David and Ruth have been married four years. The first few months were glorious: they had to make minor adjustments, of course, but they had thrilling times together, and it was a wonderful thing to have someone you belonged to, someone so comforting and lovable. Yet lately there have been difficulties. David believes in saving money; Ruth thinks that you live only once and that you ought to spend your money—wisely, of course—for the nice things and the great experiences, especially since there is no telling when the bank will fail or when the bottom will drop out of the stock market and you will lose all you've invested. David likes to get away from the house at night—to see friends, and keep up with really good movies. Ruth prefers night clubs and gay parties. David thinks Ruth ought to be more careful about those white lies and those extremely dÉcolletÉ dresses; Ruth thinks David is rather a prude and mighty inconsiderate in the way he keeps picking on her. And then there is Junior. Ruth believes in loving one's children wholeheartedly and trusting that affection and understanding will bring them through all right in the long run; David thinks that right from the cradle youngsters need to build character and to learn that they have to obey.

Two days ago there was quite a quarrel, when Ruth ordered the new electric stove without consulting David—and on the same day he discovered that she had accidentally overdrawn the bank account! Neither one has spoken it, but the word divorce has been saying itself behind those set lips and those coldly polite faces.

This falling out between David and Ruth represents one general type of marital conflict. A man and a woman differing somewhat in temperament—as any two people differ, more or less—find themselves being hurt by the other's ways of acting. Each allows a sense of antagonism to grow up. This makes them more ready to resent the next difference in opinion or purpose. Once started, the feeling of enmity can grow like a snowball until neither one is willing to believe in the other's honesty, fairness, or decency. This road leads straight to Reno.

But there are many other ways of falling out in marriage. For example, there is the experience of Henry and Mary. They had a queer sort of engagement. They enjoyed each other's friends and had wonderful times playing tennis and going to shows together. But when it came to love-making, Henry always felt that he had made a clumsy fool of himself, and Mary always felt a turmoil of baffled emotions. Their honeymoon was a ghastly failure. Of course Mary knew that there was such a thing as sex, but her parents had given her a feeling that the less people had to do with such things, the better. Her marriage night left her with a feeling of blind revulsion. She tried honestly to overcome it through the months that followed, but she had to force herself to respond to Henry's caresses, and he knew bitterly that she hated the relation which for him was a deep and urgent need.

In the years that followed they had four children and loved them dearly. They still enjoyed going out together, entertaining their many friends, and taking part together in their church activities; but there was a grim disappointment back of it all, and every now and then it broke out in harsh words which both of them regretted.

Sexual frustration as experienced by Henry and Mary—or arising from various other causes—is a factor in many marital conflicts.

Our next example illustrates another type of disharmony. Helen was really the one who brought about her marriage to William. She was a capable businesswoman, earning a good salary. He was the only son of a divorced woman. His mother loved him dearly; he was her great source of comfort in the loneliness and disappointment of her own wrecked marriage. Helen saw the fine qualities in him and felt that he was being shut away from normal life because his mother wrapped herself around him. When the mother was laid up in the hospital for three months, Helen set about a well-planned campaign. They were married shortly afterward.

His mother valiantly refrained from going with them on the honeymoon—and arranged for them to live across the hall from her in the same apartment building. William felt sincerely that he must not allow his mother to be lonely, and he could not understand why his wife showed irritation when the three of them were together four or five nights every week and throughout the summer vacation. But when he realized that it was not working out, they finally moved to the other side of town and limited the evenings with his mother to two or three a week.

When they first married, William insisted that his wife give up her work, and he also felt that he ought to manage the family finances—with his mother's constant advice. Helen longed for children, and she surrendered her business career in the hope that she might have a family. But no children came, and at last Helen found a new position, not so good as the one from which she had resigned.

She loves William passionately, but she feels that his mother has spoiled their marriage. William loves Helen, but feels that she is unaccountably hard and unfriendly toward his mother, and he is distressed by her insistence upon earning her own income. The mother wants both to be happy and is willing to retire into the background, but she believes that Helen does not really appreciate William; as a mother she does not propose to see her son's life ruined by any woman.

William's mother fixation is a somewhat extreme example of a fairly frequent source of conflict. In some cases the bride suffers from father fixation, and her husband suffers accordingly.

