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Show Kathleen Norris Says: What Is This Thing Marriage, Anyway? (Bell Syndicate WNU Service.) ... 4 i of m Before the first anniversary Dan was deeply attracted to one of the nurses in his uncles' office. DIVORCE Social changes which have occurred oc-curred in the past hundred years seem to have removed the stigma from divorce, Kathleen Norris observes. ob-serves. She is confronted by a young wife who las on unfaithful husband, asking if divorce is the only solution to her problem, or if there is any better way she can find happiness. Miss Norris advises her not to seek a divorce, but to develop other interests. - to pity or laugh at her, and then, when the infatuation is over, blandly forget and forgive and go on as if nothing had happened? Where is my dignity, where is that future toward which all women want to build, a future of security and peace, with children growing up, and garden, gar-den, home, friendships, trips, vacations vaca-tions all shared with a real companion? com-panion? And is it my fault that Dan has no desire to plan for such a future, fu-ture, but pays me attention only when he is not interested in someone some-one else? A Five Year Plan. "My own idea is that all marriages mar-riages ought automatically to be cancelled at about five years, at which time the man and woman should be forced to live apart for six months or so, to see how each feels about resuming the relationship. relation-ship. It is frightful to feel that the step you took confidently in girlhood is holding you in prison for life." That is only part of the letter, but sufficient to show that Mary is one of the great class of wives who feel a childish despair upon discovering that husbands are just human beings be-ings after all, selfish and stupid and subject to flattery and apt to get bored with home ties of wife, children, chil-dren, familiar dinner table, domestic domes-tic routine. Stigma of Divorce Removed. Truly today's husband is a little more trying along these lines than his father was, because of social changes in the last 50 years. With By KATHLEEN NORRIS ONE of the most disillusioned disillu-sioned and discouraging discourag-ing letters I ever received re-ceived came to my desk some weeks ago from a woman named Mary Baker. She is 32, has been married eight years, and she says she is scared. "Dan and I married for love, and for six or seven months we revelled in our love and home and plans," she writes. "But before the first anniversary Dan was deeply attracted to one of the nurses in his uncles' office. He works with two dentist uncles. The affair worried him, made him ashamed and unhappy; presently the girl married and Dan got over it. But it shook the ground under my feet, and I never felt quite the same confidence in him again. "He was thrilled when our little boy was born, and said he hoped we would have three or four children. But Peter was not a year old when I went away to the country for three weeks and during my absence Dan carried on an affair with a divorced woman, who had always said she was my friend. When I got home he confessed that he had been carried car-ried away by temporary emotional excitement, and that it was over, but Mrs. B. came to see me, showing show-ing me a letter in which Dan had written that if I would give him a divorce they could be married. Bears Sorrow Silently. "This disgusted me, and I had a time of despair. For weeks I did not speak to Dan, and as I would not tell even my own mother of what had occurred I had a lonely and uncomfortable time. Eventually Eventual-ly we were reconciled in a sort of divorce so common an escape, marriage mar-riage has indeed come to be something some-thing of what Mary hints, at least to those whose religious scruples do not prohibit divorce. Many a marriage breaks up in its fourth, or fifth, or seventh year, and many state laws insist upon a period during which the couple, who seek divorce, may have a chance to think things over in cool blood. Fifty years ago a husband had to stand by his wife, and a wife by her home and children, for divorce carries a bitter stigma, and few women could become self-supporting. These restrictions re-strictions are swept away now, an enormous percentage of he names in the Social Register are those of divorced men and women, and what the Social Register does the less-prominent less-prominent circles think it right to do. So that the flirtatious detached woman your husband meets in his business may well feel that she is free to win him and hold him. There were abuses and difficulties difficul-ties and domestic martyrs in the old days, of course. But also there was stability, there was security, and both those things are very valuable. valu-able. The disappointed wife turned her spurned airections to other things, she grew all the stronger and more self-reliant as she abandoned aban-doned the futile chase toward "happiness," "hap-piness," and learned to make other people happy instead of herself. And even today in her home and garden and kitchen, with her books, pets, children, friendships, with the letter-writing that was so remarkable remark-able a feature of a woman's life a hundred years ago, and today with movies, motor trips, radio, with all the world's best music boxed for her convenience and with small neighbors needing mothering, any woman can form for herself a life of beauty and use and content, inside in-side of the jail that she calls marriage, mar-riage, more easily than outside it. surface fashion, and after some months, convinced of his reform, I returned to his room and enjoyed a short time of confidence and happiness. Our second son was born, and Dan was so devoted to all three of us, and so helpful and patient that I thought myself a fortunate for-tunate woman, and that our troubles were over. "My boys are now six and three. And Dan is again in love, this time with a woman so cheap and ordinary that it is unbelievable to me that any man could fall for her, least of all Dan! Marriage in the Modern Manner. "Now, I know your advice. I've been reading your column all my married life. I know all about being independent of anyone else for my happiness, and building a life around myself and my boys. But what I want to ask is, what is marriage? If it is a relationship that nine times out of ten grows irksome and stupid to both parties after a few years, and is maintained only because of children, or society, or family dignity, dig-nity, or business considerations, isn't it a failure? Most of my friends are already taking a sort of seriocomic serio-comic attitude toward their mates. To a great many of them the sudden sud-den ending of the married state, through any cause, would be a great relief. Don't you believe this is true of all but the exceptional marriages? mar-riages? The husband enduring all sorts of defects in his wife, the wife setting her teeth to force herself to put up with her man's limitations, limita-tions, peculiarities and general cussedness. "What's the answer, if this is true? Is a wife to go on for 30 more years, blandly accepting, as in my case, the fact that any flattering flat-tering unscrupulous woman can make a fool of her husband, break up whatever happiness remains in her home, give htr friends a chance |