follows. So close an intimacy as marriage involves is really only
tolerable when love constantly supplies reasons for patience,
generosity and forgiveness. In fact by marrying for any other reason
than love men and women only make the permanent and inevitable problems
of life a great deal harder to solve. And a human life does always
involve a problem either in or out of marriage. Life is a complex and
perplexing business.

But if it be true that many marriages begin with intense love and yet
after some time turn out unhappily, then a very real problem is
presented to our minds, and probably what I have already said about the
wonder of sex love, and its harmonizing influence on personalities, has
accentuated that problem for some of my readers. There are many wives
who once loved their husbands intensely, but who are now laboriously
learning to endure them. There are many husbands who felt that they had
attained to all that they longed for when they married, but who now are
almost giving up in despair the task of living even peaceably with
their wives. Many such people are heard declaring that love is
the arch deceiver of the world, and that its power only lasts during a
few short hours in the morning of life. For many the early and
wonderful days of marriage remain only as a tormenting memory, so
entirely has the color faded out of their lives. And I know that the
pain of such situations is so intense that I would fain speak of them
only with consideration and sympathy.

But none the less the broad fact has to be stated that in such cases it
is not marriage that has failed but the people involved in marriage.
There is nothing in the whole of life so beautiful or so holy but that
it can be spoilt when mishandled, and love is no exception to this. I
believe love is always felt as a call to unselfishness, but it is a