The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book | Page 4

one's own
motives, desires, and preferences so much as contact with others. We
find ourselves liking some people better than others. We learn to
understand ourselves through our own choices. This teaches us that
self-acquaintance which measurably helps in choosing the right mate. It
is particularly important that we see the effect that others have upon us.

What we ourselves possess we are most apt to draw out from others.
The kind of mate we need for happiness is one who stirs up the best in
us, and not merely the most entertaining or the most physically
stimulating of our acquaintances. Matrimony is not a short, hilarious
excursion, but a serious lifetime undertaking.
* * * * *
Another thing we want to learn before we choose our mate is the
wearing character of any courtship candidate.
4. Does he, or she, wear well? If you are bored now, think of what you
may have to endure later.
Wearing qualities are not so easy to find out as some other things; but,
if we are alert, we can notice whether a friend who has attracted us
holds his own as we go about with him or there is a tendency on our
part toward a letting down of interest. Many of those who lose
matrimonial zest and merely have a tolerable relationship in marriage
blunder at this point. Usually they have not thought of the need of
finding out during courtship whether the friendship that started with
promise keeps its pace; they have been unconscious of the drift toward
a less meaningful relationship, or have assumed that that was an
inevitable result of being together constantly. It is true that the
emotions do somewhat settle themselves, but they do not become
weaker because they are more stable and less violent in expression.
Much association with the right sort of person in courtship should
increase rather than decrease the emotional ties that hold the two young
people together.
5. Will he, or she, grow with you--in mind and in character? If not,
your own growth will make you unhappy.
Another of the more difficult tasks that must be assumed in a wise
courtship program is discovering whether there are in the person one is
beginning to like incentives toward growth. There is one certain thing
in any marriage: it is impossible for those who enter such an alliance to
remain stationary; either they grow in character or they lose ground.

The mere possession of ambition is not evidence of the desire to grow
up emotionally. One has to probe the ideals of the other person. The
question is, "Does he or she have the character-vitality to develop
emotional maturity?" If this is lacking, successful marriage is seldom
achieved, and for one who has gained this trait to be tied to a spouse
who cannot attain it is tragic for the well-matured person.
6. Will he, or she, put father or mother ahead of wife or husband? Look
out for apron strings.
There is something that the psychiatrist warns us about that we cannot
wisely forget in our courtships. We must free ourselves from
entanglements in our emotional make-up that may have had their
beginning in childhood, and we must especially avoid marrying anyone
who has such liabilities and makes no effort to be rid of them. An
example is father fixation or mother fixation. We all know from
experience persons who cannot grow up from their childhood
dependency, and they make very trying husbands or wives. They are
easily spotted if one is only keen in noticing what takes place, because
they are constantly showing their childishness, and we can be sure that
they will continue both to reveal and to nurse their weakness
throughout life in such a way as to be discouraging and irritating in
marriage and parenthood relationships.
7. Can he, or she, "take it"? You know what they call it in the army.
Although there are many virtues that one would like to find in any
candidate for matrimony, there is one that we must look for seriously;
if it is absent, turn away from an alliance that is almost certain to fail.
That is pluck. Marriage, like life itself, puts upon persons demands that
can be met only by courage. The fair-weather type of person is certain
to be disappointing in the critical, character-revealing experiences that
are bound to arise in marriage and in parenthood. It is difficult not to
grow bitter if one finds himself or herself married to a mate who does
not have the pluck to meet the disappointments, the hardships, the
testing of ideals, that must appear in every husband-wife relationship.
* * * * *

It would be much easier for young people, we often think, if courtship
did not make its start at