ture.
Attempting to hold the partner to a similar static expression of love
hampers the growth in him or her of an expanding reality of love.

_7. There can be no narrowing of marriage to mere sex adjustment. What
is essential is life adjustment, of which sex is but a part._

To interpret the marriage association as little more than sex is to
throw away all chance of success, even in the realm of sex. The two
lives have to be adjusted to each other, and the two persons have to
work out a common life that means something to them over and above the
pleasure they may take in each other's company. As a continuing part of
this life adjustment, sex adjustment can develop into a permanent factor
of married happiness; but without the larger adjustment, the partial
adjustment cannot be made in any fundamental and enduring form.

In the sex life in marriage, as in other parts of the association, each
partner wins by considering the other before the self. Since marriage
grows by enveloping, rather than by being enveloped by, any one element,
every part of the married life must receive the same painstaking
attention. At no point can the domination of either partner over the
other take the place of adjustment.

_8. There must be no cultivation of sensitiveness, no looking for hurt,
but instead a complete trust in each other._

One who prides himself or herself on having to be handled with gloves
has a great deal of growing up to do in order to be able to be an active
partner in the marriage. Cry-babying is no more helpful in marriage than
in business or social life; it is only more easily indulged in, more
tempting because of the sympathetic response it is likely at first to
receive.

In the healthy marriage, this sympathetic response will soon give way to
anger, which in turn may have the effect of a dash of cold water in the
face of the oversensitive one, helping him or her to buck up and behave
like an adult. In the unhealthy marriage, sympathy will grow into pity,
which drives out the indispensable attitude of respect.

The person who has the backbone to try to play the part of a mature
being will realize that getting hurt in any human association is a
two-edged affair. Both get hurt, but the weak person does nothing but
squeal about it, while the robust ignores it except for trying to take
some constructive step to prevent future occasions for hurt. The
marriage partner who is mature will maintain trust in the other's go