THE ART OF BEING MARRIED
I
HOUSEHOLD HARMONY
I have the greatest sympathy with married couples who never read any
books or pamphlets containing advice to married people, and are
determined that they never will. Once a man and a woman have left their
respective homes and set up in one of their own their common life is so
entirely their own affair, and they have such a clear right to resent
all intrusions into it, that the policy of rejecting all advice
beforehand has clearly something to be said for it.
And yet, because no one need read this chapter unless he or she likes,
I put it in; and if any wife or husband does read it, I hope that in
that case both husband and wife will do so. I really write it not so
much for those who are already married, as for those still unmarried.
It matters so much--so very very much--with what preconceptions and
assumptions we approach wedded life.
Of course Mother Nature teaches the great art of living in the married
state to thousands. Two sensible people endowed with some patience,
some common sense, and a great deal of affection have every right to
expect that without much difficulty they will find for themselves the
right way in marriage. Uncounted couples who read no books and never
heard of psychology have made a lifelong success of it simply by being
natural, brave, unselfish, and really loving. Many such simply wonder
when they hear others talk about the difficulties, dangers, and painful
experiences connected with marriage. They never found these things in
their marriages. The last thing I would like to suggest to the young
is that they need be afraid. Personally I agree with the man who said
that on his wedding day he had entered a new and splendid country for
which he felt quite unworthy and that he had never since ceased to
wonder and thank God for its beauties, its interests, and its delights.
Yet there are other couples--couples who have made mistakes, and now
talk rather bitterly about marriage; and it is because I believe that
even a little more knowledge and a little more patience might have
prevented those mistakes that I offer the following pages with my
congratulations and good wishes to all who are about to marry.
There are no absolute rules for the conduct of married life. There are
only truths to be recognized. We are all apt at times to wish for
absolute rules. We think they would make life easier. We even wish
sometimes that Jesus had given us absolute rules and not simply
principles. But in fact rules always turn out to be galling things.
They are not for free personalities who differ enormously in
constitution and temperament. The right way for A and B might prove to
be just the wrong way for C and D. The problem is one which has to be
worked out by each couple afresh. It is a problem of mutual
accommodation between two persons each of whom is an original creation
of God. It is the problem of taking two different life themes and
working them into one harmony.
Nor do I think that we achieve much by thinking or speaking of "rights"
in this connection--about "his" right to rule here, and "her" right to
be considered there. No doubt husbands and wives have rights--
inalienable and august rights. But married life is part of love's
domain, and in that region the language of the law courts is out of
place. When either of the two begins to think about enforcing or
claiming rights something has already gone wrong.
And this I think is chiefly a point for men to consider. The conception
of a husband as a sort of Czar within his own home still lingers,
though it may not be openly proclaimed. Men still grow up with the idea
that a wife should be a sort of submissive and very charming slave,
honored by occasional demonstrations of affection, and that the whole
household should be ordered to suit his lordship's convenience. Such
men will protect their wives, give them money, make love to them, humor
them, and honor them in public; and in return will expect something
little short of sheer submission. Behind all this lurks the
half-conscious idea that woman is man's inferior, and that idea really
does remain hidden even in the minds of some who would repudiate it. The
fact is that the ultimate value of marriage--the thing that makes it
good fun, as well as a noble thing--lies in the fact that men and women
are so different; that they have not the same powers, and can
alternately take the lead in their common life. It is comradeship, and
not mere occasional love-making, that they must achieve in order to be
permanently happy, and comradeship is a relation in which each must be
free to be his or her natural self.
Marriage _can_ be made a cramping thing, and then in time it becomes
almost an insufferable thing. But if each will give the other room to
grow it can be an enlarging experience. It may contain the sum of the
interests of two different people. If mutual learning is brought into
it, it dignifies the lives of both. I believe in obedient wives. But
then I also believe in obedient husbands. If I did not follow my wife's
lead in some departments of life, I should be neither more nor less
than a fool. And I believe that she is quite wise to follow my lead in
some other connections.
What all this really points to is that the element of liberty is worth
conserving within marriage with very great care. When a wife has no
private means it is an essential thing for the husband to give her
regularly a stated allowance and to ask no questions as to how it is
spent. It is a good thing--a very good thing--to make certain that, if
possible, a wife has a holiday now and then from the heavy bondage of
housekeeping. It is even a good thing that she should have a holiday
now and then from the charms and joys of family life. For we men are
very like children in the way we come to depend on our wives. All our
little woes must be brought to them--from buttonless shirts to the
pitiful tale of our last defeat at golf. The children consult them
daily about a hundred things as of right, and their husbands must often
seem to them the biggest bairns of the lot. I quite see why women like
it. But it must get very wearing at times. It surely is a good thing
that now and then a wife should turn her back on it all, meet old
friends, have days in which to enjoy herself without any bothers, and
even for a few hours forget her exacting if charming dependents.
