Proposing Husband Quotes

An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.

Yes, faith; it is my cousin's duty to make curtsy and say 'Father, as it please you.' But yet for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another curtsy and say 'Father, as it please me.

Some people will hate you for not loving them.

Marriage is not kick-boxing, it's salsa dancing.

Some people each left their spouse or lover because he or she was no longer the primary source of their happiness; some, because their spouse or lover was, at that time, the primary source of their unhappiness.

I once knew an Episcopalian lady in Newport, Rhode Island who asked me to design and build a doghouse for her Great Dane. The lady claimed to understand God and His Ways of Working perfectly. She could not understand why anyone should be puzzled about what had been or about what was going to be. And yet, when I showed her a blueprint of the doghouse I proposed to build, she said to me, "I'm sorry, but I never could read one of those things." Give it to your husband or your minister to pass on to God," I said, "and, when God finds a minute, I'm sure he'll explain this doghouse of mine in a way that even YOU can understand.

My mother read it when she was a teenager," Henry said, picking a piece of lint off his lap. "To Kill a Mockingbird. The day she accepted my father's proposal, she gave him a copy and told him that Atticus Finch is the kind of father she wants her husband to be.

We're getting married as soon as possible,' he said. 'Is that what you call a proposal?' 'I'm not much of a romantic, honey, but you already know that. And I won't be much of a bargain as a husband, but I have a feeling you'll whip me into shape without too much trouble. Heck, by the time we have kids, I'll probably be downright domesticated.

Being divorced does not necessarily make one’s advice on marriage useless … or useful.

Sounds to me you just haven’t found the right man, is all,” Sage proposed. “When the time comes, it will be when you least expect it. My late husband died three years ago, and Nick and Niki came into my life unexpectedly. My husband ran a background check on me before we met, which was understandable. He had been through a messy divorce. He tried to stay away from me but couldn’t. I’m blessed to have them, including this bundle of joy,” she shone with pleasure.

I do believe you think what now you speak, but what we do determine oft we break. Purpose is but the slave to memory, of violent birth, but poor validity, which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree, but fall, unshaken, when they mellow be. Most unnecessary 'tis that we forget to pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt. What to ourselves in passion we propose, the passion ending, doth the purpose lose. The violence of either grief or joy their own enactures with themselves destroy. Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament. Grief joys, joy grieves on slender accident. This world is not for aye, nor 'tis not strange that even our loves should with our fortunes change. For 'tis a question left us yet to prove, whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love. The great man down, you mark his favorite flies. The poor advanced makes friends of enemies. And hitherto doth love on fortune tend, for who not needs shall never lack a friend, and who in want a hollow friend doth try, directly seasons him his enemy. But, orderly to end where I begun, our wills and fates do so contrary run that our devices still are overthrown. Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own. So think thou wilt no second husband wed, but die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead.

A good wife behaves like a disciple unto her husband

There are some things that honest, honorable people don’t do to the people they love. They don’t propose marriage on TV. They don’t bring home small cuddly animals without checking with their spouses first. And they don’t tell their ex-husband they love him in front of a crowd that includes their daughter and his current wife right before he goes off to almost certain death. It didn’t help that most of us could tell that she wasn’t lying.

The only person that should wear your ring is the one person that would never… 1. Ask you to remain silent and look the other way while they hurt another. 2. Jeopardize your future by taking risks that could potentially ruin your finances or reputation. 3. Teach your children that hurting others is okay because God loves them more. God didn’t ask you to keep your family together at the expense of doing evil to others. 4. Uses religious guilt to control you, while they are doing unreligious things. 5. Doesn't believe their actions have long lasting repercussions that could affect other people negatively. 6. Reminds you of your faults, but justifies their own. 7. Uses the kids to manipulate you into believing you are nothing. As if to suggest, you couldn’t leave the relationship and establish a better Christian marriage with someone that doesn’t do these things. Thus, making you believe God hates all the divorced people and will abandon you by not bringing someone better to your life, after you decide to leave. As if! 8. They humiliate you online and in their inner circle. They let their friends, family and world know your transgressions. 9. They tell you no marriage is perfect and you are not trying, yet they are the one that has stirred up more drama through their insecurities. 10. They say they are sorry, but they don’t show proof through restoring what they have done. 11. They don’t make you a better person because you are miserable. They have only made you a victim or a bitter survivor because of their need for control over you. 12. Their version of success comes at the cost of stepping on others. 13. They make your marriage a public event, in order for you to prove your love online for them. 14. They lie, but their lies are often justified. 15. You constantly have to start over and over and over with them, as if a connection could be grown and love restored through a honeymoon phase, or constant parental supervision of one another’s down falls. 16. They tell you that they don’t care about anyone other than who they love. However, their actions don’t show they love you, rather their love has become bitter insecurity disguised in statements such as, “Look what I did for us. This is how much I care.” 17. They tell you who you can interact with and who you can’t. 18. They believe the outside world is to blame for their unhappiness. 19. They brought you to a point of improvement, but no longer have your respect. 20. They don't make you feel anything, but regret. You know in your heart you settled.

(Response to King Erik XIV of Sweden's proposal of marriage:) "[W]hile we perceive ... the zeal and love of your mind towards us is not diminished, yet in part we are grieved that we cannot gratify your Serene Highness with the same kind of affection. And that indeed does not happen because we doubt in any way of your love and honour, but, as often we have testified both in words and writing, that we have never yet conceived a feeling of that kind of affection towards anyone. We therefore beg your Serene Highness again and again that you be pleased to set a limit to your love, that it advance not beyond the laws of friendship for the present nor disregard them in the future. ... We certainly think that if God ever direct our hearts to consideration of marriage we shall never accept or choose any absent husband how powerful and wealthy a Prince soever. But that we are not to give you an answer until we have seen your person is so far from the thing itself that we never even considered such a thing. I have always given both to your brother ... and also to your ambassador likewise the same answer with scarcely any variation of the words, that we do not conceive in our heart to take a husband but highly commend this single life, and hope that your Serene Highness will no longer spend time in waiting for us.

Many a woman is in a relationship with or married to her man not because she loves him but only because she likes men like him.

You are not by any manner of means the sort of woman I am in search of as a wife, and I am in a totally different universe from the husband you hope to find. But I feel a powerful urge to kiss you, for all that.

I want you with me, my dearest. Not just as a friend, though also as that. I want you as my wife. I want to know that we share our lives and cares, we share our health and ill, and we share our happiness and sorrow.

Ciro had made a bet in proposing to her, and on that same day, Enza made a bet of her own. She was putting all her money, effort and future into a partnership that she believed could not fail. She was going to pour all of herself into her marriage: love would sustain them, and trust would see them through. That was her belief, and that's how she was raised. When she spun the gold ring on her finger, it was as though it was made for her, but it meant even more that her husband had worn it since he was a boy. She was a part of his history now.

To him, she was one of the few girls who was nice to him, the stodgy son of a poor alcoholic shoemaker with such little status that he seemed unlikely to even get one wife, let alone the three or more that designated a man of standing.

In my day, husbands and wives showed each other a suitable level of indifference.

Submission to the husband is an opportunity given to the married woman to express the love to her husband.

My dearest Miss Farthing, will you do me the unutterable honor of wearing this cheap bit of metal that will most likely turn your finger green, pretending to love and honor me as your husband for the purposes of subterfuge and stratagem?

A woman must find a husband, otherwise she is at the mercy of the world. If she waits for love and it never arrives, what is to become of her? I consented to Edward's proposal because he wanted me, and it was quite possible no other man would.

I, Sebastian Athanos Algardis, accept your proposal of marriage, Ciardis Weathervane of the Weathervane family and the Companions’ Guild. In return, I submit to you my proposal to be your husband as well as your patron before the Companions’ Guild.

Reader’s Digest ran articles by Carrel advising women that a “husband should not be induced by an oversexed wife to perform a sexual act,” since sex drained the mind. In his best-selling book, Man, the Unknown, he proposed fixing what he believed was “an error” in the U.S. Constitution that promised equality for all people. “The feebleminded and the man of genius should not be equal before the law,” he wrote. “The stupid, the unintelligent, those who are dispersed, incapable of attention, of effort, have no right to a higher education.

Everybody must pity Desdemona, but I cannot bring myself to like her. Her determination to marry Othello – it was she who virtually did the proposing – seems the romantic crush of a silly schoolgirl rather than a mature affection; it is Othello’s adventures, so unlike the civilian life she knows, which captivate her rather than Othello as a person. He may not have practiced witchcraft, but, in fact, she is spellbound. Then, she seems more aware than is agreeable of the honor she has done Othello by becoming his wife. […] Before Cassio speaks to her, she has already discussed him with her husband and learned that he is to be reinstated as soon as it is opportune. A sensible wife would have told Cassio this and left matters alone. In continuing to badger Othello, she betrays a desire to prove to herself and to Cassio that she can make her husband do as she pleases. […] Though her relationship with Cassio is perfectly innocent, one cannot but share Iago’s doubts as to the durability of the marriage. It is worth noting that, in the willow-song scene with Emilia, she speaks with admiration of Ludovico and then turns to the topic of adultery. Of course, she discusses this in general terms and is shocked by Emilia’s attitude, but she does discuss the subject and she does listen to what Emilia has to say about husbands and wives. It is as if she had suddenly realized that she had made a mésalliance and that the sort of man she ought to have married was someone of her own class and color like Ludovico. Given a few more years of Othello and of Emilia’s influence and she might well, one feels, have taken a lover.

Do I think I made a mistake in getting engaged? Yes. Obviously, considering it didn’t last. Do I regret it? Yes. I regret the fact that I will never get that first proposal back; that moment won’t go to my husband, but rather will always belong to my ex. But, I’ve never believed in living life free of regrets, it’s too much pressure. In fact, I regret plenty of things: the terrible bangs I had in third grade, the hideous sequined corset I wore to the prom—hell, I regret what I wore last weekend. Regrets are mistakes that we learn from. They don’t dictate the rest of our lives, they’re just little glitches, and impulsive choices we made in the moment. But it’s just that, a moment and the moment eventually passes.

