Chapter 2: How the Home Can Succeed 4. A Helpful Emotional Atmosphere

The home has varieties of emotional tone, as the ocean has varieties of weather. A harmonious family creates its own sunshine and a stormy one makes its own tempests. Emotional strain is sometimes occasioned by mere thoughtlessness which proves more irritating than the guilty member knows. Joy or bitterness is largely an outcome of the cultivation and guidance of the emotions. While this principle applies to all personal relationships, it is especially weighty in marriage. Emotional attitudes fall into two main groups; first the positive and constructive emotions of love and trust, and secondly, the negative and potentially destructive emotions of fear and hatred. Love and hate are opposite. Every expression of love strengthens the bonds of the home, creating happy memories and increasing the pleasure tone of family experience, while outbursts of anger, peevishness or hate tend to harm the unity which marriage aims to set up.

The score of family success is built up by all acts of delicate mutual consideration, and lowered by every act of irritation and especially by uncontrolled outbursts. Anger, however, is not a sign that the marriage has failed. Occasional outbursts may be met constructively if the persons will penetrate beyond the mere upheaval to the unsolved problem or unrelieved tension which causes the flare-up.

Much possible unhappiness can be prevented if each will take pains to realize how the other thinks and feels. The same person can be pleasing at some times and irritating at others, and the one who is inclined to be careless can correct these tendencies and get in the habit of giving pleasure instead of annoyance.
Each member can determine his own behavior and in part that of the other. Love stimulates love, while critical attitudes provoke resentment and opposition, and angry outbursts tend to produce angry responses. When, however, irritability is simply due to fatigue or ill health it should be soothed at the surface and treated at its source.

Gentle words calm tense situations, but harsh words cut like sharp weapons. An old rule is to count ten when angry before speaking, another is for both not to be angry at the same time. It is better still to recognize that anger is a signal that something needs correcting, probably as much in the disposition of the one who is angry as in the behavior of the other, but often on both sides. It is easy to say too much when angry. Anybody can do that. But it is a fine achievement to analyze the situation in which anger arose and to find some constructive solution. When people who are otherwise lovable fail to restrain their tempers their words should not be taken too seriously. On the other hand, the person who has said an unkind thing ought to make amends. This is a debt which every self-respecting person should pay, and the one to whom it is due should receive it with affectionate response, not as a thing demanded.

One test of a good home is its ability to heal little hurts and forget many things that would cause irritation. If these are put behind the two lovers they are harmless, but, if piled up between them, small bits of unpleasantness will finally produce a wall of separation. For this reason little misunderstandings ought to be cleared from the way as soon as possible, and the two ought to have the rule never to begin or close the day with any hurts unhealed or offenses unforgiven. Let the harmony of the home be like a tapestry which either member would hate to tear. If torn it may be mended, but it is better not torn.

There is no doubt that much trouble is caused when people in a nervous or critical attitude make mountains out of molehills and create tempests over trifles which could be turned aside with tact or with a sense of humor. To laugh over difficulties often cuts them down to size. We should cultivate the art of laughing together. We naturally do this when things are going well, and even when outward difficulties or misfortunes must be met two people who love each other can still laugh because they have their greatest happiness in each other.

Confidence and mutual trust build up happiness while fear and anxiety tend to drive it away. Some forms of fear and lack of security have to do with circumstances over which we have little control. Yet it can make a world of difference whether we center our attention on the hopeful and constructive features of a situation or on those elements in it which are dark and discouraging.

There is no situation so favorable that a gloomy aspect may not be thrown over it by conjuring up all possible grounds of anxiety, and there is none so unfavorable as to be without some ray of hope. Hope is the child of a vigorous imagination seeing possible ways out of difficulty and new pathways toward success. Two people with hopeful spirit can find some happiness even in difficult circumstances, and with such an attitude they are in a better position to change their circumstances.

If you are married to a person who suffers from anxieties and fears, be sympathetic but do not share the moods of gloom, rather let your attitude of courage and good cheer brighten the atmosphere. Take these emotional fears and worries in a scientific spirit; make them unnecessary so far as possible, and help your partner to overcome them by thinking thoughts of happiness and confidence. At the same time realize that a person's moods are not to be changed by mere exhortation and that underlying problems can best be discussed when the mate is in a more cheerful frame of mind.

One of the most crucial forms of confidence is confidence in ourselves. The home provides a service of greatest value when it gives the individual a place where his necessary self-esteem receives support. By building such a home two people provide a refuge from the storms which beat inevitably upon every life. Whatever stress individuals have to bear outside, whether of opposition, conflict, disapproval or misunderstanding, those tensions should be relieved in their own home. For this reason each member ought to be sensitive to the strains that the other has to bear and ingenious in providing a refuge. In the quiet haven of mutual confidence troubles can be forgotten, or at least minimized. That is one reason why they should not be hashed over more than necessary.

The world wounds us at times, let the home heal us. The world deflates personality, let the home restore it. It is of inestimable value to a person if he can have a place where he is first, and where all that concerns him is of supreme interest to another. If, however, in addition to normal strain and stress outside there is tension at home, where it affects personality most deeply, both the happiness and the success of the persons will be imperiled.

The husband tired from his duties deserves to come to a home of rest and comfort; and the wife who has struggled during the day, whether at home or out in the world, should find quietness of heart at evening time, either in her home or in pleasing social contacts in company with a husband who understands her needs. Many a person goes out to win his battles through the constant help and reinforcement of his home, and such a one has a strength and poise hard to beat down. Let both work together to make their home a tower of strength and a citadel of peace.

The most important of all causes of emotional security or insecurity, of confidence or fear, are usually within the close relationships of the mates themselves. No external circumstances can give such full assurance as the complete trust of the two in each other, and no outside occurrence can strike one down so completely as a blow from within.

Artistry in family living is a matter of the skilful cultivation of love and confidence and eliminating or at least making constructive use of any angers or fears that arise. Careless drifting in turbulent waters may lead to shipwreck. Every situation which tends to call out anger or fear should be re-examined and reconstituted in such a way that love and trust will take over again. Even when outward conditions are discouraging, love and confidence will bind two people together in such a way that they can carry on more successfully.

Jealousy is a combination of emotional insecurity with anger and resentment at some real or fancied attack upon the integrity of love. It sometimes arises from thinking of one's own need of love while the other's need of it is overlooked. If jealousy arises it may be unfounded and yet difficult to deal with. It is an occasion for thinking much but speaking little.

Often it is as much a sign that the marriage needs attention from within as that it is attacked from without. To meet the situation constructively by giving renewed love is better than to indulge in suspicions or upbraidings. Jealousy sometimes arises because one of the pair is too possessive or too suspicious, making much of little matters which might better be ignored.

If you are jealous it means that you are not quite sure you are making your love satisfying to your mate. Then if you deal with the situation by making a scene or by the curtain-lecture method, you make the wound deeper and run the risk of alienating the other, perhaps unjustly. It is better to deal with it by drawing so close together that it will be hard for anything to come between you. As you do not wish to suffer the pangs of jealousy in your own heart, be even more careful not to give occasion for heart, be even more careful not to give occasion for it in the heart of your mate.

Emotional difficulties are danger points in the personality of one or both or in their relationship one with the other. In most cases they are best met by building up a large fund of understanding, of confidence and of common interests. As little physical symptoms often disappear when radiant health is gained, so also many emotional symptoms vanish like shadows when love shines with steady light and there are real goals ahead.