By Dorothy Dix
This is the story that the woman told in that mystic hour in which women let their back hair together and tell the secret of their souls. The talk had run upon a tragic story engrossing the interest of that particular group, of a middle-aged man who had forsaken his dull, middle-aged, devoted, domestic wife for a fascinating young vamp. The condemnation of the man had been sweeping and severe until, at last, the woman with the contented eyes and the wise smile spoke.
“I am not excusing the man,” she said. “Undoubtedly he is greatly to blame. And perhaps he is most to blame in this: That he made the situation possible. He did not make his wife keep step with him. He let her lag behind, and drop out of the procession, and so they were no longer comrades, marching shoulder to shoulder. That was the beginning of the end, for when a woman ceases to be a companion to her husband, there nearly always enters into his life the Mysterious Stranger.
“When John and I were married,” she went on reminiscently, “we were very much in love with each other, very companionable and happy. That first year was a glorious time of planning, and studying, and reading together, and going to lectures, and seeing good pictures, and plays., and having thrilling discussions over them afterward.
Then the baby came, and like most women with their first child, I became nothing but a mother, and I offered up the whole world as a sacrifice before the cradle. I had an idea that if I was not spending every minute doing something for the baby, and giving every thought to him, that he would perish. So I quit going with John because I couldn’t leave the baby. I quit reading because the baby left no time for it. I quit dressing up because the baby rumpled my hair, and tore at my chiffon.
“I became nothing on earth but a nursemaid, and I was just about as interesting as one, for my whole conversation was about the baby, and was about as stimulating and lacking in pep as a bottle of sterilized milk.
“Finally, John said to me, ‘Betty, I wonder if you realize how you have let yourself slump? You are not reading anything. You are not studying anything. You have lost all of your ambition. You are getting dowdy, and dull, and tiresome, and if you let yourself go on as you are doing, in 15 years more, you will be a fat, frowsy, middle-aged woman who babbles about her children and her house because she doesn’t know anything else to talk about, and who is such a bore that people weep tears of self-pity when they see her coming.
“’Now let me tell you this, my girl. You may stay put, just where you are if you want to. You may be content to just be the baby’s mother, but I am not going to be satisfied with just being the baby’s father. I am going to try to do something to make him proud of being my son. I am going on. |And you can etiehr keep up with me, or be left behind. The choice is yours. What are you going to do about it?
“’And if you won’t keep up with me, don’t expect me to be faithful to you, for I will be out hunting up some woman who interests me, and who can think my thoughts and talk my talk.”
“Well,” continued the woman, “you can imagine that speech gave me a jolt that brought me to my senses. Thereafter I devoted less time to my baby and more to my husband. Instead of holding the baby’s hand while it slept, I parked him in his little crib, and water-waved my hair. I put less handiwork on the baby’s clothes and more brain work on books, and on studying the subjects in which my husband was interested.
“And it wasn’t long before I was calling his attention to new books, and he was talking over his law cases with me, and we were back again in that most delightful and satisfying of all relationships, that of the husband the wife who really stimulate each other.
“But I shudder now when I think how nearly I came to losing out, for a woman never does lose her husband until she ceases to interest him. A man never gets tired of a woman until she begins to bore him.
“Oh, I know that we women think that it is beauty that counts with men, and that we lose hour husbands’ affections when we lose our complexions and our girlish figures, but this isn’t true. Good looks attract a man in the first place, but it takes intelligence to hold one. No man can sit up and look at a living picture without yawning in its face. He wants something living about him, something that keeps him diverted, and wondering what’s coming next.
“The woman who is vivid and vital; the woman who is gay and amusing; the woman who is full of spicy and entertaining gossip, and who cannot go down the street without having an amusing adventure; the woman whose home dinner table sparkles with wit and good humor, and good conversation; the woman who takes an intelligent interest in her husband’s business and plans and ambitions and can snap her figures in the face of the most beautiful siren who ever lived. She couldn’t lose her husband if she tried because they have got too much in common, and because he can be sure of never having a dull moment in her society.
“I know that a lot of women think that becoming a wife and mother is a good excuse for dropping out of the procession,” concluded the women with the contented eyes, and the wise smile, “but they forget that their husbands are marching on, and that if they don’t keep step with them, they’ll get left.”
From the Durham Morning Herald, Nov. 5, 1923
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