It is equally important not to forget a husband's liberty.
No doubt a great deal of cruelty lies to the charge of husbands who are
out night after night, leaving their wives--already weary after a day's
heavy work--to sit bored and alone, while they enjoy the company of
their male friends, or hunt after their favorite pleasures. It is quite
right that wives should refuse to tolerate such treatment. But the
entire reversal of that policy is apt to work badly also. A husband
should not drop all the masculine interests of his life, nor give up
his old friends, nor resign from all the responsibilities that will
take him sometimes out at nights. And a wise wife will not allow him to
do it. Somewhere between the two extremes I have indicated lies the
wise path in this connection.
Then is it not time that somebody boldly said that husbands ought to do
some of the housework? I have no time to discuss the ethical problem
raised by the households where paid servants do it all. They are a very
small minority of modern households, and in all the rest the wives do a
great deal of the housework--generally all of it. Some of it is heavy
muscular work, such as carrying coals or moving furniture. The rest
makes up an employment which is more constant, needs more brains, and
calls for more administrative capacity than any man can imagine till he
has tried to do it. Of course men say they cannot do such work. Which
is plain rubbish. It only means that they do not like doing it. Neither
do many women. And men can do most of it perfectly well if they will
only take the trouble to learn how it is done. I do not mean that I
propose for men such jobs as matching wools, or making babies' clothes,
or arranging the drawing-room. There are limits to our powers. But I do
seriously mean that setting fires, cleaning grates, carrying coals,
making beds, washing dishes, cooking, scrubbing floors, cleaning brass
and silver, etc., etc. are things which the average man can do quite as
well as the average woman. Why then should they all be piled upon the
weary back of the woman? Because, you probably say, the man must hurry
off to business in the morning, and comes home too tired at night. Yes!
most of us really believed all that before the war, and then we began
to make discoveries. One was that there can be a lot of time before a
man goes off to business, and another was that the man is not more
tired by 6.30 p.m. than the woman, and can do a lot of useful things
if he has the will. And I urge this point not only because it is in the
clearest sense only fair, but because until a man does in this way take
his share of the home burden he cannot understand his wife's life, and
cannot give her intelligent sympathy.
The instinctive male attitude to household details is often expressed
in the phrase that they are "bally nonsense," or something else equally
picturesque. But when a little experience has taught a man how _very_
uncomfortable he would be if the details were not right, he is
forthwith able to be a much more intelligent friend to his wife. I do
not think fathers ever really know their little children till they have
helped in looking after them at bedtime, in the early morning, and at
meals. And I am sure that no man ever knows what a crowded and terrific
thing life can be till he has been left at home alone for a whole
evening to look after two or three. When he has undergone that
searching experience he will forthwith respect his wife with a new
sincerity.
It is extraordinary too what a jolly business housework can be when two
people go at it together and get all the possible fun out of it. On the
other hand, when it is all done by lonely people it can be vilely
tedious. Thousands of husbands have no idea of this. If they searched
their own minds they would find that their idea of their own homes is
that they are places to be kept clean and comfortable for them, and
their idea of their own wives is that they are women whose first duty
is to minister to their comfort. Any suggestion that this may mean a
very dull life for wives is met by a snort, and some muttered murmur
about "poisonous modern nonsense." But in spite of that or any other
more brilliant adjectives that may be employed the suggestion is
unalterably true, and if, having made life as dull as that for their
wives, such men find that marriage itself is not turning out well, it
is high time they should wake up to the fact that they themselves are
to blame.
And yet may some kindly Providence save us all from the women who never
forget the house--whose domestic possessions seem to constitute mere
extensions of their nervous systems, so that if you kick the fender you
give them the jumps--who cannot sit still once they have seen a speck
of dust, and cannot turn with free minds to any wider interest. They
help to fill clubs and pubs. But they ruin homes. I want husbands to
share the housework chiefly because in that way it will get done the
sooner, and give both husband and wife some free time. If they want
really to live they must take care to get away at times from all such
merely domestic concerns. If need be let the supper dishes lie dirty,
but out of sight, until to-morrow--if need be, let your husband wear a
sock with a hole in it--put off cutting out baby's trousers, and even
let your new blouse go without that alteration in the meantime, but on
most evenings at all costs get some time to read, or enjoy music, or go
out, or talk, or dream, or do nothing. The problem of civilization is
unsolved for those who let the house tyrannize over them, and the
problem of marriage also. All of which may seem rather trivial and
unimportant to some men, but in my belief it is connected in a
strangely intimate way with the success of life.
