Little Problems of Married Life: XI

Little Problems of Married Life BY WILLIAM GEORGE JORDAN XI — The Danger of Summer Separations Long summer separations between husband and wife are unwise, temporary divorces that often leave a long trail of sorrow, grief and misunderstanding. They may not actually wreck home happiness, but they are an unnecessary risk, like "rocking a boat" — a foolish experiment that may overturn and swamp it. They say that "absence makes the heart grow fonder," but it is not always fonder of the one left behind. Brief separations may be love's tonics, but long ones are often love's narcotics. When one member of the home firm voluntarily takes a long solitaire vacation and the other stays at home in loneliness, Cupid, though blind, sees trouble ahead. With two who love each other the temporary separation may be the thin edge of the wedge of a permanent growing apart. These unnecessary solo vacations force each into a new environment in which the other has no part ; they lessen the sweetness of mutual dependence ; they break the continuity of loving conference and constant confidence; they make it easier for each to face life's problems alone instead of hand in hand with the other. They add in many ways to the complexity of home life, often creating a restless, vague sense of doubt. It is not always easy to piece again the broken threads into the old fabric of absolute unity, trust and dependence. Some note of discord creeps into the music of life for them both, and neither may be quite able to silence it. If the two have already lost the glow of their first love, with the power to recuperate from a wound of misunderstanding growing less, and sweet new treaties of love and peace no longer follow grievances, and a voluntary summer spent apart from each other seems a kind of welcome relief to both, the long vacation may ♦Copyright, 1910, by Fleming H. Revell Company.

LITTLE PROBLEMS OF MARRIED LIFE 807 widen the distance between them beyond hope of bridging. It may be impossible to fan again into the glow of reborn life and light and warmth the dying embers of an old love when they were all to each other, when no thought of travel, change of scene or new society could bring any joy to compensate for the emptiness and loneliness of separation. Continuous absent treatment is a poor cure for wounded love. The danger of these summer vacations apart is not when they are taken reluctantly and regretfully because of the pressure of compelling conditions ; when business calls the husband away on some necessary trip ; when the wife takes the little ones out for a visit to the old folks ; when either is ill and is forced to go away and circumstances forbid both going ; when a sickly child requires change of air, a breath of pine woods or the invigorating tonic of the sea. The very inevitability of vacation, accepted under protest, may not lessen for an instant the constant heart-hunger of each for the other ; it may really intensify it. But the regular exodus of the wife, because she has a restless desire to get away somewhere, because she has friends who insist on her accompanying them, or she fears the neighbors will think she cannot afford to go away, or her selfish desire for personal pleasure throws into the shadows all thought of the loneliness and other hardship it may entail on her husband — these are the forms of voluntary separation for weeks and months that are dangerous. Sometimes they even prove a short-cut from matrimony to alimony. Of the twenty-seven explanations by which she may finally secure his consent, twenty-five are merely weak excuses and the other two are shaky reasons that would not even have deceived herself for a moment in the first year or two of their married life. These separations are always hardest for the one who is left. He, in the city, still attending to his monotonous round of daily business and duties, goes home at night to a lonely house, eats where he can, and walks through empty rooms until they grow unbearable in their grim isolation. If he really cares deeply for her, he pictures her walking on the beach in her dainty new dress with the parasol to match, sitting on the wide veranda of a summer hotel in the evening in the midst of a merry group, laughing and jesting at trifles, or, in imigination sees her rowing across the silvered waters of a moonlit lake with a gay party of friends.

808 IMPROVEMENT ERA There is a feeling of restless rebellion that now he forms no part of her living. In his honest heart he may try to make himself believe that he is glad she is haying a good time and that he does not begrudge her a single hour of happiness, sunshsine and new joy that may come to her, but down deep in his heart there is a note of insistent protest that she can possibly be happy away from him when the separation is of her choosing. If she writes of the loneliness she cannot bear apart from him he involuntarily wonders why then does she stay away week after week with no word of return, why does she thus condemn herself to the misery of the continued absence, the awful days she pictures. He may have a pride of love that keeps back his pen from urging her return ; he may feel that if her heart does not make her cut her visit short and come back to him, he does not care for his words to do so. He may study her letters with undue criticism, reading new meanings into words and phrases. He does not like the references to "the young man from Boston who is stopping here a week and is such jolly company." No, he does not doubt her in the least ; of course she does not mean anything by it, she is just thoughtless, he says to himself, but somehow he — does not like it. He would like to take a run down to the beach for a week or so, himself, but he cannot afford the time, or the money, and he gives up the idea. His long evenings at home alone may soon become unbearable. He seeks distraction from this battle with time ; he joins little parties of friends, goes to the theatre, takes up the threads of old acquaintance of his bachelor days and seeks to enjoy himself as best he can. In the beginning he may do it as one takes opium to dull a pain, but there is danger that he may learn to like the taste again. How far he may drift depends on the man. And she, down near the ocean, may wonder vaguely why his letters, which ran seven pages long in the first two weeks of her absence, have dwindled down to brief notes like telegraphic messages, written in short, hurried sentences with no details — just one unexpanded fact in each sentence, like caramels in separate wrappers. In the old days she used to reread his letters until she knew them by heart ; then the mere facts they contained were of minor import, — they were merely the excelsior in which the terms of endearment were packed. At that time she used to go over his let-

