IDEAL MARRIAGE: ROMANTIC LOVE – PLAYFULNESS AS THE ELEMENT
Lastly, playfulness should be mentioned as one of the elements that preserve romantic love. In the play of love a grown man and woman find perhaps their greatest source of relaxation, since in the interchange of little nothings they come as near to enjoying again the care-free spirit of childhood as is ever possible for persons who carry about with them all the responsibilities of adulthood. But one of the common tendencies of married people is to forget how to play. In this they deprive themselves not only of one of the most delightful and undiminishing pleasures of sex, but also sometimes of any sort of satisfactory sex relations at all, as we shall see in our discussion of physical sexual adjustment. All authorities on the psychology of sex are agreed that courtship should not end with marriage but that the play of romance should be rehearsed throughout marriage, if one of the greatest pleasures is not to be lost.So much for romantic love. But is this enough? If the suggestions given above for the fostering of romantic feelings are carried out completely, does that mean that the love of a husband and wife is impregnable against all contrary forces? Far from it. While we are often deluded into believing that two persons may be miles apart in ordinary interests and tastes but fully en rapport in love, the facts will not bear this out, as many married couples discover after it is too late. When one is in courtship he believes his love is infinite and that it therefore will transcend all ordinary relationships and can never be impaired by mere finite differences. But, ungracious as it is to say so, love is not really infinite—it just feels that way. And since it is in the last analysis only a finite force of attraction, we may expect it to be undermined by other finite and very ordinary forces, which draw a couple apart. Hence as the second condition of happy marriage, we have listed fundamental equality or community.*97\275\8*