Discussions of the effects of serial publication of Victorian novels on their authors and readers1 usually draw attention to the author's peculiar opportunities for cliff-hanging suspense, as, for instance, when Thackeray has Becky Sharp counter old Sir Pitt's marriage proposal at the end of Vanity Fair's fourth number with the revelation that she is already married, and the reader must wait a month before the husband's identity is revealed. Or it may be pointed out how the author can modify his story in response to his readers' complaints or recommendations, as when Trollope records in his Autobiography how he wrote Mrs Proudie out of the Barchester Chronicles after overhearing two clergymen in the Athenaeum complaining of his habit of reintroducing the same characters in his fiction.

The murder was debated in the media, and different theories were espoused in print and on the radio and on morning chat shows. Experts were brought in to explain, condemn, justify Alicia’s actions. She must have been a victim of domestic abuse, surely, pushed too far, before finally exploding? Another theory proposed a sex game gone wrong—the husband was found tied up, wasn’t he? Some suspected it was old-fashioned jealousy that drove Alicia to murder—another woman, probably? But at the trial Gabriel was described by his brother as a devoted husband, deeply in love with his wife. Well, what about money? Alicia didn’t stand to gain much by his death; she was the one who had money, inherited from her father. And so it went on, endless speculation—no answers, only more questions—about Alicia’s motives and her subsequent silence.

Everyone fails, Lyudmila. I’ve failed. My husband has failed—you think all his New Deal proposals were dazzling successes? He has proposed initiatives that have fallen flat; he has espoused positions for which he has rightly been condemned; he has hosts of enemies who would happily see him dead.” A shadow crossed her face at that. “He has failed at more than most men ever try … but better that than not to try at all.

That summer, in a small house near the beach, he began to write a book. He knew it would be the last thing he ever did, so he decided to write something advocating a crazy, preposterous idea—one so outlandish that nobody had ever written a book about it before. He was going to propose that gay people should be allowed to get married, just like straight people. He thought this would be the only way to free gay people from the self-hatred and shame that had trapped Andrew himself. It’s too late for me, he thought, but maybe it will help the people who come after me. When the book—Virtually Normal—came out a year later, Patrick died when it had only been in the bookstores for a few days, and Andrew was widely ridiculed for suggesting something so absurd as gay marriage. Andrew was attacked not just by right-wingers, but by many gay left-wingers, who said he was a sellout, a wannabe heterosexual, a freak, for believing in marriage. A group called the Lesbian Avengers turned up to protest at his events with his face in the crosshairs of a gun. Andrew looked out at the crowd and despaired. This mad idea—his last gesture before dying—was clearly going to come to nothing. When I hear people saying that the changes we need to make in order to deal with depression and anxiety can’t happen, I imagine going back in time, to the summer of 1993, to that beach house in Provincetown, and telling Andrew something: Okay, Andrew, you’re not going to believe me, but this is what’s going to happen next. Twenty-five years from now, you’ll be alive. I know; it’s amazing; but wait—that’s not the best part. This book you’ve written—it’s going to spark a movement. And this book—it’s going to be quoted in a key Supreme Court ruling declaring marriage equality for gay people. And I’m going to be with you and your future husband the day after you receive a letter from the president of the United States telling you that this fight for gay marriage that you started has succeeded in part because of you. He’s going to light up the White House like the rainbow flag that day. He’s going to invite you to have dinner there, to thank you for what you’ve done. Oh, and by the way—that president? He’s going to be black.

In Bangladesh, if a woman, even a rich woman, wants to borrow money from a bank, the manager will ask her, ‘Did you discuss this with your husband?’ And if she answers, ‘Yes,’ the manager will say, ‘Is he supportive of your proposal?’ If the answer is still, ‘Yes,’ he will say, ‘Would you please bring your husband along so that we can discuss it with him?’ But no manager would ever ask a prospective male borrower whether he has discussed the idea of a loan

I once knew an Episcopalian lady in Newport, Rhode Island, who asked me to design and build a doghouse for her Great Dane. The lady claimed to understand God and His Ways of Working perfectly. She could not understand why anyone should be puzzled about what had been or about what was going to be. And yet, when I showed her a blueprint of the doghouse I proposed to build, she said to me, “I’m sorry, but I never could read one of those things.” “Give it to your husband or your minister to pass on to God,” I said, “and, when God finds a minute, I’m sure he’ll explain this doghouse of mine in a way that even you can understand.” She fired me. I shall never forget her. She believed that God liked people in sailboats much better than He liked people in motorboats. She could not bear to look at a worm. When she saw a worm, she screamed. She was a fool, and so am I, and so is anyone who thinks he sees what God is Doing, [writes Bokonon].

They’ll hear about your husband’s fortune. The suitors will begin to gather, and I want you to promise me this. Whenever one of them proposes, as they will, Doris must say rapturously, ‘Oh, David! All my life I’ve wanted to live in Israel.’ When he hears that she intends to live there instead of bringing him to the United States, you’ll see his interest evaporate. I said evaporate. It vanishes.” He waved his hands violently back and forth across his face to indicate total abolishment.

I’m a twenty-six-year-old woman who has been married for nine months. My husband is forty. His wedding proposal was terribly romantic, like something out of a movie starring Audrey Hepburn. He is kind and funny. I do love him. And yet … He’s only the second person I’ve been in a serious relationship with. Throughout the wedding planning process I had second thoughts about settling down so young, but I didn’t want to hurt or embarrass him by calling off the wedding. There are so many experiences I fear I’ll miss out on by staying married to someone older. I want to apply for the

Entering the office, Evie found Sebastian and Cam on opposite sides of the desk. They both mulled over account ledgers, scratching out some entries with freshly inked pens, and making notations beside the long columns. Both men looked up as she crossed the threshold. Evie met Sebastian’s gaze only briefly; she found it hard to maintain her composure around him after the intimacy of the previous night. He paused in mid-sentence as he stared at her, seeming to forget what he had been saying to Cam. It seemed that neither of them was yet comfortable with feelings that were still too new and powerful. Murmuring good morning to them both, she bid them to remain seated, and she went to stand beside Sebastian’s chair. “Have you breakfasted yet, my lord?” she asked. Sebastian shook his head, a smile glinting in his eyes. “Not yet.” “I’ll go to the kitchen and see what is to be had.” “Stay a moment,” he urged. “We’re almost finished.” As the two men discussed a few last points of business, which pertained to a potential investment in a proposed shopping bazaar to be constructed on St. James Street, Sebastian picked up Evie’s hand, which was resting on the desk. Absently he drew the backs of her fingers against the edge of his jaw and his ear while contemplating the written proposal on the desk before him. Although Sebastian was not aware of what the casual familiarity of the gesture revealed, Evie felt her color rise as she met Cam’s gaze over her husband’s downbent head. The boy sent her a glance of mock reproof, like that of a nursemaid who had caught two children playing a kissing game, and he grinned as her blush heightened further. Oblivious to the byplay, Sebastian handed the proposal to Cam, who sobered instantly. “I don’t like the looks of this,” Sebastian commented. “It’s doubtful there will be enough business in the area to sustain an entire bazaar, especially at those rents. I suspect within a year it will turn into a white elephant.” “White elephant?” Evie asked. A new voice came from the doorway, belonging to Lord Westcliff. “A white elephant is a rare animal,” the earl replied, smiling, “that is not only expensive but difficult to maintain. Historically, when an ancient king wished to ruin someone he would gift him with a white elephant.” Stepping into the office, Westcliff bowed over Evie’s hand and spoke to Sebastian. “Your assessment of the proposed bazaar is correct, in my opinion. I was approached with the same investment opportunity not long ago, and I rejected it on the same grounds.” “No doubt we’ll both be proven wrong,” Sebastian said wryly. “One should never try to predict anything regarding women and their shopping.

For the first three years, it’s fun being a pro football player’s girlfriend.   “Marlee, let me see your hand! Did Chris propose yet?” Amber asks.   I’m in year ten.   “Still naked.” I wiggle my fingers in front of her the same way I did last week and the week before that . . . and the week before that. #HeDidntPutARingOnIt   Sometimes, I like to hashtag my life. #CheaperThanTherapy   I sip my margarita. “When it happens, I promise to let you know.” Or, you know, keep asking every time you see me.   “Marlee.” Courtney sighs. She stands at the head of the table clutching a glitter-coated gavel. “We made exceptions for you to join the Lady Mustangs. Try to acknowledge that and save your little side conversation until we’ve finished.”   “Sorry, Court.” Every time I call her Court, she strains her Botoxed forehead and glares in my direction, so obviously, it’s the only thing I call her. Well, sometimes I call her bitch, but she doesn’t know about that.   “As I was saying, the annual Lady Mustangs Fashion Show is in three weeks. Everyone must attend the next meeting so we can discuss the outfits for you and your husbands.”   I catch her eye again. She raises her chin, and her fat-injected lips form an actual smile.   “Oh, I’m sorry. In your case, Marlee, you and your boyfriend.”   See? What a bitch.   “Thanks for the clarification, Court, but I understood.

On one occasion, the principal sent me a message that a British girl would be sitting behind me, and that I should be helpful to her during the exam. Ironically, that girl had been sent back to Peshawar by expat parents for an arranged marriage. She was finding it hard to adjust to the conservative environment of Peshawar. The man she ended up marrying had put in a proposal to my family for me a year earlier. I had thought this man from Charsadda would not let me continue my education or have a career. Seeing him as a backward Pashtun, I had refused. A few years later, I bumped into the same girl. She had become a judge, and was madly in love with her rather progressive Pashtun husband, while I had found myself under lock-and-key in good old England.

Oh, Captain Aubrey,' cried she, 'I have a service to beg of you.' Mrs Fielding had but to command, said Jack, smiling at her with great affection; he was at her orders entirely - very happy - delighted - could not be more so. 'Why then,' she said, 'you know I am a little talkative - the dear Doctor has often said so, desiring me to peep down - but alas I am not at all writative, at least not in English. English spelling! Corpo di Baccho, English spelling! Now if I give you a dictation and you write it down in good English, I can use the words when I write to my husband.' 'Very well,' said Jack, his smile fading. It was just as he had feared: and he must have been quite mistaken about the signals. Mr Fielding was to understand that the excellent Captain Aubrey had saved Ponto from being drowned: Ponto now doted upon Captain Aubrey and ran up to him in the street. Wicked people therefore said that Captain Aubrey was Laura's lover. Should these rumours reach Mr Fielding he was to pay no attention. On the contrary. Captain Aubrey was an honourable man, who would scorn to insult a brother-officer's wife with dishonest proposals; indeed she had such confidence in his perfect rectitude that she could visit him without even the protection of a maid. Captain Aubrey knew very well that she would not ply the oar. 'Ply the oar, ma'am?' said Jack, looking up from his paper, his pen poised. 'Is it not right? I was so proud of it.' 'Oh yes,' said Jack. 'Only the word is spelt rather odd, you know,' and he wrote she would not play the whore very carefully, so that the letters could not be mistaken, smiling secretly as he did so, his frustration and disappointment entirely overcome by his sense of the ridiculous.

