II
WHOM TO WOO
Physical Mates.—The lowest form of mating is that on the exclusively physical plane. Yet this is perhaps the most important aspect of all. If lovers are not physically pleasing and satisfactory to each other, all the financial and other inducements are worthless.
The first problem concerns the respective ages of the parties. Should they be of the same ages? If not, which should be older? On this point, Shakespeare says:
The woman matures earlier; so the younger woman is the normal equivalent, especially physically, of the man a few years older. This is all right for the time of the mating: but thereafter the man overcomes the woman’s lead, and soon surpasses her; and when, at her change of life, she has largely finished her physical function of love-making, the man is still equipped as a wooer and lover. On the other side of the same question, the same poet wrote:
This is worth quoting in full to drive home, in the concentrated phrasing of a master, the extreme differences between youth and age. When an elderly well-to-do man marries a young and lovely girl, as often happens, this may apply; and when a young man marries a woman old enough to be his mother, this may also apply.
And yet, each one’s problems of the choice of a mate is an individual problem: no general rules may be laid down. The man’s first vague ideal of the woman he wishes to love is made to imitate largely, in normal cases, his mother; the girl’s, her father. If this first ideal impression persists with great strength thereafter, youth will be happy only with age. If, in the more normal case, youth desires youth finally, then the invaluable courtship period should have taught this lesson: the young man or woman turns from the intended older mate, and the evil is corrected before it is too late. The person fully experienced in love will have experimented in courtship with people of various ages, to find where the ideal lies. Too much experimentation, of course, rubs off something of the bloom, but if enlightenment follows this rubbing off of the bloom, the thing is worthwhile.
As to dispositions, again no general rule can be laid down. Biological science says those are most happily mated whose dispositions are opposite. Similarly, biological science says that blonde should mate with brunette, and tall with short: it making no difference to science whether the man is the tall or short one, or the woman the short or tall one. Biological science is true in generalities, and does not pretend to solve individual cases and preferences. The only recommendation is, try the one you are first attracted to; and, if the period of courtship indicates a mistake has been made, and that incompatibility comes from opposite temperaments, or from the same temperaments, try elsewhere.
When should one woo and marry? Are early or late marriages advisable? Here society’s present financial arrangement comes in. Unless the man or woman is wealthy already—and few are—the man cannot afford to support a wife, in professional or white-collared business life, until he is from 25 to 30. Marriage on a very small income may work out successfully; in the majority of cases, it does not. The girl who marries at eighteen has hardly had time to know her own mind yet: there are arguments for waiting until she is 22 to 25, or even older. If the man or woman matures slowly, this is reason for later mating. The danger in late matings is that the man and woman have grown more fixed and rigid in minor matters: more crotchety, more old-maidish or old-mannish. The young are more adaptable. All of these things must be weighed. In general, courtship should begin soon after adolescence, and the mating should be entered upon as soon as the young man and young woman feel that they are completely unhappy unless living together.
Health is an important matter. Some states require a health certificate from both man and woman; and this is a wise precaution. The man or woman venereally infected should not be permitted to marry, until medical science gives a clean bill of health. If a man marries a sickly and ailing woman, who will become an invalid, he is bound down to an excessive and unpleasing load for life. On the other hand, marriage may end the woman’s invalidism, which may have been assumed subconsciously as a protection against being overworked at home, or which may be a case of physical warping caused by non-expression of the love energy. If the woman marries an invalid man, unless she wishes to support him for life, more unhappiness will follow. Samuel Butler, in Erewhon, calls disease a crime; and crime, a mere disease, to be cured by doctors. For ill health, punishment should follow. This attitude, revolutionary in a high degree, is in the main sound. Except in rare cases, only the physically sound should mate. During the courtship, this should be gone into carefully.
From the physical standpoint, a man should woo that woman or those women who attract him physically. The wooing period will indicate whether any one woman is congenial and increasingly desirable. No one but a congenial woman who is increasingly desirable should be permanently mated with. The girl should be guided by the same principle of choice.
Mental Mates.—The former conception was that the man was supposed to be the intellectual one, by training, and by contact with the broadening influences of his work, and of the world of men; and that the woman should be an intellectual weakling, tending toward imbecility. In the Oriental world, with its harems and harem favorites, this is at times the situation achieved. Such a method deprives love and mating of its chief glory: the intellectual companionship of congenial spirits.
Woman is no longer forbidden an education. Elementary education is generally hers, required by law; she may have a college training, or its equivalent; and, in general, in life thereafter, if left with time on her hands at home, she is more literate, in the world of books and ideas, than the man; although she may have had less personal contact with large groups of minds, such as a man encounters in his business and social connections. The balance, for the ideal mating, should swing closer. A woman is the gainer by practical experience at working, so that she may realize from the standpoint of the earner the value of a dollar, and not measure it merely from the standpoint of the spender.
A man once locked his business cares up when he left the office, and never brought them home; or, if he brought them home, brought them merely as complaints, unintelligible to his wife. The ideal mating is where the man and woman are equally interested and intelligent in the business welfare, and are, in effect, partners, as they must be in results. This state can rarely be entirely reached. But if, during the courtship, the girl turns out to be a chatter-tongued and scatter-brained little fool, this is a danger signal to the man, to get out while the getting is good. The girl who raves over the movies, dances like a feather, and thinks like one, is not likely to be a fit mate or mother to the man’s children. The man who turns out to be merely a would-be sheik, with no ideas above professional baseball or spending all he has made in a week in one night, is hardly to be chosen as a permanent mate. Unless such a pair woo and win each other: which makes two other people happy, who might have won these lemons and been unhappy thereafter. Courtship is the great testing time, to see whether the two concerned are congenial mentally, and whether they apparently have similar capacities of mental growth.
