Are You Emotionally Willing to Gain the Knowledge and Skills Required For a Successful Marriage

Marriage can be thought of as a vocation which calls for careful training. Whether or not you get this training will depend in part upon your emotional attitudes. When she first married, Ruth could not keep within shouting distance of her budget. She had little idea of what, where, and how to buy, and often paid much too much. She did not know how to cook, and ruined too much of the food she bought, including some expensive steaks. But Ruth was able and willing to learn. She read books and studied buying guides. She enrolled in a cooking class. Gradually matters improved. She learned to buy better food at lower prices, and to prepare it tastefully and well. Within a few weeks she was able to keep not only within, but under her budget.

When a couple first marry, they frequently lack important skills, not only in buying and cooking, but in social graces, sexual adjustments and tending the furnace. These lacks may prove distressing. They need not be serious, provided you are willing to do what is necessary to overcome them. This willingness is largely a matter of psychological maturity. Emotional infants, when confronted with a problem which they cannot overcome, often lie down and scream and cry. When adults are frustrated, they study how to overcome the obstacle. If you have good emotional health, you usually can overcome any lacks in skills. Without mental health you do not have the basis for making a good adjustment.

Are you both emotionally weaned from your parents? You have both come emotionally, as well as physically from your parents. While you were growing up as children your ideas of right and wrong, as well as your political and religious opinions came largely from them. Even in your feelings you often reflected their feelings. For many years you were Poppa's girl, or perhaps Momma's boy.

Emotional weaning from your parents did not come all at once. It had to come gradually. The first step was often the shift of interest from your parents to someone like your parents. For this reason young adolescents often develop "crushes" on much older people, such as actors, actresses, radio crooners, school teachers, or some older friend of father or mother. During this transition stage they often fall in love with, and wish to marry the "parent substitute." If the individual keeps on growing, no harm need develop-As soon as he grows up enough to feel secure within himself, he will no longer feel the need of a parent substitute. But while he or she is in the middle of this change, or if for some reason, the growth does not proceed normally, trouble may result. The girl of twenty who wants to marry the man of forty-five may actually be marrying not a husband, but a kind of father.

Until a person has become mature enough to be weaned from his or her own parents so completely as to need no substitute, he is not ready for marriage. A second danger is that in a few years the younger person may grow up. If this happens, the girl may find that she no longer wants a father, but a real husband who is not the man to whom she is married. Even if the couple are near the same age, lack of weaning may cause trouble. Marcia knew that Cyril was still tied to his mother's apron strings. She was quite sure that she was not a substitute mother, and felt that after their marriage, Cyril could be weaned away and would grow up. He did grow up, and this made their relationship worse. Although Marcia was younger, she actually was attractive to Cyril because he felt that she could still "mother" him. After he grew up he wanted a different kind of girl, and the marriage ended in divorce.

Becoming emotionally weaned from our parents does not mean, of course, that we reject their influence, or that we cease to love them. On the contrary, only as we become free from them and persons in our own right, can we be free to love them most fully and deeply. It means primarily that we come to think our own thoughts and feel our own feelings. If there is any doubt in your minds about the completeness with which either of you has been emotionally weaned from your parents, you should examine this problem with great care, possibly with competent counseling help.