he still owes them attention and thoughtful, affectionate courtesy.
Never allow yourself to feel jealous of his mother or sisters. The
fact that he is a loving, thoughtful son and brother is in a measure a
guarantee that he will be a loving, thoughtful husband.
Let me add to this advice a word more. Do not allow yourself to feel
jealous of him in any way. Jealousy is the quintessence of
selfishness, and no other passion is so destructive of happiness, so
full of the contagion of evil. If your lover is not to be trusted, you
would be wise to end the engagement at once. If he is to be trusted,
that trust should be absolute. I said you should not allow him to
monopolize you, neither should you attempt to monopolize him. There
are other people in the world besides yourself, and other occupations
than the business of waiting on you. If you make him feel that he dare
not speak to anyone but you, that he dare not think of anything but
you, he will begin to chafe under the restraint and feel a desire to
break the bonds that are becoming fetters. If he were not your
acknowledged lover, if you were anxious to win his love, but were a
little uncertain as to your power to do so, you would not meet him
with tears and upbraidings because he had for one moment seemed to
forget you, but you would at once use every possible effort to make
yourself more attractive in his eyes than any other person could
possibly be. You will be wise to use those same tactics now, even
though his allegiance is pledged to you. Be so charming that no one
else can be considered so entertaining; that no one else can be so
wise, so witty, so sympathetic, so altogether lovely, that everything
but yourself is forgotten; and then believe in him so absolutely that
he could not possibly swerve in his fidelity to you. Have you ever
thought that to accuse one of a certain wrong act may be just the way
to suggest to him the possibility of committing it? If one trusts you
implicitly, that very trust is a constant suggestion to be true, and
doubt is a suggestion to act worthy of being doubted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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