Personalities Change after Marriage. -- Let us assume that the
machinery of mate-finding is already perfected; that each person who
desires marriage can easily find a person of opposite sex to whom his
personality can make an adjustment as satisfactory as the happier
50 per cent of couples now achieve. Are the emotional problems of
marriage thereby solved? Can we now expect the great majority of
couples to live happily "ever after"?

To assume that scientific pairing would thus eliminate the major
difficulties is to ignore the ceaseless tendency of personalities to
change. Psychologists have said so much about the early childhood
foundations of personality and the difficulties of changing habits
after maturity, that we have overlooked the important types of
changes which do occur in adult life.

Marriage Is Essentially a Triali. -- Easier divorce really implies
the principle of trial marriage. This phrase carries a shocking sound
to conservative ears. However, it is one thing to advocate this princi-
ple; another to point out that it already exists. One out of every six
marriages in the United States is a trial marriage ending in such
failure that its termination is officially pronounced by a judge. We
cannot say how many more fail in reality without being juridically
liquidated.

Even with seemingly well-adjusted couples who marry with due
forethought there are many failures. Whether the law or the church
declares it indissoluble or not, marriage is essentially a trial. The
science of human relations has not yet arrived at the point where the
trial and error process can be fully dispensed with through correct
judgment at the outset.

There are many who think that the solution of the marriage prob-
lem lies in a frank recognition of the necessity of this trial and error
more than it does in efforts to sift the unwise from the wise marriages
in advance. They claim that, barring a negligible minority of obvi-
ously misguided matings, the only test of the adaptability of a couple

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