That's some fine reading, Mrs. Peale!

I have been reading an interesting book again lately...something I read many years ago. It's called the Adventure of Being a Wife. A book that Ruth Vincent Peale dedicated to her husband, Norman.

Now in this day and age... this book has all but disappeared off the library shelves. A book published in 1971...when I was a mere child of 8 years old. The notion of marriage being an "adventure"...a wife dedicating her life career to her husband during an era of women's liberation? How absurd!

Mrs. Peale held the opinion that,

..." marriage was the greatest career a woman could have...a woman might have other stimulating and important jobs, but none was so difficult and demanding , so exciting and potentially rewarding as the job of living with a man, studying him, supporting him, liberating his strengths, compensating for his weaknesses, making his whole mechanism soar and sing the way it was designed to do."

When challenged by a young woman saying modern marriage is a fraud and a mockery, Mrs. Peale responded,

"I consider myself one of the most fortunate women alive. Why? Because I am totally married to a man in every sense of the word: physically, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually. I need him and depend on him completely. He completely needs and depends on me. We're not two lonely, competing individuals. We're one integrated, mutually responsive, mutually supportive organism...It's the greatest of all adventures, but you'll never know it...if you maintain the attitudes and the code of conduct you've adopted."

The young woman responded, "Why can't a man-woman relationship be just as meaningful outside of marriage as in it?"

..." because it doesn't have the key ingredients. It doesn't have the commitment. It doesn't have the permanence. It can never achieve the depth that comes from total sharing, from working together toward common goals year after year, from knowing tht you're playing the game for keeps. Do you think my husband and I have acheived the relationship we have just by thinking happy thoughts or by waving a wand? Don't be absurd! We fought for this relationship! We hammered it out on the anvil of joy and sorrow, of pain and problems-yes, at time of discouragement and disagreement...we never thought of marriage as a trap...we thought of it as a privelege."

Wow. that's some pretty heavy stuff, Mrs. Peale.

I wonder how many women these days look upon marriage as an "adventure"?


I'm just sayin'...

So from this day forward, we are starting an adventure... Thank you for the incredible insight, Ruth!