Married man

“ He is dreadfully married. He's the most married man I ever saw in my life. ”

“ HUMILIATIONS. To the glory of women, let it be said, they care for their husbands even when their husbands care no more for them, not only because there are more ties, socially speaking, between a married woman and a man, than between the man and the wife; but also because woman has more delicacy and honor than man, the chief conjugal question apart, as a matter of course.
Axiom.—In a husband, there is only a man; in a married woman, there is a man, a father, a mother and a woman. ”

“ That's no way to talk to your first husband, the man you once swore to love, honor, and obey! Just because I accommodated you to the extent of letting you get rid of me, and because you married again and now have a very charming, talented daughter by your late lamented second husband—excellent musician, no doubt, though shiftless, and leaving you to run a boarding house—just because you're now a perfectly respectable widow, that don't give you any license to throw mud at me. ”

“ He felt that his doing so would be to place himself on a level with the man who gives his wife during the first year of their married life, a circumstantial account of the many wealthy and beautiful young women who were anxious—to a point of distraction—to marry him. ”

“ THE ATTENTIONS OF A WIFE. Among the keenest pleasures of bachelor life, every man reckons the independence of his getting up. The fancies of the morning compensate for the glooms of evening. A bachelor turns over and over in his bed: he is free to gape loud enough to justify apprehensions of murder, and to scream at a pitch authorizing the suspicion of joys untold. ”

“ The husband, when it is too late, laments his blindness and his folly. The wife is made to realize that riches take to themselves wings and fly away; and then comes the consciousness of a want of sympathy and congeniality of feelings. Both are thrown back upon themselves, for not a chord in the breast of one vibrates in unison with the other.
Let the young beware how they enter the marriage state from such motives, lest they wake too late from the delusion. ”

“ What he thought of her she knew, what he was capable of saying to her she had felt; yet they were married, for all that, and marriage meant that a woman should cleave to the man with whom, uttering tremendous vows, she had stood at the altar. ”

“ Well, this model of mine is married, of course,
For how could a bachelor be one?
So I gauge him by marital morals and force;
As a husband, he merits a crown for a cross,
For he acts as a beau instead of a boss—
I’d go to the moon to see one. ”

“ Does the fascinating little woman whose bright eyes, pretty ways and dainty dress won her a husband, having secured what she desired, make for the man whose helpmeet she has elected to be a good wife? ”

“ My husband, dear mother, is a man who absorbs you, he uses up the vital fluid of his neighbor, his ennui is gluttonous: he likes to be amused by those who call upon us, and, after five years of wedlock, no one ever comes: none visit us but those whose intentions are evidently dishonorable for him, and who endeavor, unsuccessfully, to amuse him, in order to earn the right to weary his wife. ”

“ But as things are at present in England and in America, the young man who marries, however much he may be in love, is generally too ignorant (as has been indicated in the preceding chapters) to give his wife real physical delight. ”

“ It's a dangerous thing to be married right up to the hilt, like my daughter's husband. The man is at home all day, like a damned soul in hell. ”

“ What is the fate of the average man who marries, happily and hopefully, a girl well suited to him? He desires with his whole heart a mutual, life-long happiness. He marries with the intention of fulfilling every injunction given him by father, doctor, and friend. He is considerate in trifles, he speaks no harsh words, he and his bride go about together, walk together, read together, and perhaps, if they are very advanced, even work together. But after a few months, or maybe a few years of marriage they seem to have drifted apart, and he finds her often cold and incomprehensible. ”

“ In marriage each one dreams that he will find the Understander—the one from whom he may set out into the world in search of treasures of knowledge and experience, and before whom the spoils may be exhibited without thought of rivalry, and with the certainty of glad apprisal. Treasures, dear to our own hearts but of no value to others, should here find appreciation, and here the tender super-sensitive germ of an idea may be watered and tended till its ripe beauty is ready to burst upon the world. ”

“ With an ardent man, wholly devoted to his wife and long deprived of her, the time will come when it will be sufficient for him to be near her and caress her for relief to take place without any physical connection, if, as every wife should, she has retained after marriage that dainty modesty which renders the sight of her bosom and of her beauty a privilege and a joy to her husband. ”

“ Why should not a woman dress for her husband? Why should she not cultivate a sweet disposition for him and endeavor to make his home the happiest spot on earth? Why not try to banish from it every cloud, everything that will annoy or irritate? ”

“ In conclusion, I will mention the last and most important duty of all, and that is that she should love her lover with her whole heart, mind and strength. If she does not perform this office thoroughly and well, the others might just as easily be left alone.
PREMATURE MATRIMONY.
Marriage is a divine and beautiful arrangement, as designed in God’s providence. It is the blending of two spirits in one. Man is incomplete [180] without his wife: he has strength, she has beauty. “It is not good that man should be alone.” “Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing.” ”

“ He married her because she didn’t swagger like a man,
Nor did she stand with feet apart, toes in,
She wasn’t a “good fellow,” thickly coated with a tan—
She was merely lovely, really feminine!
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STRONGER THAN MERE LOVE. ”

“ In the true wife the husband finds not affection only, but companionship—a companionship with which no other can compare. The family relation gives retirement without solitude, and society without the rough intrusion of the world. It plants in the husband’s dwelling a friend who can listen to the details of his interests with sympathy, who can appreciate his repetition of events, only important as they are embalmed in the heart. ”

