Romance and routine

              PROPERTY OF THE
LIBRARY
R 1    1967
^^ R I   iyb/
Romance and Routine
AT GRtti-iSbUf
Since you're in love, you are getting
married. The one just naturally follows the
other. It wouldn't seem right to get married
if you weren't in love. And it seems terrible
when two people who are in love can't get
married.
You enjoy being together now. But what
is going to happen when being married is
no longer fun? And it surely will not always
be fun. Look at your friends who have been
married for a year or two. Are they still
on their honeymoon?
But you are not really marrying for fun.
Although you enjoy going places together,
the real satisfaction the two of you get does
not come from the things you do. It comes
from just being together.
While you were dating you were exploring
one another's personality. There was the
excitement of discovery, the adventure of
establishing personal relationships and they
have brought you to the point of marriage.
And the process is not complete. It will
continue in marriage. You will never know
all   there   is   to know  about one  another.
But things will change. You will not go
places so often because you will not have to
do that to be together. It will be easier and
more comfortable to stay at home. Gradually
you will "settle down."
In some ways, settling down to the routine
of married life will not be a big change for
the man. He has been used to having someone prepare his meals, care for his clothes,
keep  the  house in order, and so on.    As a
married man he will still have someone
doing those things for him. He will still go
to his work in the morning well-fed and
clothed and come home in the afternoon to a
meal prepared by someone else. And afterwards he may help with the dishes—but he
probably won't.
The man will have some new responsibilities, however. He will have to adjust his
spending habits to care for family items—
even though the family has only two members.
Bills must be paid. Long-range purchases
must be planned. Whether he buys a new
suit of clothes affects his wife as well as
himself. No longer can he think of my money.
Now it is ours.
And no longer will his time be entirely
his own. His coming and going are now
important to someone else. It makes more
difference to a wife than to a mother whether
a man is home on time for meals, and where
he is in the evening, and how much time he
spends around the house. He cannot act as
if   he  were  independent  because  he  isn't.
For the wife the change is much more
radical. However many home duties she
may have had before she was married, she
has not had the responsibility. Her mother
ran the house. But now not only must she
perform her chores, she must plan them.
She has both to plan and to prepare the meals.
She has to think ahead about her husband's
clothes as well as about her own. A "messy
house" is a reflection on her, not on someone
else. And for many women to all this responsibility is added a job outside the home.
Under  the  pressure  of family  routine,