Article June 1, 1981 Issue

The love that frees

ANDREA E. STROM

Some people insist that the approach to marriage and commitments is changing. Isn't it OK, they ask, to move on when things get stale? Weren't the Ten Commandments written just for a group of people lost in a desert ages ago? And beside that, isn't the modern trend toward "open" marriages? Sex therapy is in, and, some say, the family as it was once known is definitely a thing of the past.

But wait a minute!

We need to stop long enough to consider who or what it is that truly companions us and our families and everyone else. Isn't it God? Mrs. Eddy tells us in the chapter "Marriage" in Science and Health: "Husbands and wives should never separate if there is no Christian demand for it. It is better to await the logic of events than for a wife precipitately to leave her husband or for a husband to leave his wife. If one is better than the other, as must always be the case, the other pre-eminently needs good company. Socrates considered patience salutary under such circumstances, making his Xantippe a discipline for his philosophy."^{Science and Health, p. 66.}