The Truth about Marriage/Chapter4
CHAPTER IV
EASY MARRIAGE AND EASY DIVORCE
As a result of the attacks on marriage, we have many new ideas, many new plans to bring about happy marriages.
The advocates of new plans say that marriage is after all a gamble. One can never know whether the man or the woman is going to be happy. The only way to be sure is to try marriage out first with one, then with another, until the right mates are united. Then marriage will be as happy as the most ardent lovers could desire.
One of the new plans to remedy marital unhappiness is trial marriage, oftentimes for a definite term.
Another plan is companionate marriage, which is after all precisely the same thing as trial marriage, except that it is not for a definite term; it can be dissolved when mutually desired, provided there are no children.
The idea back of the whole matter is how to take the gamble out of monogamic marriage. For most people are agreed in the matter of monogamic marriages—of one man to one woman at a time—as ideal. To those people who look upon marriage as largely an individual matter, the new plans proposed appeal with great force.
Frankly, how can the gamble be taken out of marriage?
The advocates of new ideas say that marriage must always be, in the very nature of the case, a gamble, and the only way to eliminate the hazard is to gamble again and again until the player wins.
This can be done, it is claimed, by making divorce an easy thing, obtainable by mutual consent when both partners are satisfied that their union is a failure.
But birth control should be practiced as long as there is an element of doubt as to the final success of the marriage. In this way permanently unhappy marriages will be avoided and everyone may be sure of getting eventually his or her true mate.
My own personal idea of the way that the gamble can be taken out of marriage and permanent happiness secured is by a scientfic study of the subject, finding out just why marriages are not happy, and providing an education for young people in the most important matter of their lives which shall instruct them as to the means to avoid unhappiness and unfailingly secure happiness. Why not be scientific in this matter as in every other of our day?
Marriage may be likened to buying a farm. Some people know how to buy a farm. They understand farming, and soil, and seed, and conditions that make farming successful.
The trouble with marriage is that most people who enter into it are as ignorant as most city people are of farming. They undertake to buy a farm without knowing any of the conditions governing success. They know nothing about land in general, about soils in particular, they know nothing of seed or planting or cultivation or harvesting or marketing, and all the many elements that go into successful farming. How can they make a success of it? Would we expect farming under such conditions to be anything else but a gamble?
And similarly how can we expect marriage to be a success when those who plan to enter it know nothing about the subject except that people get married, and that some are happy, and a great many others unhappy?
They have never studied themselves. They do not know what they are, what they like, what they want to do or be, except, in some vague way, to be happy. They do not know what kind of a person will make them happy. They do not study the people who appeal to them vaguely for one reason or another. When the great rush of sex urge becomes strong and they become conscious of the element of sex in the other, they think, Well, I guess this is the real thing. I guess I ought to be getting married now while I have a good chance. John, or Mary, seems to be all right. After all, marriage is a gamble, or a lottery. Who knows but what I may draw the capital prize?
I had a letter recently from a young girl in a distant city, thousands of miles away. She felt that I was a safe person to write to because of my interest in my fellowmen. She wanted to find out whether she ought to marry a certain young man who was deeply in love with her.
Most girls do not welcome advice at such a time provided they reciprocate the love that is offered.
But this girl did not want to make a mistake. Can you blame her, reading as she does every day about unhappy marriages? She knew certain things about the young man's family which she thought might affect his character. She realized the importance of the step which faced her.
Of course, she might argue that she could get a divorce, but somehow the idea of getting married with divorce as the easy way out fortunately does not appeal to every young girl who is giving up herself, body, mind and spirit. She did not want to yield her body unless she gave also her mind and soul.
I shall not tell you what I told her, for that is a matter between ourselves, but I trust that she will go forward, or stand still, or retreat, according to the outlook for happiness.
I cannot fancy myself saying to a pure young soul like that, Enter into a trial marriage, or a companionate one, if you like to call it that; practice birth control until you find out whether you want to live permanently with your husband; but always keep in mind that you can dissolve your marriage at any time by mutual consent. An honest study of yourself and your sweetheart and of marriage itself is not at all necessary; for, after living together awhile you can separate and try it out with someone else. Enjoy life. Take a chance. What have you to lose?
Well, what does a young girl have to lose in a trial marriage? I am not going to try to answer that question yet. But from what I know of young girls I fancy that many of them would lose the glory of a dream, for one thing, and a loveliness of spirit that would make life thereafter rather sordid.
But there are other difficulties in the way.
Biologically, and thus nominally, a marriage is intended to produce offspring. Deliberately to enter marriage with the provision that there shall be no offspring unless desired is to enter it selfishly and cold-bloodedly. Only sophisticated people could do it. It places the individual's sexual pleasure above the normal purpose of marriage, above the normal instincts of human beings as lovers and potential parents, it degrades marriage into a mere animal condition.
Furthermore, easy divorce is the last thing in the minds of those who truly love each other, and love is the only basis for marriage. Lust is no basis at all.
It is perfectly true that marriage as it now exists is often a failure, but it is too often a failure because it is entered into as lust sanctioned by law. People with bestial passions desire one another's bodies. Lust is cruel and filled with the spirit of hate as soon as it is gratified.
If marriages are failures now, will it improve matters to invite people to enter them more freely by taking away responsibilities and offering easy divorce? If modern conditions are degenerate, what benefit will ensue from legalizing degeneracy? Sex-relationship in itself is not evil, nor wicked, if orderly and in harmony with the laws of human nature and society; but there is nothing more disorderly or terrible in its effects if animated by a bestial spirit.
Shall we not endeavor to restrain and eliminate bestiality and have our laws conform to the inherent law of our inner nature?
To change old laws and customs, frankly to meet modern demands in the matter of greater freedom in sex relationship, because people are not living up to the old ideals of marriage, would seem to be lowering our ideals to a degenerate age and would represent a descent into depravity. Can our civilization withstand such a lowering of standards?
As to the matter of morality in marriage, which seems to be involved in this discussion, morality is after all merely what has become established custom, the word "morals" is from the Latin "mores" and really means the manners and customs of a people.
But actually morality is based upon the highest ethical views of a people, their notions of right and wrong, of their duties to their fellowman and to God.
And so we are to think of the question of morality in marriage, not because of established custom only, but because of the factors of right and wrong, of order and disorder, of the harm done to individuals and to society by a disregard of its sacred and binding character, which are imbedded in marriage morals.
A man may live as a hermit, and get away with it, but as soon as he marries he becomes a social being and ceases to be able to live solely as an individual consulting individual caprice. Unrestricted individualism cannot be permitted in marriage, because of the fact that marriage is the beginning of community life. Men who marry must be governed by laws designed to promote the good of the community.