Dear Ann Landers,


DEAR LOVING WIFE,
During the past year, I have tried to make love to you 365 times. I recorded 320 excuses and 45 successes. I kept track of the reasons which accompanied the re- fusals. Here they are: We'll wake the children 17 It's too hot 10 It's too cold 5 I'm too tired 32 It's too early 15 It's too late 23 Please, dear, I'm asleep 35 Windows open, neighbors might hear 9 Backache: 18: : Headache: 16: : Toothache: 2: : Drank too much: 4: : Ate too much: 14: : Not in the mood: 21: : Mud pack: 2: : New hairdo: 17: : Company in next room: 11: : Wouldn't you rather: : : watch the late TV show?: 40: : Is that all you men think: : : about: 29: : Thanks, dear.: : : YOUR LOVING HUSBAND (BUT NOT ENOUGH) How about it, Ann. Is it funny? PARADISE, CALIF. DEAR PARADISE: Yes, it's funny, but like a great deal that passes for humor, I sense a lot of kidding on the square. MAKE EXCUSES, NOT LOVE? DEAR ANN: I'm one of the thou-sands (maybe millions) of wives whose husbands asked, "Did you read Ann Landers today?" The letter he wanted me to see was signed, "Your Loving Husband-But Not Enough." We both laughed and thought it was very clever. How about equal time for a wife's rebuttal? Dear Loving Husband: During the last year I approached you to make love to me 365 times, but you had 329 excuses. You said "Yes" 36 times. Here's my tally on the ex-cuses: Hard day at the office-40 times. Argument with the boss, too tense- 35 times. Important meeting tomorrow, have to get a good night's sleep-30 times. It's too cold in here-5 times. It's too hot in here-20 times. I'm beat-30 times. My back is acting up again-30 times. I drank too much, couldn't hack it-15 times. I can't tear myself away from this terrific movie (during which you fell asleep)-40 times. As soon as I finish this article (dur-ing which you fell asleep)-35 times. I was sleeping, what did you say?- 30 times. We aren't newlyweds anymore. What are you trying to prove?-10 times. Why don't you go bowling with the girls or take a cold shower?-9 times. Signed-Your Loving Wife, But Not Forever P.S. Ann, dear girl, will you please rush the name of "Loving Hus-band" and send it to my new address, which will be Siberia if my husband finds out I wrote this letter. ROCK-FORD, ILL. DEAR ROCK: My lips are sealed. I'll never never tell. Incidentally, I re-ceived dozens of tallies from other wives who had a similar tale of woe, but you told yours best. Marriage* An Overview MARRIED LIFE RULES FOR A HAPPY ONE Never both be angry at once. Never yell at each other unless the house is on fire. Yield to the wishes of the other as an exercise in self-discipline if you can't think of a better reason. If you have a choice between making yourself look good or your mate-choose your mate. If you have any criticism, make it lovingly. Never bring up a mistake of the past. Neglect the whole world rather than each other. Never let the day end without saying at least one complimentary thing to your life's partner. Never meet without an affec-tionate welcome. Never go to bed mad. When you've made a mistake, talk it out and ask for forgiveness. Remember, it takes two to make an argument. The one who is wrong is the one who will be doing most of the talking. "If you had it to do over again, would you marry the person to whom you are now married?" This is the question I put to my readers. Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public responded with unprecedented speed and vehemence. Within ten days my office was buried under fifty thousand pieces of mail. Although I had requested "postcards only," more than seven thou-sand letters arrived-long ones-describing in detail how "terrific" (or "rot-ten") their marriage was. My instructions were as follows: "Tell me (on a postcard, no letters please) if you had it to do over again, would you have married the person to whom you are now married? Write YES or NO. State whether you are male or female, and the number of years you have been married." * Originally titled "If You Had It to Do All Over Again Would You Marry the Same Person?" Reprinted from July 1977 issue of Family Circle magazine, � 1977, The Family Circle, Inc. Although my work has made me positively shockproof, I must confess the results of this survey rattled me. It was a devastating commentary on mar-riage, American style. Seventy percent of the fifty thousand readers who responded did not sign their names. In my opinion, the unsigned responses reflected the true story. The final count-52 percent voted no; 48 percent voted yes. The breakdown of the unsigned mail: 70 percent from females and 30 percent from males. Of the signed mail, 70 percent said yes (many who signed their names also gave their addresses), 30 percent said no. Eighty percent of the signed mail came from females and 20 percent came from males. We received forty-two postcards from homosexuals, who considered them-selves "just as married as anyone else." They were all happy and voted yes. I couldn't do a thing with "number of years married" because more than half who responded misunderstood the question and gave their ages instead. (Apparently