ARE YOU WELL MATED?
Here is a final check-list on compatibility, primarily for a person who took the tests in Chapter XI by himself. This test, which can be taken by either a man or woman, provides you with a rough gauge for determining whether the person you are dating might make a good mate for you. If you are a man, change questions to read “she” instead of “he.”
If each had sixteen yes answers or more to the above questions, then your romance would seem to be on fairly solid ground. However, after you have taken the test, then go back and compare the two sets of answers on all the questions. If each had seventeen yes’s or more, and if there was mutual agreement, that is, if both had the same yes answers to at least fifteen of the questions, then it would appear that your marriage is not so mixed that it cannot be made to work.
Chapter XIII
Beware of Mixed Marriages
The “Mixed” marriage is any marriage in which great differences exist between the husband and wife, particularly differences of culture or religious training. You also have a “mixed” marriage if there are decided differences of personality, of intelligence, of education, of age, of race or nationality, of social culture or of economic status.
Suppose there are great differences. That’s what makes life interesting, some people say. Differences may be “interesting” but if they are really fundamental they can form a gulf between the two mates that will make happiness difficult to achieve. It is the conviction of the authors—based upon a study of hundreds of happy and miserable marriages—that the more a man and girl have in common the more likely they will enjoy being married.
One of the factors that seems to have great importance in making a marriage work is the congeniality of the two persons. This congeniality must be built upon the things they have in common. The more things they have in common and the fewer the differences, the greater the likelihood of congeniality. And the greater the ease with which the two can talk over their mutual problems fully, frankly, and understandingly. The success of a marriage depends upon the total adjustment the two personalities can make to each other. Even where couples are highly compatible far-reaching adjustments must be made. When to the normal differences you add fundamental differences of background, the sheer problems of adjustment will add a severe strain to the union.
Suppose the two people do bridge the gulf between themselves. There will be great differences between their two sets of parents that may present problems. And there will be the differences between their two sets of friends. No couple lives completely alone. Two mates not only take each other for better or worse but also they must take with them the parents and friends of the other.
Take two cases with which we are familiar. They are typical of the cases in the files of any marriage counselor. (Their real names, of course, are not used.)
John is forty-two years old, a Catholic, a Democrat and had a high school education. His young bride, Margaret, is twenty-four, has had three years of college at a fashionable finishing school. She is a Baptist and a Republican. These two people think they are in love. Perhaps they are. But on the other hand Margaret was attracted to John chiefly for his “maturity,” his handsome appearance, the very nice compliments he paid her, and the success he has made of himself. She likes the idea that he is a self-made man. (He is the junior partner in a business, and his income is about six thousand dollars a year.) John is fussy and parsimonious in his habits and thinks that going to the movies once every month or two is enough for anybody. He is not very sociable and would rather stay at home and read some thrilling mystery story than go out. He lives with his parents and has specified that Margaret come and live with them as his mother is not in too good health. Margaret is vivacious, full of life and energy, very much interested in parties, dancing and sports. She is warmhearted, and since she was accustomed in her own home to having servants, she is careless where she puts things. After she finishes dressing her room looks as though a Kansas cyclone had struck it.
John was attracted to her despite her “odd” ways because she had given him considerable appreciation for the progress he has made without much formal education. She is the most attractive girl who has ever shown an interest in him, and he subconsciously feels that her social position in the community will be an asset to him in the success of his business. Despite their present professions of love it is hard for us to believe these two will find lasting happiness in marriage. They have too many points of difference.
Jim and Mary, in contrast, are what we could call compatible. Jim is twenty-eight, a college graduate in business, and is a junior executive in an office-supply firm. He is a sociable person, likes the movies, wants to go to an occasional dance and has many friends among both sexes. Mary also likes to dance, has many friends, enjoys parties and sports. She was graduated in liberal arts in college but in addition took a secretarial course. He is a Methodist, she a Presbyterian. He is an independent in politics though reared in a Republican home. Although Mary has voted the Republican ticket she tends to be something of a liberal, politically. They became acquainted in their senior year at college and now both are working at the same firm. If they go through with their marriage we predict they will find a great deal of happiness in it. They have so many things in common.
