It is not the ceremony that makes the marriage:  the ceremony only begins it.  Marriage is a slow and careful adjustment.  A true story which illustrates the opposite of this condition is that of a man and woman who were to all appearances happily married for years.  They were apparently the very closest friends.  The man’s nerves were excitable and peculiar, and his wife adjusted herself to them by indulging them and working in every way to save him from friction.  No woman could stand that constant work of adjustment which was in reality maladjustment, and this wife’s nerves broke down unexpectedly and completely.

When our nerves get weak we are unable to repress resistance which in a stronger state we had covered up.  This wife, while she had indulged and protected her husband’s peculiarities, had subconsciously resisted them.  When she became ill her subconscious resistance came to the surface.  She surprised herself by growing impatient with her husband.  He, of course; retorted.  As she grew worse he did not find his usual comfort from her care, and instead of trying to help her to get well he turned his back on her and complained to another woman.  Finally the friction of the two nervous systems became dangerously intense.  Each was equally obstinate, and there was nothing to do but to separate The woman died of a broken heart, and the man is probably insane for the rest of his life.

It was nothing but the mismanagement of their own and each other’s nerves that made all this terrible trouble.  Their love seemed genuine at first, and could certainly have grown to be really genuine if they had become truly adjusted.  And the saddest part of the whole story is that they were both peculiarly adapted to be of use to their fellow-men.  During the first years of their life their home was a delight to all their friends.

Tired nerves are likely to close up a man or make him irritable, complaining, and ugly, whereas the tendency in a woman is to be irritable, complaining, and tearful.  Now of course when each one is selfishly looking out for his or her comfort neither one can be expected to understand the other.  The man thinks he is entirely justified in being annoyed with the woman’s tearful, irritable complaints, and so he is—­in a way.  The woman thinks that she has a right to suffer because of her husband’s irritable ugliness, and so she has—­in a way.  But in the truest way, and the way which appeals to every one’s common sense, neither one has a right to complain of the other, and each one by right should have first made things better and clearer in himself and herself.