Of course the converse to all this is that wives do well to enter into
their husbands' interests. It is often done with amazing success. I can
think at the moment of doctors, lawyers, engineers, shopkeepers,
scholars, writers, financiers, teachers, and ministers whose wives have
entered keenly and with intelligence into all their cares, plans, and
labors. And in every such case the friendship between man and wife has
been very close, and the marriage truly happy. When this is not done, I
often wonder why. I suppose some wives do not understand their
husbands' affairs at first, and cannot be bothered trying to
understand. I suppose that some husbands are too impatient to explain,
and that others really cannot. If so it is a pity. Possibly some would
rather not explain. I have often wondered what the wives of many modern
business men think of modern business methods; and I suspect that
generally they simply do not know the truth. But I repeat it is a very
great pity when a wife has no relation to her husband's business. It
means that he has a life quite apart from her. And if it be said that
many a man wants to forget his business and all its worries as soon as
he gets inside his own front door, it is equally true that often such
men have worries they cannot forget, and that they would be stronger
and happier men if they only knew what a woman's sympathy is.
All of which seems to me so very important--so inevitably important--
that I cannot but think it should be remembered when young men and
women are deciding about their marriages. Have you noticed the lines on
the face of that greatest of men--Abraham Lincoln? They were there in
large measure because he married a woman who could not or would not
share his real life.
II
PHYSICAL HARMONY
It is beyond all question that in many cases where marriage is not
turning out happily the real cause lies in some failure to achieve real
and true adjustment of the sexual relationship which marriage
involves.
Here again there are no absolute rules. Miss Royden, for instance, has
written a most notable chapter called "The Sin of the Bridegroom" in
which with fine candor she points out how cruel it may be for a husband
to suppose that on the first night of his marriage, and after a day of
great fatigue, his wife will necessarily be emotionally attuned for her
first experience of intimacy, and how fatal the results may be if he
imposes himself upon her in an unresponsive hour. I am sure that
every word in that chapter is true and important. I agree with the
suggestion that every man should read it before he marries. But it is
also true that many couples who did then experience intimacy can look
back upon the first night of marriage as on a sacred occasion which
they recall with wonder.
Yes, there are no absolute rules. But there are unalterable facts. And
the supremely important one here is that sexual intimacy is only a
perfect experience when it is a mutual experience. I think the delusion
is nearly dead that woman is a passionless creature, who will never
actively desire her husband but who ought to be willing to receive him
whenever he desires. Happy marriages can only be built upon the grave
of that misconception. It was held to be a view honoring to women. As a
matter of fact it led to a great deal of cruelty. No doubt women differ
greatly, but in every woman who truly loves there lies dormant the
capacity to become vibrantly alive in response to her lover, and to
meet him as a willing and active participant in the sacrament of
marriage. And till that dormant capacity has been stirred into life
sexual intimacy may be actually repulsive, with the result that
children may be born who are not in the full sense the product of
creative love, and that the relations of husband and wife may remain
difficult and unsatisfying to both.
This is not what God ordained. There is an art of wooing which Nature
teaches to many men, and would, I think, teach to all men if they were
patient and willing to learn. It consists in a love-making that appeals
to the mind, the heart, and ultimately the body, and through it alone
can a woman be attuned for her natural part in marriage. It is her
inalienable right thus to be wooed before sexual intimacy is asked for,
and husbands who are too impatient to offer such wooing do her a real
wrong.
There are times when a woman cannot respond, and a true husband must
learn to recognize such times. Some of them are perfectly obvious. When
a woman is not well, or is fatigued--when pregnancy has advanced beyond
its early stages--when full health has not been recovered after
childbirth--at these and at other times the conditions are not present
for a true sexual experience, and in the name of his love a man must
learn not to ask for what cannot be freely given.