In the last few chapters we have already pointed out how crucial it is for a couple to have compatible personality traits. Studies have shown that unhappy couples frequently disagree on their friends, matters of recreation, the way they demonstrate affection, the way children should be reared and other things that are a vital part of marriage. The research of the Marriage Counseling Service at Penn State has shown that the couples who disagree most are the couples whose personalities are least alike. Take the great difference of ideals in the case of the son of the traveling salesman who is rushing the daughter of a clergyman. She is almost spiritual in her ideals and at home learned to restrain all manifestations of affection. The young man is handsome and dashing, a fast talker and a social butterfly. He likes to tell dirty stories and to get drunk. It is unlikely that their romance will progress far enough to contemplate marriage, but if they should get married, the radical differences in traits will produce a great unhappiness.
What are the other factors besides personality traits that can produce mixed marriages? Here are the main mixtures to watch out for.
Are There Fundamental Differences of Religion? If the couple are of different religious beliefs their philosophies of life may be so deeply different that they may be liable to constant friction.
One German study showed that the fewest divorces were in marriages between Jews and that the largest number of divorces occurred when a Catholic married a non-Catholic. In Maryland, twelve thousand young people were asked the religious affiliations of their parents and also asked if their parents were living together, divorced or separated. Here were the percentage of broken marriages found in different groupings:
| When both parents Jewish | 4.6% |
| When both parents Catholic | 6.4% |
| When both parents Protestant | 6.8% |
| When religions mixed | 15.2% |
In other words, a mixed marriage is two or three times more likely to end in unhappiness than when the marriage is not mixed religiously!
And in inter-marrying some combinations seem to be more explosive than others. Below are three possible combinations in descending order, with the bottom combination least likely of all to produce a happy marriage.
- Protestant to Jew
- Protestant to Catholic
- Jew to Catholic
Catholics have the greatest difficulties in inter-marriages presumably because their church takes a sterner view of inter-marriage than do the other churches. Another factor may be that they are taught not to use birth control devices (though family spacing through “rhythm” is condoned).
Suppose that a Catholic and Protestant do marry. There are thousands of couples who have achieved happiness in spite of religious differences. You can achieve it, perhaps, but both of you should face the problems involved in such an inter-marriage before, not after, the wedding. If possible one should agree to embrace the religion of the other. You should also definitely agree on the church in which the children are to be reared. You should even discuss the size of the family desired because that may become a point of difference. If both refuse to budge from their religion they must face the likelihood of disharmony developing after marriage, particularly as children come along and decisions must be made about their religious training. Religious inter-marriages are particularly difficult when one or both are deeply religious and feel very strongly about holding to their particular faith.
Are There Significant Differences of Intelligence? A wife can be somewhat less intelligent than her husband and they can still be happy, but almost any other variations in intelligence are apt to produce problems, especially if the differences are pronounced.
Studies have shown that husbands and wives usually are much more alike in intelligence than in physical characteristics. People in general tend to select mates whose mental ability is about the same as their own. When two people of vastly different mental equipment marry, the less-endowed mate is apt to develop very strong feelings of inferiority, and the two may find it very hard to select interests and activities to share. The more intelligent one unconsciously may develop a superior attitude that may be patronizing or impatient.
Another thing they are bound to disagree on is how to spend their leisure time, the kind of friends that they will have, the social ethics they will have, and in fact their whole philosophies of life. The brighter mate reads serious magazines, listens to symphonies and forums, reads little or no light fiction. The less intelligent mate is interested in the spectacular radio programs, reads the more frothy magazines, has few deep intellectual interests. It is the glamorous, exciting things that appeal. Also they do not share ambitions. Two such people cannot talk over with each other their hopes and ambitions, their frustrations. There is no sharing. One feels aloof from the other.
