How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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considered a very objective human being. Either he takes
his work too seriously, in which case he lacks the necessary
humour to make him happy, or he is running away from
other obligations by demonstrating how hard he has to
work, in which case his unhappiness is due to the one¬
sidedness of his life.
On the sexual front, satisfactory solutions allow of
greater elasticity of attack. Here, the time element and
the element of social and economic success play a r6le,
and while an adult individual should marry, establish a
family, and assume the social responsibilities of the
education of his children, there are not only organic, but
frequently social and economic, obstacles beyond the
individual's control that make this ideal solution nearly
impossible. Merely being married and having children is
not evidence of success on this front. Any two fools (or
any two feeble-minded people) may marry—but the
construction of a “ we ” relation which represents the
merger of two egos, together with the amicable division of
labour, the reciprocal sharing of responsibilities, the
mutual encouragement and satisfaction of the partners, is
an essential attribute of a good marriage.
Without love in the adult sense, and without responsi¬
bility, marriage may actually be a neurotic symptom,
either of one partner’s psychic dependency on the other,
or of one partner’s attempt to inflate his ego at the
expense of the other. The successful marriage is almost
never found except in those cases where both the partners
have established a well-advanced position on the social
and occupational fronts, although occasionally a woman
finds her real occupation only in marriage and the
education of children. Indeed the sexual relation may be
the only relation which gives meaning and colour to the
life of many who are the unwilling slaves of the machine
age.
By contrast, many individuals, who are actively pre¬
paring for the assumption of the full responsibilities of
marriage, but have not yet married, may be said to be
farther advanced on this front than their neighbours who