XLVII
LOSING A WIFE’S LOVE
One of the most curious superstitions in the world is the childlike belief that men have in the indestructibility of women’s love. They visualize the feminine heart as a sort of perpetual-motion machine that, once they press the button and set it to work, goes on automatically pumping up affection for them as long as they live, and they think that nothing they do or say ever interferes with its functioning. In a word, they believe that if a man wins a woman’s love it is his for keeps. He can’t lose it or mislay it. The poor thing has no choice but to go on adoring him to the end, because she is built that way. It is a comfortable and consoling theory, and men take liberties with it, but the trouble is that it isn’t true. In reality, women are just as fickle as men are, and just as few women as men are capable of a deep and abiding love. Women’s fancies are just as unstable as men’s. They are just as much lured by a handsome face and fall as easily for a smooth line of soft talk. And there are just as many wives who get tired of their husbands as there are husbands who are weary of their wives.
The only difference between the sexes in the matter is that women face the situation, while men shut their eyes to it and refuse to recognize that it exists. Every woman knows that because a man was in love with her when he married her is no indication that he is going to remain in love with her to the end of the chapter. She knows that if she keeps her husband’s affection she has to be up and doing, and on the job. That is why there are millions of women undergoing all the agonies of slow starvation trying to maintain a girlish figure; why millions are boiled alive and thumped and scalped in beauty parlors, and why the nation spends more a year for face paint than it does for house paint, and why, wherever we go, we see fat, middle-aged, bread-and-butter wives attempting to look like flappers and acquire the technique of the vamp in order to keep their husbands nailed to their own firesides.
Apparently, however, it never occurs to a man that there is the slightest necessity to make any effort to keep his wife fascinated and to prevent her eyes from roaming around in search of a sheik. He may be bay-windowed and bald, but if he reduces it is only on his doctor’s orders, and not because he wants to look boyish to his wife. And he never buys a toupee until after he becomes a widower and begins to take notice again. The idea that his wife might cease to love him actually never crosses the average man’s mind. He is convinced that she couldn’t do it. It is some peculiarity of the feminine constitution that makes a woman go on loving what has become unlovable. Now, with a man it is different, of course. He realizes that he couldn’t stay very long in love with a woman who was slouchy, and sloppy, and untidy looking, who came to breakfast in a dirty kimono and run down at the heel slippers. Nor would he take much interest in kissing a cheek smeared with cold cream.
But he doesn’t see why his wife shouldn’t still regard him as a romantic figure when he goes around in a soiled shirt and a rumpled collar, with grease spots on his coat and trousers that bag at the knees, and offers to her lips a countenance with a two days’ stubble of beard on it.
A man knows well enough that, as far as he is concerned, the only way to keep the love fires burning is to keep piling the fuel on it and pouring over it the oil of flattery and praise. But he thinks that you don’t have to put any more fuel on the fire of a woman’s heart, because it is a flame that miraculously replenishes itself. So after he marries he never bothers to show her any attention, or to pay her any compliments, or to tell her that he loves her, or give any indication that he regards her as anything but a piece of useful household furniture. If any woman ever treated him that way his affection would mighty soon starve to death, but he never has the slightest apprehension that his wife’s love will perish on the same meager rations.
There are men who abuse their wives, who swear at them, and curse them, and speak to them as if they were dogs. There are men whose wives live in trembling fear of their tempers. There are men who are stingy and who do not give to their wives, who spend their lives slaving for them, the poorest wage of an ill-paid servant. Yet these men go on believing that their wives still love them because they loved them in the days of courtship, when they were handsome, gallant, and neat, and attractive, and loving, and flattering, and generous, and considerate swains.
Such men befool themselves by thinking that they cannot kill a woman’s love. Never was there a greater mistake. A woman’s love is as delicate and as fragile a thing as a flower that you can crush with a finger. And it takes never-ending skill, and care, and cherishing to keep it alive. You can kill it with disgust. You can kill it with unkindness. You can kill it with injustice. You can kill it with neglect, and it would surprise many a man who still believes that his wife loves him in spite of the way he has treated her, in spite of his indifference to her, to know that her love for him has been dead so long that she has almost forgotten that she ever cared for him at all.
So I warn you, Mr. Man, not to put any faith in the theory that you can’t kill a woman’s love. Women are like men; they only love the lovable. And if you wish to retain your wife’s affections, you have got to continue after marriage the same tactics you used in winning her.