a. Man is at least 25 years, girl at least 22, credit 10
points
b. Man is at least 23 years, girl at least 20, credit 5
points ___
c. Man 22 years or older, girl at least 19, credit 3 points | |
d. Any other combination receives no credit |___|
7. ACQUAINTANCESHIP
a. Have known each other six years or more, credit 20 points
b. Have known each other 3 but less than 6 years, credit 15
points
c. Have known each other 2 but less than 3 years, credit 10
points
d. Have known each other 1 but less than 2 years, credit 5 ___
points | |
e. Any other combination receives no credit |___|
8. DATING
a. Have been dating and going steady 3 years or more, credit
20 points
b. Have been dating and going steady 2 but less than 3 years,
credit 15 points
c. Have been going steady 1 year but less than 2 years,
credit 10 points
d. Have been going steady 8 months to 1 year, credit 5 ___
points | |
e. Any other combination receives no credit |___|
9. ENGAGEMENT, IF ANY
a. Have been definitely engaged for over 2 years, credit 20
points
b. Have been definitely engaged 18 months to 2 years, credit
15 points
c. Have been definitely engaged 12 months to 18 months,
credit 10 points
d. Have been definitely engaged not less than 6 months, ___
credit 5 points | |
e. If engaged less than 6 months, no credit |___|
10. QUARRELS
a. There have been no quarrels to speak of during courtship,
credit 20 points
b. Any misunderstandings have been quickly settled by mutual
agreement, credit 15 points
c. While there have been conflicts, no one was so serious
that the couple did not see each other regularly, credit
10 points
d. Misunderstandings have been infrequent and have been ___
settled by one or the other giving in, credit 5 points | |
e. Any other answer receives no credit |___|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
___
| |
Total Final Score |___|
Now, you have twenty-one scores and a Total Final Score. Let us see
what this score means.
If the Total Final Score for you two is 250 or above, then you
would seem to be very well matched. Furthermore, it would appear
that you two people should be quite happy in marriage. If there are
no unfavorable factors present such as poor physical health, or
inability to make a living, and if you two people are really deeply
in love, then your marriage should be a happy one.
If the final score is 200 to 249, you would still seem to be
fairly well matched. If there are no unfavorable factors, if both
of you are old enough for marriage, if both of you are determined
to make it work, you should be happier than is the average couple.
If your final score is 150 to 199, the outlook would not seem to be
too favorable. Your marriage might not be as happy as that of the
average couple. Why not wait another six months? Give yourselves
time to see what some of your problems are. Do something active
about them. It may help you to talk things over with a marriage
counselor, or with your minister, or somebody else whom you trust
and who is mature enough to help you analyze the situation.
If your score is 149 or less, then it would seem that you two
people should put off marriage for six months or perhaps a year or
longer. You can be sure there are some factors present that should
make you stop, look, and listen. Perhaps both of you are not well
adjusted as separate personalities, or to each other. Maybe you
are of radically different religions, or your parents are opposed
to your marriage. Perhaps you need to have a much longer period of
courtship or engagement. Whatever the reason, you should talk the
matter over with some person competent to advise you. See a good
marriage counselor or psychologist who specializes in guidance.
Talk things over with your minister, rabbi, or priest. You don’t
want to make a mistake and have an unhappy marriage that might
terminate in separation or divorce.
Of course you can say, and correctly, that you have little or
no responsibility for some of the factors, such as the lack of
happiness in your parents’ marriage. Even though this may be the
case, you have been affected or influenced by the presence or
absence of happiness in your own home.
What are some concrete suggestions that may help you bring about a
happy marriage even though one of you, or the two of you, may not
have made scores typical of young couples who get married and are
happy? These suggestions may be of help to you:
1. If you are introverted (unsociable), you should increase the
number of social skills that you have. Oftentimes we find that our
enjoyment from association with other people is increased greatly
when we learn to do some of the things they do, such as dance,
bowl, swim, etc. Try to be outstanding in something.
2. Acquire a philosophy of life. What are your beliefs and views?
Are you a conservative or a radical in politics, religion, ethics?
Are there some guiding principles in your life? If you aren’t sure,
sit down with yourself and try to figure out what you believe in
and practice. Check it against your own behavior. Do you say one
thing and do another? Are your family and friends rather sure about
what you believe in, or do they have trouble predicting what you
will do next?
3. Is your temper explosive, unruly, and peevish? Why do you
get angry? If it is because you feel inferior, why do you feel
inferior? Can’t you do something about it? Do you honestly try to
control your temper?
4. Are you unstable, fearful, nervous? Why? Is it because you
feel you are unattractive or ignorant, or are you carrying around
feelings of guilt and uneasiness about something you feel ashamed
of? If it is your physical health, see your physician. If it is
your mental health, see a clinical psychologist or psychiatrist.
