Read Ebook: The Myth in Marriage by Hubbard Alice

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Ebook has 293 lines and 10910 words, and 6 pages

But this living together has induced a thousand conditions that had nothing whatever to do with the ecstacy of the soul.

Young people do not realize how much economics has to do with every-day living until they are face to face with every-day life.

Earning money, the drudgery in housework, the personal habits of the individuals, intimate tastes and prejudices, are all foreign to the awakening of ideals in the soul. The beloved, who was once an angel, becomes a wife, a weaver, a worker, a plain human being, subject to the shortcomings and ignorance that other human beings have.

And the lover, who is also beloved, becomes a husband, an earner of money, in competition with other workers, subject to irritation, weariness, discouragements, human failings.

The human qualities, the frailties and shortcomings, do not inspire the soul to high ideals. And each looks across the impassable gulf of the breakfast-table and wonders why they "introduced into their lives a spy."

"Where is the ideal I was to dwell with?"

"Where is the ideal that was to abide with me?"

Their souls are wrenched in anguish.

FACTS

The business in marriage requires commonsense about ninety-nine per cent.

There is usually less romance in marriage than in any other relationship of life.

But the general idea concerning marriage is that it is all or nearly all romance.

There is no other business partnership so intimate and complex as that in marriage.

And this partnership is entered into, the legal papers are drawn, witnesses to the transaction are called, and a life agreement is made without thought, discussion or an agreement concerning the business part of this partnership.

Emphasis has been placed only upon the love, the part of the contract which mortals can not control.

The business part of this contract holds the destinies of the contracting parties as no other partnership can. Husband and wife can ruin each other's fortunes utterly. No outsider can do this.

We would consider two men ridiculous who entered into a business partnership, discussing with each other only the pleasure they anticipated in seeing each other so constantly as they would, working side by side each day.

Imagine one partner saying to the other, "With all my worldly goods I thee endow," and slipping upon his finger a little gold ring. Then for the duration of this partnership, the privileged partner giving to him who wears the ring what he is inclined, varying as the joy in each other's presence waxes or wanes. The idea is silly.

And yet a man and a woman may contract to live together, giving little serious thought to the business part of such living, until they find that mortals can not live on romance, and that the joy of their lives has flown away.

Ecstacy continued, burns up life, and is not intended except for inspiration.

Love may continue with marriage, and it may not. Civilization has drifted us into conditions where it is difficult for romance to continue after the lovers enter into the business of life together.

Marriage is of universal interest. The weal or woe of the race is involved in it.

It is a natural incident in the lives of lovers; but the marriage of lovers, although an incident in love, becomes an event in their lives because of the business partnership, which phase they did not contemplate.

The primal purpose in the marriage of lovers is that they may be perpetually purified, that they may live constantly their best. To do this they must have the Ideal forever before them.

When the business part of marriage shows another "side" of their natures, the Ideal may take wings. Then they naturally feel they are cheated. Their first impulse is to run away from this "trouble," to get back to the Ideal before it has been effaced.

AN AWAKENING

The expressions, "falling in love," and "making love," are terms suggesting something that is impossible.

No one falls in love. The experience of loving may come when a person has evolved where fine perceptions are possible. All living is an awakening process in which there are many degrees of consciousness. At a certain stage in his evolution, a human being is able to see and feel certain truth.

The imagination is a power which is developed with intellect and fine feeling. The imagination can create a world and people it. In this way, ideals are perpetually made. Humanity's effort to realize ideals is evolution.

When man can image a human being that fulfils the highest ideal he can create, the soul rejoices. Man forgets the imperfect in his ecstacy when contemplating the perfect. And when one human being sees another human being who reminds him, more or less, of his ideal, he is said to love.

He does not "fall" nor "make," he realizes, he awakens, and sometimes re-creates.

It may often occur that the person who awakens one to this ideal may recall this ideal once, twice, again and yet again. Or this person may constantly recall it, or cease altogether to recall it.

That man and woman are lovers who constantly keep before each other the Ideal.

They wish to abide together, because together they live their best lives, do their best work, are most kind to their fellow-man, do no wrong, can do no wrong. This is commonly accepted today as the basis of marriage. It is this ideal which is vaguely or definitely in the minds of thinking people when they wish to marry.

The poet Dante had a wonderful, complete ideal. He saw but twice the woman who reminded him of his Perfect. He wrote in poetry of his Ideal and called Her by this woman's name.

His wife, the mother of his children, was another woman.

Many critics say that Dante's love for Beatrice was pure. Probably they say this, because he asked nothing of her. That he never knew Beatrice was fortunate, for the two people had very little in common. Dante was a poet and dreamer. Beatrice was a woman of the nobility without serious cares and responsibilities.

THE NATURAL MARRIAGE

When young people meet on a natural basis our present civilization insists that it must necessarily be followed by a permanent, life-long friendship or disgrace.

The cosmic urge causes a meeting which, if followed by an enforced close relationship, usually has incompatability as a sequence.

Nature has one thing forever in mind. Civilization has not counted on this.

A youth and a maiden meet when passion is strong, the will undisciplined and judgment undeveloped. Convention says there is but one thing to do when young people are thus strongly attracted to each other, and that is to get the sanction of society and make arrangements for a permanent intimacy.

The youth expects the perpetual beauty, smile and charm of the ballroom, reception or parlor. The maiden expects protestation of love, and her ideals and promises fulfilled.

Each has firmly fixed in the mind an idea of something that has none or little of the real in it--an idea that is impossible. Yet in it there are hope and fond desire somewhere hinted.

The facts are that a struggle has just begun with some of the unpoetic realities of existence, of which neither has ever before dreamed.

Perhaps the wife must rise early, prepare the breakfast, keep the rooms in order. This is work.

The husband goes to business.

Business perplexes.

"Oh, she is just like other women!"

"Oh, he is just a common man!"

They complain.

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