Louis Roney: Love and Marriage

This morning I heard a radio voice asking the question: “Do you have a good marriage?”

The question made me wonder …

When I was a small kid, movie stars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks were celebrated as “America’s sweethearts “ — the perfect couple! They were “the cat’s pajamas.” They were both good looking, they lived in a splendid Hollywood mansion, and were always smiling when they got out of their limousine to attend movie premieres. My impressionable era was knocked flat on its rompers when the news came out that Doug and Mary, “the perfect marriage,” was not perfect after all, and they were going their separate ways.

Just as is it takes two to tango, it takes two to be married — and perhaps a rare two to prove that marriage is “workable.” A good marriage is not like a good prizefight where one contestant pummels the other into total submission — a K.O., that is. A good marriage may seem dull to outsiders who are not parties to the many varied utterances and happenings that go on behind closed doors where the main drama of the marriage story is played.

To the saying, “opposites attract,” my answer is: “attract what?” My b.w. and I are both professional musicians, but you’d be surprised how seldom we talk about music. I know that b.w. loves Mozart as I do, but I don’t need to remind her of it any more than I do that we both drink coffee for breakfast. If I held her down and poured coffee into her mouth, I think it would disturb our marital bliss.

The question of education in marriage seems to me to be quite simple: Both partners should be about equally educated in something or other, and/or have considerable interest in what interests the other. Temperament is a big item in the requisites for a good marriage. Temperament is the thing that determines whether a man and woman can stand to be with each other for long. Married couples must like each other as well as love each other. I highly recommend that they find this out before they buy their bungalow. We all know lots of people who are nice to be with — for a while — that is. But how many could we hook up with for extended periods, when the evolving realities of “the long haul” collide with the ventilator?

The fact of marriage itself may be simply a humanly created affair. Certainly, marriage of human dimensions is not necessarily the rule throughout the animal kingdom. The human family, with Mom, Pop and the kids, is more likely a development of sociology than of “biological doings in the forest primeval.”

American architect Louis Sullivan’s “form follows function” applies eerily as well to sociological constructs, as to buildings. In a day when one hears all too often of children whose parents are not married, one who came from traditionally moral antecedents is nevertheless shocked despite himself. However, children floating around in parentless childhoods may soon be the larger percentage of our youthful population. Those of us who were blessed with married parents dedicated to raising children are fortunate indeed, and may now belong to a sadly dwindling minority.

Is marriage as we have historically known it disappearing? And is a formless sexual anarchy superseding it?

What that state might be called is your guess as good as mine …

About Roney: Harvard’42—Distinguished Prof, Em.—UCF 2004 Fla. Alliance for the Arts award (Assisted by beautiful wife Joy Roney)