WHAT IS YOUR EXPECTANCY OF MARRIAGE?
This test should show pretty clearly whether your chances of marrying are good, or not so good. Be honest with yourself.
The correct answer to the first three questions is no, and to all the remaining thirty-one questions yes. If you answered twenty-five or more of the questions correctly then you have a high “expectancy” rating. If you answered only eight or less of them correctly then your chances of marrying are definitely poor unless you take action to improve your eligibility.
Chapter III
Are You Ready for Married Love?
The answer to this question is deceptively simple. You are ready if you are old enough. But how old are you?
There are several yardsticks besides the calendar for measuring your age. Educators enjoy telling the story of the wise young orphan. When a sweet old lady leaned over and asked him his age the young man removed his glasses, polished them thoughtfully for a minute and then replied:
“My psychological age, Madam, is twelve years; my moral age is ten years; my social age is eight years; my anatomical and physiological ages are respectively six and seven; but I have not been informed of my chronological age. That, I understand, is a matter of comparative insignificance.”
When we ask you if you are old enough to marry, we mean mature enough. And maturity, as it bears on your readiness for marriage, can be measured in at least five ways: physiological, mental, vocational, sexual and emotional maturity. By these standards some people are not old enough to marry when they are thirty-five!
How Old Are You Physiologically? The adolescence of the early teens is characterized by rapid bodily growth—growth in height, weight and sexual development. By eighteen, however, you are nearly as tall as you will ever be. Sexual growth, while not complete (especially for a girl), has reached a point where reproduction is possible. General growth slows down considerably and by twenty-four has just about stopped. For purposes of marriage the average person is “mature” physiologically by the age of twenty. But some require more time, because of glandular disturbances.
How Old Are You Mentally? We do not mean what is your I.Q., which is a measure of your capacity to learn, but rather the accumulation of your learning. In short, how wise are you? Normally a person must live twenty-one or twenty-two years before he has seen enough of life through schooling and practical experience to take on the responsibilities that go with marriage. If you have led a sheltered or one-sided life it will probably take longer.
How Old Are You Vocationally? A man, certainly, is not mature until he has established that he can earn a living. A college degree, a license to practice medicine, to teach, or to practice barbering are not enough. There must be a successful work record and that cannot be present until a person has used his vocational knowledge to make a living for a period of not less than one year.
Once it was thought that girls needed no special training vocationally but that notion is pretty well outdated now. Modern women like to feel independent, and frequently their ability to earn money is called into use. Perhaps the husband is a disabled war veteran, or perhaps the wife feels she needs a career to earn money. At the least, the girl entering marriage should already be capable of managing a home—and that requires skill and knowledge that can’t be learned in a night club.
Since some occupations require many more years of education and training than others, vocational maturity can fall anywhere between eighteen and twenty-six, but for most people it doesn’t come until about the age of twenty-two.
How Old Are You Sexually? Sexual maturity implies far more than the ability to beget or bear a child. Most morons can do this. Sexual maturity is largely determined by childhood and it is something most people either have or don’t have.
A youngster who was reared by parents who were well balanced emotionally, who were ready listeners to his problems, who explained comprehensively the magic and mystery of sex functions to him, will usually be ready to face the problems of sexual adolescence. During adolescence he will be subjected to many strains. He will undergo many glandular changes and begin to have sexual capacity. The reproductive apparatus approaches maturity between the ages of twelve and fourteen. The boy has emissions. The girl begins to menstruate. Both often are disturbed or even frightened by these new functions, unless the parent has been wise enough to prepare them for the changes.
During adolescence they start “dating,” which at first is done self-consciously and awkwardly. Their state of mind is made more nervous if the parents tease or ridicule these first steps in courting.
When the boy and girl emerge from adolescence about the age of eighteen, they have achieved sexual maturity if all has gone well. If so:
—There is freedom from repression and inhibitions concerning sex.
—There is no disgust or aversion as far as sex is concerned.
—Likewise there is no abnormal curiosity or longing for sexual information or experience.
—He or she may still be shy or self-conscious at first when in the presence of someone of the opposite sex but both soon get over it when they find activities to share. This is normally easy because by eighteen youngsters have acquired skill in dancing, card playing, sports, hobbies, and conversing.
If by eighteen or twenty a person hasn’t acquired sexual maturity in the sense described, it might be a good idea to consult a marriage counseling bureau, a college psycho-educational clinic, a psychologist or some other person trained in helping normal people achieve normal adjustments.
How Old Are You Emotionally? This is by far the most significant of all your ages in determining your readiness to marry! Most of the research on marriage indicates that people who lack “emotional maturity” rarely achieve a happy marriage.
What is emotional maturity, you may ask? It’s a state of mind that includes ability to get along with people ... ability to find satisfaction and reward in work ... ability to recognize and solve problems which involve your relations with others ... and finally it includes freedom from instability and neuroticism.