“ When knowledge and love together go to the making of each marriage, the joy of that new unit, the pair will reach from the physical foundations of its bodies to the heavens where its head is crowned with stars. ”

“ It is my experience, that in the early days of marriage, the young man is even more sensitive, more romantic, more easily pained about all ordinary things than the woman, that he enters marriage hoping for an even higher degree of spiritual and bodily unit than does the girl or the woman. ”

“ Before I proceed in the history of the married part of my life, you must allow me to give as impartial an account of my husband as I have done of myself. He was a jolly, handsome fellow, as any woman need wish for a companion; tall and well made ”

“ A maiden lady of forty-one, very jolly, bright, and good-natured, interesting but not pretty, and so fleshy she was a sight, had never in the east met a man whom she could marry. She went to California to visit a sister, and in less than a year was married to a wealthy widower.
Change of residence will often change the lonely spinster, young or advanced, into a happy wife. ”

“ Your bliss is the cause of your silence, so I pardon you. Still, if, fatigued with so many pleasures, you one day, upon the summit of your grandeur, think of your poor Claire, write to me, tell me what a marriage with a great man is, describe those great Parisian ladies, especially those who write. Oh! I should so much like to know what they are made of! Finally don’t forget anything, unless you forget that you are loved, as ever, by your poor
“CLAIRE JUGAULT.”
From Madame Adolphe de Chodoreille to Madame la Presidente de la Roulandiere, at Viviers. ”

“ In short, at this period, you walk very comfortably with your wife on your arm, without pressing hers against your heart with the solicitous and watchful cohesion of a miser grasping his treasure. You gaze carelessly round upon the curiosities in the street, leading your wife in a loose and distracted way, as if you were towing a Norman scow. ”

“ The exquisite unselfish tenderness which is aroused in a man by the sense of mental and spiritual harmony with a wife who sympathizes with, because she understands his needs is one of the loveliest things in marriage. A wife who knows how to waken this tenderness in a man raises him out of the self-centered slough in which so many men wallow unhappily. ”

“ I see marriage as a man must, a good, sensible workaday institution; but awfully curbing to one's liberty. Somehow, after you're married forever, life has lost its feeling of adventure. There aren't any romantic possibilities waiting to surprise you around each corner. ”

“ When she discovers the true nature of his body, and learns the part she has to play as a wife, she may refuse utterly to agree to her husband's wishes. I know one pair of which the husband, chivalrous and loving, had to wait years before his bride recovered from the shock of the discovery of the meaning of marriage and was able to allow him a natural relation. There have been not a few brides whom the horror of the first night of marriage with a man less considerate has driven to suicide or insanity. ”

“ If her husband is her true lover, his tenderness and real devotion will give him the wit to conceal it. But though by concealment he may preserve the unruffled surface of their happiness, yet the longing to be roving is not completely extinguished. ”

“ Before making some suggestions which may help married people to find not only a via media of mutual endurance, but a via perfecta of mutual joy, it is necessary to consider a few points about the actual nature of man's "desire." ”

“ The lady of your story was wedded to a rich gentleman of high and ancient lineage, and had married him on account of the great affection that they bore to one another.
Being a woman most pleasant of speech, she by no means concealed from her husband that she had lovers whom she made game of for her pastime, and, at first, her husband shared in her pleasure. ”

“ I have heard from women, whose marriages are looked upon by all as the happiest possible expressions of human felicity, the details of secret pain of which they have allowed their husbands no inkling. ”

“ Ha, ha, the first thought of a young girl—‘shall I ever be married?’ Yes, yes, pretty one. I can promise you a husband for certain! Girls like you—so lovely and naïve—are very sure to marry, for the men will not give them any peace. ”

“ He will cease to believe in women, taught by his captor to distrust the sex for her sake.
There is all the difference in the world between the girl who angles honestly, so that a happy union may be had with the man she loves, and the girl who angles simply for the achievement of some tribute to her vanity—a wealthy husband, a husband with more money than her [177] friend’s husband possesses, or a husband who will give her a title and position. ”

“ It’s a pretty story, if you look at it from one point of view; though my wife maintains—and she’s a bit of a judge, mind you—that it’s not yet finished, she arguing that there’s a difference between marrying and being married. You can have a fancy for the one, without caring much about the other. ”

“ The burning magnificence of an overpowering lifelong love is not given to many, and a husband who desires lasting and mutual happiness in his marriage, will carefully study his wife, observe how far she has a normal rhythm, and in what respects she possesses peculiar personal traits. ”

“ Now let us turn to the other side of the problem—the more normal relations of men and women who are lovers, who are husbands and wives. May I again recapitulate what appears to be the history of many married people, even in 1921. ”

“ On the other hand, it may be that after years of fighting with his hot young blood a man has given up and gone now and again for relief to prostitutes, and then later in life has met the woman who is his mate, and whom, after remorse for his soiled past, and after winning her forgiveness for it, he marries. ”

“ The typical British husband sees much less of his wife than he does of his business partner, his fellow clerk, or whoever works beside him day by day. Man and wife do not as a rule, live together: they only breakfast together, dine together, and sleep in the same room. ”

“ Many boys and girls enter matrimony before they are old enough to realize the responsibility they assume, and they frequently fill their lives with bitterness by acting so rashly. Wait till you are old enough to exercise judgment in the choice of your companion; then choose wisely, and enthrone the goddess of Love upon a heart stamped with eternal fidelity, and be your home a palace or a cottage, it will indeed be a “sweet, sweet home.” ”