The truth which people seem to overlook in this matter is that the
marriage ceremony is quite useless as a magic spell for changing in an
instant the nature of the relations of two human beings to one another.
If a man marries a woman after three weeks acquaintance, and the day
after meets a woman he has known for twenty years, he finds, sometimes
to his own irrational surprise and his wife's equally irrational
indignation, that his wife is a stranger to him, and the other woman an
old friend. Also, there is no hocus pocus that can possibly be devized
with rings and veils and vows and benedictions that can fix either a
man's or woman's affection for twenty minutes, much less twenty years.
Even the most affectionate couples must have moments during which they
are far more conscious of one another's faults than of one another's
attractions. There are couples who dislike one another furiously for
several hours at a time; there are couples who dislike one another
permanently; and there are couples who never dislike one another; but
these last are people who are incapable of disliking anybody. If they
do not quarrel, it is not because they are married, but because they
are not quarrelsome. The people who are quarrelsome quarrel with their
husbands and wives just as easily as with their servants and relatives
and acquaintances: marriage makes no difference. Those who talk and
write and legislate as if all this could be prevented by making
solemn vows that it shall not happen, are either insincere, insane,
or hopelessly stupid. There is some sense in a contract to perform or
abstain from actions that are reasonably within voluntary control; but
such contracts are only needed to provide against the possibility of
either party being no longer desirous of the specified performance or
abstention. A person proposing or accepting a contract not only to do
something but to like doing it would be certified as mad. Yet popular
superstition credits the wedding rite with the power of fixing our
fancies or affections for life even under the most unnatural conditions.