Our fourth case illustrates another widespread type of marriage problem. Sam had had a gay and jolly life before he married. Mabel felt keen pride when she finally captured him from the other girls. He really meant to settle down and be loyal to her when they married. Their passion for each other was absorbing and wonderful for a while. Twins were born promptly, and a year later came another child. The babies kept Mabel tied down rather closely to the home. Sam often found her with wildly straying hair and a mussed dress when he came home, and her temper was apt to be on wire edge after nights of being up with the children. Sam always seemed to be sound asleep when the children needed attention.

Mabel became careless about the cooking: the food was often burned, cold, lumpy, and poorly seasoned. She noticed that Sam always brightened up when a pretty girl was near.

He used to go out often "to play cards with the boys," and Mabel twice found lipstick on his handkerchief.

A nice medical student who rooms next door has now taken to dropping in to talk to Mabel. She wonders—since Sam is so free and easy—whether she might not also pick up a little thrill on the side. And the neighbors have recently overheard some violent arguments between Sam and Mabel.

Four typical cases of unhappy marriage have been sketched: a man and woman who are allowing differences of opinion to grow into intense antagonism, a couple suffering from miscarriage of their sex life, a vigorous woman married childlessly to a mother-absorbed man, and an overworked and rather careless mother married to a man who is always seeking fresh romance. By way of contrast let us look at a quite different type of marriage.

Charles and Anna have been married twenty years. Loving each other has been the great adventure of their lives—that and having their three children. They always regarded marriage as a partnership—fifty-fifty, they used to say. There have been times of stress, but they have always been able to talk their problems out together. There have even been outbursts now and then when they have got behind on their sleep, and when each of them has been trying so hard to hold down the lid that it has finally blown off. But always these storms have cleared the air, and afterward they have come closer to each other than before. Marriage, for them both, is the great central core of life—focus of love, faith, and joy.

In spite of all that appears in the tabloid newspapers, the Charles-and-Anna type of marriage is far more typical than the experiences of the other four couples whose stories have just been sketched. In almost every marriage there are rich values to be preserved and possibilities of deeper and fuller joy than have ever been achieved. Our purpose in this article is to point out some of the practical steps which can be taken by couples who do have fallings out, to eliminate friction, to keep love alive, and to discover the deeper and wider happiness which might be theirs.

Five Ways To Go

No matter what crisis one confronts in life, there are the following five possible ways of reacting:

1. One may acquiesce ignobly. That means to give in weakly, to "take it lying down," as the boys say. If one is disappointed in one's wife or one's husband, if one's sex life in marriage is a failure, if one's in-laws intrude disastrously, if one's mate follows loves outside of marriage, or if any other catastrophe overtakes one's home, one can give way to hopeless lamentation and self-pity: "There's nothing I can do about it. It's just a rotten world. Nobody ever gives me a decent chance. I suppose I've got to live along and pretend I don't care. Poor me!"

2. One may evade cravenly. That means to run away like a coward. Many divorces are simply a blind and frantic attempt to escape from suffering. Some divorces, of course, are the best possible solution of a bad situation. But quite often the persons seeking the divorce are really trying to run away from themselves. They have never learned how to live in friendly happiness with other people. If they marry again, they will promptly find themselves in new suffering because they have never solved the basic problems of their own personalities. Sometimes the cowardly evasion is mental instead of physical. The husband or wife retires into a private world and puts up an icy barrier against the partner. In any case this type of solution is a blind attempt to run away from the problem instead of facing it bravely, trying to understand it, and seeking the wisest and best solution possible.

3. One may attack vindictively. Most husbands and wives who are skidding toward divorce have convinced themselves that their marriage partners are villains. "This person I married is to blame. He is selfish, heartless, cruel, disloyal, lazy, and nasty. He has hurt me terribly, but I'll get even. I'm going to make him suffer the way he's made me suffer. I'll show him that he can't do that to me!"

4. One may grapple courageously. This means to look the situation squarely in the face, to study it calmly, open-mindedly, and thoroughly. It means to discover the real causes for the disaster, to take an inventory of all the possible resources, and then deliberately and bravely to choose whatever line of action seems most likely to lead up out of the swamp onto higher ground. In any problem which we face, some of the conditions are almost completely beyond our control. One cannot do much, for example, to change the kind of mother whom one's husband has had, to reverse his inherited characteristics, or to cure the economic depression against which he may have to struggle. But certain other conditions one can change. Especially, if one will, one can alter one's own ways of acting, of talking, and even of thinking. The courageous grappler accepts without despair the unchangeable factors in his problem and sets about correcting the conditions which are within his control—especially his own patterns of living.

