As to your acquaintance with the other man, there is this to be said: When you are morally bound to another it is neither honorable nor just to encourage him to take an interest in you. You will probably do him grievous wrong, even if you do not do wrong to your husband or to yourself, which will be hard to avoid. Try to regain your husband’s interest at once, and decide resolutely to have none but passing acquaintances. Break off your correspondence at once, telling your friend why you do so in a frank, womanly manner, and you may depend upon it that if he is a man of worth that he will respect you ten thousand times more for your action.
Let us hear from you again.
“I don’t know of any one to turn to in my trouble but you, dear Miss Shirley, and I’m sure you will not refuse me. Both my parents died when I was a child, and for ten years I have lived in this little town with my grandparents. I am nearly eighteen years old, and am beginning to enjoy men’s society, which my grandparents can’t seem to understand. They make life miserable for me with their reproofs whenever I go out with any of my men friends, and I am tempted to cut loose from it all. There is one of my friends who wants me to marry him and go away. I don’t really love him at all, but he swears he loves me, and I certainly respect him very much. Do you think I could be happy with him and make him a good wife?”
You poor little child, not to have had the benefit of a mother’s advice and fostering care! There are many like you who have married for the sake of a home and have found that home—oh, so unhappy after the novelty and glamor of the change had worn off. Grace Shirley’s advice is not to marry for any reason but one—and that is love. A marriage based on any other reason must in time prove unsatisfactory. Respect must go with love, of course, but respect alone is not sufficient to keep two people together “until death.”
If you married without loving your husband you would only make him unhappy because he would yearn for what you could not give him. To see him unsatisfied would only dishearten you and make you even more unhappy.
Wait until the one comes along whom you know you really love and then decide.
In the meantime try and be friends with your grandparents, and in a kind way try to make them realize that you are young and need amusement, and there is no doubt but what they will remember that they, too, were young once and that they will meet you half way.