Man Says Love for Husband Is Formula
DEAR MARY HAWORTH: A daily (male) reader of your clear-thinking column, I have something to say to your recent correspondent who asks how to be a good wife. She is a good housekeeper but her husband disparages that. He calls for inspiration and ego-building.
Here is my advice: Don’t marry unless you love your husband-to-be. Clean corners, well brought up children, good plain cooking cannot compare to a wife’s love for her husband, as a source of happiness. And love of husband cannot be faked. The fullest sense of obligation cannot bring it forth. If it isn’t there, the marriage is a lie and the lie started in the beginning.
When a man says “I love you,” he means “I love you, I desire you, I cherish you. I want to take care of you. I want to work with you and for you.” And he isn’t kidding or he wouldn’t get married. He doesn’t expect the woman to marry him unless she feels the same. Oh, an occasional man may feel he loves enough for both, and begs the girl to be his wife even if she doesn’t love him but that is an honest risk.
When a woman says “I love you,” the man expects that she means “I want you, I think you are wonderful, I want to be taken care of by you, and I will take care of my brood.” Too often she really means “I want your love. I am afraid of being a spinster. You are my likeliest prospect. I want to get away from my family. I am willing to make a life with you.”
Stiff Blonde, Spanish Dance
So they marry. If she is a good woman she wants to do the right thing. She tries her best. But she can’t be an inspiration. She doesn’t love him. The result adds up to a stiff blonde trying to do a Spanish dance. Why isn’t the dance any good. Was the arm held at the wrong angle? Who knows? But everyone knows it didn’t come off. It wasn’t in her.
If a woman loves, she can’t stop doing those little things that reveal her heart. But if she is merely a fine dutiful woman dying to do the right thing — and not in love with her husband — she is licked. She can’t be a good wife. House- work can be “raising a cloud of dust to hide yourself from yourself.” It is an out, an escape.
A bad character, not in love with her husband, will shirk, drink, cheat, etc., but a good woman will not. She will do the job, work hard, go to church, possess self-esteem, be a pillar of society. Nobody can say she isn’t a good wife. But I will say it — she isn’t a good wife. A good wife, the wife a man hopes to get when he marries, is a wife who loves him. Then he won’t notice the quality of the housekeeping.
Tell the girls to wait until they fall in love before they marry. Tell them life won’t be a contract in quiet desperation if they are in love. There won’t be drudgery, cheating, unhappiness if love exists. At least, if marriage had this factor and little else, your problem mail would be cut in half, Mary.
F. R.
Loving Woman’s Point of View
DEAR F.R.: Well, yes and no. There is something in what you say, but you are pipe-dreaming, too, about the delights of living with a slavishly infatuated houri. Anyway, your viewpoint is valuable as an eye-opener to women, regarding what men hope for.
Now, as an eye-opener to men, I’d like to cite a remark recently made by a famous woman of abundantly feminine character and great spiritual depth, who has loved and been loved much. Speaking of man-woman love she said, “I have no desire to be the burning center of anyone’s life. I wish to share life and love with someone who loves God primarily, as I do.”
M. H.
Mary Haworth counsels through her column, not by mail or personal interview. Write her in care The Panama City News.
Taken from the Panama City News. Panama City, Florida. April 30, 1953.
