Chapter 2: How the Home Can Succeed 5. Good Times Together

The married person may well cultivate the arts of being interesting, amusing and encouraging, and also of being a good listener appreciative of what the other says and does. One needs to learn to enjoy the good traits of the person to whom one is married and even to appreciate on occasion his amiable faults.

Homes that are gay with laughter and good cheer will bear the burdens of life more easily, and shafts of difficulty and adversity will not destroy them. Recreation, especially, lightens burdens of fatigue and care, and at the same time promotes harmony and gives life a good taste. It is well named when it re-creates, and every home ought to build into its experience plenty of good times planned and carried out together. Therefore, the two should be alert to find the available things that are fun to do together.

While men have their sports and games and Women have their special interests, there is a large place for happy times in which the husband and wife play together. If the husband likes hiking, camping and swimming, let not the wife be content to live merely an indoor life. If the wife enjoys concerts and plays, the husband may well learn to share these pleasures if he does not already appreciate them. Each wants to give the other a fall and glowing life, and each may gain, even from the personal point of view, by learning to enjoy the things the other likes.

Happy is the wife
Who knows how to be a playmate
To share and enrich her husband's leisure
And happy the husband,
Who is a giver of good times,
And a comrade to his wife.
For many burdens and cares
Must be shared within the home,
But in good times together,
They lay up larger stores of joy.