When you love a man, don’t spoil everything by marrying him
From "I do" to "I don't"
Speaking as an old married man (ten days!), I think the main question about marriage is not so much whether you are in love with each other as whether you have the essential points in common which enable you to live with each other without getting on each other’s nerves.
P. G. Wodehouse
Letter to Leslie Bradshaw
10th October 1914
—P. G. Wodehouse: A Life in Letters
I really feel I am one of those women whose marriage is the central experience of life, much more crucial than a religion or career or anything: and I have found the only perfect husband for me & so can write & work & do all the rest from a solid happy center.
Sylvia Plath
Letter to her mother
7th May 1957
—The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Vol 2
Marriage is a nest of small scorpions, but it kills the big dragons.
Ted Hughes
Letter to Daniel Weissbort
Autumn 1961
—Letters of Ted Hughes
I really think marriage is a rotten institution and when you love a man, don’t spoil everything by marrying him.
Simone de Beauvoir
Letter to Nelson Algren
22nd December 1947
—A Transatlantic Love Affair: Letters to Nelson Algren
Having experienced the failure of my first marriage it’s good to know that you’re happily remarried. Perhaps failed first marriages are actually rites of passage through which young males and females prepare and become inured for the stresses and the pleasures and pains of matrimony. But of one thing I’m sure: After living with Fanny for some forty-seven years I’ve never regretted that my first marriage went sour.
Ralph Ellison
Letter to Willie Morris
16th June 1993
—The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison
In marriage, the point is not to achieve a rapid union by tearing down and toppling all boundaries. Rather, in a good marriage each person appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude and thus shows him the greatest faith he can bestow. The being-together of two human beings is an impossibility; where it nonetheless seems to be present it is a limitation, a mutual agreement that robs one or both parts of their fullest freedom and development. Yet once it is recognized that even among the closest people there remain infinite distances, a wonderful coexistence can develop once they succeed in loving the vastness between them that affords them the possibility of seeing each other in their full gestalt before a vast sky!
Rainer Maria Rilke
Letter to Emanuel von Bodman
17th August17 1901
—Rilke’s Letters on Life
Never forget that a marriage is in one way very much like a newspaper. It has to be made fresh every damn day of every damn year.
Raymond Chandler
Letter to Neil Morgan
18th November 1955
—Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler
I did want to say darling, that I know what a great decision you have to make fairly soon, & to beg you to look at it from every angle, and to be quite sure that you don’t marry somebody because you are sorry for them. Marriage is such a momentous step and so intimate, and it is far, far better to be a little cruel & say ‘no’ to marriage unless you are quite quite sure.
Some people make wonderful friends & confidants, & not such successful husbands and there is so much giving in a happy marriage, & sometimes real sacrifice, & it must be on both sides.
Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother
Letter Princess Margaret1
11th October 1955
—Counting One’s Blessings: The Selected Letters of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother
I have given the art and practice of marriage much thought, and have observed many good and bad ones, and have been married three times myself, legally. I think it demands the capacity to endure, surmount, cope with, fight for a shared and continuous intimacy, and that is something few people can accept. Colette wrote of what she called ‘conjugal courtesy’ as one of the prime requirements of this state, and I think that too is something few people consider when they enter into almost any kind of intimate partnership. And I honestly think that I am too old to try to establish this courtesy, this intimacy. It demands much more than there is left in me of vigour and freshness and physical passion. It also demands great skill and patience, and I am increasingly short on both.
M. F. K. Fisher
Letter to Marietta Voorhees
17th June 1973
—M. F. K. Fisher: A Life in Letters
My only trouble is John. He ought to divorce me, marry a really gay young healthy creature, have children and ask me to be godmother. He needs a wife beyond everything. I shall never be a wife and I feel such a fraud when he still believes that one day I shall turn into one. Poor John!
Katherine Mansfield
Letter to Elizabeth Russell
5th June 1922
—The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume 5
The day is overcast. It looks like snow. My marriage is in the dumps. I drink vodka for breakfast.
John Cheever
Letter to Tanya
15th January 1972
—The Letters of John Cheever
It’s been a rough 2 years. I still don’t know whether I did the right thing, but it’s done and that’s that. I couldn’t take marriage any longer; I don’t like the alternative at all but at least there's nobody telling me yesterday’s sins every morning, when I goof it’s my fault, when I succeed it’s my own too.
Marian Engel
Letter to Pauline McGibbon
10th January 1976
—Marian Engel: A Life in Letters
I have never been without your love, and because of it we are now so firmly linked after twenty-five years. Karl, my dear, thank you. I have so rarely told you in words what you have been and are to me. Today I want to do so, this once. I thank you for all you have given me out of your love and kindness. The tree of our marriage has grown slowly, somewhat crookedly, often with difficulty. But it has not perished. The slender seedling has become a tree after all, and it is healthy at the core. It bore two lovely, supremely beautiful fruits.
Käthe Kollwitz
Letter to her husband of 25 years, Karl
June 1916
—The Diary and Letters of Käthe Kollwitz
I am permanently damaged by the break-up of marriage. Those wounds will never heal.
Kurt Vonnegut
Letter to his daughter, Nanette
29th April 1977
—Kurt Vonnegut: Letters
It seems to me I had better get divorced [from Ernest Hemingway]. There is no one to marry, and if God has any benevolence for me he will spare me further horrid errors of the heart, when one tries to make permanence. I wish only to be unmarried; it seems neater. I am so free that the atom cannot be freer, I am free like nothing quite bearable, like sound waves and light. But I think it disorderly to be so free and officially, legally, attached.
Martha Gellhorn
Letter to Allen Grover
2nd November 1944
—Selected Letters of Martha Gellhorn
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Weeks later, after much intense speculation, Princess Margaret publicly announced that she would not be marrying Peter Townsend.
this was a beautifully curated strand.
Dear Shaun,
How brave of you, considering your exploration on the subject. Bravo and best of luck!
I wonder about Sylvia. It seems she was hoodwinked by the society of the time. Poor girl.
And what a tragedy for Princess Margaret. I always felt sorry for her.
I’m relieved none of my husbands had such high expectations as some of these guys.