Dating And Marriage

Happiness in marriage does not result automatically from the mere act of getting married. It is achieved only by mutual striving, endless patience, and persistent effort.

The happiness a couple gets out of marriage must be earned. This means supreme effort on the part of both must be maintained before marriage ever takes place.

A lofty unselfish love in marriage is prepared for beforehand by a lofty unselfish love during courtship.

This implies, of course, that both parties understand what love really means.

It is amazing and even tragic how prevalent is the false idea of the meaning of love in the minds of many high school students. "Love is falling for someone," a boy writes, "it'll strike like a thunderbolt." A girl states: "Every time I look at him I have a wonderful feeling inside." "Butterfly-in-stomach feeling," ventures another.

It's almost as if someone cooked up a gigantic conspiracy to produce this fuzzy thinking. In many instances it is produced. The plot is extreme romanticism. It reaches us daily through songs, the advertisements for soap and cosmetics, the radio, the movies, television, and the books and magazines we read. You know the typical story. It goes something like this:

She was sweet sixteen and a doll. Nothing much had ever happened to her. She had been living a life of innocent waiting, doing her school work, helping her mother around the house. Suddenly, one night at a school dance he appeared. This was it!

Right away they knew that they were made for each other. They had "that ol' feeling." Suddenly nothing else in the world mattered. They were in love. Completely, utterly, suddenly, madly in love. From the very first kiss they realized that fate had thrown them into each other's arms. There was nothing else to do but get married for this was the real thing. And so they eloped and got married and lived happily ever after.

This romantic fairy tale has deceived many teen-agers into thinking that they are really in love when in reality it is nothing more than mere infatuation. How many more happy marriages there would be if this false idea of love were not so widespread. True love is not infatuation, everyone knows that. But how to tell the one from the other? Monsignor J. D. Conway, the famous ques-tion-and-answer priest, makes some very definite distinctions between love and infatuation in his book:

What They Ask About Marriage.

Love grows and growth takes time. It has to sink its roots firmly into the deep soil of the soul. It is a perennial plant, and these grow slowly. You fall into infatuation. Falling is fast, with acceleration. Falling is uncontrollable. It comes as a whirlwind sweeping one off his feet... but it seldom lasts long, and is often disastrous. It provides only thrills.

True love is based on knowledge. It knows well the one it loves and why it loves. It observes. It appraises. It is held firmly by many ties. It can enumerate in detail the points of beauty of the loved-one, the flights of spirit, the qualities of soul, the walk, voice, words, interests and mannerisms. Infatuation is apt to be swept up in the strong attraction of a few compelling traits. It sees blonde hair, fine face and fancy figure and forgets all the rest. In other words, true love stresses the internals, infatuation stresses the externals.