None the less it is not always and only the husbands who make mistakes
in this part of life. A woman must be at least willing to be awakened
and made responsive, and many women have a strange power of controlling
themselves in this matter. They can repress their natures even when
desire has begun to stir. They can remain cold at will. And they do
it for many and varied reasons. Sometimes their reasons are purely
selfish--they cannot or will not be bothered. Sometimes they allow a
sense of pique over some trifling grievance to inhibit their natural
instincts. Sometimes because they shrink from the labors of motherhood
they acquire a distaste for this whole side of married life. And
meantime their husbands are men in whom ardent love naturally,
inevitably, and rightly produces a desire for intimacy. They may be
willing to be patient. They may study their wives' moods, and try to
learn to be chivalrous lovers. But if day after day they meet with no
response--if on the contrary they find their wives deliberately
checking all response, is it not clear that a situation is created that
cannot but threaten married happiness? Is it not inevitable that
husbands so treated should begin to wonder whether their wives really
love them? For love makes people unselfish, and equally it makes them
understanding. On the other hand, when wives do understand, and learn
in this respect to be generous, they bind their husbands to them in new
chains of affection. In some husbands almost the strongest emotion
they have towards their wives is a sense of profound gratitude for a
generosity that made those wives willing to meet them again and again
in love's high places, and allow them that ultimate expression of
their passion through which nature is restored to balance and peace.
And surely it might help wives to attain to that generosity if they
would but remember that it is love for them that kindles passion, and
that it is an ever-renewed sense of their lovableness that keeps their
husbands so eager.
But there is another strange reason that keeps some wives physically
unresponsive, and so prevents any perfect sexual experience. It is a
reason that only operates with refined and spiritually minded women,
and though its results may be very serious it seems to them a right
reason. What I am thinking of is a sense that it is not quite right or
quite seemly or quite refined to allow the primitive instincts of the
body to awaken. In other words, such women are afraid of passion in
themselves, and suspect that it is not quite consistent with their
moral and religious ideals to allow it to have sway. And so they never
frankly and openly accept their own sexuality. It may be natural enough
in view of the terrible ways in which men and women have misused and
degraded passion. It is almost inevitable when women have been brought
up to believe that morality consists chiefly in self-suppression.
None the less it is a mistaken, and ultimately an irreverent as well as
a fatal misconception. It was Jesus who said, "He which made them at
the beginning made them male and female and said, For this cause shall
a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they
twain shall be one flesh." There is a place in the holy life for the
free, happy, and full expression of the instincts and desires that are
rooted in our sex natures. The assumed inevitable opposition between
bodily and spiritual functions has no real existence. We cannot
spiritualize the body away. To neglect or simply to repress it is a
course that comes to no good. What we can do is to accept, understand,
and then use it rightly. And when we do so it turns out that the free
and happy exercise of bodily function will harmonize with all the rest
of our life till body, soul, and spirit attain to harmony and unity. I
think this reluctance to accept our real natures is wrong and
unreasonable, but my chief feeling about it is a sense of pity that
women for reasons which seem to them good should none the less miss the
joy and exaltation which might be theirs, and should compel their
husbands to suffer also.
It is strange but it is true that the two commonest reasons for the
failure of marriage in this aspect of it are a lustful view of it and a
mistakenly spiritual view of it. A lustful view of it will lead people
to be content with merely physical unity, though they are attaining to
no union of their mental and spiritual lives. And that means that
marriage is a very poor affair. But on the other hand this falsely
spiritual view will lead to an attempt to leave the body out. And that
is a course of folly for incarnate spirits. The real end of marriage is
a unity in which body, soul, and spirit will all play a part, and
nothing else really satisfies. It has been wisely said that "there are
liberating and harmonizing influences which are imparted by sexual
union and which give wholesome balance and sanity to the whole organism
provided that union is the outcome of psychic as well as physical
needs. . . . Through harmonious sex relationships a deeper spiritual
unity is reached than can possibly be derived from continence either in
or out of marriage."
The waiting-rooms of specialists in nervous disease are crowded by men
and women suffering from nerve trouble through failure to attain
harmonious sexual relations in married life. But many of them might
have escaped that fate had they only been able to take the simple
Christian view of themselves and their natural functions. It was a God
of love who made us as we are, and we only interfere with His plans for
us when we try on this earth to live as if we were out of it, or call
that unclean which in His wisdom He has set in the center of our life.
III
BIRTH CONTROL
Not only because the subject of Birth Control occupies a very great
place in the public attention just now, but also because it does raise
very important and real questions for married persons I wish to speak
shortly of it here.
Some day, perhaps, the medical profession will do the public the great
service of issuing some authoritative statement about the physical
aspects of the matter, for there are issues with which only medical men
can deal wisely.
And yet it is far from being only or even mainly a medical question.
The moral and social issues involved in it are of great importance.
It is now a matter of common knowledge that it is possible for two
persons to live together in sexual intimacy and yet avoid having
children. And this has created new problems for the married and new
dangers for the unmarried. Probably it has had a great deal to do with
the recent increase of irregular sexual relationships outside marriage.
The women whose sole motive for chastity was the fear of having
children and so of being openly disgraced are now set free to sin
against the truth without fear of that particular penalty.