HOW DO THEY RECEIVE ME? They call me “little girl,” “dear daughter,” “dear child.” Probably if I was of their generation they would behave differently with me. Calmly and as equals. Without joy and amazement, which are the gifts of the meeting between youth and age. It is a very important point, that then they were young and now, as they remember, they are old. They remember across their life—across forty years. They open their world to me cautiously, to spare me: “I got married right after the war. I hid behind my husband. Behind the humdrum, behind baby diapers. I wanted to hide. My mother also begged: ‘Be quiet! Be quiet! Don’t tell.’ I fulfilled my duty to the Motherland, but it makes me sad that I was there. That I know about it…And you are very young. I feel sorry for you…” I often see how they sit and listen to themselves. To the sound of their own soul. They check it against the words. After long years a person understands that this was life, but now it’s time to resign yourself and get ready to go. You don’t want to, and it’s too bad to vanish just like that. Casually. In passing. And when you look back you feel a wish not only to tell about your life, but also to fathom the mystery of life itself. To answer your own question: Why did all this happen to me? You gaze at everything with a parting and slightly sorrowful look…Almost from the other side…No longer any need to deceive anyone or yourself. It’s already clear to you that without the thought of death it is impossible to make out anything in a human being. Its mystery hangs over everything. War is an all too intimate experience. And as boundless as human life… Once a woman (a pilot) refused to meet with me. She explained on the phone: “I can’t…I don’t want to remember. I spent three years at war…And for three years I didn’t feel myself a woman. My organism was dead. I had no periods, almost no woman’s desires. And I was beautiful…When my future husband proposed to me…that was already in Berlin, by the Reichstag…He said: ‘The war’s over. We’re still alive. We’re lucky. Let’s get married.’ I wanted to cry. To shout. To hit him! What do you mean, married? Now? In the midst of all this—married? In the midst of black soot and black bricks…Look at me…Look how I am! Begin by making me a woman: give me flowers, court me, say beautiful words. I want it so much! I wait for it! I almost hit him…I was about to…He had one cheek burned, purple, and I see: he understood everything, tears are running down that cheek. On the still-fresh scars…And I myself can’t believe I’m saying to him: ‘Yes, I’ll marry you.’ “Forgive me…I can’t…” I understood her.

I went to Lila’s house in search of comfort. But I knew I had made a mistake with her, too. I had done something stupid: I hadn’t told her about going with Stefano to get the photograph. Why had I been silent? Was I pleased with the role of peacemaker that her husband had proposed and did I think I could exercise it better by being silent about the visit to the Rettifilo? Had I been afraid of betraying Stefano’s confidence and as a result, without realizing it, betrayed her? I didn’t know. Certainly it hadn’t been a real decision: rather, an uncertainty that first became a feigned carelessness, then the conviction that not having said right away what had happened made remedying the situation complicated and perhaps vain. How easy it was to do wrong. I sought excuses that might seem convincing to her, but I wasn’t able to make them even to myself. I sensed that the foundations of my behavior were flawed, I was silent. On

As England moves toward redefining marriage,” the Daily Telegraph reports, “the word ‘husband’ will in future be applied to women and the word ‘wife’ will refer to men, the Government has decided.” According to John Bingham, “Civil servants have overruled the Oxford English Dictionary and hundreds years of common usage, effectively abolishing the traditional meaning of the words for spouses.” In the government’s proposed guidelines, “‘Husband’ here will include a man or a woman in a same-sex marriage, as well as a man married to a woman. In a similar way, ‘wife’ will include a woman married to another woman or a man married to a man.” So, a man could be a wife if married to another man (or not), while a woman could be a husband if married to another woman (or not), all of which begs the question: Why use words at all if they have utterly lost their meaning? It’s like saying that up is down (or up) and down is up (or down), while north is south (or north) and south is north (or south). But this is what happens when marriage is redefined.16

Don’t worry,” he said flippantly, taking her arm and starting to walk back toward the house. “I’m not going to make the ritualistic proposal that followed our last encounters. Marriage is out of the question. Among other things, I’m fresh out of large rubies and expensive furs this season.” Despite his joking tone, Elizabeth felt ill at how ugly those words sounded now, even though her reasons for saying them at the time had nothing to do with a desire for jewels or furs. You had to give him credit, she decided miserably, because he obviously took no offense at it. Evidently, in sophisticated flirtations, the rule was that no one took anything seriously. “Who’s the leading contender these days?” he asked in that same light tone as the cottage came into view. “There must be more than Belhaven and Marchman.” Elizabeth struggled valiantly to make the same transition from heated passion to flippancy that he seemed to find so easy. She wasn’t quite so successful, however, and her light tone was threaded with confusion. “In my uncle’s eyes, the leading contender is whoever has the most important title, followed by the most money.” “Of course,” he said dryly. “In which case it sounds as if Marchman may be the lucky man.” His utter lack of caring made Elizabeth’s heart squeeze in an awful, inexplicable way. Her chin lifted in self-defense. “Actually, I’m not in the market for a husband,” she informed him, trying to sound as indifferent and as amused as he. “I may have to marry someone if I can’t continue to outmaneuver my uncle, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I’d like to marry a much older man than I.” “Preferably a blind one,” he said sardonically, “who’ll not notice a little affair now and then?” “I meant,” she informed him with a dark glance, “that I want my freedom. Independence. And that is something a young husband isn’t likely to give me, while an elderly one might.” “Independence is all an old man will be able to give you,” Ian said blntly. “That’s quite enough,” she said. “I’m excessively tired of being forever pushed about by the men in my life. I’d like to care for Havenhurst and do as I wish to do.” “Marry an old man,” Ian interjected smoothly, “and you may be the last of the Camerons.” She looked at him blankly. “He won’t be able to give you children.” “Oh, that,” Elizabeth said, feeling a little defeated and nonplussed. “I haven’t been able to work that out yet.” “Let me know when you do,” Ian replied with biting sarcasm. “There’s a fortune to be made from a discovery like that one.

The ever-present war in the background lent a pleasant informality to social relations, an informality which older people viewed with alarm. Mothers found strange men calling on their daughters, men who came without letters of introduction and whose antecedents were unknown. To their horror, mothers found their daughters holding hands with these men. Mrs. Merriwether, who had never kissed her husband until after the wedding ceremony, could scarcely believe her eyes when she caught Maybelle kissing the little Zouave, Rene Picard, and her consternation was even greater when Maybelle refused to be ashamed. Even the fact that Rene immediately asked for her hand did not improve matters. Mrs. Merriwether felt that the South was heading for a complete moral collapse and frequently said so. Other mothers concurred heartily with her and blamed it on the war. But men who expected to die within a week or a month could not wait a year before they begged to call a girl by her first name, with "Miss," of course, preceding it. Nor would they go through the formal and protracted courtships which good manners had prescribed before the war. They were likely to propose in three or four months. And girls who knew very well that a lady always refused a gentlemen the first three times he proposed rushed headlong to accept the first time.

For a brief moment she considered the unfairness of it all. How short was the time for fun, for pretty clothes, for dancing, for coquetting! Only a few, too few years! Then you married and wore dull-colored dresses and had babies that ruined your waist line and sat in corners at dances with other sober matrons and only emerged to dance with your husband or with old gentlemen who stepped on your feet. If you didn't do these things, the other matrons talked about you and then your reputation was ruined and your family disgraced. It seemed such a terrible waste to spend all your little girlhood learning how to be attractive and how to catch men and then only use the knowledge for a year or two. When she considered her training at the hands of Ellen and Mammy, se knew it had been thorough and good because it had always reaped results. There were set rules to be followed, and if you followed them success crowned your efforts. With old ladies you were sweet and guileless and appeared as simple minded as possible, for old ladies were sharp and they watched girls as jealously as cats, ready to pounce on any indiscretion of tongue or eye. With old gentlemen, a girl was pert and saucy and almost, but not quite, flirtatious, so that the old fools' vanities would be tickled. It made them feel devilish and young and they pinched your cheek and declared you were a minx. And, of course, you always blushed on such occasions, otherwise they would pinch you with more pleasure than was proper and then tell their sons that you were fast. With young girls and young married women, you slopped over with sugar and kissed them every time you met them, even if it was ten times a day. And you put your arms about their waists and suffered them to do the same to you, no matter how much you disliked it. You admired their frocks or their babies indiscriminately and teased about beaux and complimented husbands and giggled modestly and denied you had any charms at all compared with theirs. And, above all, you never said what you really thought about anything, any more than they said what they really thought. Other women's husbands you let severely alone, even if they were your own discarded beaux, and no matter how temptingly attractive they were. If you were too nice to young husbands, their wives said you were fast and you got a bad reputation and never caught any beaux of your own. But with young bachelors-ah, that was a different matter! You could laugh softly at them and when they came flying to see why you laughed, you could refuse to tell them and laugh harder and keep them around indefinitely trying to find out. You could promise, with your eyes, any number of exciting things that would make a man maneuver to get you alone. And, having gotten you alone, you could be very, very hurt or very, very angry when he tried to kiss you. You could make him apologize for being a cur and forgive him so sweetly that he would hang around trying to kiss you a second time. Sometimes, but not often, you did let them kiss you. (Ellen and Mammy had not taught her that but she learned it was effective). Then you cried and declared you didn't know what had come over you and that he couldn't ever respect you again. Then he had to dry your eyes and usually he proposed, to show just how much he did respect you. And there were-Oh, there were so many things to do to bachelors and she knew them all, the nuance of the sidelong glance, the half-smile behind the fan, the swaying of hips so that skirts swung like a bell, the tears, the laughter, the flattery, the sweet sympathy. Oh, all the tricks that never failed to work-except with Ashley.

