As a result of many such investigations, reliable information is available on the kinds of people who make the best mates, and on the causes of marriage success and failure.
In this book we have tried to include those findings which should be most helpful and interesting to all people involved in love or marriage—but particularly to people who sooner or later will be taking unto themselves a mate. It is not our intention to lay down a set of rules for people to follow. But we hope that after reading this book you will be more enlightened in your hunches than you might be otherwise, and be a much happier and more desirable mate yourself!
How to Pick a Mate
Chapter I
Why Marry, Anyhow?
Mating is as old as Eve. In fact it is the oldest and most popular custom ever devised by mankind. Even in the most isolated tribes that explorers have uncovered on this globe adult males pair up with females to live together as man and wife.
In many areas of the world, it is true, marriages are still arranged by the elders, often at a neat financial profit to the bride’s parents. Freedom of choice in mating is a newfangled idea. And in Madagascar the groom is warned at the wedding that he can beat the bride all he pleases, but if he breaks any bones or gouges any eyes she has a perfect right to go home to mother. Yet even there mating is popular.
Though marriage is the most universal institution known to man increasing numbers of Americans are shunning it by divorce or otherwise. About ten per cent of our marriageable men have become unbudgeable bachelors. The number of women who are choosing careers to marriage is soaring. Moreover there are 1,500,000 men and women in America who tried marriage and are now living apart in divorce. Many others were divorced, then remarried.
Thus “Why marry, anyhow?” is today a fair question. So let’s face right at the start the main reasons why people do not marry, or stay married.