--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Jordan, William George collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 16 number: 11 published: 1913-09 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Jordan, William George, "Little Problems of Married Life: Comradeship in Married Life," *Improvement Era* 16, no. 11 (September 1913): 1071–1074.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera16011unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera16011unse start_page: 1071 end_page: 1074 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1913-09) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera16011unse publication_year: 1913 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1913, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Little Problems of Married Life: Comradeship in Married Life Little Problems of Married Life BY WILLIAM GEORGE JORDAN XXIII — Comradeship in Married Life There is but one real reason, but one justification for mar- riage, and that is — love ; all the other motives are not reasons, they are only excuses. Those who start in married life with a good capital of love feel that they have an absolute guarantee of har- mony and happiness that will endure through all their years, but if they depend solely on love they may find they are exhausting their capital instead of living on the interest and may soon become bankrupt of love. But love alone is too fine, delicate and emo- tional to stand the constant hard usage of daily life. Like gold, it is better and stronger when alloyed ; love should be made sturdy and lasting, reinforced, strengthened and intensified in its power to resist wear. It is only when alloyed, or blended, with comrade- ship and trust that it is at its best. The truest, sweetest and happiest marriages are those of twe who just are wedded sweethearts and good chums. With this duality of condition and trust that keeps their atmosphere pure, clear, bracing and wholesome, all sources of discord are neutral- ized, all joys are doubled by sharing, all sorrows lightened by mutual sympathy, comfort and inspiration, and all problems solved in the sweet sacredness of conference, with the united wisdom of both ever at the command of either, needing no outside referee. Success in married life does not require heroic spectacular qualities possible only to a few chosen ones, the elect of the earth ; it needs only loving comradeship and confidence, a little self-con- trol, courage, kindness, unselfishness, cheerfulness and just daily patience along the way. It does not require wealth, for often the poor are the happiest and most contented. It does not demand intellectual powers and fine education, for two aged lovers, hardly able to read, may sit together in the sunshine by a cottage door at even-tide, finding all their world in each other's eyes, telling their beads of sweet memories of past joys and of sorrows outlived, and as her thin worn hand rests lovingly in his, there seems a benedic- tion of calm peace and consecrated love that makes mere intellec- tual wisdom seem worthless by contrast. There are some who tell us the qualities necessary in husband and wife. The long inventory sounds like an unabridged dic- tionary of all the virtues and one can imagine the saints blushing *Copyrighted by Fleming H. Revell Company, 1910. 1072 IMPROVEMENT ERA with shame at the sudden realization of how far short they are of this perfection. It seems like a test-examination for a front seat in paradise and few of us would get more than a nine per cent rating on an honest marking. Let us be thankful that two who arc just human and with all their Faults, foibles and failings can have happiness if they deter- mine to have it and pay the price in thought and effort. It is not a gamble; it is a certainty if both determine to do their hest and work in union and unity. It does not mean a life unclouded by trial, sorrow, or suffering, hut a home filled with love and peace, a rest and a refuge where no real discord can long throw darken- ing shadows. Comradeship is one of the strongest ties of married life. Comradeship is friendship in a negligee suit ; it is free, near, trust- ful, comfortahle, familiar and intimate. It has a basic respect that makes formality out of place, and pretense and pose seem treason ; the two are their natural selves, spontaneous and unrestrained except by that respect for each other's individuality that makes each careful not to wound or offend the other. Comradeship between husband and wife is the finest type of friendship, for pulsing through it is the constant current of love, tenderness, sympathy, nearness, dearness and closer communion of interests, that ever vitalizes, intensifies and freshens. Comrade- ship gives to each a finer, truer understanding of the other that comes, not from the mere observation of acts and of moods, but from glimpses into the depths of each other's thought, the reveal- ings of standards and ideals, the unconscious confession of hopes, fears and longings and restless ambitions that are hidden forces struggling towards expression like the root of a plant seeking to penetrate the soil and reach the light. These come only in easy conversation where there is no thought of talking for effect, no sense of being on dress parade. When the two are real comrades the wife is interested in the hobbies, games, business, friends and politics of the husband. She may not see what fun he can have knocking a little ball over the landscape and then poking round a big field to find it, but if golf gives him any real pleasure she is glad, and is interested, and wants to understand. Politics may seem to her just something we pay office-holders to manage, hut if he sees anything in it she is pleased to give him a chance to let her in on the puzzle. Her talk about their friends, her clothes, her reading and the hundred trifles of gossip and comment that may appeal to her he hears with genuine