Jackson gaped at her, wondering how this had all turned so terrible wrong. But he knew how. The woman was clearly daft. Bedlam-witted. And trying to drive him in the same direction. "You can't be serious. Since when do you know anything about investigating people?" She planted her hands on her hips. "You won't do it, so I must." God save him, she was the most infuriating, maddening-"How do you propose to manage that?" She shrugged. "Ask them questions, I suppose. The house party for Oliver's birthday is next week. Lord Devonmont is already coming, and it will be easy to convince Gran to invite my other two. Once they're here, I could try sneaking into their rooms and listening in on their conversations or perhaps bribing their servants-" "You've lost your bloody mind," he hissed. Only after she lifted an eyebrow did he realize he'd cursed so foully in front of her. But the woman would turn a sane man into a blithering idiot! The thought of her wandering in and out of men's bedchambers, risking her virtue and her reputation, made his blood run cold. "You don't seem to understand," she said in a clipped tone, as if speaking to a child. "I have to catch a husband somehow. I need help, and I've nowhere else to turn. Minerva is rarely here, and Gran's matchmaking efforts are as subtle as a sledgehammer. And even if my brothers and their wives could do that sort of work, they're preoccupied with their own affairs. That leaves you, who seem to think that suitors drop from the skies at my whim. If I can't even entice you to help me for money, then I'll have to manage on my own." Turning on her heel, she headed for the door. Hell and blazes, she was liable to attempt such an idiotic thing, too. She had some fool notion she was invincible. That's why she spent her time shooting at targets with her brother's friends, blithely unconcerned that her rifle might misfire or a stray bullet hit her by mistake. The wench did as she pleased, and the men in her family let her. Someone had to curb her insanity, and it looked as if it would have to be him. "All right!" he called out. "I'll do it." She halted but didn't turn around. "You'll find out what I need in order to snag one of my choices as a husband?" "Yes." "Even if it means being a trifle underhanded?" He gritted his teeth. This would be pure torture. The underhandedness didn't bother him; he'd be as underhanded as necessary to get rid of those damned suitors. But he'd have to be around the too-tempting wench a great deal, if only to make sure the bastards didn't compromise her. Well, he'd just have to find something to send her running the other way. She wanted facts? By thunder, he'd give her enough damning facts to blacken her suitors thoroughly. Then what? If you know of some eligible gentleman you can strong-arm into courting me, then by all means, tell me. I'm open to suggestions. All right, so he had no one to suggest. But he couldn't let her marry any of her ridiculous choices. They would make her miserable-he was sure of it. He must make her see that she was courting disaster. Then he'd find someone more eligible for her. Somehow. She faced him. "Well?" "Yes," he said, suppressing a curse. "I'll do whatever you want." A disbelieving laugh escaped her. "That I'd like to see." When he scowled, she added hastily, "But thank you. Truly. And I'm happy to pay you extra for your efforts, as I said." He stiffened. "No need." "Nonsense," she said firmly. "It will be worth it to have your discretion." His scowl deepened. "My clients always have my discretion.

Speaking of shooting, my lady,” Mr. Pinter said as he came around the table, “I looked over your pistol as you requested. Everything seems to be in order.” Removing it from his coat pocket, he handed it to her, a hint of humor in his gaze. As several pair of male eyes fixed on her, she colored. To hide her embarrassment, she made a great show of examining her gun. He’d cleaned it thoroughly, which she grudgingly admitted was rather nice of him. “What a cunning little weapon,” the viscount said and reached for it. “May I?” She handed him the pistol. “How tiny it is,” he exclaimed. “It’s a lady’s pocket pistol,” she told him as he examined it. Oliver frowned at her. “When did you acquire a pocket pistol, Celia?” “A little while ago,” she said blithely. Gabe grinned. “You may not know this, Basto, but my sister is something of a sharpshooter. I daresay she has a bigger collection of guns than Oliver.” “Not bigger,” she said. “Finer perhaps, but I’m choosy about my firearms.” “She has beaten us all at some time or another at target shooting,” the duke said dryly. “The lady could probably hit a fly at fifty paces.” “Don’t be silly,” she said with a grin. “A beetle perhaps, but not a fly.” The minute the words were out of her mouth, she could have kicked herself. Females did not boast of their shooting-not if they wanted to snag husbands. “You should come shooting with us,” Oliver said. “Why not?” The last thing she needed was to beat her suitors at shooting. The viscount in particular would take it very ill. She suspected that Portuguese men preferred their women to be wilting flowers. “No thank you,” she said. “Target shooting is one thing, but I don’t like hunting birds.” “Suit yourself,” Gabe said, clearly happy to make it a gentlemen-only outing, though he knew perfectly well that hunting birds didn’t bother her. “Come now, Lady Celia,” Lord Devonmont said. “You were eating partridges at supper last night. How can you quibble about shooting birds?” “If she doesn’t want to go, let her stay,” Gabe put in. “It’s not shooting birds she has an objection to,” Mr. Pinter said in a taunting voice. “Her ladyship just can’t hit a moving target.” She bit back a hot retort. Don’t scare off the suitors. “That’s ridiculous, Pinter,” Gabe said. “I’ve seen Celia-ow! What the devil, Oliver? You stepped on my foot!” “Sorry, old chap, you were in the way,” Oliver said as he went to the table. “I think Pinter’s right, though. Celia can’t hit a moving target.” “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she protested, “I most certainly can hit a moving target! Just because I choose not to for the sake of the poor, helpless birds-“ “Convenient, isn’t it, her sudden dislike of shooting ‘poor, helpless birds’?” Mr. Pinter said with a smug glance at Lord Devonmont. “Convenient, indeed,” Lord Devonmont agreed. “But not surprising. Women don’t have the same ability to follow a bird in flight that a man-“ “That’s nonsense, and you know it!” Celia jumped to her feet. “I can shoot a pigeon or a grouse on the wing as well as any man here.” “Sounds like a challenge to me,” Oliver said. “What do you think, Pinter?” “A definite challenge, sir.” Mr. Pinter was staring at her with what looked like satisfaction. Blast it all, had that been his purpose-to goad her into it? Oh, what did it matter? She couldn’t let a claim like this or Lord Devonmont’s stand. “Fine. I’ll join you gentlemen for the shooting.” “Then I propose that whoever bags the most birds gets to kiss the lady,” Lord Devonmont said with a gleam in his eye. “That’s not much of a prize for me,” Gabe grumbled. She planted her hands on her hips. “And what if I bag the most birds?” “Then you get to shoot whomever you wish,” Mr. Pinter drawled. As the others laughed, Celia glared at him. He was certainly enjoying himself, the wretch. “I’d be careful if I were you, Mr. Pinter. That person would most likely be you.

At first, they joked about it but as they became more detoxed and more assertive from therapy, paid ironically by the husbands, they began to realize that they each had unique strengths and powers and a burning desire for revenge. Between the Three Wise Women they had an IT expert, an actress and a supermodel, all very wealthy and beautiful. All the three men’s’ brains appeared to reside in their pants and they wondered if they set a honey trap could it possibly work. A plan was proposed by Felicity and she called it Operation Devastation. Angelina would hack into their MIS computer systems, bug their telephones, offices, cars and homes. Ava would seduce Ryan, who owned Novels and the computer firm, Angelina’s husband in a honey trap and get it all on DVD for the divorce court. Then Ava would seduce Felicity’s husband, James, the Irish footballer. Finally, Sean who was Felicity’s friend who was an out of work actor would seduce Patrick

[F]ollowers of Christ think differently than others. . . . Where do we look for the premises with which we begin our reasoning on the truth or acceptability of various proposals? We anchor ourselves to the word of God, as contained in the scriptures and in the teachings of modern prophets. Unless we are anchored to these truths as our major premises and assumptions, we cannot be sure that our conclusions are true. Being anchored to eternal truth will not protect us from the tribulation and persecution Jesus predicted (Matthew 13:21), but it will give us the peace that comes from faith in Jesus Christ and the knowledge that we are on the pathway to eternal life. . . . We oppose moral relativism, and we must help our youth avoid being deceived and persuaded by reasoning and conclusions based on its false premises. . . . We reject the modern idea that marriage is a relationship that exists primarily for the fulfillment of the individuals who enter into it, with either one of them being able to terminate it at will. We focus on the well-being of children, not just ourselves. . . . “God has commanded that the sacred powers of procreation are to be employed only between man and woman, lawfully wedded as husband and wife.” That declaration is not politically correct but it is true, and we are responsible to teach and practice its truth. That obviously sets us against many assumptions and practices in today’s world--the birth of millions of innocent children to unwed mothers being only one illustration. . . . Of course, we see the need to correct some long-standing deficiencies in legal protections and opportunities for women. But in our private behavior, as President Gordon B. Hinckley taught many years ago about the public sector, we believe that any effort “to create neuter gender of that which God created male and female will bring more problems than benefits.” . . . When we begin by measuring modern practices and proposals against what we know of God’s Plan and the premises given in the word of God and the teachings of His living prophets, we must anticipate that our conclusions will differ from persons who do not think in that way. But we are firm in this because we know that this puts us on safe ground, eternally. . . . [Some] persons . . . mistakenly believe that God’s love is so great and so unconditional that it will mercifully excuse them from obeying His laws or the conditions of His Plan. They reason backward from their desired conclusion, and assume that the fundamentals of God’s eternal law must adhere to their concepts. But this thinking is confused. The love of God does not supersede His commandments or His Plan. . . . The kingdom of glory to which we are assigned in the final judgment is not determined by love but by the law that God has given us--because of His love--to qualify us for eternal life, “the greatest of all the gifts of God” (D&C 14:7). Those who know that truth will surely think differently about many things than those who do not. . . . We cannot escape the conclusions, teachings, and advocacy of modern Pharisees. We must live in the world. But the teaching that we not be “of the world” (John 15:19; 17:14, 16) requires us to identify error and exclude it from our thinking, our desires, and our actions. [CES Evening with a General Authority, Feb. 8, 2013]

I was now Mrs. Emma Hamilton and married to the love of my life. I never would have thought that the hot and sexy man I stared at across the bar at a nightclub in Miami would become my husband and that we’d have a beautiful healthy daughter. Max’s proposed deal turned out to be the best deal of a lifetime and I couldn’t image my life any other way.