As in sexual maturity (which is closely related to emotional maturity) the first ten years of life are apparently the most important in determining if you will be emotionally stable. Certainly by the age of eighteen a person should have a pretty firm hold on his emotions. If he has not acquired such balance by twenty-one or twenty-two the outlook is not too promising, and he should deliberately set out to achieve better control of himself.
A stenographer of twenty-four came to the Penn State Marriage Counseling Service for advice after she had had a dozen promiscuous affairs with men. She came from a broken home where her parents had taken only an erratic interest in her and she showed serious signs of emotional instability, as do virtually all promiscuous girls and men.
Here is the verbatim report that was written on Sandra. It provides a classic picture of emotional instability:
Sandra feels inferior, does many unconventional things, has few standards or ideals. Badly maladjusted, she flits from one boy to another, seeking new thrills. Quite promiscuous and highly sexed, she has had sexual affairs with 12 or 13 men. Somewhat popular while in college, with attractive face and nice figure, she was dated by many boys, none of whom even went with her for more than four dates. Easily persuaded to any course of action, she could readily excuse any breach of behavior. Changeable and selfish, but anxious to be known as a “Campus Queen,” she openly sought dates and a sort of dubious and short-lived popularity.
Because of her instability, total lack of standards, ideals and morals, and her selfishness and shallowness, she is unlikely to marry unless she catches a rich “sucker.” She is in six “danger zones” on her Audit Profile. May the Lord help the poor man who is inveigled into marriage. No boy has ever proposed marriage to her, a fact that has hurt her vanity.
To pin emotional maturity down more specifically, here side by side are eight traits, one or more of which are frequently noted in persons who are considered “emotionally immature,” and eight noted in mature persons.
A person can be emotionally unstable and not show all of those symptoms but he undoubtedly will show some of them.
What can anyone do to improve his control over his emotions, and thus achieve greater emotional maturity? Here are a few suggestions:
—Try to look at yourself objectively. Try to do so especially in connection with your relations with others. Are you reasonable rather than prejudiced? Can you recognize that a man may be a fine person even though he is a Republican or a Democrat, that he is a good person even though he may be a Protestant or a Catholic? Do you honestly try to make decisions on the basis of facts rather than on the basis of feelings, or imaginary facts that are more agreeable to you? Sit down every few weeks and try deliberately to look at yourself as others must see you. Would you like yourself if you were someone else?
—Learn to laugh at yourself. The person who can laugh at himself, or who can laugh at the things he loves and continue to love them, is the person who is most likely to have insight into himself. And that insight is important in emotional maturity. If you have a sense of the ridiculous you can see fun in many of your own activities, and in doing so are able to relax and feel happy. You learn to laugh at your troubles, yet at the same time do your best to improve the situation. This ability to see the ridiculous side acts as a cushion and helps you maintain your stability, even when things are most exasperating.
—Set up a confidential relationship with some other person. Telling your problems to another person helps you define the problem in your own mind, it furnishes relief from the tensions you have built up, and it brings another person’s point of view into the picture. One of the biggest single values in marriage is the fact that it provides husband and wife a confidant in each other, and gives them the confidential relationship that is so important to mental integration.
—Seek work that satisfies you. Nothing will prevent you from getting a hold on your emotions more than being confined every day to work that is disagreeable to you. If you find it is uninteresting or doesn’t challenge you or doesn’t offer any opportunity as a stepping stone to more challenging work, change jobs. But do it intelligently, because the person who is a frequent job-jumper is not a good marriage risk.
Recently we talked to a man who is forty-four years of age. He had been divorced once, is now unhappily living with a second wife, wants to divorce her and marry a third woman. His job record shows that he has held thirty-nine different jobs in his life. Is it any wonder that he is unlikely to find happiness or stability in life? He does not know what he wants, can’t learn from experience, and is pursuing a will-o’-the-wisp.
—When you have a problem face it squarely. Define the problem, get all the facts, and line up alternative solutions in case the first course isn’t successful. Many people seem incapable of defining their problems. When they are faced with a frustrating situation, they frequently are unable to vary their attack upon it. When a girl can’t get her way she cries. Crying may bring her some reduction of tension, but it does not solve the problem. The emotionally mature person can keep his head, figure out something to do, but the immature person gives up or cries or gets drunk.
We have devoted so much more space to your emotional age than to the other four ages—physiological, mental, vocational and sexual—because it is so fundamental to marriage success. If you find after reading this chapter you want to know more about developing your own maturity, you will find further suggestions in the chapters “Getting Along with the Other Sex,” “Attracting the One You Want,” and “Crucial Traits for Marriage Happiness.”
When all the five “ages” are taken into consideration it would seem that a girl should not consider marriage until she is at least nineteen or twenty and the man should not before he is twenty-one or twenty-two. Those are minimum ages for normal men and girls. Those who develop slower than average in any of the five ages should try to wait a year or two longer before deciding about marriage.