Evening star., 1950-08-20
Dorothy
Dix
Wonen's Lack
OF Perspective
Causes Grief

One of the strangest things
about women is the way they
magnify trifles. They have a posi-
tive genius for making mountains
out of molehills, and it is the
assiduous following Of this oc-
cupation that is responsible for
most of their unhappiness. Pos
sibly the pebble in the shoe hurts
as badly as a mortal wound, but
It is both pathetic and humorous
that the things that ruin most
women's lives and Of which they
complain loudest and longest are
not great crushing tragedies, but
petty irritations.
I am, myself. sort Of human
tear jug into which unnumbered
thousands of women weep, and as
I listen to their tales of woe the
thing that amazes me most is how
small Is the grievance that most
of them are permitting to spoil
their happiness, and I marvel
again and again at the feminine
lack of perspective, the feminine
lack of sense of value, the irresist-
1ble feminine mania for prodding
at a pimple until they turn 1t
into "a cancer that eats out their
hearts.
Admits She's Well Off.
A woman will admit that
Heaven has bestowed all of its
choicest blessings upon her. She
has health, every comfort and
luxury, a good, kind, generous,
devoted husband, lovely children.
q beautiful home, but instead of
esteeming herself the favorite
daughter Of Lady Luck she beats
upon her breast and cries out that
she is the most miserable of all
women because she has made
some tiny speck on her horizon
into a cloud that blots out all
of her sunshine.
1t is literally true that women
resent some little personal pecu-
larity in their husbands more than
they do their vices, and that they
find it easier to forgive unfaith-
fulness or drunkenness or being
no-account than they do a mans
having some little habit that gets
on their nerves. The thing that
oftenest turns marriage into Gin
ders, ashes and dust to a woman
is the way her husband eats or
his failure to wipe his feet on the
mat before he comes into the
house or his forgetting to post
letters.
The thing over which the great
majority of wives make most moan
is their husbands neglect of them.
Their husbands coldness and lack
of appreciation. Now this is a
direful thing, if true, and calcu-
lated to make any everloving wife
grieve, but if you will investigate.
nine times out of ten you will
find that the wife's charges have
no basis in fact.
His Habits Are Proof.
The poor man is working him.
self to death. He never looks at
another woman and sticks as close
to his own hearth as the house
cat, and he feels that this is all
the proof of devotion that any
woman should need. But because
he provides her with beefsteaks
instead of orchids, and because he
doesn't WOO her as ardently as he
did in his counting days, she con-
siders herself neglected and wor-
ries over having lost his affec-
tions.
Another potent source of trou-
BILE with women is the in-law trou-
BILE, which is aggravated. II it is
not caused entirely, by the fem
mime tendency to exaggerate the
Importance of trifles. Mother-in-
law makes a mild suggestion and
daughter-in-law takes 1t as an
unwarranted meddling in her af-
fairs and an indication that the
older woman is going to try to run
her house, and forthwith she runs
up the fighting signal.
And so it goes all through life
Women who should be happy and
contented are miserable and dis
gruntled because they make the
unimportant important, because
they magnify trifles. because they
let the little things that shouldn't
worry them fret them to death
and because if they haven't any
real troubles they create imagi-