interest, not with that condescending tolerance that some foolish people, unconscious of how much they might learn, employ in listening to some little toddler who wants' to talk. He has always rather sniffed at women's clubs, but when she ioins one, and is appointed on the committee, and has been scheduled LITTLE PROBLEMS OF MARRIED LIFE. 1073 to write a paper, he is pleased to talk it over and dig up some gems of material from the mine of his masculine wisdom, just to help out. They criticize some book she has been reading as she tells him the story, or perhaps she has read it aloud to him after dinner, and though she may think the hero a demi-god and he calls him a pompous prig and they grow a bit enthusiastic and finally laugh at each other's view, their non-agreement really does not make the least difference, you know, for this is just — com- radeship. With this spirit of comradeship there is never any thought of settling the question of "who is boss?" for such a question never arises. When a problem comes up before this home supreme court, they have a quiet little earnest session and if they do not s:e the issue from the same point of view, by concession and com- promise the one who has thought most deeply on the subject, who feels it most intensely or who is most affected by it casts the deciding vote. Comradeship inspires tolerance and throws little peculiarities into the shadow ; it ignores or obscures petty failings as of no real consequence ; it concentrates on the fine sterling qualities and for- gives and forgets the little mortgages. Love ofttimes is exacting ; in its intensity it may place undue importance on a trifle and be seriously disturbed at a flaw or failing that seems a scar on a noble character. Comradeship helps love to a more human view, a saner, wiser charity in judging. A man says of a friend of whom he is genuinely fond, "he is a bully good fellow," and all the emphasis of his heart goes into the words and atones for the phrasing; he knows his friend's failings but loyalty minifies their importance, the eyes are trained not to see, the lips keep silence. In his bachelor days the husband may have had some friend tried and true who was dear to him, whom he trusted as one good man does another. If the golden light of some success or pros- perity threw a glow of radiance across his pathway an involuntary smile brightened his face as he thought how pleased his friend would be to hear it, how unselfish would be his sympathy, how hearty would be his congratulations ; he could bank on his friend's happiness just as certainly and absolutely as if his own dear mother were listening to the story and eager for every word of detail. If the hand of sorrow pressed heavily on his soul, and the night of doubt and fear settled down on his life, and the ship of his great hope had sunk when it was almost in port, and he faced failure and defeat, he knew one who would be unchanged, whom he could count on to the very end. And when some problem affecting the welfare of either had to be solved it was the problem of both and they would stay up half the night to settle it like a jury locked out until they came to a verdict and they put together 1074 IMPROVEMENT ERA tlu'ir wisdom just as they had <>ftcu pooled their meagre funds when the exigencies or need of the one became the privilege and glad opportunity of the other. When this instinctive impulse to confidence is carried into married life and the heart and the lips and the outstretched arms turn to the wife as naturally as the magnetic needle finds its north, with the truest comradeship made greater and finer hy love, then married life has no real problems that the two, united and in uni- son, cannot solve. Comradeship holds the spectre of monotony at hay. With two ever bringing their best sweetly to each other, as a little child carries to its mother a wayside flower it has plucked, just because it is most natural to bring it to her, there is little fear that their days will be long or that they will hunger for change from each other, when they are finding this change in each other and with each other. Whatever tends to lessen their comradeship and to de- crease their dependence on each other is a menace to their happi- ness. One of the early temptations of married life is to live with the old folks. It all sounds so alluring when it is proposed that "they can take the entire third floor which is not really needed" by the home company who are willing to donate it or sublet it to the young firm. The advantages are obvious, the disadvantages, are more subtle, but it is a hazardous experiment. It is an unwise blend of two families, that should be kept separate, not at tele- scopic but at visiting distance. Two shows under one canvas may pay on the road, but it is unwise for families, especially in the be- ginning. The opening words of the world's greatest book are "In the beginning," and they are the most important words of married life; they open its chapters of greatest joy and keenest sorrows. All its problems are most easily mastered "in the beginning;" wrongs and injustice that may throw the dark shadow of despair over the life of one and perhaps even finally separate forever the two who have loved may, in a spirit of calmness, courage and wisdom, be silenced forever "in the beginning." If there have been mistakes and blind blundering and folly, if the two deter- mine to start afresh, to begin all over again and wipe out the past, letting love, comradeship and trust be their watchwords they can have a new — beginning. And what was true of that first marriage, in the dim dawn of history, in that garden of Eden, is true of all marriages and will be till time shall end, that their paradise is committed to the abso- lute keeping of the two, and that they shall watch it and guard it and care for it, and that only by their own wrong shall this para- dise, with all its joys and its peace and its sunshine, ever pass from them. (the end)