Develop a trusting confidential relationship with someone,
preferably an older person, with whom you can feel free to unburden
yourself.
5. Are your standards and ideals too low, or too high, when
compared to your behavior? Perhaps you are an intolerant and
prejudiced person who is too narrow-minded and prudish. Are you
critical and gossipy about many of the things your acquaintances
do? Do you know whether you have set your standards impossibly
high; so high that you have a constant feeling of frustration
because you are always falling short?
6. Are you an emotional person, always going off on a tangent,
never able to keep a steady course? Is it because you aren’t in
the work you want to do? Can’t you change jobs? Perhaps you are
confused in your thinking, disturbed about religion, morals, things
that are right or wrong. Have you asked your friends their ideas?
Do you keep busy? Have you talked things over with your pastor?
Is there some serious frustration always hanging over your head?
Why don’t you sit down, take stock of yourself? It is only by an
inventory of ourselves, accompanied by a searching analysis, that
we discover what is wrong and see ways to clear things up.
7. Are you so set in your ways that you cannot see that “circumstances
alter cases?” Do you earnestly try to adapt yourself to people and new
situations or do you expect all the adaptation to come from somebody
else? Perhaps you are smug, never have a new idea. Try reading a
Republican newspaper if you never read anything but a Democratic
paper. Go to a different church. Get out of the rut you are in. Listen
to other people’s ideas for a change. Don’t be so cocksure that you
are always right and the other fellow always wrong.
8. Do you ever sit down and think? Reflect about yourself, your
friends, your activities, your responsibilities? Do you stop
and ask yourself if you are selfish and inconsiderate? Do you
sympathize with others, try to avoid saying things that may hurt
somebody’s feelings? Do you build up people rather than tear down?
Do you go out of your way to help others?
9. If you and your prospective mate are constantly quarreling, have
you stopped asking whose fault it is and started doing your best
to prevent conflicts? Unless you two people settle your problems
by compromise and mutual give-and-take, your marriage future looks
dark.
10. Did you get engaged shortly after you first met? In most real
love, an engagement rarely occurs before the couple have known and
dated each other regularly for at least a year or longer.
11. Are you sure it is love? Could it be just loneliness, a desire
to escape an unpleasant environment? Are you sure it isn’t a
“phantasy ideal?”
12. Why don’t your parents approve this marriage? After all, they
may have something. Look back in the past--weren’t they right many
times then when you thought they were wrong? Unless your friends
warmly approve this marriage, your parents are probably right in
urging you to wait.
13. Do you really know your mate? What makes one a good date
doesn’t usually make one a good mate. Although an hour’s enjoyment
of dancing, going to the movies, etc. may be wonderful pastime, it
may be far from what you need in a mate. Are you sure what you want
in a mate is what you need? Are you sure that what you have found
is what you _need_ in a mate?
14. Last but not least is this prospective mate going to be the
sort of parent you want your children to have?
When you have finished asking yourself these questions, you will
probably have some good ideas what to do if you and your mate
didn’t make a score above average. Take your time. It is easier
to get married than it is to get separated or divorced, and much
easier on one’s disposition in the long run. You want to marry but
we want you to make a good choice and to find in marriage all the
happiness and contentment that it can bring.
_Procedure If You Are Doing the Matching Alone_
Some readers may wish to see how they match with another person but
would prefer to do the matching without consulting him. That can
be done, though of course it will be much less accurate. Use the
“Do You Match?” tables in this chapter, just as couples working
together did. You won’t have much trouble scoring the last ten of
the twenty-one items since they are based on known facts. Your
greatest problem will be in estimating the scores your mate would
make in the ten tests on personality traits. Your estimates will
necessarily be rough approximations; but if you have known this
person for several months you may have a fair idea how he would
answer the various questions in those tests and estimate scores for
him accordingly. Be rigidly honest when you imagine the answers
this person would make. You can double-check your compatibility
with such an absentee person by taking the following short test. It
is a greatly abbreviated check on compatibility.
ARE YOU WELL MATED?
Here is a final check-list on compatibility, primarily for
a person who took the tests in Chapter XI by himself. This
test, which can be taken by either a man or woman, provides
you with a rough gauge for determining whether the person
you are dating might make a good mate for you. If you are a
man, change questions to read “she” instead of “he.”
