Since these things or rather what they may lead to, really disturb me, am I safe in marrying this man I have known all my life and respect and love so well?" What really disturbs ME about this letter is the almost infantile simplicity sim-plicity and self-centeredness of Nancy. Nan-cy. It seems Incredible that any girl could grow to marriageable age with so romantic and idealistic a viewpoint. I'll tell you something about marriage, mar-riage, Nancy, and at the same time tell some of the other girls and brides who write me the same sort of question. Marriage an Eye-Op. nor. Marriage is one of the eye-openers of life. War Is another; serious poverty, pov-erty, long illness, enforced solitude and a religious vocation are some of the others. When you marry you wake up with a bump from all your little-girl dreams of that gallant suitor, who was going to ride into your life on a great white horse, leap to earth to kiss your hand, and put you on a pedestal of devotion-more, devotion-more, of Idolatry, forever. The man you marry is as selfish as you are, perhaps even more selfish. self-ish. He doesn't know it any more than you do. His innocent amazement amaze-ment that because you love your old friend Barbara you want to ask her to dinner once a week, that because be-cause you don't like cornbread you aren't ever going to make it, that you will send your mother five dollars' dol-lars' worth of flowers when she is ill and then insist that he turn out all the lights upstairs before he comes down to dinner, is just as innocently in-nocently inconsistent as a hundred tilings you do. Early married life is full of pinpricks, pin-pricks, jars and shocks. Often a young wife actually forgets the thrill, the glamour, the joy of belonging be-longing to Philip, the pride of wifehood, wife-hood, in her bewilderment and dls tress over trifles that mean selfishness. selfish-ness. Indifference to her wishes, persistence per-sistence in his own way Face Percentage of Differences. This is inevitable. Courtesy and affection may cloak the situation fur a shorter or longer time, but eventually eventu-ally the man and woman must face a certain percentage of differences. Differences of opinion, of custom, of habits, or everything. Not only that The situation is complicated by the fact that a man is one thing when he is courting. UNPREDICTABLE Do you look toward marriage with an idealistic and romantic viewpoint? "I'leate don't," says Kathleen Norris, "lor marriage is one of the eye-openers of life and in its early states is full of jars, shocks, pinpricks . . . it is unpredictable. unpre-dictable. In today's article are tins on how YOUli problem can be solved. and quite another when the responsibilities respon-sibilities of married life have settled set-tled upon him. Your extravagant sweetheart may not turn out to be merely reasonble In what he spends upon you, as a husband, he may be penurious. The night-club-loving man often is the home-staying husband. hus-band. The man who fussed so long and so anxiously about not wanting to see too much of your family, may become as devoted to your people as you are. The husband who doesn't particularly care for children chil-dren will be the most devoted of fathers; the dreamy unsuccessful man who couldn't hold a job turns out to be a genius, and surprisingly gives you fame and wealth. Nothing is predictable about marriage mar-riage except that it is unpredictable. If it is contracted between two reasonably rea-sonably agreeable and adaptable persons, a man and woman with some generosity of spirit, with at least the intention of making it a success, it can develop from the young passion and confusions and surprises of the honeymoon into the finest, deepest and truest relationship relation-ship human beings ever will know. what True Marriage Means. It can mean that in all the years to come the bond only draws closer and dearer. That the man comes home at night to gentleness, understanding, under-standing, affection; that the woman grows slowly but steadily to feel that she need fear no crisis, no shock or sorrow in her life as long as Phil Is beside her to help her face it. Years of companionship make marriage, and happy marriage is attainable by 09 couples out of every 100, If they but knew it. True marriage means joys shared, sorrows sor-rows shared, nursery delights and fatigues and crises and responsibilities responsibili-ties shared, picnics and anniversaries, anniversa-ries, the successful dinner party, the unsuccessful dinner party, Illness in the house, money worry, the raise in salary, vacations, visitors and always the same man and woman, planning for them, talking them over, building between them the strong web of married friendship. When a woman says to me: "from the very beginning Ned has been the sweetest, the gentlest, the most considerate con-siderate of men. There's never had to be any adjustment, any concessions conces-sions on my part We were sweethearts sweet-hearts 25 years ago and we aVe sweethearts today," she is saying as much for herself as for her Ned. She is saying "we were both One, gentle, reasonable human beings, disciplined into consideration and wisdom before we were ever married." A lovely woman was praising her husband after 16 years of wedlock In terms that brought tears to her eyes and his. "I was a foundling," she told me later, "for the first 18 years of my life I had nothing and nobody belonging be-longing to me. I hungered for home, tor love, for a chance to live. Charley Char-ley was my bosses' son when I had a factory job, he had been crippled and we thought he could not live. But he did live, and he got well, and all our happy years followed!" In other words, she told me that she and Charley had both been to the hard school of life, and had learned some of Its lesson before marriage and not after it |