Are There Four or More Years Difference in Formal Education? There can be wide differences in schooling but only as long as the two people’s interests and attitudes are about the same. And in these days of wide reading, radio information, night schools and correspondence courses, two people may differ greatly in formal education but differ little in their informal education.
However, it does appear to be a fact that the happiest marriages seem to be those in which the two people met each other on a school campus, took similar curricula, lived in the same academic background.
Are There Wide Differences in Your Economic Background? This is closely related to the social differences. Mothers have encouraged wide differences in economic background by teaching their daughters to marry “up” the economic scale. They are urged to make “good catches.” It is only human for a mother to wish that her daughter will not have to scrimp as she has had to in her marriage. It also enhances a family’s social prestige if a daughter can marry “up.” However when there are wide differences in the incomes of the two sets of parents, those differences are accompanied by differences in social background which are often hard to reconcile. Added to this is the factor of acceptance that invariably arises when either a girl or man marries way above his own economic level. The parents and friends of the wealthy mate often assume that the other married for money. That may produce serious tension and create a lasting in-law problem.
Is There a Wide Difference in Age? One study has shown that the least happy marriages are those in which the husband is six to eight years older than the wife. Perhaps it is not the difference in age itself so much as the fact that people that far apart in age will be unlike in other respects which creates the strain on marriage.
The happiest marriages for wives seem to range from one extreme where the wife is four years older than the husband to the other extreme where the wife is four years younger than the husband. The happiest marriages for husbands seem to be those in which the husband is from one year older than the wife to where the husband is four years older than the wife. When all the evidence is analyzed it would seem that the happiest marriages for everybody concerned are those marriages in which the husband and wife are within one to two years of each other.
Are There Differences in Your Social Culture? Here is a girl who has been reared in the South. She was taught to be a lady, to be waited upon, not to work because she would have servants. Here is a man brought up in Nebraska, reared in a home where his own mother was hardworking, not only did the housework but occasionally helped milk the cows and helped do other chores for her farmer husband. With the Southern girl there has been a tremendous emphasis upon “family,” on social prestige, on doing certain things in certain precise ways. In the case of the Nebraska man, little of this formality has been present. Instead the emphasis has been upon hard work, upon thriftiness, upon a wife sharing heavily the responsibilities of earning a living. Two such widely differing philosophies are likely to produce grief in marriage. The war, with its tremendous shifts of population, produced a great many of these interregional marriages. They are certainly not doomed but the couples should face frankly the problems involved in a mixing of cultures.
Those, briefly, are the main types of mixed marriages. You should enter into them carefully, if at all. In any case where there are serious differences of background, the couple should compare themselves carefully, see just what the differences are, be realistic about those differences, ferret out the special problems that those differences will create (as in the rearing of children), agree on ways to attack the problems and solve them. Only then is there hope that the marriage can be a success. The difficulty is that couples tend to gloss over differences that exist. They refuse to identify them, to admit their existence. They put off facing them. Then later in marriage the problems can no longer be avoided and by then they have become so acute that reconciliation becomes very difficult.
For example, if a Catholic wants to marry a Protestant, it is far better for the couple to see the problems that will exist from such a mixed marriage before they are married than after they are married.
Chapter XIV
Nine Dangerous Characters
There are some prospective mates who will survive all the tests we have given you thus far and in fact look like ideal partners, and yet will bring you grief every time in marriage.
In studying marriage failures it has been found that again and again certain types of mates make a marriage seem intolerable. We’ll introduce you to nine of the worst troublemakers. They are hard to detect, but usually you can spot them if you have had several months really to know them before you commit yourself to marriage.
The Jealous Mate. Perhaps a man becomes excessively jealous because his young wife is attractive to other men or because she has been accustomed to traveling with a more sophisticated crowd than he has. On the other side perhaps the wife—with little cause—becomes insanely jealous of her husband’s secretary.