My dear sister, if Judas (from Jesus church) had come to you and proposed marriage to you, would you have refused him? You make a big big biiiiiig mistake not to ask God in prayer before choosing a wife /Husband AND RECEIVING A DEFINITE ANSWER FROM HIM. Are you still thinking "Unbeliever" means people who are not in the message church? Church was indeed a kaboooooooooom!

The first of the tests is the overcoming of appetite. This involves their doing a two days’ walk or hunt without food, and then being brought suddenly before a fire on which some choice kangaroo steak or other native delicacy is being cooked. They are required to take only a small portion of this. The next is the test of pain. The young boys and girls submit to having their noses pierced, their bodies marked, and to being laid down upon hot embers thinly covered with boughs. The third is the test of fear. The young people are told awesome and hair-raising stories about ghosts and the muldarpe, the Evil Spirit or the Devil-devil. After all these tests they are put to sleep in a lonely place, or near the burial-place of the tribe. During the night the elders, who are made hideous with white clay and bark headdresses, appear, making weird noises. Those of the candidates who show no signs of having had a disturbed night are then admitted as fully initiated members of the tribe. No youth or maiden is allowed to marry without having passed these tests. A proposed marriage is talked over first by all the old members of the tribe. The uncle on the mother’s side is the most important relative, and it is he who finally selects the wife. The actual marriage ceremony takes place during the time of festivals. The husband does not look at or speak to his mother-in-law, although he is husband in name to all his sisters-in-law.

She couldn’t tell him the truth—that she was here to wrangle a proposal out of him. How desperate would that make her look? Besides, no man wanted to think he was being manipulated into marriage. He wanted to be the pursuer, the one in control. She was simply creating opportunities in which that pursuit might occur. No,

Some of the conclusions that I draw are very different from the ethical views most people hold today. That, however, is not a ground for dismissing them. If every proposal for reform in ethics that differed from accepted moral views had been rejected for that reason alone, we would still be torturing heretics, enslaving members of conquered races, and treating women as the property of their husbands.

With a quick glance into the room, noting the inquiring faces, Lydia reached out for Robert's waistcoat and slowly pulled him into the shadows. "There is one matter that counts above all else. Do you love me?" This time, there was no hesitation. "With all my heart, until the day I die, and beyond, if there is an afterlife." A flood of relief washed over Lydia, leaving her speechless... for all of a moment. "Then, I will marry you, if you will ask." Before he had a chance to say anything, Lydia leaned forward. She wrapped her arms around his neck and lifted her mouth to his. She could feel his heart pounding out a quick-time rhythm as he slipped his arms around her waist and pulled her closer. When their lips met, she thought her insides would melt into a puddle of ecstasy. Filled with a delicious, undefined longing, Lydia leaned in closer, wishing that she could stay locked in his arms forever. But all too soon, Robert lifted his head, taking a ragged breath. "Lydia, my dove?" "Yes, Robert?" "I have just thoroughly compromised you." "Thoroughly...what ever shall we do?" "We will have to announce our intention this very evening -- before there is any hint of a scandal." "Excellent idea. What are our intentions?" Robert chuckled and leaner over to kiss her forehead, but Lydia lifted herself up on her toes, initiating another session of excellent compromising. "Lydia, my dove?" Robert said again eventually. "Yes, Robert." "Will you grant me the great privilege of your hand in marriage?" Lydia closed her eyes and savored his proposal---the offer of a union for life. Exquisite joy, overwhelming and eternal, filled her to the brim; the sensation was so marvelous that she forgot to breathe for a time. The air around them stilled, as did Robert. He was waiting. How could he not know her answer? She had encouraged the proposal. And still he waited. Lydia opened her eyes and grinned. "I would be honored." The relief on his face nearly brought tears to her eyes. She lifted her hand and cupped his chin. "I would be honored," she repeated. "I love you so very much." As her future husband lowered his head once again, Lydia sighed dreamily. "We should go in," she whispered, tightening her hold, preventing him from going anywhere. "Absolutely," he said, nibbling at her lower lip. All thoughts of ballrooms and inquisitive glances were instantly drowned by the flow of marvelous sensations coursing through her body and a sudden desire to drag Robert deeper into the shadows. They would go back into the ballroom soon...but not yet.

Marriage usually ends up turning one of the spouses into the other.

Sir Montague Fowler (1858-1933) fourth (and last) Baronet of Braemore, was the third son of Sir John Fowler. Coming from the family of a very wealthy and eminent engineer, he might have been expected to pursue some career along the same lines, or go into politics, or even - as his younger brother Evelyn seems to have done - become expert at doing nothing. Instead, he entered the church. He attracted public approbation for several charitable acts before the war and was rector at various churches in London; but the high point of his ecclesiastical career was his appointment as chaplain and purse-bearer to the Archbishop of Canterbury. And he wrote books: Some Notable Archbishops of Canterbury (1895), Church History in Victoria's Reign (1896), Christian Egypt (1901), The Morality of Social Pleasures (1910) and others. In 1913, he founded the Church Imperial Club in London, which had 'an imposing list of divines and Church dignitaries as patrons'. In 1889, he married his first wife, Ada Dayrell Thomson, a niece of the Archbishop of York. She too was an author, a bit like the Countess of Cromartie, but more racy: her several works written under the pseudonym 'Dayrell Trelawney' included The Revolt of Daphne, The Robbery of the Pink Diamond and The Secret of the Haunted Road. She also wrote several plays under the nom de plume 'Gaston Grevex', and a marvellously patriotic poem, Femina Imperialis 1900 ('Awake! Imperial daughter of a race/That rules the sea...') appeared under her own name in the Revelstoke Herald of British Columbia in 1900. Ada died in 1911. In 1914, Montague married his second wife, Denise Chailliey, a Frenchwoman thirty-four years his junior; she wrote neither novels nor church histories, but produced two daughters, bred toy spaniels and outlived her husband by sixty years.

So . . . you’re already married, then?” The thought seemed impossible, especially given the way he had been staring at her. “Not yet. But if you’re offering, a chara, I’d be glad to accept.” He sent her a teasing smile, and it seemed that his mood had shifted from the earlier melancholy. She sent him a wry look. “I was hardly proposing marriage, Mr. Donovan.” She wasn’t so desperate as that. “Besides, I already have a gentleman suitor.” “Have you?” His face brightened. “I cannot say I’m surprised to hear it. Any man would be honored to wed a cailín as fair as you.” Although his words were kind, she wasn’t interested in idle flirting. “Yes, well. You can turn your interests somewhere else.” “Is he here, then? Your betrothed husband?” “No, he’s in London.” “I can’t believe that’s wise. Leaving a beautiful woman such as yourself at the mercy of the local swains. You might change your mind about marrying him.” She

I want you, and you say you want me, and the only thing standing in our way is you. Don’t tell me that you survived all those battles, and suffered through so much, merely to come home for this--” He laid his fingers against her mouth. “Quiet. Let me think.” “What is there to--” “Beatrix,” he warned. She fell silent, her gaze locked on his severe features. Christopher frowned, weighing possibilities, inwardly debating the issue without seeming to come to any satisfactory conclusion. In the silence, Beatrix rested her head on his shoulder. His body was warm and comforting, the deep-flexing muscles easily accommodating her weight. She wriggled to press closer to him, until she felt the satisfying hardness of his chest against her breasts. And she adjusted her position as she felt the firm pressure of him lower down. Her body ached to gather him in. Furtively she brushed her lips against the salt-scented skin of his neck. He clamped his hand on her hip. Amusement threaded through his voice. “Stop squirming. There is no possible way a man can think when you’re doing that.” “Haven’t you finished thinking yet?” “No.” But she felt him smile as he kissed her forehead. “If you and I marry,” he said eventually, “I would be put in the position of trying to protect my wife against myself. And your well-being and happiness are everything to me.” If…Beatrix’s heart leaped into her throat. She began to speak, but Christopher nudged his knuckles beneath her chin, gently closing her mouth. “And regardless of what fascinating ideas your family may have about the marital relationship,” he continued, “I have a traditional view. The husband is master of the household.” “Oh, absolutely,” Beatrix said, a bit too quickly. “That’s what my family believes, too.” His eyes narrowed skeptically. Perhaps that had been taking it a bit far. Hoping to distract him, Beatrix nuzzled her cheek into his hand. “Could I keep my animals?” “Of course.” His voice softened. “I would never deny something so important to you. Although I can’t help but ask…is the hedgehog negotiable?” “Medusa? Oh, no, she couldn’t survive on her own. She was abandoned by her mother as kit, and I’ve taken care of her ever since. I suppose I could try to find a new home for her, but for some reason people don’t take readily to the idea of pet hedgehogs.” “How odd of them,” Christopher said. “Very well, Medusa stays.” “Are you proposing to me?” Beatrix asked hopefully. “No.” Closing his eyes, Christopher let out a short sigh. “But I’m considering it against all better judgment.

I think Phelan and Beatrix should wait,” Leo said. “Nothing will be lost by waiting.” “I don’t know about that,” Cam said. “As the Rom say, ‘Take too much time, and time will take you.’” Leo looked smug. “I knew there would be a saying.” “With all due respect,” Christopher muttered, “this conversation is leading nowhere. At least one of you should point out that Beatrix deserves a better man.” “That’s what I said about my wife,” Leo remarked. “Which is why I married her before she could find one.” He smiled slightly as he contemplated Christopher’s glowering face. “So far, I haven’t been all that impressed by your flaws. You drink more than you should, you have trouble controlling your impulses, and you have a temper. All of those are practically requirements in the Hathaway family. I suppose you think Beatrix should marry a quiet young gentleman whose idea of excitement is collecting snuffboxes or writing sonnets. Well, we’ve tried that, and it hasn’t worked. She doesn’t want that kind of man. Apparently what she wants is you.” “She’s too young and idealistic to know better,” Christopher said. “I fault her judgment.” “So do I,” Leo shot back. “But unfortunately none of my sisters let me pick their husbands for them.” “Easy, the two of you,” Cam interceded calmly. “I have a question for you, Phelan…if you decide to wait indefinitely before proposing marriage to Beatrix…do you intend to continue seeing her in the meantime?” “Yes,” Christopher said honestly. “I don’t think anything could keep me away from her. But we’ll be circumspect.” “I doubt that,” Leo said. “The only thing Beatrix knows about being circumspect is how to spell it.” “Before long there would be gossip,” Cam said, “and criticism, which would harm Beatrix’s reputation. With the result that you would have to marry her anyway. There’s not much point in delaying the inevitable.” “Are you saying you want me to marry her?” Christopher asked incredulously. “No,” Cam replied, looking rueful. “But I can’t say I’m all that fond of the alternative. Beatrix would be miserable. Besides, which one of us will volunteer to tell her that she’s going to have to wait?” All three were silent.

