Foreword
It has become clear in recent times that the once time-honored institution of marriage is under severe attack. In the advanced industrial societies we see this trend mirrored in the ever rising tide of divorce and separation that at times seems to threaten the majority of marriages. We hear repeated warnings that the existence of the family itself is at stake, and with it the very fabric of life as we know it.
But it is usually the less visible manifestations of a problem that pose the most insidious dangers, more threatening because they are so much harder to recognize. They merge into the confused background of our daily lives and their very familiarity cloaks them with the guise of normality. The increasing divorce rate has already been mentioned, but what about the millions of married couples who live lives of quiet desperation, unable to recognize the nature of the emotional trap that has closed around them? This is the theme that author J. Wheatfield has so courageously chosen for the subject of this book.
Mr. Wheatfield pulls no punches as he delves straight into a world of paralyzing hypocrisy, of the claustrophobia of mutual jealousy and the dehumanizing struggle for petty victories that mars the relationship between couples who have refused to grow emotionally. After the problems have been clearly set out, we are given a first-hand glimpse into the inner workings of one of the more recent and least understood efforts of struggling individuals to come to terms with the realities of modern life. We find ourselves faced with a new movement, perhaps less drastic than divorce, but certainly more threatening to our traditional moral code. Adultery, wife-swapping, 'swinging', whatever name it bears at the moment, this current trend is seen by the tradition-bound as a debased and sinful way of circumventing the vows of matrimony.
But beyond the shocked and indignant reactions of its critics, one may sense in this subject a fresh new breeze of unabashed freedom and open-minded experimentation, coupled with a courageous attempt to reverse the seemingly unavoidable increase in personal unhappiness among married couples.
Will this new and daring experiment work? Can it save a threatened institution? Only the future holds the complete answer. The purpose of this book is not to pass judgment but to present a case study of just such an experiment, an encounter between two couples, people who bear general characteristics that we can easily recognize in our friends and neighbors and perhaps in ourselves. Any final judgment is left up to the reader.