How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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were the rule during courtship, were not in itself evidence of a lack of human understanding and a perfectly legiti¬ mate excuse for sexual frigidity. Happiness in love, like freedom, is to be bought only at the cost of unflagging watchfulness and assiduous mutual adjustment. No love is happy in which one partner does all the adjusting and the other remains an unbending rock, complete in his self-assurance of perfec¬ tion and immovability. Nagging and criticism are the easiest ways to undermine love. Sentimentality and a cloying display of public affection are likewise well designed to spoil the even tenor of love, just as the belief that all expressions of love and affection are childish and silly, robs love and loving of its spontaneity, its playfulness, its very beauty. Somewhere between cool, objective matter-of-factness in sex, and the dripping marshmallow of romantic passion, lies the golden mean of human love. Like happiness, love may be achieved only where each partner is not only confident of his value to his mate but also to humanity at large, and is willing to assume that his mate, likewise, is well adjusted and useful not only to him but to humanity. No two human beings are perfect. It is more than likely that even in the best arranged matches, one or both of the partners have some vestige of childish, romantic behaviour. There is hardly a man who does not like to play God in some respect, though he may be largely normal and objective about the great issues of life, and there is hardly a woman to be found who does not at some moment or other wish to be considered a princess in her own realm. The intelligent mate will allow her partner his little God-game, especially where it concerns unessentials. I know of marriages which have remained happy despite the fact that the wife had an utterly unobjective belief in the impeccability of her cooking, which her husband allowed her to maintain despite the evidence of tongue and stomach to the contrary. I know of another marriage in which a wise wife has allowed her husband