We know from investigation that jealousy causes at least one out of every five quarrels that occur between American husbands and wives. And furthermore, in divorce cases jealousy turns up as a factor in almost half of all divorces. That is not hard to understand because a jealous person inevitably becomes a difficult person to live with. He or she is usually suspicious, quick-tempered and disagreeable. It is hard to love a person who is jealous of you. You lose your respect for him, and you can’t be natural with him.
When you do try to be natural he will set you on your guard by some snippish and unprovoked remark and will question you awkwardly at length to check on your movements. Frequently he will fly into temper outbursts or sink into black moods.
Psychologically jealousy is a feeling of frustration, which in turn produces anger and dejection. The person is frustrated because he fears he is losing the love of the mate or fears that the mate is being unfaithful.
Jealousy may be real or imaginary. Evidence uncovered at the Penn State clinic would indicate that frequently it is the latter. In real jealousy the mate knows, or suspects correctly, that the other person is flirting or acting in a questionable manner. In imaginary jealousy the jealous person is that way simply because he lacks confidence in himself. He would probably be jealous of anyone he married, because he has strong feelings of inferiority and is usually unstable emotionally.
Any prospective mate who is habitually in such a mental stew without real cause would make an extremely poor husband or wife.
The Mate Who Wants to Improve You. There is sound psychology behind the thought in the marriage ceremony that you take your spouse “for better or for worse.” At the wedding each mate should be accepted for what he is with no reservations for the future.
Marriage is a partnership in the true sense and if one partner takes it upon himself to teach or improve the other, that relationship is sorely disturbed. One starts feeling superior and the other either inferior or indignant or both.
It is terribly easy for some new husbands and wives—after the glamour has worn off—to see flaws in their mates that should be corrected immediately. Their intentions may be kindly but soon they are continually criticizing and imploring the mate to change his or her ways.
A constant urge to improve a mate is closely akin to nagging. In fact nagging means oral pressure, and when applied to a spouse it invariably produces discord. The nagger in marriage is one of the major troublemakers.
If the attempts to improve a mate are made in public—as they frequently are—the affronts then clearly become intolerable. Nothing produces greater resentment. Even if the aggrieved partner can absorb such criticism without slashing back he will seethe inwardly and seek revenge for such an assault on his dignity.
Let’s look at the “improver.” It has been found that such a person is rarely the happily adjusted, emotionally mature person. Rather he could stand some self-improvement himself. Usually he is trying to improve the other either because of his own underlying feeling of inferiority, or because it gives him a mean, petty advantage over the other.
If after reading the above you still feel that your own mate or prospective mate has faults that could well be improved, why don’t you try one of these tacks?
First, remember that if you maintain high standards yourself your mate will gradually rise to them. Set a good example. Couples grow more alike every day they are married.
If you are anxious to have immediate results, use indirect rather than direct suggestions. A wife, for example, might say to her husband that she appreciates the fact that he has been more considerate of her during the past few days. This may be hokum. But even though he has not been any more considerate, the compliment will encourage him to be more considerate in the future.
Or suppose that a man thinks his fiancée shows appalling taste in her clothes. A frontal criticism would wound and probably infuriate her. But if he starts out by complimenting her on the few presentable things she wears, he can use them as springboards for getting across to her the kind of clothes she should wear to make herself most appealing to him. Few women can resist such suggestions.
The “Nervous” Mate. Many wives neglect their husbands, and many husbands quarrel with their wives, because they are emotionally insecure. They are at loose ends with themselves. In scientific language, they are maladjusted or neurotic.
Marriage in itself rarely cures an emotionally unstable person. In fact it may aggravate his trouble by adding new frustrations. A person who is unstable before marriage is apt to find that the increased responsibilities and decreased liberty under marriage impose new burdens. His frustrations become aggravated.
Every marriage counselor knows from experience that unhappily married couples usually present difficulties that can be traced to the emotional maladjustment of one or both of the mates. Perhaps the husband flies into a rage if supper is late or if his pipe rack has been moved. But any psychologist knows such tantrums are merely symptoms, symptoms of the man’s basic maladjustment to life. They will appear when he meets any sort of frustration.
