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“I really was very much in love with him and only just at the end of the engagement did I notice how hard he blew his nose. After we were married, I thought: ‘Oh! don’t be so silly and notice such little things, he’s such a splendid fellow.’ A little later–‘Oh! I do wish he wouldn’t blow his nose like that, it drives me mad.’ Now I find myself listening and telling myself with an awful feeling of doom: ‘He’s going to blow his nose!'”

(She never tells him that he trumpets like an elephant. She fears to offend him. She prefers to stand there, exasperated and chafed. One day he will trumpet down the walls of her Jericho.)

There are awful little things between two people. Here are some of them:

M 43. When tired, the wife has a peculiar yawn, roughly: “Hoo-hoo! Hoo-hoo!” The husband hears it coming, and something curls within him.

M 98. Every morning in his bath the husband sings: “There is a fountain fill’d with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins,” always the same.

M 124. The wife buys shoes a quarter size too small and always slips them off under the table at dinner. Then she loses them and develops great agitation. This fills her husband with an unaccountable rage.

M 68. The wife is afflicted with the cliche habit and can generally sum up a situation by phrases such as: “All is not gold that glitters.” Or, “Such is life.” Or, “Well, well, it’s a weary world.” The husband can hear them coming.

There are scores of these little cruel things which wear away love as surely as trickling water will wear away a stone. (Observe how contagious cliches are!) The dilemma is horrible; if the offended party speaks out, he or she may speak out much too forcibly and raise this sort of train of thought: “He didn’t seem to mind when we were engaged. He loved me then, and little things didn’t matter. He doesn’t love me now. I wonder whether he is in love with some one else. Oh! I’m so unhappy.” If, on the other hand, one does not speak out forcibly, or does not speak at all, the offender goes on doing it for the rest of his or her life, and there is nothing to do except to wait until one has got used to it and has ceased to care. But by that time one has generally ceased to care for the offender.

There are ideal marriages where both parties aim at perfection and are willing to accept mutual criticism. But there is something a little callous in this form of self-improvement society. People who are too much together are always making notes, adding up in their hearts bitter little adverse balances with which they will one day confront the fallen lover. Some slight offense will bring up the bill of arrears. A quarrel about a forgotten ticket will give life to the cruel thing he said seven years before about her mother’s bonnets, or her sudden dismissal of the cook, or the dreadful day when he sat on the eggs in the train. (Clumsy brute!) All these things pile up and pile up until they form a terrible, towering cairn made up of tiny stones, but of great total weight, just as an avalanche rests securely upon a crest until a whisper releases it. Nearly all marriages are in a state of permanent mobilization. There is only one thing to do, to remember all the time that one could not hope to meet one quite great enough to be one’s mate, and that this is the best the world can do. The thought that nobody can quite understand one or quite appreciate one arouses a delicious sorrow and an enormous pride.

Too much together is bad, and too much apart may be worse. As I suggested before, there is no pleasing this institution.