Another reason why the Marriage of Affection is the most likely to prove a success is because mutual respect enters so largely into its composition, and how enormously important this is in the holy estate, none can realise until they marry. I shall have more to say later about the urgent necessity for respect in married life. II WHY WE FALL OUT: DIVERS DISCORDS ‘And yet when all has been said, the man who should hold back from marriage is in the same case with him who runs away from battle.’ --R. L. STEVENSON. We have discussed those types of marriage more or less doomed to failure from the outset, and now come to the reason why so many matches prove unhappy when apparently every circumstance has been favourable. It was Socrates, I think, who said: ‘Whether you marry or whether you remain unmarried, you will repent it.’ The people who assert that marriage is a failure seem to lose sight of the fact that the estate was not ordained for the purpose of happiness, but to meet the necessities of society, and so long as these necessities are fulfilled by marriage, then the institution must be pronounced successful, however unhappy married people may be. If the reasons ‘why we fell out, my wife and I,’ were to be considered exhaustively, the subject would overflow the bounds of this modest volume and run into several hundred giant tomes; indeed I believe an entire library could be filled with books on this matter alone. Ever since Adam and Eve had a few words over their dessert, husbands and wives have gone on quarrelling continuously and the humble philosopher who said that certain people quarrelled ‘bitter and reg’lar, like man and wife,’ was merely describing a condition that habit had made familiar to him. As with the rest of life, in matrimony it is the little things that count, and the frail barque of married happiness founders principally on the insignificant, half-perceived rocks--the little jealousies, little denials, little irritations, little tempers, little biting words, which by degrees wear so many little holes in the stern that at last an irreparable leak is sprung and the ship goes down in the next storm. The big obstacles make a worse crash when they _do_ get in the way, but they can be seen from afar and steered clear of.