I am not, however, in the meantime concerned with them. It is the
problem raised for married persons that concerns me. About two main
points I am quite clear.
In the first place, for two healthy young persons to marry with the
definite intention of having no children is, I believe, an unchristian
thing. If they cannot afford to have children they cannot afford
to marry. If at the beginning they interfere with nature they spoil
their first experiences of sexual intimacy, which should be spontaneous
and untrammelled. I even believe that artificial attempts to postpone
the arrival of a first child are a deplorable mistake. The first
consummation of love should be closely followed by parentage. Some
couples having followed the plan of postponing parentage have, when it
was too late, found that by this course they had forfeited the
possibility of that great privilege. Of course children mean very hard
work. Of course they restrict the freedom of parents to pursue their
own pleasure, and use up a large proportion of the family income. But
these things are a blessing in disguise. Comparative poverty for young
couples is a bracing and a useful discipline. Probably the cream of the
nation consists of men and women reared in families of four or five,
where the parents gave much individual attention to each child, and by
self-denial helped them to a good start in life. When birth control is
resorted to in order to avoid the labors of family life it is a purely
selfish and quite indefensible thing.
I am thinking of course of healthy parents. Unhealthy parents probably
ought not to have children at all.
The second point I am clear about is that for most couples to have as
many children as is possible is equally indefensible. Most healthy
couples could have far more children than they can do justice to. In
fact the plan of unrestricted families results in a threefold wrong. It
is nothing less than cruel to women. The overburdened mothers who were
confined once a year or once in eighteen months, never allowed to
regain full strength between confinements, and made prematurely old,
are, I hope, a thing of the past. Marriage on those terms did mean
servitude. Further, the plan is cruel to children. They cannot
on these terms receive sufficient attention. They are not given a fair
start in life, and in many cases do not even receive sufficient healthy
nourishment. These things are of course in part due to the artificial
conditions of modern life. But the conditions are there and cannot be
ignored. And thirdly, the plan involves a wrong to society. We have
great need of healthy well-trained children, but society as a whole
suffers when children are brought into the world who cannot be properly
cared for.
About this point I conceive there really cannot be any doubt whatever.
And thus the problem of birth control forces itself upon our attention.
It is a duty to women, to children, and to the state. The really
difficult question is, "How is it to be achieved?"
One great Church in Christendom replies, "By continence, and by no
other method." And there are many who arrive at the same position
because they hold that sexual intimacy is only justified, and
is only holy, when the deliberate purpose of producing children enters
into it. As I see the matter we come here to the central ethical issue
of this whole matter. Is it true that sexual intimacy is only right and
beautiful when it is entered upon with a creative purpose, or is it
also right and sacramental as an expression of mutual affection?
Or put differently--granting that two persons have allowed their love
to lead to parentage, and have loyally accepted the burdens of family
life, may they rightly continue to live in intimacy after the point has
been reached at which they know they ought not to have any more
children? It is at this point that people of unquestionable moral
earnestness differ acutely, I am compelled to take my stand with those
who believe that sexual intimacy is right and good in itself as an
expression of affection. It has, as a matter of fact, a good many other
consequences than the production of children. It constitutes a bond of
very great worth between two persons. It is in many interesting ways
beneficial to a woman's physical system; and it brings to men a general
balance and repose of being which is of enormous value. I believe, in
fact, that in actual experience it does justify itself as a method
of expressing affection.
The alternative for thousands of couples is not merely the cessation of
sexual intimacy, but also abstinence from all the endearing intimacies
which are natural and spontaneous in married life. They must not only
sleep apart, but in many ways live apart. And this not only means pain
of heart such as would take a very great deal to justify it, but also
often leads to serious nervous trouble because of the strain which it
involves. I have insisted again and again in these pages that
continence is perfectly possible for unmarried men. But continence for
a man living in the same house with a woman whom he loves, and with
whom he has had experience of sexual intimacy, is a very different
thing. It is possible for some--perhaps for many, and without serious
loss. But for many others it is not possible except on terms which lead
to serious nervous trouble. And for such persons, and on the terms I
have indicated, I believe conception control to be the better way.
As to how that control should be achieved I have no special fitness to
speak. I would advise any couple, faced by the problem, to consult some
doctor of repute till they understand the matter, and then to find out
for themselves what is for them the right course to adopt.
I know that for some people what is called the sublimation of sexual
desire provides a successful way of dealing with the situation. They
find themselves able without any emotional loss to divert to other
directions and uses the energy of their sex natures. But it is a
mistake to imagine that what is possible for one couple is necessarily
possible for all. Attempts at sublimation often result in mere
repression, and on the heels of that come serious troubles.