Johnny isn't the only one in the family who can't read.) Most respondents were candid about telling why they voted the way they did. One wife from Corning, New York, wrote: "Carl is one of those non-talkers you get so many complaints about. The last time he spoke a full sen-tence to me was Friday. He said, 'Pass the salt.' But actions speak louder than words, Ann. Today he brought home a dozen roses. I'm voting yes." An Oakland male waxed philosophical: "We still love each other- physically, I mean-but we don't like each other. I vote no." From Davenport, Iowa, I received a curious card with two votes-his and hers. She wrote: "I'm a female, married twenty-seven years. We are the hap-piest couple in town. I vote a great big yes." At the bottom of the card, hast-ily scrawled in pencil, was a word from her husband, who apparently had been asked to drop the card in the mailbox. He added: "That's what she thinks. I vote no." One hundred and ninety women voted "Hell, no." One hundred and four men voted "Hell, no." Most of the "Hell, no"s were in extra-large block let-ters, heavily underlined and often followed by several exclamation points. A "Hell, no" from Omaha was written with such a heavy hand the pen went clear through the postcard. From New Orleans, a male (age fifty-one, married thirty-four years) wrote: "No! No! A thousand times no. If I had any guts I would have called it quits twenty years ago. It's too late now. She's sick and I can't leave her." A husband in Roanoke, Virginia (married fifty-six years), said: "Yes. She is a beautiful person . . . Women had character in those days." A wife from Bonita Springs, Florida, made a point that turned up repeat-edly among the negative responses. Reactions ran the gamut from quiet ac-ceptance to angry resentment. The Florida woman wrote: "I would have voted yes during the first five years of our marriage, but I'm voting no now. He was 'Mr. Right' at the time, but somehow we didn't grow together and today we have very little in common. If I didn't have some outside intel-lectual stimulation, I'd go bananas. The man is dull, dull, dull." A wife from a fashionable New Jersey suburb (she asked me not to pin-point her residence) wrote: "When we were poor, our marriage was fun. Things changed when my husband started to make big money. We joined the country club, played golf and bridge. Then came the fancy clothes and ex-pensive cars. Yes, we take glamorous trips and entertain a lot, but we haven't carried on a real conversation in years. I vote no. I'm sure he would vote no too." One of the most heartwarming cards came from Mr. and Mrs. C. A. Jones of Santa Ana, California. It was Mr. Jones who wrote: "Yes! We've been married nearly sixty-six years. I am ninety; my wife is eighty-eight. See recent photo on reverse side." And there it was-two adorable, smiling faces, their white heads together; she wearing a double orchid corsage, he with a pink rose in his lapel. (I noted with interest that a great many yes votes came from couples who said they had been married over forty years.) Thousands of no voters bluntly stated that sex was the major problem. Most women complained about the absence or infrequency of sexual rela-tions, while the men were critical of the quality. ("She wants the lights out, the kids asleep and the phone taken off the hook. I have to shave and shower. All this for the deadest three minutes you can imagine.") A man who voted "Hell, no" in Salem, Oregon, added, "Marriage is the only war where you sleep with the enemy. And sleep is all I get. I drew one of those cold fish you write about." From Miami, Florida, a twenty-seven-year-old male and a twenty-nine- year-old female wrote: "Yes. We've been married five years. And we plan to stay happily married. We decided at the outset not to have any children." A couple from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, both voted no-and it was the last election that did it. The wife wrote, "The fool is still defending Nixon and Agnew. It bums me up. Ford may be a nice guy, but he was picked by Nixon and that was enough for me. I vote no." The husband wrote on the same card, "We got along okay until my wife decided to go for that peanut farmer from Georgia. The day she came home wearing a Carter button, I knew I had married the wrong woman. I vote no." At least one thousand no voters gave religion as the reason for sticking with a marriage that had gone sour. An eighty-one-year old woman from Dayton, Ohio, put it this way: "My marriage was a mistake and I knew it after two years, but I stayed with him because I am a Catholic. I'm glad to see the Church is becoming more human and moving away from some of the old nonsense. If I were twenty-five years younger, I would definitely get a di-vorce." Several hundred widows voted yes (many from St. Petersburg, Santa Bar-bara, Monterey, Los Angeles and Honolulu). Almost every widow who voted yes extolled the virtues of her dearly departed. ("He was a saint.") In-teresting how death improves people. In-laws were mentioned in several responses. A male from Traverse City, Michigan, wrote: "Yes. She's