when understanding has failed, except love. But love can do it when
there is enough of it.

Nor is that the hardest thing love has to do. There come times when,
because nobody is always good, and most of us are often bad, love has
to face the plain fact of sin in the loved object. At such times to
approve is impossible, and would be a real disloyalty. To break out
into mere reproaches is futile and irritating. To do nothing is to let
a seed of separation sink into the common life. Yet the situation can
be met. It can be met by real love, because love can forgive.
Forgiveness does not mean condoning wrong. It does not mean blindness,
which is never a helpful thing. It means loving the person who has
stumbled in spite of the fact, and even perhaps just because of it. It
is at such times that one who has failed most needs love, and when
therefore love gets a supreme chance. But if a husband or a wife has
not enough love to take that chance, then marriage may fail.

And here I am not talking about exceptional cases. Whoever you are, if
you marry you are going to marry a sinner--a man or a woman who will
some day fall below his best self or her best self. And just because
you love it will bring you acute pain. You would do well to ask
yourself beforehand what you are going to do about it. And if you
cannot feel that you could forgive and go on loving all the same, you
would do well to think again. The whole story of some unhappy marriages
is told in one sentence. There was love in them, but not enough to
produce forgiveness. Yet the ultimate proof that true love is divine in
origin lies just in the fact that true love _can_ forgive.

All of which leads me on to the real reason why I write this chapter.
Marriages often fail because people often fail, and people fail