1. Are you two about equally sociable? That is, are you
both either gadabouts or both stay-at-homes? Yes No
2. Are you both stern-minded, with high ideals, or else
are you both broadminded and practical? Yes No
3. Does he find satisfaction and reward in his work? Yes No
4. Is he over 20, under 40, and not divorced? Yes No
5. Is he regarded by acquaintances as a solidly dependable
person not given to excuse-making and sly lies? Yes No
6. Have you been dating steadily for two years or longer? Yes No
7. Has your dating been relatively free from quarrels? Yes No
8. Do you and your mate have much the same beliefs and
attitudes about religion? Yes No
9. Do both sets of parents favor this marriage? Yes No
10. Did he attend Sunday school regularly until he was at
least 18? Yes No
11. Is he in good physical health? Yes No
12. Do you two have about the same emotional responsiveness
or warmth of passion? Yes No
13. Was he free of conflict with his parents and did they
discipline him firmly but not harshly? Yes No
14. Were his parents happily married? Yes No
15. Is he free of jealousy and suspicion? Yes No
16. Does he have a calm, even temperament, especially if
you are one to fly off the handle quickly? Yes No
17. Do you both have a healthy attitude toward sex? (That
is, are you neither disgusted nor morbidly concerned
with it?) Yes No
18. Is he a temperate person not given to heavy drinking? Yes No
19. Are you two fairly close together somewhere in the
broad middle zone between being timid and reckless? Yes No
20. Do you both think you want children? Yes No
If each had sixteen _yes_ answers or more to the above
questions, then your romance would seem to be on fairly solid
ground. However, after you have taken the test, then go back
and compare the two sets of answers on all the questions. If
each had seventeen _yes_’s or more, and if there was mutual
agreement, that is, if both had the same _yes_ answers to at
least fifteen of the questions, then it would appear that
your marriage is not so mixed that it cannot be made to work.
_Chapter XIII_
Beware of Mixed Marriages
The “Mixed” marriage is any marriage in which great differences
exist between the husband and wife, particularly differences of
culture or religious training. You also have a “mixed” marriage if
there are decided differences of personality, of intelligence, of
education, of age, of race or nationality, of social culture or of
economic status.
Suppose there are great differences. That’s what makes life
interesting, some people say. Differences may be “interesting” but
if they are really fundamental they can form a gulf between the
two mates that will make happiness difficult to achieve. It is
the conviction of the authors--based upon a study of hundreds of
happy and miserable marriages--that the more a man and girl have in
common the more likely they will enjoy being married.
One of the factors that seems to have great importance in making
a marriage work is the congeniality of the two persons. This
congeniality must be built upon the things they have in common.
The more things they have in common and the fewer the differences,
the greater the likelihood of congeniality. And the greater the
ease with which the two can talk over their mutual problems fully,
frankly, and understandingly. The success of a marriage depends
upon the total adjustment the two personalities can make to each
other. Even where couples are highly compatible far-reaching
adjustments must be made. When to the normal differences you add
fundamental differences of background, the sheer problems of
adjustment will add a severe strain to the union.
Suppose the two people do bridge the gulf between themselves.
There will be great differences between their two sets of parents
that may present problems. And there will be the differences
between their two sets of friends. No couple lives completely
alone. Two mates not only take each other for better or worse but
also they must take with them the parents and friends of the other.
Take two cases with which we are familiar. They are typical of the
cases in the files of any marriage counselor. (Their real names, of
course, are not used.)
John is forty-two years old, a Catholic, a Democrat and had a
high school education. His young bride, Margaret, is twenty-four,
has had three years of college at a fashionable finishing school.
She is a Baptist and a Republican. These two people think they
are in love. Perhaps they are. But on the other hand Margaret
was attracted to John chiefly for his “maturity,” his handsome
appearance, the very nice compliments he paid her, and the success
he has made of himself. She likes the idea that he is a self-made
man. (He is the junior partner in a business, and his income is
about six thousand dollars a year.) John is fussy and parsimonious
in his habits and thinks that going to the movies once every
month or two is enough for anybody. He is not very sociable and
would rather stay at home and read some thrilling mystery story
than go out. He lives with his parents and has specified that
Margaret come and live with them as his mother is not in too good
health. Margaret is vivacious, full of life and energy, very much
interested in parties, dancing and sports. She is warmhearted, and
since she was accustomed in her own home to having servants, she
is careless where she puts things. After she finishes dressing her
room looks as though a Kansas cyclone had struck it.
John was attracted to her despite her “odd” ways because she had
given him considerable appreciation for the progress he has made
without much formal education. She is the most attractive girl who
has ever shown an interest in him, and he subconsciously feels that
her social position in the community will be an asset to him in the
success of his business. Despite their present professions of love
it is hard for us to believe these two will find lasting happiness
in marriage. They have too many points of difference.
Jim and Mary, in contrast, are what we could call compatible. Jim
is twenty-eight, a college graduate in business, and is a junior
executive in an office-supply firm. He is a sociable person,
likes the movies, wants to go to an occasional dance and has many
friends among both sexes. Mary also likes to dance, has many
friends, enjoys parties and sports. She was graduated in liberal
arts in college but in addition took a secretarial course. He is
a Methodist, she a Presbyterian. He is an independent in politics
though reared in a Republican home. Although Mary has voted
the Republican ticket she tends to be something of a liberal,
politically. They became acquainted in their senior year at college
and now both are working at the same firm. If they go through with
their marriage we predict they will find a great deal of happiness
in it. They have so many things in common.
