Page:The Truth about Marriage.djvu/83

, the national background, the family background? Would they understand each other?

Then there is the question of previous environment. What kind of early surroundings have influenced the young man or the young woman? Socially, educationally, culturally, religiously?

If you do not belong to a similar social stratum so that you will be mutually at home in your surroundings, if you do not have approximately the same degree of education so that you will understand the other's background of knowledge, if you do not have about the same degree of culture, if you do not have the same religion, or one near enough for you to agree in your religious beliefs, your marriage will be apt to go on the rocks.

Then there is the question of personal reaction. By personal reaction I refer to the way one acts because of his inherited background and his early environment and training. You may be of the same race and nationality and social stratum and education and culture and religion, and yet be thousands of miles apart on everything that makes for mutual happiness.

Here we are treating of what is after all actual character, our way of reacting to life and its situations.

You want to avoid selfishness, coldness, hardness, cruelty, roughness, brutality, bad temper, nagging