Peninsula Freeway, and another off Penzance Beach Road, which wound in a dizzying climb high above sea level. She slowed for an intersection, the light green. She should make a right turn here, but that meant giving way to the oncoming traffic, which was streaming indifferently towards her, and what if some maniac failed to stop before she completed the turn? She tried to swallow. Her mouth was very dry. Someone sounded their horn at her. She continued through the intersection without turning. All those people there last Saturday, as close as bodies can get to one another, yet Janine hadn’t expected, sought or found any kind of togetherness. She knew from past experience that the other couples would look out for each other, the wives watching out for their husbands, always with a smile, a kiss, a comforting or loving caress, ‘Just checking that you’re happy’ kind of thing, and the husbands checking on how their wives were doing, ‘Are you okay? Love you’ kind of thing, even stopping to have sex with them before moving on to another play area. But that wasn’t Robert’s style. He would never so much as say ‘Enjoy yourself’ but go after the single women and younger wives, a glint of grasping need in his eyes, and last Saturday hadn’t been any different. He’d kept her there until three in the morning, long after most of the others had gone home. ‘Mum?’ ‘What?’ ‘Can I have a Happy Meal for lunch?’ ‘We’ll see.’ Beside her, Georgia began to sing. It had taken her husband about three months to wear her down. When he’d first proposed attending one of the parties, late last year, Janine had thought he was joking, but it soon became clear that he wasn’t. She’d felt vaguely discomfited, more from the tawdriness and risk of exposure than realising he probably didn’t want her sexually any more. ‘Why do you want to have sex with other women besides me?’ she’d asked, putting on a bit of a quiver. ‘But

Evolutionary biologist John Hartung asks us to consider people who are stuck in a position that they might otherwise perceive as unfair or beneath their station (Hartung, 1987). Consider a man who holds a job that he knows does not take full advantage of his talents or a wife who knows that she is more intelligent than her husband. Acting as though your job or your spouse is beneath you could put your employment or your marriage in jeopardy. Your boss might fire you for insubordination. Your spouse might seek someone with whom he or she feels more comfortable and less threatened. The adaptive solution that Hartung proposes is called deceiving down. Deceiving down is not “playing dumb” or pretending to be less than you are. Instead, it involves an actual reduction in self-confidence to facilitate acting in a submissive, subordinate manner.

I was trying to challenge the Sydney Anglican Church’s oppression of women, a church I had begun attending with my family when I was ten. This was a church that still told women to be silent, to not speak when men were present, to submit to male authority. A church that tried to rebrand and prettify patriarchy, to pretend it was not ancient but countercultural, resisting the sinful pull of modern feminism. A church many of my friends fled. For those who stayed, there was comfort and community but often a cost — one uniquely talented friend told me when she accepted her husband’s proposal that she had somehow prayed away her sin of ambition.

Victoria would in fact be the only married woman in the whole country who'd retain control over her own income and property. This was important. The reason Albert had nearly given up on the courtship was because it placed him "in a very ridiculous position. "Even now, everyone would know that he wasn't really the master in his own household. ... And then again, there was the distressing fact that she'd been the one to speak first. "Since the Queen did herself for a husband 'propose'," ran a London ballad, "the ladies will all do the same, I suppose: Their days of subserviency now will be past, For all will "speak first" as they always did last!

Ukeles’s interest in maintenance was partly occasioned by her becoming a mother in the 1960s. In an interview, she explained, “Being a mother entails an enormous amount of repetitive tasks. I became a maintenance worker. I felt completely abandoned by my culture because it didn’t have a way to incorporate sustaining work.” In 1969, she wrote the “Manifesto for Maintenance Art”, an exhibition proposal in which she considers her own maintenance work as the art. She says, “I will live in the museum and do what I customarily do at home with my husband and my baby, for the duration of the exhibition…My working will be the work.”25

In my mind, then, I began to question myself and answer myself. I wanted clarity, I wanted sight, but it seems to me that I did not try to think the thoughts I thought. I did not foresee the thoughts I was going to think. “Do you mean that you love Mattie Chatham enough to say what you just said?” “Yes. Oh, yes! I do.” “You love her enough to be a faithful husband to her? Think what you’re saying, now. You’re proposing to be the faithful husband of a woman who is already married to an unfaithful husband?” “Yes. That’s why. If she has an unfaithful husband, then she needs a faithful one.” “A woman already married who must never know that you are her husband? Think. And who will never be your wife?” “Yes.” “Have you foreseen how this may end? Can you?” “No.” “Are you ready for this? Think, now.” “Yes. I am ready.” “Do you, then, in love’s mystery and fear, give yourself to this woman to be her faithful husband from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death?” “I do. Yes! That is my vow.

The modern urban-industrial society is based on a series of radical disconnections between body and soul, husband and wife, marriage and community, community and the earth. At each of these points of disconnection the collaboration of corporation, government, and expert sets up a profit-making enterprise that results in the further dismemberment and impoverishment of the Creation. Together, these disconnections add up to a condition of critical ill health, which we suffer in common -- not just with each other, but with all other creatures. Our economy is based upon this disease. Its aim is to separate us as far as possible from the sources of life (material, social, and spiritual), to put these sources under the control of corporations and specialized professionals, and to see them to us at the highest profit. It fragments the Creation and sets the fragments into conflict with one another. For the relief of the suffering that comes of this fragmentation and conflict, our economy proposes, not health, but vast "cures" that further centralize power and increase profits... Only by restoring the broken connections can we be healed. Connection is health. And what our society does its best to disguise from us is how ordinary, how commonly attainable, health is. We lose our health -- and create profitable diseases and dependencies -- by failing to see the direction connections between living and eating, eating and working, working and loving. In gardening, for instance, one works with the body to feed the body. The work, if it is knowledgeable, makes for excellent food. And it makes one hungry. The work thus makes eating both nourishing and joyful, not consumptive, and keeps the eater from getting fat and weak. This is health, wholeness, a source of delight. And such a solution, unlike the typical industrial solution, does not cause new problems.

Is Alzheimer’s a Vascular Disorder? In 1901, a woman named Auguste was taken to an insane asylum in Frankfurt, Germany, by her husband. She was described as a delusional, forgetful, disoriented woman who “could not carry out her homemaking duties.”66 She was seen by a Dr. Alzheimer and was to become the subject of the case that made Alzheimer a household name. On autopsy, Alzheimer described the plaques and tangles in her brain that would go on to characterize the disease. But lost in the excitement of discovering a new disease, a clue may have been overlooked. He wrote, “Die größeren Hirngefäße sind arteriosklerotisch verändert,” which translates to “The larger cerebral vessels show arteriosclerotic change.” He was describing the hardening of arteries inside his patient’s brain.67 We generally think of atherosclerosis as a condition of the heart, but it’s been described as “an omnipresent pathology that involves virtually the entire human organism.”68 You have blood vessels in every one of your organs, including your brain. The concept of “cardiogenic dementia,” first proposed in the 1970s, suggested that because the aging brain is highly sensitive to a lack of oxygen, lack of adequate blood flow may lead to cognitive decline.69 Today, we have a substantial body of evidence strongly associating atherosclerotic arteries with Alzheimer’s disease.70 Autopsies have shown repeatedly that Alzheimer’s patients tend to have significantly more atherosclerotic plaque buildup and narrowing of the arteries within the brain.71,72,73 Normal resting cerebral blood flow—the amount of blood circulating to the brain—is typically about a quart per minute. Starting in adulthood, people appear to naturally lose about half a percent of blood flow per year. By age sixty-five, this circulating capacity could be down by as much as 20 percent.74 While such a drop alone may not be sufficient to impair brain function, it can put you close to the edge. The clogging of the arteries inside, and leading to, the brain with cholesterol-filled plaque can drastically reduce the amount of blood—and therefore oxygen—your brain receives. Supporting this theory, autopsies have demonstrated that Alzheimer’s patients had particularly significant arterial blockage in the arteries leading to the memory centers of their brains.75 In light of such findings, some experts have even suggested that Alzheimer’s be reclassified as a vascular disorder.76

My life had no purpose, I just drew great dreams in my head, never knew it will come true or not? Someone entered in my life like an accident, sudden, known by name but never by face, blindsided or may be God send him to change me. He was the only person who proposed me in my entire life. He taught me to accept the love no matters from where you belong. He supported me to work in different cultures along with different people, different cities. As a companion, I’ll be with him wherever he’ll go but as an achiever I’ll set my new goals wherever I’ll go. This is the life which I meant to be in marriage, just to hold each other, no matter how you struggle.

Tell me,” she interrupted. “What do you want in a husband exactly?” Elizza gave the question careful consideration for a few moments before replying. “ A good Muslim man who encourages me to do good—” “Kamal is a hafidh,” her mother cut in. Repeating the phrase for the umpteenth time. “—and allows me to grow at my own pace!” Elizza finished. “Someone who supports my goals as if they were his own. Someone considerate of the needs of others. Educated. Good looking. A six pack would be nice,” she ended with a laugh. Her mother swatted her arm.

Maitland had opened the bidding. He proposed that Mary be allowed to marry the husband of her choice,

What made the marriage unusual, then, was not the age difference but its closeness, especially given the difference in social status between husband and wife. And the fact that it was she who proposed to him.

It was she who proposed, quite simply because he could not. Especially after abu-Talib’s rebuff, he would not have dared take the initiative. Khadija was from the powerful Asad clan, which made her eminently marriageable. Her suitors included the wealthiest merchants in Mecca, all of them offering large gifts to her father as a way of sweetening the deal. Except that Khadija, unlike abu-Talib’s young daughter, refused to be auctioned off. She had no need for another conventional marriage; this time she would defy convention by marrying the man she chose, not the one chosen for her. So as ibn-Ishaq tells it, adding “so the story goes” in acknowledgment of the oddly stilted language, she said: “I like you, Muhammad, because of our relationship and your high reputation for trustworthiness and good character and truthfulness,” and asked him to be her husband.

