It is pretty hard to accept, but I might as well admit it. It is what I face when I wake up with the warm morning sunlight moving across my walls until I bury away my last thought in the darkness of each night. This unhappiness has deadened my once smiling blue eyes and this frustration has painted a frown upon my young face. A weariness will hang over my body like iron until the day all the memories are thrown in a box and sealed away with time. It is what I had to teach myself and what I want you to learn from me. But, people don’t want to learn from me just as I didn’t want to learn from others. I could so easily cry for those who have to teach themselves. You never forget. Sometimes you never forgive yourself.

The problem I have to share is that . . . that I happen to be one caught in the high percentage of unhappy marriages. Perhaps you expected my problem to be of another kind. Perhaps you have heard so much about failing marriages that it really doesn’t strike you. Yet, it remains to be such a horrible tragedy. Somehow all the words in the world would not do justice to describing the pain.

You know, marriage is not what so many seem to think it is. It is not as simple as society seems to make it. Today the young marriages contribute greatly to the increase in divorce rate. The age of many of our marriages today are in the teenage years, resulting in a rapid discovery of the incap­ability to accept the responsibility that is involved. Unfortunately, they find in them­selves a lack of knowledge and understand­ing of love. They disappoint themselves in realizing that the concept of love involves more than the sexual attraction. They find that they need more than sex to attract them in order for them to be satisfied. The large mistake is that people do not dis­tinguish a difference among attraction, re­spect and love. Certainly love requires at­traction and respect but, marital love can­not exist as one of these alone.

Another serious problem within the many marriages of today is the forced marriage. Some feel that marriage is the best possibility for the future child involved but, really it becomes nothing but a loss when he is brought up in an environment that is un­happy, fighting, and constantly tense. Others feel that pregnancy is the only way in which parents will allow their marriage, either because their parents do not feel they are old enough or because they do not like the mate their child chooses. Interestingly enough, a survey indicates that ninety per­cent of such marriages complete themselves in a divorce.

Marriage is also used as a means to es­cape. Some use it to escape from school, some from emotional problems, and some from a feeling of bitterness towards their parents. Others escape with the false belief that marriage will solve their problems. Of course, this is not necessarily true.

Another problem related with the failing marriage is the lack of understanding and forgiveness between the partners. This may go back to the length of time in which a couple goes together before they do marry. It requires time to discover the social back­ground of each, their emotional stability, their goals, religion, beliefs, and values. It also takes time to discover their educational background and time for the honesty that is shared with each other. So many people underestimate the importance of this for a successful marriage.

A final cause of ruined marriages arise from an insufficient understanding of the responsibility involved in marriage and from false ideal concepts of marriage. Evidently enough, these false ideas can come from the kind of environment in which an in­dividual is brought up. If the parents are not living a married life the way in which they should, how can you expect their children to walk into marriage and own a fair understanding of what kind of meaning marriage should hold. Marriage does not hold the same life that dating does. Mar­riage lays on every individual responsibilities of rearing children, living with sickness, and coping with setbacks. If one is not ready for such responsibilities he should be willing to wait.

Marriage should not be a state of unhap­piness, but marriage should hold a vision of a more perfect happiness. Yet, percent­age wise more end fooling themselves than those who succeed. Somehow fact proves that the idea of happiness in marriage has become very distorted. To me a happy marriage is the most beautiful and precious picture that one will ever see.

In no way can the happiness of watching stars puncture the night sky, or seeing the yellow sunshine brighten up the whole world, or feeling a summer rain against your face ever, ever replace the missed happiness of sharing a life.