5. One may cooperate creatively. This means that one will still grapple courageously, but not as a lone wolf. One will seek to understand the other people who are involved: one's husband or wife, one's children, one's relatives, one's rivals, and all the other people who have any part or interest in the family problem. To understand means to be able to see the situation sympathetically through their eyes, but without losing perspective. Cooperating creatively means teamwork. It means discovering what is the best solution for everybody involved, and then working wholeheartedly toward that solution. The rest of this article is devoted to outlining some practical steps toward cooperating creatively when one has fallen out with one's marriage partner.

If you yourself are confronting difficulties in your marriage, you may find it helpful to note down each of the following steps on a sheet of paper and then write in after each step the applications that fit your own case. See whether you can transpose these suggestions into the terms of your problem. If you start thinking about what you face, in the light of these steps, you will probably find new ideas and fresh possibilities coming into your mind as you write. Those solutions which spring up in your own thinking may prove to be just the aids which you need to get a new grip and to start transforming your marriage into a thing of new beauty, joy, and power.

Ten Steps To Marital Adjustment

1. Abandon all feelings of resentment. Emotional antagonism toward one's mate, or toward other personalities in the problem, acts as an effective barrier against finding the creative solution and against putting it into effect. What you hate you cannot understand, because you are ready to believe all evil of it, and unprepared to perceive its good. Therefore surrender all grudges, jealousies, and feelings of contempt. Emotions of enmity distort one's vision and impel one toward actions and words that are not wise. When one person feels resentment against another, the other is likely to feel resentment in return. This intensifies the first resentment, and so the hatred grows. Someone has to break the vicious cycle. Don't wait for your marriage mate to take the first step if this joy-destroying process has started in your home. Forgive and forget. Let good will take the place of antagonism in your own consciousness, even though your mate continues to carry on the old grudge for a while.

2. Eliminate needless irritants and antagonizers. Make a careful and thorough study of the things that are hurting, distressing, or thwarting your mate. Here is a check list which includes some of the most frequent annoyers in married life.

Stop criticizing your mate—above all in the presence of other people, but also in private.

Carefully avoid every action or situation which makes your mate feel inferior, or which brings him unnecessary failures, even in small things. Don't insist on playing bridge if he a poor player; don't cultivate witty conversations with brilliant people if he feels like a dub in such company; don't throw him into contrast with people who are stronger, more successful, or better educated than he; avoid those situations in which you demonstrate your own superiority over him.

Study to eliminate the topics of conversation which are annoying to him: stop bringing up the subject of his shiftless relatives, the time he went bankrupt, the occasion on which he made a fool of himself, or that political or religious question on which you always quarrel.

Replace those items of household equipment which keep causing unnecessary pain, labor, and irritation: that leaky faucet, that worn-out washing machine, that broken light switch, that asthmatic vacuum sweeper, that torn rug, that decrepit snow shovel, that ready-to-be-junked lawn mower.

Avoid inflicting unnecessarily on your mate people or pastimes which bore him. Don't drag him to teas or to concerts or to prize fights if these events pain and torture him.

Form the habit of keeping all appointments with your mate on the punctual minute. But (unjust as this may seem) do not demand that your mate do likewise.

Never read at the table unless your mate also has something interesting to read and agrees to the arrangement.

Bring your mate into contact with your relatives so infrequently and under such favorable circumstances that their liking for each other will flourish rather than perish.

Do not try that dangerous experiment of flirting with someone else in order to keep your mate interested in you.

Never repulse your mate's sexual advances in a way which will seem unloving, contemptuous, or irritated. If you cannot respond fully at the moment, be sure that you express unmistakably your respect, your affection, and your comradeship, and make it clear that the necessary sexual denial is a mere postponement.

Watch to see whether you are needlessly violating your mate's ideals of courtesy, decency, good sportmanship, generosity, or honor.

See whether you can discover any other way in which you have been unnecessarily irritating or hurting your mate, and make a clean break with that joy-destroying habit.

3. Find ways to do new joyful things together, even in seemingly trivial ways. The long check list under item 2 is largely negative. Add the positive side. Buy your mate little presents—from the ten-cent store and occasionally from more expensive places. Make a private list of the small things that please him most (yellow jonquils, Olivia de Havilland, dipped caramels, picnics, chicken pie, Bill Smith, ice-box snacks, Beethoven records, best-seller novels, theatre parties, grape juice with ginger ale, odd china, or whatever they are) and make a habit of springing small but delightful surprises. Cultivate the friendly little family jokes that grow up wherever people enjoy each other intimately.

