CHAPTER FIVE
Learning to Live Together
The wedding shuts one gate and opens another. The longings and dreamings of courtship are at an end. The supreme intimacy of life begins.
As John and Mary move away from the altar, pronounced man and wife, they know they are starting a great adventure. His beaming face masks a stiff determination to keep his bride happy in spite of any worldly obstacles. Her radiance hides a solemn inward vow to do everything humanly possible to make smooth the way of their life together. They are right. Unless they are very different from most people, this new joint enterprise is going to mean more to each of them than anything else ever can.
Before them is a clear road. Not to happiness, as they may believe, but to the opportunity for gaining happiness. The goal is not easily won, but they can attain it without the aid of luck or rare gifts or miracles—simply by practicing the common everyday virtues that bring success in all human ventures.
A young couple's engagement period is like any other time of excited anticipation, when one has received the promise of something greatly desired, but must wait awhile before its delivery. The happiness of the waiting period is characterized by the absence of a critical spirit, and therefore is apt to be thought of as an experience of pure delight. But the first days of marriage bring out a different set of feelings—those that come when one has definitely obtained possession of anything that before was only promised. At first the emotions seem to stand still—this is the long-coveted moment! Then one begins to appraise. Is the object of one's wishes as desirable as one had expected?
Because reality rarely measures up to imagination, the first answer is almost bound to be, "No, this is not what I expected." And the first emotion tends to be disappointment. If one accepts the fact that discrepancy between imagination and reality is inevitable, he is better able to go on to a more thorough examination of the situation, from the fresh viewpoint of finding out just what he has received, regardless of hazy but optimistic expectations; and the object possessed will more than likely turn out to be better than, although different from, what the imagination pictured.
Knowing that a fleeting sense of disappointment is not peculiar to one's own marriage, but likely to occur in all, as in every other human undertaking, takes away its power to hurt. Unworried by any fear of calamity, each marriage partner can turn to account his or her powers of discernment by learning to recognize the assets as well as the liabilities of the partnership.