LITTLE PROBLEMS OF MARRIED LIFE 809 ters, picking out the adjectives and nouns of loving, like a child dislodging raisins and citron from a cake. She may forget, too, that her letters to him are written in a large, sprawly hand, spreading little news thin over four small pages, making her brief communications little more than epistolary vacuums. The notes grow shorter as the absence grows longer. In blissful unconsciousness that she herself is erring in the slightest, she feels that he must be losing his love for her, and that now that she is away she might as well enjoy herself. If he really wanted her to come back at once, she feels sure he would say so. This sophistry is ever the logic of the selfish. When she finally returns in the early autumn she finds that he is not so effusively glad to see her as she expected. She feels in a subtle way some shade of loss that may elude expression in words. He may not thrill with enthusiasm at her story of the "perfectly delightful times" she had ; he may not be melted into his old lover-like mood when he hears again how lonely she was and how she just "tried to seem to be happy because of the others." He listens, and thinks, and of what he thinks he may say little. Then she grows suddenly and acutely desirous of knowing just how he spent the summer. He feels that her fusillade of questions and shots of intense interest are coming a little late in the day, and all would have been unnecessary and they would be nearer and dearer to each other were it not for her self-imposed exile on a solitary vacation. Perhaps next day she looks over the summer gas-bills, and if they be small she grows reflective and wonders how they could possibly be so small if he really sat every night alone reading till midnight "so he would be tired enough to sleep." If the gas-bills loom larger than the amount her housewifely instinct tells her is just right, she feels confident he has been having card-parties up to unearthly hours and that he has been having a splendid vacation of his own. Innocent or guilty, on this or some other charge, he is lucky if he be not caught between the upper and the nether millstones of her withering doubt and criticism. She, too, may have to stand the brunt of his protests, and in the face of some unwarranted, jealousy, tortured out of perhaps innocent trifles, she may find it difficult to prove that convincing alibi that leaves no slightest residue of doubt. The result is often the distressingly unsatisfying Scotch verdict : "Not proven."

810 IMPROVEMENT ERA Vacations in the household are good, stimulating and revivifying for husband, wife and the little ones. If the spirit of love be true and constant, they will realize that if the increased expenditure of money can be spared for an outing, it should be arranged so that his vacation could be taken with theirs to lessen the term of separation ; that some place nearer home could be chosen so that he could be with them at the close of each of his business days, or that, at the most, only the few days between week-ends would find them apart. Vacations have a true place and a real place in the economy of life, but it is making them a fetich if they be permitted to endanger the unity and truest harmony and mutual dependence of husband and wife. There is a theory that occasional brief separations of husband and wife are actually necessary, that they break the monotony of life, give the two a fresh start and tend to restore their real appreciation of each other. When one has to fast for a few days to get a normal appetite for meals, there is something wrong with one's system. When recourse to absence is necessary to keep the two together ; when short separations are desired and sought on this plea, and they welcome good-byes for even a few days with a glad sense of freedom and a long, deep breath of relief, there is something organically out of gear. It requires more direct, radical treatment than absence, which may temporarily ease a trouble it does not cure. They should hold a thoughtful inquest and discover the real causes of their mutual boredom, and make the change within the home together, not seeking it outside and apart. The danger is not in the mere fact of separation, but in the conditions that make either of them actually long for it. Vacations with each other may be new miniature honeymoons bringing renewed love, life and light to both ; but long vacations from each other are what the insurance companies term — "extrahazardous risks." ["When the Children Come" is the title of the next article in this series.]