Men, Women, and God

a chapter by itself. Put in a sentence it is this: Only real love offers a basis for a happy marriage, and real love is something more than physical a

it is there it is felt as an imperious summons to marriage. To each the other seems for the time being a wonderful person, to be desired beyond all others. Often the critical faculty in us is entirely suspended by this attraction; and "her" words seem wise, though in fact the

n remains the only bond between two people. Sometimes in the other departments of life they actually fret and annoy one another. Sometimes a friendship refuses to grow up. Sometimes even while the attraction still exists contempt lurks behind it. And that means that it is entirely unsafe to get engaged on the basis of a mere physical attraction. There is really something impersonal about mere physical attraction. The individual as such is hardly an active agent in it. He or she is the victim of some gre

extraordinarily astute when she packed off her husband, who was the victim of an intense physical attraction for another woman, into a lonely place in the country where he would have to spend all day and every day with the lady whom he held to

ng time, and is a poor affair when a husband is bored by his wife's conversation, or when a wife is repelled by her husband's views. Even to such there may come recurrent hours of ardent love, but both will want more than that. We must take our whole selves into marriage, and to have experienced a mere physical attraction is no proof that we shall be able to do it. I remember one very distressed young wife who once asked me for help. Sh

ction, and perhaps to have to decide not to act at all in consequence of it. To stifle an incipient passion in that way may be a terrific b

inning of everything else. But it is not alway

th, and when nature has had her way with them a really complete marriage will be attained. But it is not always so. Neither may have the power fully to awaken the other. In some marriages that are fine friendships either the man or the woman is half-conscious of deep-seated longings that have never been satisfied. And if by chance a third person appears with the power fully to awaken the physical