Science has not a word to say against permanent marriage if the pair are really compatible. What constitutes compatibility, however, is much more a mental attitude on the part of the husband. A man that thinks he has to have a special, peculiar type of woman for a wife, or because of a bringing up in an excessively romantic family thinks there is only one woman in the world, specially born for him, who alone can make him happy in marriage, or who thinks he has found her when he has fallen in love at first sight, assumes no responsibility for his own happiness, but fatalistically waits for destiny to provide him with a suitable spouse. “Spouse” is derived from Latin _spondeo_ which is at the root of the word _response_, and means “to promise solemnly.” This refers to what the person confidently expects to _get_, not himself contribute to the union. But it has been clear to the seers of all ages that giving is the only true getting. On the basis of giving, almost any woman can be made a wife, but never in the sense of spouse if it has its ancient meaning of a person bound to give something. If a young man is given the proper training in the right way, which shows him that the most intensely physical contacts are emotionally worthless without the spiritual factor in the truly erotic, and that the intimacies of marital life are far more determined by hypersomatic (spiritual) facts than by physical ones, that he has the privilege of making his married life as romantic as he wishes or can leave it quite prosaic and dull; if he knows this, even a provisional marriage entered into with a woman not positively distasteful to him can be made a triumphant success. The proviso, however, will be made by most people that there must be an original rapport between the two. It is the unequivocal position of this book, on the contrary, that the rapport, even if it never existed, can be created by the husband, by means of his own conscious creative power. § 208 This implies neither that the rapport is solely a physical one nor that it is based on solely physical factors. Nor does it imply that a perfect marital love that has all the qualities of the romantic may not, by the proper behaviour on the husband’s part, be progressively developed as the years pass. Indeed, the fully matured love of at least a quarter of a century’s duration is the only marital love that has any claim to be called romantic. In the young, love is not romantic but may be spectacular, in its expression, or in the egoistic-social circumstances which surround it, but the only perfect love of a man and a woman is the one that has the growth of years.