In the last few chapters we have already pointed out how crucial it
is for a couple to have compatible personality traits. Studies have
shown that unhappy couples frequently disagree on their friends,
matters of recreation, the way they demonstrate affection, the way
children should be reared and other things that are a vital part of
marriage. The research of the Marriage Counseling Service at Penn
State has shown that the couples who disagree most are the couples
whose personalities are least alike. Take the great difference of
ideals in the case of the son of the traveling salesman who is
rushing the daughter of a clergyman. She is almost spiritual in
her ideals and at home learned to restrain all manifestations of
affection. The young man is handsome and dashing, a fast talker
and a social butterfly. He likes to tell dirty stories and to get
drunk. It is unlikely that their romance will progress far enough
to contemplate marriage, but if they should get married, the
radical differences in traits will produce a great unhappiness.
What are the other factors besides personality traits that can
produce mixed marriages? Here are the main mixtures to watch out
for.
* * * * *
ARE THERE FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCES OF RELIGION? If the couple are of
different religious beliefs their philosophies of life may be so
deeply different that they may be liable to constant friction.
One German study showed that the fewest divorces were in marriages
between Jews and that the largest number of divorces occurred when
a Catholic married a non-Catholic. In Maryland, twelve thousand
young people were asked the religious affiliations of their parents
and also asked if their parents were living together, divorced or
separated. Here were the percentage of broken marriages found in
different groupings:
When both parents Jewish 4.6%
When both parents Catholic 6.4%
When both parents Protestant 6.8%
When religions mixed 15.2%
In other words, a mixed marriage is two or three times more
likely to end in unhappiness than when the marriage is not mixed
religiously!
And in inter-marrying some combinations seem to be more explosive
than others. Below are three possible combinations in descending
order, with the bottom combination least likely of all to produce a
happy marriage.
Protestant to Jew
Protestant to Catholic
Jew to Catholic
Catholics have the greatest difficulties in inter-marriages presumably
because their church takes a sterner view of inter-marriage than do
the other churches. Another factor may be that they are taught not to
use birth control devices (though family spacing through “rhythm” is
condoned).
Suppose that a Catholic and Protestant do marry. There are
thousands of couples who have achieved happiness in spite of
religious differences. You can achieve it, perhaps, but both of you
should face the problems involved in such an inter-marriage before,
not after, the wedding. If possible one should agree to embrace
the religion of the other. You should also definitely agree on the
church in which the children are to be reared. You should even
discuss the size of the family desired because that may become a
point of difference. If both refuse to budge from their religion
they must face the likelihood of disharmony developing after
marriage, particularly as children come along and decisions must be
made about their religious training. Religious inter-marriages are
particularly difficult when one or both are deeply religious and
feel very strongly about holding to their particular faith.
* * * * *
ARE THERE SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES OF INTELLIGENCE? A wife can be
somewhat less intelligent than her husband and they can still be
happy, but almost any other variations in intelligence are apt to
produce problems, especially if the differences are pronounced.
Studies have shown that husbands and wives usually are much more
alike in intelligence than in physical characteristics. People in
general tend to select mates whose mental ability is about the
same as their own. When two people of vastly different mental
equipment marry, the less-endowed mate is apt to develop very
strong feelings of inferiority, and the two may find it very hard
to select interests and activities to share. The more intelligent
one unconsciously may develop a superior attitude that may be
patronizing or impatient.
Another thing they are bound to disagree on is how to spend their
leisure time, the kind of friends that they will have, the social
ethics they will have, and in fact their whole philosophies of
life. The brighter mate reads serious magazines, listens to
symphonies and forums, reads little or no light fiction. The less
intelligent mate is interested in the spectacular radio programs,
reads the more frothy magazines, has few deep intellectual
interests. It is the glamorous, exciting things that appeal. Also
they do not share ambitions. Two such people cannot talk over with
each other their hopes and ambitions, their frustrations. There is
no sharing. One feels aloof from the other.
* * * * *
ARE THERE FOUR OR MORE YEARS DIFFERENCE IN FORMAL EDUCATION? There
can be wide differences in schooling but only as long as the
two people’s interests and attitudes are about the same. And in
these days of wide reading, radio information, night schools and
correspondence courses, two people may differ greatly in formal
education but differ little in their informal education.
However, it does appear to be a fact that the happiest marriages
seem to be those in which the two people met each other on a
school campus, took similar curricula, lived in the same academic
background.
* * * * *