If the wife is careful to have supper on time and keep the pipe rack in the same place the eruptions will appear somewhere else. They will appear, that is, unless the husband can get hold of himself and grow up emotionally. This may require help from an experienced psychologist who can get at the roots of the man’s difficulties.
Here are some other thoughts for easing a situation where one or both of the couple are high-strung.
When either mate is upset the other should make it easy for him to talk his troubles out. Talking things over dispassionately is a wonderful way to ease tensions. Psychologists now realize its importance and refer to it as mutual psychotherapy.
Sometimes the tensions are produced by physical and mental fatigue. Perhaps one or both mates are working too hard and relaxing too little. If so they should try to modify their routines to get in more rest, sleep and relaxation.
The Financial Critic. Money is not the root of all evil, but it certainly is at the root of a lot of marriage unhappiness. All studies that have been made concerning the reasons why married couples quarrel agree that financial arrangements cause more friction than any other one phase of marriage. For example, couples quarrel five times as much over money as they do over the rearing of children, which is a well-known troublemaker. One half of all divorced couples say that financial problems were a part of their difficulties.
Unless the couple is really poor, the lack of money doesn’t cause the troubles as much as bad management of it. The average couple should be comforted to know that too much money causes trouble almost as much as too little money.
A girl considering marriage with a man who has an irregular or uncertain income should face frankly the fact that the situation may become the source of bitter quarreling if the two aren’t careful. Regularity of income and job security seem to be more important than the size of the income. Couples who save money are happier than those who don’t, other things being equal.
Both girls and men selecting a future mate should be wary of people who are disorganized in their personal lives or are prone to carping. Those two types of people are most apt to inspire or provoke quarrels over money.
The main grievance of wives financially is that their husbands are too tight and the main complaints of husbands are that their wives are too extravagant or too chaotic in their budget-keeping. Husbands, interestingly, complain much more about the extravagance of their wives than wives complain about extravagance of husbands.
The Alibi Artist. Beware of the excuse-maker. Alibi-making is not mentally healthy. In fact it is one of the early signs of emotional confusion and mental deterioration. If a man or girl sees in the other during courtship indications that excuse-making is an ingrained habit, he would do well to break off the courtship and seek a mate elsewhere.
That may sound like a harsh way to deal with the purveyor of “little white lies” and excuses but it has been clearly established that such a person is a very bad marriage risk. The individual usually excuses his own lack of accomplishment or ability by projecting the blame for his failures on other people. Bit by bit this projection becomes devastating.
Continued excuse-making gradually brings the individual closer and closer to the gulf that divides the real from the imaginary, the sane from the insane. In its most pronounced form it is paranoia, a type of insanity.
The alibi artist has little respect for the truth, cannot be predicted, evades his obligations and is generally not dependable. The test designed to measure this tendency to alibi, which psychologists call “tendency to rationalize,” has already been discussed. The victim rationalizes or excuses his own conduct. The amazing thing is that this one test is an extremely accurate device to predict, by itself, marriage happiness or failure. Investigations have established that persons obtaining low scores in that one test have consistently proved to be unsatisfactory mates in marriage.
No husband ever gets conditioned to excuses for the lateness of meals, the unmade beds, the buttons that have not been sewn on. He doesn’t resent the inconveniences as much as he resents the wife’s constant excuses for failure to show some improvement.
The Escapist. The escapist is a close relative of the alibier, but somewhat more honest. He finds himself unable to cope with his everyday problem of living in a modern world so he turns and flees from them. This flight may be physical. That is, he may become a hermit or may go into the armed forces where he can shed all responsibilities for directing his own life. But more often nowadays the flight is into a dream world, via narcotics or alcohol.
Heavy drinking is steadily becoming more serious. Many distillers are even urging moderation in their advertisements. It is not merely on a moral basis that marriage counselors will warn you to shun the heavy drinker. As a husband or wife he’s a hard person to live with. And marriage rarely cures dipsomania or any other mania. So don’t think you can cure a fiancé or fiancée who habitually tipples.
