How to Tell If You Are Eager to Get Married or Marrying Just to Get Away From it All

How eager are you, really, "just to get married?" Has this eagerness made you feel love for unsuitable persons because you could get them? Is your home or work situation unhappy? Are you marrying to "get away from it all?"

Getting married has always been, and should be, a romantic and thrilling adventure. The excitement of getting ready, the wedding in which you are the center of attention, the thrill of establishing a new and intimate relationship with another person; these rightly have great appeal. When June comes and you see so many of your friends getting married, and there is someone special whom you like and who wants to marry you, it is quite a temptation! No wonder that under such circumstances some people feel that they are in love.

The danger is that such marriages may end up as "roller coaster" marriages. They are highly exciting at first and for a brief time. But the couple ends up at the bottom with a thrill which is past. Those who are rather lonely and hungry for love must be especially careful about this. he love which they think they feel toward a person may really be a love for the excitement of getting married. Even when there are other bases, this love for a thrill may be enough, in combination with other motives, to push us into a marriage which is not for the best. All of us need to watch out!

The trains came and the trains went on through Smallville, but Susan never went anywhere except to visit her aunt and uncle who lived in the same kind of small town about fifty miles down the line. Oscar was a nice boy with whom she had gone through high school. She liked him, and he was really interested in her. But if she married him, what could that bring her? Oscar was working in his father's store, which some day he would take over, and they would be stuck in Smallville all their lives. But Jerry was something different. Jerry was a counselor in a boy's camp, whom she had met at a dance one Saturday night. She had been dating him on his nights off ever since, for Jerry was not like the hicks in Smallville. He was from Big Town. If she married him she would live where things were really going on; could go to the theatre where big stars played in person, shop at really big stores, and mingle with real crowds. Susan knew little about Jerry except that he had a fast line, a citified manner, and a job in the Big City. But since she was in love with him, wasn't that enough? Or was she only in love with the possibility of getting out of Smallville?

How often is this "love" which some feel the desire to get away from a quarrelsome, bickering family, a dominating mother, or a tight little office in which one feels stifled? It is understandable that people should strive to get away from that which annoys them, although the basic reasons for the annoyance may be in themselves. When you marry you assume responsibilities; you do not escape them. A good marriage will mean that life will be much richer and more worthwhile, but it will not be easier. Marriage creates as many problems as it solves. The success of your marriage will depend upon what you are getting into, not what you get away from.