ought of his future misery if she should
leave him was able to mean more to her than so many words. Only, in her
half-stupefied condition, she had the wit to remember, as one might
recall the multiplication table without caring anything about it, that
she had always previously despised people who acted on impulse without
trying to find out the probable consequences. Therefore she stuck to her
self-imposed rule that she would have no contact with the man, even by
letter, until she could get over the strange numbness of her emotions
toward her husband. Then, gradually but thoroughly, she came out of her
trancelike infatuation, until she found it hard to remember that it had
ever happened.

The time to put on the brakes in checking runaway emotions is before
they gain momentum. While the feelings aroused still seem harmless, the
person can redirect his or her energy toward a more desirable object
such as finding new grounds of communion with the spouse or sublimating
its expression by turning it into constructive artistic or social
channels. To wait until disaster threatens before taking oneself in hand
is to pile up, at best, a guilty feeling that one has not done one's
best to meet the needs of the mate.

Those who "step out" in the frantic forties and foolish fifties
complicate the picture for their younger observers. What they are trying
to find is not so much a new thrill as the reliving of an old glow--the
hopefulness of their lost youth. Not content to live over in memory the
high hopes that were theirs when life was new--because of the gap
between expectation and realization--they close their eyes to the new
disillusionment they are heading for, and think only to shut out their
sense of inadequacy in their present association by steering full steam
ahead for another encounter, in which the odds are even more against
them.

One may think one doesn't care much about the partner, one may get tired
of listening to the same old jokes, the same set of worries, the same
reminiscences; but let there be a misunderstanding, and one finds that
one must care tremendously or one could not be so devastated. No
association is so humdrum that it cannot be quickened into life, no
matter how long it has been meagerly taking its course.

Certain types of people, whom we might lump together as a restless,
discontented lot, enjoy "shopping around" for doctors, for jobs, for
friends, for lovers, never staying long enough with any on