4. Have children together if you possibly can. Have them deliberately, by mutual agreement. Have as many as your mate can wholeheartedly agree to, and throw yourselves into the great adventure of giving them the best possible start in life. Remember that the finest things you can give your children are courage, self-respect, faith, understanding of beauty, comradeship, and the eager desire to serve their fellowmen. These great endowments can be given to one's sons and daughters even though one has a severe struggle to give them good clothes and an education. Often the financially hard-pressed give their young a far richer heritage than do those who are wealthy but neglectful.

5. Understand your mate. Set about that job as though your life depended on it. Your married life and its happiness do depend on it. Understanding one's wife or husband is far more important than earning a college degree—and even more thrilling and absorbing, if one goes about it in the right way. Spend time alone, quietly, affectionately, and dispassionately thinking about your mate. What have been his great emotional experiences in life? What are the main drives that determine his ways of acting? What are his deepest aspirations and longings? What are his unrealized possibilities? What are the things that have most thwarted him and kept him from achieving what he has hoped to do?

Sometimes the process of understanding oneself and one's mate calls for expert help. Skilled marriage counselors are available increasingly in our larger cities (but be sure to go only to those who have demonstrated their skill and training by helping other people whom you know and helping them over a considerable period of time).

Sometimes magazine articles will help. Excellent books on marriage and family life are available at public libraries.

6. Discuss your vital family problems with your mate frankly, but do not argue endlessly. If there are tensions in your married life, bring them into the open, honestly and courageously. Don't try to convert your mate to your point of view; try to understand his point of view. Try to understand each other. But after you have cleared the air and shared your ideas and your problems do not rehash and repeat and go back over and over again until you are both weary and rebellious. Marriage is a partnership, not a debating society.

7. Discover areas of agreement, and develop together joint programs of action on which you can work together enthusiastically. The projects and purposes of a husband and wife often conflict even when their desires and motives are in harmony. Very well, go back of the purposes to the underlying desires, and build new projects and purposes on which you can unite. Suppose that one of you wants to go to the movie down on the corner and the other just hates the idea. Very well; that is a conflict. But if you search open-mindedly, you will probably find some underlying agreement. Perhaps, though you disagree about this particular movie, you both are craving to see some good movie; and if you look up the advertisements, you can find one that will delight you both. Or perhaps the essential desires of each will be fulfilled best if you stay home tonight to catch up on your sleep, and then go to a movie tomorrow night. Or perhaps one of you dislikes the idea of any movie at all, but both of you want to go out for the evening; then doubtless you can find some other entertainment that will satisfy both.

Somewhere, back of the surface disagreement, lies a deeper agreement if you will seek it patiently and lovingly. And this applies not only to a little dispute over movies, but to all the greater controversies that husband and wife confront. Where shall we move? How shall we get along on the family income? What religious training shall we give the children? Shall Mary be permitted to have that Jones boy come to the house? No matter how perplexing the disagreement may be, there is a best possible solution for all concerned if we will seek it understandingly and in the spirit of love.

8. Surrender nonessentials. Many a marriage has gone to smash because husband or wife or both clung as a matter of principle to a point which could easily have been given up and forgotten if both had centered on the great underlying essentials. Do not acquiesce ignobly on vital matters. But do not wreck your own happiness and that of your mate over some comparatively minor issue that was never worth the tears and the agony which it caused.

9. Agree to live and let live. Cultivate freedom for your mate, your children, and all the people involved in your family problems. To be oneself is one of the most precious rights of a human being. We need it for the fulfillment of our own life. Our loved ones need that same freedom for the fulfillment of their lives. Now, freedom is not defiance of law, but voluntary fulfillment of law. The better we understand each other and the laws of life, the more likely we are to find that freedom which brings the fullness of joy. By one of those strange paradoxes, we never fully win the love of our dear ones until we cease demanding it.

10. Put the welfare of your family first, and stop fretting about yourself. Although this rule comes last in our list, it really comes first in the search for fulfillment of personality in family life. What do you really want from your mate and your children? Are you after comfort, security, affection for yourself? Or do you want, above all things, that these loved comrades of yours shall find the road to the abundant life—shall experience richly and grow fully, until they find their true places in the master pattern of our world adventure?

Answer that question honestly. Live up to your real decision. And if with all your heart you seek the joy of these others, your love will be met with the high tide of love, and even out of anguish you will win your way into the meaning and the glory of existence.

Frances Bruce Strain