Dale Carnegie - How To Win Friends And Influence People

"But, although to have a contented wife and a peaceful and happy home means more to a man than to make a million dollars, not one man in a hundred ever gives any real serious thought or makes any honest effort to make his marriage a success. He leaves the most important thing in his life to chance, and he wins out or loses, according to whether fortune is with him or not. Women can never understand why their husbands refuse to handle them diplomatically, when it would be money in their pockets to use the velvet glove instead of the strong-arm method.

"Every man knows that he can jolly his wife into doing anything, and doing without anything. He knows that if he hands her a few cheap compliments about what a wonderful manager she is, and how she helps him, she will squeeze every nickel. Every man knows that if he tells his wife how beautiful and lovely she looks in her last year's dress, she wouldn't trade it for the latest Paris importation. Every man knows that he can kiss his wife's eyes shut until she will be blind as a bat, and that he has only to give her a warm smack on the lips to make her dumb as an oyster.

"And every wife knows that her husband knows these things about her, because she has furnished him with a complete diagram about how to work her. And she never knows whether to be mad at him or disgusted with him, because he would rather fight with her and pay for it in having to eat bad meals, and have his money wasted, and buy her new frocks and limousines and pearls, than to take the trouble to flatter her a little and treat her the way she is begging to be treated."

So, if you want to keep your home life happy.

• Rule 6 is: Be courteous.

Dr Katherine Bement Davis, general secretary of the Bureau of Social Hygiene, once induced a thousand married women to reply very frankly to a set of intimate questions. The result was shocking-an incredibly shocking comment upon the sexual unhappiness of the average American adult. After perusing the answers she received from these thousand married women, Dr Davis published without hesitation her conviction that one of the chief causes of divorce in this country is physical mismating.

Dr G. V. Hamilton's survey verifies this finding. Dr Hamilton spent four years studying the marriages of one hundred men and one hundred women. He asked these men and women individually something like four hundred questions concerning their married lives, and discussed their problems exhaustively-so exhaustively that the whole investigation took four years. This work was considered so important sociologically that it was financed by a group of leading philanthropists. You can read the results of the experiment in What's Wrong with Marriage? by Dr G.V. Hamilton and Kenneth Macgowan.

Well, what is wrong with marriage? "It would take a very prejudiced and very reckless psychiatrist," says Dr Hamilton, "to say that most married friction doesn't find its source in sexual maladjustment. At any rate, the frictions which arise from other difficulties would be ignored in many, many cases if the sexual relation itself were satisfactory."

Dr Paul Popenoe, as head of the Institute of Family Relations in Los Angeles, has reviewed thousands of marriages and he is one of America's foremost authorities on home life. According to Dr Popenoe, failure in marriage is usually due to four causes. He lists them in this order: • 1. Sexual maladjustment. • 2. Difference of opinion as to the way of spending leisure time. • 3. Financial difficulties. • 4. Mental, physical, or emotional abnormalities.

Notice that sex comes first; and that, strangely enough, money difficulties come only third on the list.

All authorities on divorce agree upon the absolute necessity for sexual compatibility. For example, a few years ago Judge Hoffman of the Domestic Relations Court of Cincinnati-a man who has listened to thousands of domestic tragedies-announced: "Nine out of ten divorces are caused by sexual troubles."

"Sex," says the famous psychologist, John B. Watson, "is admittedly the most important subject in life. It is admittedly the thing which causes the most ship-wrecks in the happiness of men and women."

And I have heard a number of practicing physicians in speeches before my own classes say practically the same thing. Isn't it pitiful, then, that in the twentieth century, with all of our books and all of our education, marriages should be destroyed and lives wrecked by ignorance concerning this most primal and natural instinct?

The Rev. Oliver M. Butterfield after eighteen years as a Methodist minister gave up his pulpit to direct the Family Guidance Service in New York City, and he has probably married as many young people as any man living. He says:

"Early in my experience as a minister I discovered that, in spite of romance and good intentions, many couples who come to the marriage altar are matrimonial illiterates." Matrimonial illiterates!

And he continues: "When you consider that we leave the highly difficult adjustment of marriage so largely to chance, the marvel is that our divorce rate is only 16 per cent. An appalling number of husbands and wives are not really married but simply undivorced: they live in a sort of purgatory."

"Happy marriages," says Dr Butterfield, "are rarely the product of chance: they are architectural in that they are intelligently and deliberately planned."

To assist in this planning, Dr Butterfield has for years insisted that any couple he marries must discuss with him frankly their plans for the future. And it was as a result of these discussions that he came to the conclusion that so many of the high contracting parties were "matrimonial illiterates."

"Sex," says Dr Butterfield, "is but one of the many satisfactions in married life, but unless this relationship is right, nothing else can be right."

But how to get it right? "Sentimental reticence"-I'm still quoting Dr Butterfield-"must be replaced by an ability to discuss objectively and with detachment attitudes and practices of married life. There is no way in which this ability can be better acquired than through a book of sound learning and good taste. I keep on hand several of these books in addition to a supply of my own booklet, Marriage and Sexual Harmony.

"Of all the books that are available, the three that seem to me most satisfactory for general reading are: The Sex Technique in Marriage by Isabel E. Hutton; The Sexual Side of Marriage by Max Exner; The Sex Factor in Marriage by Helena Wright."

So,

• Rule 7 of "How to Make Your Home Life Happier" is: 'Read a good book on the sexual side of marriage.

Learn about sex from books? Why not? A few years ago, Columbia University, together with the American Social Hygiene Association, invited leading educators to come and discuss the sex and marriage problems of college students. At that conference, Dr Paul Popenoe said: "Divorce is on the decrease. And one of the reasons it is on the decrease is that people are reading more of the recognized books on sex and marriage."

So I sincerely feel that I have no right to complete a chapter on "How to Make Your Home Life Happier" without recommending a list of books that deal frankly and in a scientific manner with this tragic problem. • The Sex Side Of Life, by Mary Ware Dennett. An explanation for young people. Published by the author, 24-30 29th Street, Long Island City, New York. • The Sexual Side Of Marriage, by M.J. Exner, M.D. A sound and temperate presentation of the sexual problems of marriage. W.W.

Norton amp; Co., Inc., 70 Fifth Avenue, New York City. • Preparation For Marriage, by Kenneth Walker, M.D. A lucid exposition of marital problems. W.W. Norton amp; Co., Inc., 70 Fifth Avenue, New York City. • Married Love, by Marie C. Slopes. A frank discussion of marital relationships. G.P. Putman's Sons, 2 West 45th Street, New York City. • Sex In Marriage, by Ernest R. and Gladys H. Groves. An informative and comprehensive book. Emerson Books, Inc., 251 West 19th Street, New York City. • Preparation For Marriage, by Ernest R. Groves. Emerson Books, Inc., 251 West 19th Street, New York City. • The Married Woman, by Robert A. Ross, M.D., and Gladys H.