Social Mates.—Should a girl marry only a man well able to support her? Should a man marry only a girl who is well off financially? These questions would be absurd, if current standards of society did not let them largely dictate many of the most unhappy marriages among us. One should marry for love, primarily and almost entirely. The purpose of mating is to increase one’s happiness: love cannot be bought, and the thing called bought love cannot increase happiness. Love in poverty has a harder row to hoe than love in comparative opulence: but love in poverty is immeasurably better than sham love in opulence, which grows soon enough to hatred in opulence. Let physical attractiveness, plus mental congeniality, be the touchstones during the wooing period. The money will somehow come to those who are not utterly spiritual weaklings, and who present a loving and united front to the world. They may never be well off: but they will win more of the goal of mating and life, which is happiness, than well-to-do haters of their mates.
The matter of social position is similar. The chance of happiness in marriage today is not great when all advantages are in favor of the mating parties. When to this is added a distinct difference in social standing, this makes the problem harder of solution. Let this fact, when ascertained, put you on your guard. But, at the same time, it is only one fact among many to be weighed; and, if the physical and mental attractions are strong enough, they should overweigh any inequality in rearing and background.
Of all errors achieved in mating, perhaps marrying to reform a man is the worst. If a man cannot overcome his pet vices during the courting period, when he is free to fight the battle out within himself, it is almost a sure bet he will not alter after marriage. Even if he temporarily ends the faults or vices during the courting, he may slump later. Reforming a man (or a girl either) is a tremendous gamble. If you choose to gamble with your life, and enjoy the risk, that is an excellent reason for going ahead with it. But the more normal human beings will leave reformation to the person concerned, and marry for other and sounder reasons.
Special Problems.—Should a man be married who has sowed his wild oats? Or should a girl insist upon the man’s coming to the mating pure? Should a girl be married who has sowed her wild oats? Or should a man insist upon her coming to the mating pure?
The average answer is that the man is the gainer by the sowing of wild oats; and that the girl is ruined by the practice. Needless to say, this angle of judgment is all wrong. If the sowing of wild oats consists in mere amorous experience with other women, or in this coupled with drinking, even to the point of moderate drunkenness, and gambling on a scale not too large, the man is not injured for marriage by these. Nor is the girl injured in the slightest. The object of life is to achieve happiness. The chief method of gaining this is by experiencing the world. Love experience is no more harmful (unless pregnancy results) than experience in sampling different food menus. If disease has come, that is a matter for the doctors to pass upon, and the discussion of health above covers it. If the girl has had an illegitimate child, society’s ban is so strong that the case is altered somewhat. This is a factor to be weighed by both parties: it does not of necessity make the girl any the less fit as a mate, than the man would be if he had had an illegitimate child by another woman.
In general, the man is better off for having sowed some wild oats before marriage: he is less liable to plow a field of post-marital wild oats. The same is true, although in a slightly less degree, of the girl. The only difference is caused by the weight of social standards upon the two sexes today.
Should a bashful man or woman woo or be wooed? Bashfulness is in no wise discreditable; it is in general a nervous trait which may be remedied. It comes in general from a want of self-confidence. In general, the bashful continue plugging away in humble self-effacement; and, at times, suddenly burst forth with an achievement far ahead of that of the brassiest individual, self-confident from birth. The cure for bashfulness is contact with crowds, which brings sooner or later the realization that you are not inferior in the slightest to the run of humanity, and are superior to many of your associates. Something of the Coué method—repeating to yourself, without intentional compulsion, “I am important, I believe in myself,” might help. Luckily for the bashful, they ordinarily attract the opposite temperament. If the husband of the bashful woman does not make fun of her peculiarity, but sympathetically brings her out, and if the wife of the bashful man does the same, the effort becomes more than twice as successful. In general, the bashful make mates as satisfactory, or more satisfactory, than the self-confident.
Is love at first sight a possibility? Of course, and a frequent one. The normal man falls in love, at first sight, with every attractive woman he sees. If this is an error, take it as a confession. Many a woman falls in love at first sight with a man who satisfies her ideal, hitherto unrealized. If both feel the emotion simultaneously, we have the perfect case. The subsequent wooing will indicate whether this is enduring love, or an illusion.
Should a man or woman woo several persons at once? In general, especially in the earlier stages of the wooing, this is an advantage. If you wish to buy a jewel, you are wise if you examine several, before making your final choice. The same applies to wooing for a mate. We say at once, because successive wooing permits choice really only of some subsequent love object; whereas the first may be, after all, the most suited. Wooing should be done in honesty; so the element of deception of the parties concerned should not ordinarily be used. This is not because it is ethically wrong, but because, if found out, unpleasant consequences may ensue. But, in general, the wider the choice, the more satisfactory the mating that follows. People who marry the first woman or man they are infatuated with are seldom well mated. Since trial wooings are socially accepted, they should be taken advantage of.
We can now proceed to the technique of wooing.