One of the dangerous and yet most nearly universal threats to marital harmony is provided by in-laws. Not that any predicament arising from this source is more difficult to handle than any other; but in this case the temptation is strong to blame the mate and his family for resulting frictions. The husband’s mother and [...]
In-Laws are a Mutual Task
Love Needs Constant Tending
Husband and wife, aware of this, will try to stimulate affection, to earn responsiveness, instead of considering his or her own rights. Too many forget as soon as they are married their capacity to charm and to entice. They believe that the marriage document gives them a right to gratification. And when their expectations do [...]
The Need to Bargain
It is implicitly held by most married couples and explicitly stated by numerous authorities that bargaining is bad in marriage. Pastoral counselors, in particular, seem to err in the direction of urging people to “make sacrifices,” “give,” “do it for his sake.” Women’s magazines in numerous articles have urged their hundreds of thousands of readers [...]
Origins of Marriage and the Family
At the beginning of man’s existence, over a million years ago, it seems that members of the human race procreated in the same random manner as almost all other animals do. A female and a male met by chance, and if both had a strong sexual drive, they copulated. After a short period of intimacy, [...]
The Changed Marital Relationship
This recognition is imperative today if we wish to avoid utter confusion in our generation, faced as it is with tremendous sexual and marital conflicts. Without a clear understanding of the underlying social and moral factors, no individual problem between husband and wife or between lovers can be approached sensibly or solved at all. Men [...]
Female Best Person (nee: Best Man)
Hey, it’s the 21st century – it happens. Sometimes a man’s best friend is a woman (next to his wife I’m sure), and he wants this woman to stand up for him at his wedding. Other times the best person is the groom’s sister (particularly suitable when the groom and best person are twins).
The role [...]
Gratification Requires Mutual Adjustment
When two people enter a sexual relationship, each brings into the union his personality, a host of past experiences and, of course, his physical constitution, too. It must be an extraordinary coincidence if they really match perfectly. Lovemaking is an art, the perfection of which has to be developed through training, like any other art. [...]
Past Influences Influence the Present
One factor which often influences the selection of a certain person is his resemblance to other persons previously objects of our affection. The resemblance may lie in physical features or mannerisms or, what is more important, in character traits which promise the re-establishment of an already familiar relationship. Previous experiences with a person of the [...]
Marital Consultation Service
Since it is difficult to understand one’s self and one’s mate, the necessity arises to consult someone whose training enables him to assist in the process of mutual adjustment. The psychiatrist renders service to “normal” persons in their normal problems. Psychiatry is no longer a science concerned mainly with diagnosing and curing insanity and abnormalities. [...]
Looking For Perfection
Their attitude is well expressed in the following episodes:
Two men met on the street. “Hello, Bob. What’s the matter with you? Why do you look so down in the mouth?” Bob confessed he had just met the girl he had always been looking for: the perfect woman. He raved about her beauty, charm, intelligence, good-nature [...]