Bit ripe, proposing to Phoebe five times if he’s got a mistress.” “So? Phoebe has a fiancé and Hetta Galloway has a husband. God, you’re bourgeois.

Lukas: In traditional Greek Culture it would seen as admirable for a woman to live close to her parents Ashleigh: It doesn't work like that way where I'm from. I want to be independent of my parents, not living in their pockets. And wouldn't you think a husband would want his new wife to himself? Lukas: Oh, yes. If he had a woman like this for his wife he would not share her with anyone. Not that he ever wanted a wife. The example of his parents and others in their social set had turned him right off marriage.

Isn’t it a most ridiculous thing that married people who both wish to separate can’t do so and be quite free again?’ ‘I suppose it would lead to all sorts of troubles — don’t you think?’ ‘So people say about every new step in civilisation. What would have been thought twenty years ago of a proposal to make all married women independent of their husbands in money matters? All sorts of absurd dangers were foreseen, no doubt. And it’s the same now about divorce. In America people can get divorced if they don’t suit each other — at all events in some of the States — and does any harm come of it? Just the opposite I should think.’ Edith mused. Such speculations were daring, but she had grown accustomed to think of Amy as an ‘advanced’ woman, and liked to imitate her in this respect.

Driving on 1-65 near Nashville, Bill proposed to her.102 Hazel started laughing. She knew he couldn’t be a husband. It wasn’t just that he was promiscuous: She knew that now, with his resurgent fame, he was married to the world.

When a wife downplay respect for the husband and the husband takes love lightly for his wife, the couple becomes housemates, they just continue to exist together in the same space waiting for a strong reason to ultimately seperate.

For a century after Darwin proposed the theory of sexual selection, it was vigorously resisted by male scientists, in part because they presumed that women were passive in the mating process. The proposal that women actively select their mates and that these selections constitute a powerful evolutionary force was thought to be science fiction rather than scientific fact. In the 1970s, scientists gradually came to accept the profound importance of female choice in the animal and insect world, and in the 1980s and 1990s scientists began to document within our own species the active strategies that women pursue in choosing and competing for mates. But in the early decades of the twenty-first century, some stubborn holdouts continue to insist that women have but a single mating strategy—the pursuit of a long-term mate. Scientific evidence suggests otherwise. The fact that women who are engaged in casual sex as opposed to committed mating shift their mating desires to favor a man’s extravagant lifestyle, his physical attractiveness, his masculine body, and even his risk-taking, cocky “bad-boy” qualities tells us that women have specific psychological mechanisms designed for short-term mating. The fact that women who have extramarital affairs often choose men who are higher in status than their husbands and tend to fall in love with their affair partners reveals that women have adaptations for mate switching. The fact that women shift to brief liaisons under predictable circumstances, such as a scarcity of men capable of investing in them or an unfavorable ratio of women to men, tells us that women have specific adaptations designed for shifting from long-term to short-term mating strategies

You remember when we were little, Dadi would pray for us to find good husbands and families. She’d say the best of men should come looking for us for our manners, and they must be staunch in their decision to marry us, wanting no one else but us. It may seem silly, but the outline she projected transformed the way I look at marriage proposals. When a man asks my father for my hand in marriage, I want him to do it not out of his parents’ will but because this is what he wants.

We’ll be using an amusement park in the Midwest, which we closed for the day. The owners were told that we were having a private party and wanted the park to ourselves. Everything you see on TV will be acting and the still pictures of people that are shown who died will be of people in Europe who died under various circumstances,” “Mr. Evans, without you, nothing we’ve wanted would have come to pass. While I’m sorry that Congresswoman Cindy Vickers was assassinated for the cause, she knew the risk when she proposed it, and her husband has become a tireless advocate for us when it comes to these gun control measures. Now, along with the restaurant massacre in Utah and the unexpected workplace violence at Fort Hood, what we do here today will change the course of American history. My one question is: how do we prevent Americans, especially those annoying Tea Partiers, from finding out this operation was a false flag and then protest against the measures we plan on taking? Plus, how do we prevent one of our actors from spilling the beans later on if they get it into their heads to do so? asked Meeds.

I cannot marry you,” she told the clump of toadstools flourishing at its base. “I’m so terribly sorry. I should have told you years ago, but—” “For God’s sake, Cecily.” His soft laugh startled her, and she lifted her gaze. “You can’t do this, not yet. How can a lady refuse a man, when he hasn’t even proposed? I won’t stand for it.” “It’s not right, Denny. I’ve known for some time now that we wouldn’t . . . that I couldn’t . . .” He shushed her gently, placing his hands on her shoulders. “The truth is, we know nothing of what could be or would be. We’ve been delaying this conversation for years now, haven’t we? I’ve been waiting for . . . Well, I hardly know what I’ve been waiting for. Something indefinable, I suppose. And you’ve been waiting for Luke.” Her breath caught. Denny knew? Oh, dear. Perhaps she shouldn’t be so surprised. They’d grown up together. He’d known her longer than anyone. “Yes, of course I knew,” he said, as if reading her thoughts. “Why do you think I invited you both here, to my home? I wanted to know how matters stood between you.” “And how do they stand?” she asked, hoping he would understand her better than she knew herself. He sighed. “I know he has some strange hold on your heart. But I believe you’d be happier marrying me.” Cecily shook her head in disbelief. If she didn’t know better, she would think him working in concert with Luke. Their arguments were one and the same. “But, Denny . . .” She prayed these words would not hurt his pride overmuch. “But we don’t love one another, not in that way.” “Perhaps not. But you’ve been in love with Luke for four years now. Has it made you happy?” She had no answer to that. “And I’ll admit, bachelorhood is losing its charms for me.” Gently, he folded her hands in his. “I know there is no grand passion between us, Cecily. But there is genuine caring. Honesty. Respect. Lasting unions have been built on foundations far weaker than these. And in time, perhaps some deeper attachment would grow. We don’t know what could happen, if only we gave it a chance.” He brought her hands to his lips and kissed them warmly—first the knuckles, then each sensitive palm—before pressing them to either side of his face and holding them there. The sweetness in the gesture surprised her, as did the fond regard in his eyes. This was Denny’s face she held in her hands. Dear, familiar, uncomplicated Denny, with the dimple on his right cheek and the tiny pockmark on the other. She’d known this face since her childhood. Could she learn to see to him in a new light, as a husband? She did want children and companionship and a happy home—all the things Luke refused to offer her. She sighed. “I don’t know what to say.” “That’s all right. I’m not asking you to say yes, not right now. Just . . . don’t say no quite yet?” He smiled then, that crooked, endearing Denny smile. And he kissed her, still holding her hands pressed against his face. It was sweet. He tasted of tea and peppermint, and his lips felt soft and warm. Denny’s kiss was mild, tender. Comforting and comfortable. And it was wretchedly unfair to him, that even as he claimed her lips, her heart remained divided. She couldn’t stop comparing this kiss to Luke’s. It just wasn’t the same. “Do

I’m certain every last one of them fell hopelessly in love with you. How many proposals have you rejected in the past four years? A hundred or more, I’m sure.” “Twenty-six.” Luke slowed as the cottage came into view—a tidy, thatched-roof dwelling hunched between two tall pine trees. “Twenty-six,” he repeated, coming to a stop. She turned to him, clutching his hand tight. “Yes. Twenty-six. Not counting the invalid soldiers.” The color of her eyes deepened to an intense cobalt blue. “You cannot know how I have fought for you, Luke. Not in the same way you have suffered, to be sure. But I have waged my own small battles here. I have fought the pressure to marry, fought the envy for my friends who did. I have struggled against my own desire for companionship and affection.” Her voice broke. “I am not a woman formed for solitude.” “I know it,” he whispered, raising his free hand to her cheek. “I know it. That’s why you need a husband who can—” “I have fought despair,” she interrupted, “when months, years passed with no word of you.” Guilt twisted in his gut. “I could not have written. We weren’t engaged.” “Yes, but you might have written Denny. Or any one of our mutual friends. You might have casually asked for word of me.” “I didn’t want word of you.” She recoiled, and he whipped an arm around her waist, pulling her close. “How can I explain? You know my parents died several years ago. I’ve no siblings, very few relations. And it didn’t take but one dusty skirmish in Portugal for me to realize—if I died on that battlefield, there would be no one to mourn me, but a handful of old school friends.” He touched her cheek. “No one but you. I did think of you. Constantly. I did remember that perfect, sweet kiss when I was bleeding and starving and pissing scared. It was the thought that kept me going: Cecily Hale cares whether I live or die. I couldn’t risk asking word of you, don’t you understand? I didn’t want to know. Surely I’d learn you’d married one of those twenty-six men queuing up for the pleasure of your hand, and I would have nothing left.” “But I didn’t marry any of them. I waited for you.” “Then you were a fool.” He gripped her chin. “Because that man you waited for . . . he isn’t coming back. I’ve changed, too much. Some men lose a leg in war; others, a few fingers. I surrendered part of my humanity. Just like the ridiculous werestag you’re out here chasing.” “I’m out here chasing you, you idiot!” She buffeted his shoulder with her fist. “You’re the one I love.” He

What is more strange yet, his wife was a daughter of quiet, sober, unfantastic England: she was much younger than himself; she was fair and gentle, with a sweet English face; she had married him from choice, and (will you believe it?) she yet loved him. How she came to marry him, or how this shy, unsocial, wayward creature ever ventured to propose, I can only explain by asking you to look round and explain first to ME how half the husbands and half the wives you meet ever found a mate!

A friend who had divorced her husband because he had cheated on her, had surprised Yeong-sin by confiding that she had felt liberated when she found out about her husband's affair. It stunned Yeong-sin, because she knew that her friend was being completely truthful. And Yeong-sin shuddered to realize how the unvarnished truth could make a mockery of the reassuring latitude that people marry because they're in love. It was a platitude that most people, including herself, wanted to believe. Once the truth is revealed, it is impossible to go back to the world as it had been before. That's because we have changed in light of the truth, but the world has not. If the truth is discomfiting or cruel, that's because only we are changed by it. Before we know the truth, we tremble in fear of it; after we know the truth we shiver with regret. Platitudes are the lies that we tell in order to escape fear or regret. On the one hand Yeong-sin hoped her boy-friend would propose to her, but on the other hand she was afraid he would.

