Article January 11, 1975 Issue

Making Marriage Happy

ARLINE WALKER EVANS

One who is unmarried sometimes feels he is not needed or wanted, and he yearns for marriage in order to share what he has to give and to be loved and cherished by another. On the other hand, one who is married can be just as unhappy or more so; he may feel he is not receiving from the relationship what he had hoped for from one whom he could love and who would love him.

Yearly the divorce rate in many countries climbs. So it is evident that marriage, of itself, is not always the way to happiness and is too often the way to unhappiness. It is well to recognize that we need to work at understanding our eternally perfect relationship to God as His spiritual expression. To the degree we are conscious of unity with Him and reflect His qualities, we have a basis for harmony in our human relationships. But when we look to persons for what we should be claiming from God, there is often discord, disappointment. In Retrospection and Introspection Mrs. Eddy gives us some reassuring statements: "The heavenly intent of earth's shadows is to chasten the affections, to rebuke human consciousness and turn it gladly from a material, false sense of life and happiness, to spiritual joy and true estimate of being.

"The awakening from a false sense of life, substance, and mind in matter, is as yet imperfect; but for those lucid and enduring lessons of Love which tend to this result, I bless God."^{Ret., p. 21;}