By CHARLES M. GUTHRIEof the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
April 21, 1956
A PET conviction of the match-makers is that both parties to the marriage contract must have much in common to be happy. If you discover that you and Prudence don't have similar tastes and temperaments, you had better back out of the deal as gracefully as possible before the clergy makes it binding, else there will be the devil to pay.
Believe this if you will, but I refuse to buy the whole package. Although you would start with two strikes on you if you and your lady had no mutual interests, you can get along passing well if you see eye-to-eye in a mere 50 percent of the area.
THIS does not mean, as the slide-rule boys might have you suspect, that you and Prudence are on speaking terms only half the time. It does not mean that your marriage must be temporary. If it did, divorce would be more the rule than the exception.
If, before you and your beloved felt you could decide that you were meant for each other you had to compare likes and dislikes and undergo a psychiatric check, you'd probably retreat into permanent bachelorhood.
As I get it, a fellow marries a girl because he loves her and even his prior knowledge that she is crazy about Liberace and green onions will not dissuade him.
The chatterbox, I'm sure, makes a better go of marriage if he or she weds someone who doesn't always have something to say. And the hot-head would do well to exchange vows with his opposite, a person of tolerance and restraint.
I HAVE been mulling over the things my wife and I don't have in common and have toted up quite a formidable list. They are little things, perhaps, but even little things can grow with the years. In the face of these divergent tastes, traits and opinions, however, and maybe in defiance of the psychological percentages, we have muddled through without benefit of expert counsel or apparent need of it.
This despite the fact that milady likes cocoa for breakfast and I can take it only to arrest starvation. This despite the fact that she likes cake and I prefer pie, that she cannot stand milk while I love the stuff, and that she sips coffee only under social duress while for me it is as vital as air.
THERE ARE other differences. Football is my wife's favorite sport and baseball is mine. I doubt that she can tell the difference between the split-T and the single-wing but she can name the teams in the Big Ten and knows there are 11 men on a side.She does not know what the World Series is all about and she might even suspect that the National league is on the attorney general's list of subversive organizations. As a consequence relations get a bit strained about this time of year, when I am glued to a ball game and she is making pointed references to the sad state of the yard.
I like western movies and she likes the song and dance variety. I coaxed her to the cinema a couple of years ago only to have her sleep like a baby through "High Noon." I could not find it in my heart to blame her much, being stirred only slightly myself. Had I known, however, that Grace Kelly was destined to become the princess of Monaco, the Duchess of Valentinois, the Marquise of Baux and such I'd be flapping yet, no doubt. I was wheedled into attending "An American in Paris" and, because merciful sleep would not come, sat through the long dance sequences blanketed in boredom.BUT WE are as one in many ways. Neither of us can get to bed at a civilized hour. We both love fried chicken and corn on the cob, we both play horrible bridge and are indifferent to television, and neither of us chews gum in church.
In the big things we are highly compatible. And that, I confess, is a help.
