Improvement Era, 1912 by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Religion

Little Problems of Married Life. 1 By William George Jordan

XI-the Danger of Summer Separations

Long summer separations between husband and wife are unwise, temporary divorces that often leave a long trail of sorrow, grief and misunderstanding. They may not actually wreck home happiness, but they are an unnecessary risk, like "rocking a boat"-a foolish experiment that may overturn and swamp it. They say that "absence makes the heart grow fonder," but it is not always fonder of the one left behind. Brief separations may be love's tonics, but long ones are often love's narcotics.

When one member of the home firm voluntarily takes a long solitaire vacation and the other stays at home in loneliness, Cupid, though blind, sees trouble ahead. With two who love each other the temporary separation may be the thin edge of the wedge of a permanent growing apart. These unnecessary solo vacations force each into a new environment in which the other has no part; they lessen the sweetness of mutual dependence; they break the continuity of loving conference and constant confidence; they make it easier for each to face life's problems alone instead of hand in hand with the other. They add in many ways to the complexity of home life, often creating a restless, vague sense of doubt. It is not always easy to piece again the broken threads into the old fabric of absolute unity, trust and dependence. Some note of discord creeps into the music of life for them both, and neither may be quite able to silence it.

If the two have already lost the glow of their first love, with the power to recuperate from a wound of misunderstanding growing less, and sweet new treaties of love and peace no longer follow grievances, and a voluntary summer spent apart from each other seems a kind of welcome relief to both, the long vacation may widen the distance between them beyond hope of bridging. It may be impossible to fan again into the glow of reborn life and light and warmth the dying embers of an old love when they were all to each other, when no thought of travel, change of scene or new society could bring any joy to compensate for the emptiness and loneliness of separation. Continuous absent treatment is a poor cure for wounded love.

The danger of these summer vacations apart is not when they are taken reluctantly and regretfully because of the pressure of compelling conditions; when business calls the husband away on some necessary trip; when the wife takes the little ones out for a visit to the old folks; when either is ill and is forced to go away and circumstances forbid both going; when a sickly child requires change of air, a breath of pine woods or the invigorating tonic of the sea. The very inevitability of vacation, accepted under protest, may not lessen for an instant the constant heart-hunger of each for the other; it may really intensify it.

But the regular exodus of the

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