Part 8 (1/2)
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 s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual 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 const.i.tutes 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 s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual 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 s.e.x 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.
CHAPTER XI
UNHAPPY MARRIAGES
A good deal has already been said in these pages about the causes of failure in marriage, but I feel that a more definite dealing with the problem of unhappy marriages is called for.
I do not recognize any problem in those cases where marriage has not been based upon love. When a man or a woman marries for financial reasons, or out of a desire for a certain place in society, or because of a mere desire to settle down in life, then he or she runs an enormous risk, and there is nothing to be surprised at if trouble follows. So close an intimacy as marriage involves is really only tolerable when love constantly supplies reasons for patience, generosity and forgiveness. In fact by marrying for any other reason than love men and women only make the permanent and inevitable problems of life a great deal harder to solve. And a human life does always involve a problem either in or out of marriage. Life is a complex and perplexing business.
But if it be true that many marriages begin with intense love and yet after some time turn out unhappily, then a very real problem is presented to our minds, and probably what I have already said about the wonder of s.e.x love, and its harmonizing influence on personalities, has accentuated that problem for some of my readers. There are many wives who once loved their husbands intensely, but who are now laboriously learning to endure them. There are many husbands who felt that they had attained to all that they longed for when they married, but who now are almost giving up in despair the task of living even peaceably with their wives. Many such people are heard declaring that love is the arch deceiver of the world, and that its power only lasts during a few short hours in the morning of life. For many the early and wonderful days of marriage remain only as a tormenting memory, so entirely has the color faded out of their lives. And I know that the pain of such situations is so intense that I would fain speak of them only with consideration and sympathy.
But none the less the broad fact has to be stated that in such cases it is not marriage that has failed but the people involved in marriage.
There is nothing in the whole of life so beautiful or so holy but that it can be spoilt when mishandled, and love is no exception to this. I believe love is always felt as a call to unselfishness, but it is a call that can be resisted. And when it is resisted and two selfish people find themselves tied together for life, all the conditions of misery are present. Selfish people are nearly always unhappy people, and two unhappy people certainly cannot make a happy marriage.
And yet these generalities do not carry us very far. Unless we can discover in further detail why marriages fail, these things were better left unsaid. I believe, however, we can discover many of the reasons.
To begin with, a good many unhappy husbands are idle men. Having no hard work to which they must give themselves daily, they have to try to find interest in life in some other way. And because there is no other way they inevitably find themselves threatened with boredom. While their love was new it seemed to them that it would fill life for ever with romance and joy, but so soon as the first early stages of marriage were past they found it failing them. Such men almost always become moody or restless or irritable, and if they are much at home their wives have to try to humor them through their troubles. It is more than any woman ought to be asked to do, and more than any woman can continuously accomplish. If such men came home in the evening honestly tired through trying to do something worth doing they would find their homes a delightful solace. But life's problem cannot be solved by an idle man, whether he be married or unmarried.
And the same is true for idle wives, though there are not so many of them. When a woman has turned over to her servants all household cares and even the care of her children that she may run after pleasure she has chosen to live on terms which never yet made anybody lastingly happy. We are by nature too big for that way of life, and sooner or later it fails to make us even content. Love will light up with a wonderful color lives that are given to honest work, but even love cannot make idleness other than a wearisome career. Then there are couples who have refused to have children. If the reason be that some possibility of disease has made it seem wrong to have children, it may be that both will learn to adapt themselves to this limitation and to achieve happiness in spite of it. Thousands of couples who are childless against their own wills have learnt none the less to live together in lasting happiness. But when childlessness is the result of a mere selfish policy, it often revenges itself upon the couple concerned. They have deliberately refused satisfaction to one of the deepest instincts within them, and though they may not realize it, those suppressed instincts destroy their harmony of being. They do not face the fact that they have such instincts, because they could not meet them with any adequate reason for suppressing them. They try to deceive themselves into believing that the instincts are not there, or they repress them from selfish causes, and life does not let them off.
Love remains unsatisfied. Its august claims have been refused. And therefore it does not and cannot continue to bring them joy.
