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How To Win Friends And Influence PeopleButterfield 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 ...» |
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