a great girl. I would marry her again-but I'd poison her mother first." An Indianpolis female (age forty-two) wrote: "I vote no four times. Once on account of him-he's a gutless wonder-and once for each of his miser-able sisters." Alcohol was mentioned by thousands of no voters. A Wichita, Kansas, wife said, "Put my vote in the no column. I could have handled his side affairs, the years of job-hopping and even the poker losses, but when the booze took over it destroyed all my love and respect. Whenever you mention A.A., I put the column where he can see it, but he's too pie-eyed to read." Hundreds of writers took the opportunity to cast a belated vote for the first survey. They added a P.S. "And yes, I would have had every one of my chil-dren if I had it to do over again." But at least as many mentioned children as the reason they were voting no. A man in Louisville put it candidly: "The first five years of our marriage were great; then the children started coming. They ruined it for me. She became all mother, no wife. Long before they were teenagers they learned how to 'divide and conquer.' This house is an armed camp. The wife and kids are on one side and I'm on the other." No one knows what a marriage is like except the two people in it-and sometimes one of them doesn't know. I arrived at this conclusion after hav-ing my ear-and eyes-bent by thousands of people whose marriages were considered "very good" by observers. It is my firm conviction that a truly beautiful marriage-one that offers joy, fulfillment and genuine contentment with both parties operating on the same wave length as friends, partners and lovers-is very hard to find. I had such a marriage for many years, and it ended in divorce. Perhaps the lesson to be learned is, "No one knows what tomorrow will bring." I believe if twenty-five couples were selected at random and their marriages examined under the glaring light of truth, it would be discovered that one marriage out of twenty-five is "very good." Four are "okay,"-which means they get along fairly well most of the time. Seven are bad-much bickering, many fights, poor communication-but the situation is tolerable. Eight of the twenty-five are unrewarding-a real drag, both parties fed up and wishing there were an easy way out. Five are disasters-they share nothing, not even a bed. Yet they plug along year after year, like a pair of matched mules, put-ting up a front, or not even bothering to pretend-needling each other at every opportunity, battling in the presence of family and friends. Or sadder still, they simply ignore each other: no sex; no conversation; no com-munication. They turn to hard liquor, white wine, work, hockey, golf, gam-bling or sleeping around. I've discovered, too, that millions of marrieds es-cape their boring-or punitive-partners by hooking their eyeballs into the TV set. TV has had a stronger impact on our society than any single invention since the automobile. It has put the dead hand on conversation and provided countless couples with an excuse for not discussing what's on their minds. Worse yet, TV has become the electronic baby-sitter. How many young mothers who are reading this article are willing to permit their children to look at anything in exchange for a little peace and quiet? It can be success-fully argued that TV is a wonderful tool for education, but unfortunately the overwhelming percentage of viewing time is devoted to trivia, non-sense and garbage-which includes smut, violence and offensive commercials. The greatest natural resource in any country is its young people. What I see today that I didn't see before I became Ann Landers is a generation growing up in a sex-oriented culture. I'm convinced if we don't offer a first- rate program of sex education in all public schools no later than the fifth grade, we're headed for serious trouble. Of course the ideal place for children to learn about sex at home, but how many parents are well informed or emotionally equipped to do the job? There were over one million teenage pregnancies in the United States last year. A report prepared by the Alan Guttmacher Institute in New York City revealed that at least eleven million teenagers in our country are sexually ac-tive. Venereal disease has reached epidemic proportions. Yet there are those who say we daren't give young people explicit information about sex because it will "encourage them to experiment." When are the narrow, unrealistic vigilantes going to wake up and smell the coffee? Our teenagers are already experimenting-witness the Guttmacher statistics-and they won't stop just because their priest, rabbi, minister, par-ents, teachers or Ann Landers tells them to. Some of my advice has changed over the years and I am not ashamed to admit it. There is a vast difference between abandoning one's principles and dealing with issues in a relevant manner. Change is essential to growth. The reversals in my advice reflect the changes in our society. It's a different world today than it was twenty-five years ago. To pretend otherwise is to hide one's head in the sands of time. My position on virginity, for