both fear that the supreme quality of their marriage is
vanishing. The more a couple have been lifted up by their romantic
attachment for each other, the more they can be hurt when the wearing
out of its unreal element drops them to earth again. The ones who are
stouthearted enough to count their own hurt a small matter, if they can
still help the partner to have something to look forward to beyond the
present difficulties, are matured by this part of their marriage
experience, and later come to look back on what went before as a
dreamlike time when they lived on nothing more substantial than hopes.

This is the testing period of the marriage. Each partner must
continually get used to the new outline of the other's personality as it
is showing itself, without losing sight of the value of the essential
quality that persists. Of one thing both can be sure: each still has
need of the other.

In today's mail comes a letter from a businessman who admits that he had
got out of the habit of showing his wife how he felt about her in the
rush and worry of trying to keep his head above water financially. Now
that she in her loneliness has lost her heart to another man, the
husband almost breaks into poetry in telling of his feelings. Not
vindictive, he is just hopeless. If the wife could have had imagination
enough to realize the strength of his need of her, she would never have
wrapped herself in loneliness away from him.

The drop from the temporary bliss of the beginning of love to the
lasting burden-sharing of the rest of life offers many a chance for hurt
feelings. Those who lose confidence in their own or their partner's
ability to keep on trying to live together on a reality basis are
generally the ones who want to keep one foot in the dreamland of
immaturity. If he drinks and she sulks, both would rather think
themselves martyrs and talk over their troubles with sympathetic friends
than get down to business and do something about their problems.

Quarrels are intense in proportion to the depth of tender emotion in the
background. Not understanding what is happening to them, the husband and
wife think it is the end of love, and he may be tempted to accept
comfort from another woman, she from another man. Then they need
desperately to know, "What is the case for monogamy?"

History shows that monogamy has always been accompanied by increasing
vigor in the society or group practicing it, and that its
opposite--freedom