That summer, the month he turned twenty-nine, my brother had proposed to his girlfriend, the one he’d met four years earlier, just before coming to stay with me in Brooklyn. Nearly everyone from high school and most of my friends from college were married, or soon to be, and as for ex-boyfriends: W married in 2005; R met his soon-to-be wife in 2006 (today both couples have two children). Even the close friends I’d made in New York were “joining the vast majority,” as Neith had put it. All of us wanted to believe this wouldn’t change anything. But it did, invariably, in ways small and large. It’s a rare friendship that transcends the circumstances that forged it, and being single together in the city, no matter how powerful a bond when it’s happening, can prove pretty weak glue. Alliances had been redrawn, resources shifted and reconsolidated; new envies replaced the old. Whereas before we were all broke together, now they had husbands splitting the rent and bills, and I couldn’t shake my awareness of this difference. A treacherous, unspoken sense of inequality set in, which only six months into my new magazine job had radically reversed: I’d become the one who could afford nice restaurants while they had to channel their disposable incomes toward a shared household, and I felt their unspoken judgment just as before they’d felt mine. One newly married friend lashed out at me for never inviting her to parties. I tried to explain: Didn’t she see I was going because someone else had invited me? And that if I didn’t go, I’d be home alone, whereas she had someone to keep her company? When a dear friend said, “You know, I may be married now, but I’m still just like you! I can still do whatever I want!” I blanched. She’d been on her own so recently herself. Didn’t she remember that being single is more than just following your whims—that it also means having nobody to help you make difficult decisions, or comfort you at the end of a bad week?

What now?" she asked, as if preparing for a new round of difficulties. Nick considered the question, feeling a tug in the center of his chest as he saw the resolution in her expression. She had endured the past few days with an equanimity that was extraordinary for a girl her age. No doubt any other woman would have been reduced to a sobbing heap by now. He wanted to remove the strained look from her eyes and for once see her carefree and relaxed. "Well, Mrs. Gentry," he said, moving to the space beside her, "for the next day or two, I propose that we have some fun." "Fun," she repeated, as if the word were unfamiliar. "Forgive me, but my capacity for enjoyment is rather diminished at present." Nick smiled and settled his hand on the outline of her thigh. "You're in the most exciting city in the world," he murmured, "in the company of a virile young husband and his ill-gotten gains." He kissed her ear, making her shiver. "Believe me, Lottie, there is a great deal of fun to be had.

In fact, I seriously entertained his proposal for about two-and-a-half seconds, until I recalled that he already had a wife back home in Schenectady." Everyone fell silent. "Evidently," Mrs. Wheaton added just before taking one last sip of tea, "she was unaware of her husband's propensity to enter his vessel in more than one race at a time." The others stared dumbfounded, as did Martin for a brief moment before he laughed out loud and nearly spit out his lemonade.

Tithing at the local church will make you to be faithful to your wife or husband. People who cheat on God will surely cheat on their partners. Be inspired to be faithful to God and then you will be faithful to your loved one.

Once a woman (a pilot) refused to meet with me. She explained on the phone: “I can’t… I don’t want to remember. I spent three years at war… And for three years I didn’t feel myself a woman. My organism was dead. I had no periods, almost no woman’s desires. And I was beautiful… When my future husband proposed to me… that was already in Berlin, by the Reichstag… He said: ‘The war’s over. We’re still alive. We’re lucky. Let’s get married.’ I wanted to cry. To shout. To hit him! What do you mean, married? Now? In the midst of all this—married? In the midst of black soot and black bricks… Look at me… Look how I am! Begin by making me a woman: give me flowers, court me, say beautiful words. I want it so much! I wait for it! I almost hit him… I was about to… He had one cheek burned, purple, and I see: he understood everything, tears are running down that cheek. On the still-fresh scars… And I myself can’t believe I’m saying to him: ‘Yes, I’ll marry you.

All Hale Kate: Her story is as close to a real-life fairy tale as it gets. Born Catherine Elizabeth Middleton, the quiet, sporty girl next door from the small town of Bucklebury - not quite Cinderella, but certainly a "commoner" by blue bloods' standards - managed to enchant the most eligible bachelor in the world, Prince William, while they were university students 15 years ago. It wasn't long before everyone else fell in love with her, too. We ached for her as she waited patiently for a proposal through 10 years of friendship and romance (and one devastating breakup!), cheered along with about 300 million other TV viewers when she finally became a princess bride in 2011, and watched in awe as she proceeded to graciously but firmly drag the stuffy royal family into the 21st century. And though she never met her mother-in-law, the late, beloved, Princess Diana, Kate is now filling the huge void left not just in her husband's life but in the world's heart when the People's Princess died. The Duchess of Cambridge shares Di's knack for charming world leaders and the general public alike, and the same fierce devotion to her family above all else. She's a busy, modern mom who wears affordable clothes, does her own shopping and cooking, struggles with feelings of insecurity and totes her kids along to work (even if the job happens to involve globe-trotting official state visits) - all while wearing her signature L.K. Bennett 4 inch heels. And one day in the not-too-distance future, this woman who grew up in a modest brick home in the countryside - and seems so very much like on of us- will take on another impossibly huge role: queen of England.

Stop doing this,” she cried fiercely. “You’ll drive me mad. You want to behave as if I belong to you, but I don’t, and I never will. Your worst nightmare is becoming a husband and father, and so you seem determined to form some kind of lesser attachment that I do not want. Even if I were pregnant and you felt duty-bound to propose, I would still refuse you, because I know it would make you as unhappy as it would make me.” Devon’s intensity didn’t lessen, but it changed from anger into something else. He held her with a gaze of hot blue infinity. “What if I said I loved you?” he asked softly. The question drove a spike of pain through her chest. “Don’t.” Her eyes smarted with tears. “You’re not the kind of man who could ever say that and mean it.” “It’s not who I was.” His voice was steady. “But it’s who I am now. You’ve shown me.” For at least a half minute, the only sound was the crackling, shivering fire on the hearth. She didn’t understand what he truly thought or felt. But she would be a fool to believe him. “Devon,” she eventually said, “when it comes to love…neither you nor I can trust your promises.” She couldn’t see through the glittering film of misery, but she was aware of him moving, bending to pick up the coat he had tossed aside, rummaging for something. He came to her, catching her arm lightly in his hand, drawing her to the bed. The mattress was so high that he had to fit his hands around her waist and hoist her upward to sit on it. He set something on her lap. “What is this?” She looked down at a small wooden box. His expression was unfathomable. “A gift for you.” Her sharp tongue got the better of her. “A parting gift?” Devon scowled. “Open it.” Obeying, she lifted the lid. The box was lined with red velvet. Pulling aside a protective layer of cloth, she uncovered a tiny gold pocket watch on a long chain, the casing delicately engraved with flowers and leaves. A glass window on the hinged front cover revealed a white enamel dial and black hour and minute markers. “It belonged to my mother,” she heard Devon say. “It’s the only possession of hers that I have. She never carried it.” Irony edged his voice. “Time was never important to her.

Mr. Collins,” snapped the lady in question, “I should not accept a proposal from Darcy even were I not already engaged to Richard. I am of age and may choose my husband for myself. You, sir, will tend to your own business.

The way most women take care of thier nails and hair, some husbands may wish they were nails and hair.

Nevertheless, the issue of Catholic marriage deserves some additional theoretical and historical consideration to prevent ambiguity. Naturally in our case it is not the arguments of “free thinkers” that turn us against this kind of marriage. Earlier I mentioned the contamination between the sacred and the profane. It is worth recalling that marriage as a rite and sacrament involving indissolubility took shape late in the history of the Church, and not before the twelfth century. The obligatory nature of the religious rite for every union that wished to be considered more than mere concubinage was later still, declared at the Council of Trent (1563). For our purposes, this does not affect the concept of indissoluble marriage in itself, but its place, significance, and conditions have to be clarified. The consequence here, as in other cases regarding the sacraments, is that the Catholic Church finds itself facing a singular paradox: proposals intending to make the profane sacred have practically ended up making the sacred profane. The true, traditional significance of the marriage rite is outlined by Saint Paul, when he uses not the term “sacrament” but rather “mystery” to indicate it (“it is a great mystery,” taken verbatim—Ephesians 5:31-32). One can indeed allow a higher idea of marriage as a sacred and indissoluble union not in words, but in fact. A union of this type, however, is conceivable only in exceptional cases in which that absolute, almost heroic dedication of two people in life and beyond life is present in principle. This was known in more than one traditional civilization, with examples of wives who even found it natural not to outlive the death of their husbands. In speaking of making the sacred profane, I alluded to the fact that the concept of an indissoluble sacramental union, “written in the heavens” (as opposed to one on the naturalistic plane that is generically sentimental, and even at base merely social), has been applied to, or rather imposed on, every couple who must join themselves in church rather than in civil marriage, only to conform to their social environment. It is pretended that on this exterior and prosaic plane, on this plane of the Nietzschean “human, all too human,” the attributes of truly sacred marriage, of marriage as a “mystery,” can and must be valid. When divorce is not permitted in a society like the present, one can expect this hypocritical regime and the rise of grave personal and social problems. On the other hand, it should be noted that in Catholicism itself the theoretical absoluteness of the marriage rite bears a significant limitation. It is enough to remember that if the Church insists on the indissolubility of the marriage bond in space, denying divorce, it has ceased to observe it in time. The Church that does not allow one to divorce and remarry does permit widows and widowers to remarry, which amounts to a breach of faithfulness, and is at best conceivable within an openly materialistic premise; in other words, only if it is thought that when one who was indissolubly united by the supernatural power of the rite has died, he or she has ceased to exist. This inconsistency shows that Catholic religious law, far from truly having transcendent spiritual values in view, has made the sacrament into a simple, social convenience, an ingredient of the profane life, reducing it to a mere formality, or rather degrading it.

If you fail to be submissive as a wife, you will become an agent of satan and you will go around giving ill advices to people to despise marriage and thier husband.

My future husband. "I want you to know I'd suffer through ten more public proposals if it meant I got to marry you.

Great delusion is when you dishonor your husband or wife and believe that you can still honour God whom you do not see or touch.