The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1921-12-07
Dorothy Dix Tails
BIZ DOROTHY DIX
WORLDS highest Paid Woman Writer.

Ladies Also.
The matrimonial tragedy of which
we hear the most is that of the de-
, serted wife, who at middle age finds
that her husband has tired of her,
and is Indifferent to her, even if he
has not wandered off after some
younger and fairer face.
We hear so much of lonely wives,
and see so many married women
working with might and main to keep
down their flesh, and keep up Their
pep, in order to retain their husbands
affections that we have fallen into
the way of thinking that matrimony
is a perpetual picnic to women. and
that it is only men who find it a rainy
Sunday with relatives in the country.
We accept the fact that the years
bring disillusion to the man. We
realize how the monotony of domes-
ITCHY gets on his nerves and how he
gets sick and weary of seeing the same
face across the breakfast table from
him, and listening to the same COM
plants, and winding the same clock,
and putting the same key in the same
door at the same hour every night
We can see how his passion could
cool off as his wife's beauty faded,
and her peculiarities increased; how
familiarity could even blunt his per
ception of her virtues until the time
might come when all he could see in
her was just hoE-ely, nagging wou-
an who SMILED when she talked, and
could never let anything rest.
Far otherwise is the popular con-
cepuon of the middle aged woman
We picture her as sloshing over with
romance to her dying day. We sec
her IN an attitude of perpetual adora :
ton before her husband, who cOntin-
9es TO be the hero of her giriish
dreams TO the end We never imagine
her as growing tired of domestic life.
or as perceiving that husband has got
ten bald, and bay Widowed. and
prosy.
Men are especially committed to this
view OF a woman's heart being a per-
petuaI motion machine that never runs
90Wh AFTER 1t is once put in motion.
therefore a man never loses any sleep
over the problem of how to retain his
WlIes affections He knows that he
simply can't lose her and that she is
just bound to go on loving him be-
cause she can't help it. She's built
that way.
1t appears that there is some slight
error in this view of the situation, and
that very often the middle aged Wo-
man is just as tired of matrimony as
any man could be, and lust as fnbch
bored by her husband as he could pos
sibly be by her. At any rate, 1 have
gotten a letter from a woman who
turns most interesting searchlight on
this matter. She says: $50
nave Deen reading some OF the
advice you have been giving to old
men who have wearied of the women
to whom they are married, and who
want TO swap off old wives for new.
How do you know their wives are
not tired of them and glad to have
them go? A woman of fifty or sixty
may be done with romance. or it may
merely be that her husband doesn't
look romantic to her as he dozes over
a newspaper by the fire, and she would
like to have a more lively companion
herself. If you could look into the
minds of old wives you would find
many of them are bored 10 death with
their husbands. 1t is hard to live with
a man forty years. and stay in love
with him. You know him too well.