The causes of drunkenness are not too well known but one thing is sure: the habitual use of alcohol is just a symptom of the person’s basic maladjustment to life, and not the cause of the maladjustment. In alcohol he forgets his problems, or imagines that he has found brilliant solutions for them.
The person who drinks excessively is always a psychological problem and an amateur cannot hope to be too successful in tackling it. Even a sanatorium cure brings only temporary relief unless the basic conflicts that impelled him to drink are resolved. Usually very careful counseling of the alcoholic is necessary to uncover his troubles and help him work out a solution for them.
The Disorderly Mate. To be successful in marriage or almost anything else in life, a person must keep his affairs in a fair degree of order. You should be wary if you find that a person you are considering for marriage is sloppy in his or her appearance or affairs.
If a girl’s apartment looks like an unmade bed, you can consider that a fairly accurate forecast of how she would manage your home. Or if a man is habitually late for dates or shows up without a tie or with unshined shoes, you can be sure he would be even more sloppy and inconsiderate as a husband.
Neatness, of course, can be overdone. One wife we know objects to her husband sitting in certain chairs until he has changed his clothes. Another will not permit her husband to enter the living room—which she prizes—until he takes off his shoes, unless there are guests.
Some people are fastidious about the way they dress and yet are disorderly in organizing their lives. Others are the other way around. But when disorderliness becomes general an intolerable strain is imposed on a marriage.
The Mate with Clinging Relatives. Statistically, in-laws cause about as much marriage woe as drinking. Many a promising marriage has been marred by them.
In the past six months, more than ten per cent of the troubled married couples consulting the Penn State Marriage Counseling Service had problems aggravated or initiated by their in-laws. We read recently a letter from a young wife who bewailed the fact that her husband’s mother insisted on going along with them on their honeymoon. She had told her son she needed a vacation and would like to go with them. Without consulting the bride he agreed. The bride lamented:
“I spent far more time alone with my mother-in-law than I did with my bridegroom!”
Living with in-laws at any time creates a hazard for most couples and should be avoided if possible, but it is particularly irritating during the first few months of marriage. Those months are crucial because of the adjustments the two people are making. It is then that they get fully acquainted, adapt their habits, work out compromises.
Any person contemplating marriage shows lack of foresight if he fails to consider the attachments his prospective mate may have to close relatives, or if he fails to weigh the chances that these relatives will ever live with the couple, and the outcome if they do.
One little-known aspect of this is that some in-laws in a couple’s home cause more trouble than others. The husband’s mother, for example, is apt to produce more difficulties than the wife’s mother because it is the wife who must spend the most time with the woman.
The husband’s mother often becomes a rival of the wife for the husband’s attentions and—as the husband’s own mother—may become head of the household.
Likewise a wife’s father in the household presents more difficulties than the husband’s father.
It is not necessarily fatal to live with in-laws. In fact the hazards are relatively small if the man and wife are both grown up emotionally and very happily married.
If you do find yourself eventually living with an in-law in the home, remember most of all to keep all financial arrangements clear-cut, and abide by them even more scrupulously than you would if they involved total strangers. Further, don’t borrow money from them.
The Flirt. Whether male or female, the person with the roving, aggressive eye is a poor prospect for marriage. The flirt is a poor prospect because he is basically a shallow, conceited, inconsiderate person, incapable of genuine love.
He will prove a difficult, unsatisfying person to live with as a marriage partner, because the wedding ceremony will not change his fundamental characteristics. You will have trouble establishing a give-and-take relationship with him. Then, when the glamour of the wedding wears off and the normal difficulties of marriage adjustment confront him, he will find this humdrum and start recalling his premarital conquests. Soon he may be flirting again and you may find yourself with a triangle on your hands. Triangles are responsible directly or indirectly for at least a fourth of all divorces.