Chapter 1: What Marriage Means 2. Maturing of Love

Married love completes courtship love. In marriage a person rightly seeks his own happiness, but even more one dedicates himself to the happiness of the other. The one who most truly brings joy into the life of the other will most surely have it for himself. It is easy to think of one's own pleasure. A child can do that. But it takes a finer growth of personality to be able to devote one's self to the creation of a shared happiness.

The finest marriages are those in which love is constantly developing. In part love comes without our planning. It is something that we fall into, but it is much more than that. It is a life undertaking of two persons who not only feel that their lives will be happier if they are together, but who set out with a loyal intention to make life more satisfactory for each other in every way.

Toward this end each will consider the various needs, wishes and ambitions of the mate, and will learn how best to provide comradeship, help, appreciation, encouragement and whatever else the mate happens most to desire. A happy partner is a test of our success in marriage. Some things please and others annoy. The strategy of harmony will be each to learn how to increase the pleasing experiences and avoid causing annoyance.

Marriage should bring a rich development of all the forms of attraction that two people can have for each other. Physical attraction is only a first step although a pleasing one. We can see that God himself intended the sexes to be attractive to each other. This is of greatest significance, however, only when it leads to a deeper sharing of life.

Married lovers should develop in mental comradeship also, sharing their thoughts, respecting each other's viewpoints and learning how best to stimulate and supplement each other. True marriage is a process in which each grows into a deeper understanding of the mind of the other. This close comradeship becomes one of the greatest satisfactions, with its reward in the avoidance of unnecessary tensions and in a sense of unity in the experiences of life.

Love should be enriched also through our social relationships. The husband and wife should realize that each can delight the heart of the other by making a good impression, for it is a joy to a wife if she can feel proud of her husband in the presence of her associates, and to the husband if his wife is highly regarded by his comrades. Marriage is not merely-an affair of two in the moonlight, but of two people unified through love in the midst of all the relationships in which they move. Sharing their comradeships will add to the unity of their lives, and will help each to deeper appreciation of the other.

The spiritual growth of love is experienced most completely as the lovers adventure together in the highest life. When people love deeply it gives them an urge for struggle toward the heights, for love has an essential kinship with all that is excellent. Religion teaches that love is of God, and the love of true hearts in wedlock is also of God, making the individual want to be his best for the other and for the home.

Two persons coming together in marriage will have a measure of agreement, and also, perhaps, certain differences in their thinking and feeling about spiritual matters. Each should learn to appreciate thoroughly the ideals of the other, and if either realizes that the other has taken higher ground he should seek to come up to it and share it. At the same time each should take the attitude that life is constant growth and that there are greater heights above those to which we have attained. Love itself is more satisfying when it is on an upward path.

Love is both material and spiritual, tangible and intangible. We build ourselves into our house of dreams: we grow into our world of happiness; for love is not a fragment of life, or a part of us; it is the whole of us lifted to rapture in our relationships with another. While we often regard it as a way of feeling, it is just as much a way of thinking and acting. As feeling, it is a sense of joy in an adored person; as thought, it is understanding and planning for the other; and as action it means all this carried out in behavior. Love is most perfect when it is turned into the art of complete living; quickening the emotions, stimulating aesthetic appreciation, giving vigor of purpose, and enlarging the mind and spirit.

Married love is to be expressed in words, in actions and in a life program. It is love woven into the fabric and pattern of living. Love is deeper than speech but also it needs to be spoken. It is taken for granted but also it should be constantly renewed and revealed joyously in behavior. Because we love each other the daily experiences of marriage are lifted on a tide that bears us along toward the true goal of living.