Chapter 2: How the Home Can Succeed 6. Continuing to be Lovers

The vows at the altar do not make further courtship unnecessary, but prepare the way for it to be more complete. Persons who have learned how to please each other before marriage ought to continue to develop this art afterwards. Law, custom and a marriage certificate cannot make a home, and even the promise to love while life shall last is not enough unless it is carried out continually in words and acts. Married people should be lovers and sweethearts no less than engaged people are, but more, each stimulating the normal love impulses of the other by being easy to love. The period before marriage is an apprenticeship in love. After marriage comes the greater and growing fulfillment.

People who continue their lovemaking at home do not need to seek comfort from outside adventures, nor even to spend much on expensive entertainment; but the home in which either one is starved in the emotional expression of love is a disappointing one and more subject to the invasion of outside attachments.
Emotional non-support may be as serious as financial non-support in its effect on the inner life of the pair. Do not take everything for granted, but make your love so secure that if the choice of life partners were to be made over again each would choose the other. Remember that your mate has a perfectly natural desire for attention and appreciation from you.

Be certain that you measure up to the pattern of affection to which your mate. has been accustomed. If the bride's father was an ideal lover to her mother do not be less so to her. If the bridegroom's mother set a high ideal of affection and tenderness, do not fall short of that standard. If, on the other hand, the childhood home was less than happy there is every reason for going to the opposite extreme so completely as to stamp out any fear that unhappiness may be normal to married life. In giving affection do not be surpassed by any other home.