example, has been modified. In 1955 I held the firm conviction that every girl must hang on to her virginity until mar-riage or death-whichever comes first. I no longer believe this is true. I still believe that the young woman who can approach the marriage bed with hymen intact is to be admired, but today I would not call her a tramp if she failed to do so. Lest there be a misunderstanding, I would like to make it clear that I do not condone high school sex. In my opinion, the majority of fifteen-, sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds are not sufficiently mature to deal with an intimate physical relationship. My opinion notwithstanding, recent surveys show that approximately 70 percent of the girls who graduate from high school have had sexual intercourse. So you can see they are not paying a great deal of at-tention to me in this regard. My position on divorce has also changed. In 1976 there were over a mil-lion divorces in our country. It appears that 1977 will see at least as many splits, if not more. The bars and cocktail lounges are jammed with married men and women having "a quick one" before heading home. It's almost as if they were bracing themselves for the battle or anesthetizing themselves against the boredom that awaits them. Too often they end up seeing double and acting single. Women's magazines continue to print "helpful" articles on How to Hang on to Your Husband while thousands of wives write to me and complain that "hanging is too good for 'em." According to a Gallup poll conducted in February 1977, the percentage of drinkers in the United States has reached a thirty-eight-year peak. The big-gest gain was noted among women. Are more women drinking because their marriages have gone bad, or is it the other way around? Have the marriages gone bad because more women have taken to the bottle? If pressed for an an-swer, I'd say the booze came first. What does all this mean? Is marriage on the way out? Has something oc-curred in our society these past thirty years to undermine this once-hallowed institution? Have people changed? I think not. It is my firm conviction that marriage is here to stay. More-over, human nature has changed very little in the last thousand years. Man is still capable of being the most base and the most magnificent of creatures. The seeds of everything-hate, anger, envy, malice, greed, selfishness, beauty, love, tenderness, generosity and nobility-are within all of us. What then has gone haywire with the promise "Till death do us part"? Why were more couples divorced last year than were married? One of the principal reasons is the economic independence and improved status of today's woman. Thirty-five years ago, if Cfrandma was galled by Grandpa's stinginess, his alcoholism, his roving eye or a tendency to crack her across the mouth when she spoke "out of turn," she hoped the neighbors didn't hear, and put up with the humiliation and abuse. In those days, Grandma had no marketable skills. She was dependent on her husband for the roof over her head and food for the table. If there were children, she stayed "for their sake." What's more, the divorce laws were designed to make marriage permanent. Unless the wife had uncommon courage or family money to fall back on, she was hopelessly trapped. Today, when a marriage turns sour, women have options. Vocational school, a college degree or on-the-job training can be her ticket to freedom. No longer is an exploited female forced to remain in a wretched, anxiety- producing situation for "room and board." She can tell the bum to get lost. And more and more women are doing that. By the same token, the husband whose "dearly beloved" has turned into a shrew, a nag or a lazy slob who views him only as a meal ticket has a way out too. He can extricate himself without staging phony photographs to prove adultery. Can you believe adultery was the only ground for divorce in New York State until 1967? Thousands of women and men were forced to take this disgraceful route because it was the only way to legally terminate a terri-ble marriage. No-fault divorce laws are among the most civilized pieces of legislation passed in the last twenty years. Today almost every state in the union has some form of no-fault divorce. I am ashamed to say own state, Illinois, is one of the few that does not. It was humiliating for me, in October 1975, to sue my former husband for "cruel and inhuman treatment" when he was neither cruel nor inhuman. But like thousands of others, I sought the least destructive grounds-and that was it. Another reason for the increase in the divorce rate is the admission (at long last) that it is perfectly possible for well-intentioned, intelligent people to make a mistake. "He (or she) turned out to be very different from the person I thought I had married" is a line I've seen so often. People do change. The man or woman you took for better or worse in 1952 is not the same person you see across the breakfast table in 1977. If you don't believe it, just get out the old wedding album and take a good look. Furthermore, the times have changed. Before