The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1918-03-06
DOROTMY DIX TALKS
BY DOROTHY DIX
Worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer.
which Should Love the More?

Which Should Love the More?
A correspondent asks this question:
AT the time of marriage which
should be the more in love, the man
or the woman?''
The man.
OF course the ideal condition of af-
fairs is when Cupid holds the scales
in an even hand and the couple enter
on a fifty-fifty devotion
basis. Unfortunately, however, in this
imperfect world, conditions are sell
dom just exactly what they should be.
1t is only too true that in most mar
says, lone kisses; the other suffers
herself or himself to be kissed"
Such being the case and love not
being a matter of volition that we can
summon at will, we turn the water
on at the tap, it is far more important
for the man to go to the altar bub-
bling over with romantic love than it
is for the woman to be efferveScing
with those sentiments.
There are many good and cogent
reasons why the man should be more
in love at the time of marriage than
the woman. To begin with, love
plays much bigger part in the life
of a woman than it does in the life
of man. 1t is much more important
to woman to be loved than it is to a
man. To a man love is merely the
icing on the cake of life, but to a
woman love is the bread of life, and
she starves and perishes without it.
A man has a million interests outside
of the state of his affections, but the
heart interest is the only interest of
the great majority of women
Therefore, if a man is married to a
woman who gives him only a luke
happy if she is pleasantly agreeable.
easy to get along with, and good
housekeeper. He has other things to
think about than the temperature of
his wife's devotion, and anyway, the
average man is no more critical of his
wife's love than he is of her ribbons.
If they are pretty. pink and attrac-
tive, he doesn't concern himself with
whether they are near silk or super
fine silk.
ever sitting with her hand on the
pulse of her husbands love, and woe
to her when she perceives that it has
gone down from fever heat to normal,
or below normal. No matter how
good, and kind, and generous he may
be to her she is miserabl She wants
the real devotion of his heart Moth
ing else makes up to her for missing
1t. Having that she can be happy in
howell Lacking it she is wretched
in a palace.
Moreover, this also is to be sad. that
while woman who entertains only a
luke warm affection for her husband
often makes the most dutifu, and con-
siderate of wives, the man who is not
madly in love with his wife is almost
invariably a brutal husband. Woman
can substitute conscience for love-
turning out such satisfa Glory jobs as
wives that their husbands never know
the difference
But it takes the inspiration of the
grand passion itself to give a man
tenderness, patience and insight to
deal With all the vagaries of the
feminine temperament; to treat a wife
in way that makes her happy and
turns matrimony for her into a grand,
sweet song. The unloving wife may
be good wife, but the unloving hus-
band is never a good husband.
Another reason why the man should
be more in love than the woman at
the time of marriage is because mar
riage, for some inexplicable reason,
appears to be more disillusioning to
men than it is to women. Somehow
for men the romance evaporates more
swiftly than for women, the gilt on the
gingerbread is more quickly rubbed
off.
Heaven knows why this should be.
1t only is. To the dispassionate OBJ
server bay Widowed, triple chinned,
bald headed man is no more an object
| of beauty than is a fat, grizzle headed
woman. Nor is a man whose CONVEX
sational repertoire is confined ex-
| clusiyely to his shop and his golf score
any more exciting companion
| than a woman who babbles continu-
ously about her children, her opera
ton and the small beer gossip of her
| set.
Yet a woman can still see a hero of
| romance, a dashing Romeo whose
| every word charms and thrills her, in
her fat, bald unShaven husband who
| sleeps with his mouth open while to
| hn n tic cto l4I L.
| commonplace wife is the essence of all
| that makes, matrimony a prolonged
yawn of boredom.
| Doubtless it is because men, in
picking their wives. are mainly in
| fluenced by the girls good looks and
youth that their enthusiasm wanes so
sadly when these qualities ranish, as
they must, under the strain of time
and married life. This makes it i'm
portant that when a man enters the
holy estate he should have such head
| of steam on that it will carry him
safely past the danger point when he
see1 his wife's beauty fade and realizes
that instead of being the angel of his
imagination, she is just a human
woman.
Sometimes this happens. Some
| times the man is so in love with the
woman he E1arries that he never real
1y sees her as she is She is always
| to him the maiden of his dreams. She
is always the incarnate romance of
his youth and blinded by his own love
he never sees the changes that age
works on her. and happily. hand in
| hand. they walk down the years to a
| perpetual wedding march.
| The danger of women being disil-
| lusioned by matrimony is not so great
because they pick out their husbands
for less evanescent charms than beau
ty and youth. The things that attract
a woman to a man are his strength,
his bI aims, his character, all qualities
that improve with time and expert
ence, and so the middle aged husband
mas often a thousand times more
charm for his wife than he had when
she married him. This is why it is a
common thing for a woman to fall in
love with her husband, whereas a man
practically never falls in love with his
|