What Two Married People Owe Each Other

John Ruskin said, “Do not think you can make a girl lovely, if you do not make her happy.”¹ This moves us to the question of marriage, of parents, of children, and of all that happens at home. And to those about to marry⎯and to those who already are⎯let it be said that marriage is not meant to be a half-way matter. What you invest in this venture is beyond calculation. There is no more complete commitment in life. And it works both ways: If either one of you is unhappy, both of you will be. And if you are happy with each other, your children likely will be. “The most important thing a father can do for his children,” wrote one writer, “is to love their mother.”² “Every home may be maintained if the members will maintain it. Any home may be destroyed if either of the two members will to destroy it . . . Such domestic unions are spiritual . . . [and] represent unity of heart and intellect, of will and of conscience. Such marriages, moreover, represent the primary element of equality . . . so that, [as John Stuart Mill said it], ‘each can enjoy the luxury of looking up to the other'”³ “Marriage gives the finest opportunity that life affords for practicing . . . principles . . . flexibility, fair-mindedness, . . . upon which durability . . . depend[s].”⁴ In marriage, as in all relationships of life, all have adjustments to make. No one is perfect; all have faults; all can find faults. Little things can be much magnified. William Cowper gave us this couplet: “The kindest and the happiest pair, will find occasion to forbear; find something every day they live, to pity, and perhaps forgive.”⁵ In marriage beauty is sometimes sought. But there is beauty of much more than face and features. There is beauty that increases with respect, with service, with kindness and sincere consideration. Remember that in marriage you are investing more than can be calculated, and if either of you is unhappy, both of you will be. “The sum which two married people ow each other defies calculation,” said Goethe. “It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through all eternity.”⁶ “Do not think you can make a girl lovely, if you do not make her happy.”