World War H, a divorcee was considered-well, not exactly a scarlet woman, but she did pay a price. In small towns, particularly if she was Catholic or Jewish, she was made to feel like a pair of brown shoes worn with a tuxedo. When the late Adlai Stevenson was being considered as a presidential can-didate in 1953, there was grave concern about his chance for the nomination because he was a divorced man. When he received the nomination in 1954, it was a giant step toward making divorce "respectable." Interesting that in 1946 James M. Curley, the major of Boston, was elected while in jail. Had he been divorced, he wouldn't have had a chance. Has the cultural shock knocked us crank-sided? Are we punchy from the radical changes that have occurred these past thirty years? I don't know if these are the best of times or the worst of times, but I do know it is the only time we have. In my view, anything that allows people to be more honest and true to themselves is good. Life is too precious to waste years in a joyless marriage-or, worse yet, in a miserable one. Divorce does not necessarily mean failure. In some instances it may be a victory, an indication that there has been growth, coupled with the courage to change one's life-to say, "We are no good for each other; let's not continue to cheat ourselves by putting up a false front for people who couldn't care less." Do I sound as if I am championing the cause of divorce? No way. I am, however, making a strong plea in behalf of decency, integrity, courage and self-respect. This is what the good life is all about. Nothing is so joyous or energizing as a healthy marriage-nor as draining and nerve-racking as a sick one. I believe in marriage. Man was made for woman and woman was made for man. This is the central theme of the Divine Plan. But it must be a straight- arrow partnership. They must be best friends as well as lovers-pulling to-gether, giving one another emotional support, each sensing the other's needs and doing their best to fill them. A healthy marriage means total trust, a long leash, respect for one an-other's privacy. Everyone needs room to breathe-time to reflect. Moments of silence can be the glue that holds the marriage together. Sometimes the best thing you can do for a tired, harassed mate is to leave him (or her) alone. This, in my view, is the true measure of maturity. If your marriage does not embody the qualities I have mentioned, you have a piece of pop bottle instead of a diamond. How good and honest it is that more and more people are refusing to settle for shoddy substitutes. I vote yes for the real thing. What Marriage Is All About Nothing has been talked about or worked on more incessantly than the mod-ern American marriage. The reason is simple. Americans want it to work. They don't set out to get divorced. But a successful marriage is a lot of trou-ble. The notion that marriage solves life's problems, especially those of loneli-ness or of sexuality, is largely an illusion. Marriage doesn't solve anything. It is one long troublesome adventure filled with extraordinary possibilities for the peace and joy that all human beings long for. The big trouble is that joy does not come by itself nor is it marketed at a discount for those who want to avoid the risks involved in human closeness. Marriage is a worthwhile kind of trouble because it is built on the efforts of two people who must continually work at it. It is an institution in which peo-ple have the opportunity to realize the best and the richest truths about them-selves and others. It is the institution in which human beings feel that they have touched the core of existence and that they need not be afraid any more. Taking the trouble to work at love makes the difference between successful and unsuccessful marriages. The most naive approach to marriage is that it will somehow take care of itself, that it is a special state that confers status, self-esteem and emotional security. There can be nothing but trouble for peo-ple who feel that marriage is a chamber of safety, and once having entered, the world will bother them no more. The questions that all married people should ask themselves are: What does my marriage mean to me? Am I willing to pay the price to make it bet-ter? Or have things reached such a state that I am used to it and don't care to do anything more about it? Good will is not enough. We must take practical steps to nourish and deepen the sustaining love of the married state. It requires us to do something as well as to think beautiful thoughts. It demands that we invest ourselves and be able to meet each other freshly every day-to fight against letting life dull our responsiveness to one another. A related mistaken expectation for married people is that their fife together will always be like the life they shared in courtship and the early days of mar-riage. They are disappointed when this passionate, somewhat ethereal state begins to fade. They thought that fiery passion was love, and when its inten-sity is vastly diminished they don't know what to do about themselves or about their marriage. They are unprepared