Another reason for unhappy marriages I have already spoken of in a previous chapter. Sometimes they were marriages of pa.s.sion and not of love. Sometimes men and women allow themselves to be hurried into union by the driving force of an almost impersonal thing that is purely physical in nature, and though they think they are acting out of love, they are leaving out the larger part of their natures. Mind and spirit may have had no part at all in the transaction. And after such a step there is bound to come a painful awakening. After a while he or she will find that in the most intimate part of married life only the body is acting, and then two people who have got very close to one another in one respect may yet find that they are still in many ways strangers to each other. That must always be a most critical situation. I believe that a successful way out of it might almost always be found, if only the two concerned would use much patience and would learn mutual accommodation. But patience is not a universal possession either among men or women, and often rash and foolish things are said or done at such times which seem to break hopelessly the house of dreams which up till then had seemed so beautiful and so permanent.
If only men and women could learn that the love which makes happy marriages is _not_ mere pa.s.sion, though it involves pa.s.sion, a world of troubles might be avoided.
The plain though unpalatable truth about a great many marriages is that, though there was love in them at the beginning, there was not enough of it. Often there was enough to make the man eager and delighted to enjoy his wife when she was happy, but not enough of it to make him able and willing to help her when she was depressed. There was enough to make each able to take delight in the charms of the other, but not enough to make either willing to forgive the faults in the other, and help him or her to conquer them. There was enough for sunny days but not enough for foggy ones--enough to produce laughter but not enough to beget patience--enough for admiration but not enough for understanding--enough for joy in the other's successes but not enough for helpfulness after the other had failed. Perhaps a woman will always seem in some ways a queer creature to a man. It is certain that no man has always understood any woman. And I suppose a man always seems at times a strange, childish, and primitive being to a woman, so that she also fails to achieve understanding. But when understanding has failed love is put to one great test. Nothing can get a couple through times when understanding has failed, except love. But love can do it when there is enough of it.
Nor is that the hardest thing love has to do. There come times when, because n.o.body is always good, and most of us are often bad, love has to face the plain fact of sin in the loved object. At such times to approve is impossible, and would be a real disloyalty. To break out into mere reproaches is futile and irritating. To do nothing is to let a seed of separation sink into the common life. Yet the situation can be met. It can be met by real love, because love can forgive.
Forgiveness does not mean condoning wrong. It does not mean blindness, which is never a helpful thing. It means loving the person who has stumbled in spite of the fact, and even perhaps just because of it. It is at such times that one who has failed most needs love, and when therefore love gets a supreme chance. But if a husband or a wife has not enough love to take that chance, then marriage may fail.
And here I am not talking about exceptional cases. Whoever you are, if you marry you are going to marry a sinner--a man or a woman who will some day fall below his best self or her best self. And just because you love it will bring you acute pain. You would do well to ask yourself beforehand what you are going to do about it. And if you cannot feel that you could forgive and go on loving all the same, you would do well to think again. The whole story of some unhappy marriages is told in one sentence. There was love in them, but not enough to produce forgiveness. Yet the ultimate proof that true love is divine in origin lies just in the fact that true love _can_ forgive.
All of which leads me on to the real reason why I write this chapter.
Marriages often fail because people often fail, and people fail ultimately for one central reason--that they have not G.o.d in their lives. I have read as much modern fiction as most people. And while I have plodded through elaborately told tales of the sufferings of married people, my amazement has grown that these tales are almost without exception the stories of people who had no conscious relation to G.o.d. Their authors seem to think it a most interesting thing that such lives should go wrong, and they base upon that fact the suggestion that life is essentially a tragic and rather disappointing matter. To me nothing seems more inevitable and more entirely explicable than that on such terms life should fail, and should fail alike for the married and the unmarried. What could be more simple!
The essential greatness of man lies in the fact that he is capable of fellows.h.i.+p with G.o.d. It is in realizing that fellows.h.i.+p that he truly comes to himself. In nothing less than that can he ultimately find satisfaction. The reason why all lesser experiences fail him is just that he was made for something greater still. These lesser experiences will carry him through the morning of life and past the usual time for marriage. But later on the unalterable facts about his nature begin to a.s.sert themselves. Though he does not always know it--often indeed does not know it--he begins to need his G.o.d. And till he finds G.o.d he is wrongly related to the whole universe. Though he will generally fight against it a certain sadness threatens to settle on his spirit. He will try all the old joys; and though he may p.r.o.nounce them still good, a quiet voice within will p.r.o.nounce them not good enough. He cannot live even on human love, and a disturbing force will begin to trouble him even when he is with the wife he has loved so well. And so marriage begins to fail.