for the inevitable-that the way married people feel about each other changes steadily through the years. The most practical thing that a married couple can prepare for is change. The effort to hang onto love in its original state can be disastrous. Change is the law that governs all other living things-and if your marriage is alive it will indeed undergo alterations. This is not to say that love disappears when it changes. It evolves and transforms itself, demanding something new of husband and wife, allowing them to discover things they never suspected about each other. The learning that goes along with a man and a woman living closely together is never ended. Marriage is filled with the glorious trouble of being alive. It is accepting this kind of trouble that allows people to know what it means to be human. It is also helpful for people not to wait for something to happen to them. In marriage, as in almost everything else in life, if we want good things we must do something to make them happen. Nobody is going to do it for us and there is no way in which we can tease a happy life out of the fates if we are unwilling to take responsibility for it ourselves. We design our lives to a great extent, whether we admit it or not. Waiting for a change in one's spouse (or one's self) or a stroke of good luck is a deadly stance for a partner who wants a marriage to stay alive. Unfortunately, many contemporary efforts to bolster marriage remain pre-cisely at the surface level. That is the level at which people reach legal agreements about who will walk the dog and who will wash the dishes; these, of course, overemphasize the superficial aspects of their lifestyle. Too many people five on the surface, emphasizing the way they look and the things they have, and then wonder why they have so much trouble developing better and deeper relationships. An overriding concern of how the marriage looks to others is sure death. As elsewhere, it helps if people are never surprised by anything that is gen-uinely human. This includes seven-year itches, wandering eyes and regrets about a wide variety of things. We should not be surprised to find that people who love each other very much can be distracted or that they can have bad days. The mistake comes when we interpret these as signs that the marriage is disintegrating or that we have become psychological wrecks and the only al-ternative is to abandon the conventional ways of life for something new and more exciting. This is precisely what many people do in a society which seems to be rushing to divorce courts in droves, convinced it will solvp all of life's problems forever. While no one can argue the wisdom of pronouncing a marriage dead when it is indeed lifeless, one must resist the temptation to turn immediately to divorce whenever tensions or difficulties arise. The acceptance of our human failings instead of misreading them as sig-nals that the relationship is unsalvageable is essential for people who want to remain married. We must accept the fact that things don't "just happen" to us. We always contribute to their development. If a person begins to notice boredom, a need for a change, or finds he or she is beginning to flirt a little, it is time to examine the self. People sometimes engage in mildly seductive be-havior because they enjoy the excitement, or they feel the need to prove something about their own attractiveness. Husbands and wives should expect these things to happen and be prepared to withstand them rather than to pretend that they are of no consequence. When people get into this kind of trouble, it is because they want to. Honest confrontation, not a frontal attack, is the way to deal with the truth of what is going on between us and others. When people try to ignore what is right before their eyes, and pretend it does not exist, they risk building up a reservoir of anger that finally cracks through any dam of control and washes away the marriage at the same time. Such situations do not become danger-ous overnight. They acquire a devastating power when we ignore them or are afraid to face their implications. When a husband or wife first notices the small cracks in their relationship they should discuss them with an awareness that they are dealing with fissionable material. The "little things in life" carry a tremendous potential for destruction. Husband and wife must be ready to understand each other in a practical way. To understand another person is a continuing journey into unfamiliar territory. We must not fool ourselves into believing that we already know ev-erything there is to know about the person we married. We never have him (or her) all figured out. Men and women must also look at fidelity as something that is highly significant in their relationship. The world has become careless about this. Fi-delity is the willingness to live up to a commitment to another human being and there is nothing casual about it. Fidelity is not keeping an old promise as much as it is discovering what is new and fresh in life together. Believers exchange extraordinary gifts in very simple ways. There is a spe-cial kind of faith that people who stay married have in each other. They know that what they do and think and how they act when they are apart have a lot to do with the strength of their commitment. People who love each other and want to deepen their marriage should avoid feeling like victims. Men and women are not victims of life and there are many practical things which they can do to help see the fresh possibilities that continue to reside in their life together. There are no tired, old mar-riages. There are only tired and distracted people who have forgotten how to look at each other. Perhaps the most central lesson for husband and wife to learn is that of respecting each other as separate, fully identified human beings. One can never live in the shadow of the other. One cannot be just the husband of somebody or the wife of some other personality. That is not the way mar-riages stay alive. People who love each other must learn to let each other be. They must have lives that are separate but in touch with one another. They must free each other for that existence, letting each other go, giving each other room, not in some faddish open-marriage style that insists on freedom, but rooted in each person's readiness to acknowledge the freedom of the other. They cannot do this if the identity of one is absorbed totally in the identity of the other. One must never sacrifice everything for the sake of the other. Later, blame sets in, and the sacrificing party plays that old familiar game-"If it weren't for you . . ." Husband and wife are wise to recall that their relationship is not a reasona-ble one. How often man and woman, after a period of difficulty or strife, ap-proach each other with the phrase "Let's be reasonable about this . . ." and, of course, when tempers flare, reason is the first thing to go. This does not mean either or both parties are crazy-or illogical. It means that their relationship is highly personal and therefore exists on several levels besides that of intellect. There is no way to be reasonable about something that is fraught with emotion. Married people should begin to worry if they have only logical problems to discuss. They should be deeply concerned if there is no overflow of emotion, no passionate concern about life or about each other. They should be prop-erly upset if everything between them can be settled by the provisions of a legal document. It means there is something dusty and drought-season-dry about their relationship. It might be polite, perhaps platonic, the kind of rela-tionship one might have with a schoolmate or bridge partner, but hardly the kind that should exist between people living intimately with each other. When passion is gone it is time for people to wonder why, to stand back and try to find out how their marriages became mummified. Becoming sensitive and continually understanding requires concentrated effort and hard work. It also requires that people do something concrete, each day if possible, to express this sensitivity and to show one another that they are actively seeking to understand and respond at more than a surface level. Resolve to do something special every day for the one you married. This doesn't take much. It doesn't mean a big present. It means a little thought-fulness-something done freely rather than out of obligation. It should be the kind of thing that comes as a surprise and carries the message "you are treasured and loved because you are special." Do something different once a week and do it together. Do things that bring you into the realm of new experiences and break the grip of routine and dullness. The cost of these adventures need not be high. They are, in fact, priceless because they provide the kind of setting in which people can revitalize their life together. Stop immediately and get help of some kind if you note a growing convic-tion that whatever is wrong is all the fault of the other party. As soon as we are sure that we are the totally aggrieved one, it is time to take a closer look. No difficulty is caused totally by the other person. When we begin to believe this is true, it means we are in deeper trouble than we think. This is also true when we are totally surprised by sudden difficulty which seems to have arisen from nowhere. Difficulties in marriage usually come from inside rather than from some distant place. Sadly enough, many people hurt each other when they don't want to. They separate when, in truth, they still love each other but things went too far or got so out of hand that there is nothing left to do but move out of each other's range. There are many signals that, if noted, can move us to act be-fore the roof falls in. Increasing our sensitivity to these signals is essential if we are to avoid disaster. Of course, a great deal of effort and energy is required to repair a relationship that has become damaged or sweeten one that has turned slightly sour, but it is nothing compared to the trouble it can spare us. credit: Eugene Kennedy, Ph.D. From The Trouble Book, Chicago, Illinois: Thomas More Associates. WHY MARRIED COUPLES SHOULDN'T WORK TOGETHER