Page:The Art of Helping People Out of Trouble (1924).pdf/31

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this instinct, preventing both his marriage and the free development of his career.

In making the adjustment to single life, the man must guard both against a devotion of this kind which hinders him from attaining to a true self-expression, and against a self-centered existence that at the worst may drift into sensuality. At the best he may, in adjusting himself to single life, achieve an intense application to work and a variety of interests and friendships that can bring him a large measure of happiness.

Widowhood, like all other adjustments, presents itself under a multitude of varying circumstances. The widowhood which follows a happy marriage is primarily the adjustment to a great loneliness, a loneliness that is both spiritual and physical. Life has hitherto been arranged on a communal basis; the family instead of the individual has been the unit, every responsibility has been shared, the habit of intimate association with another person has been formed. Now this is all changed. Some people attempt to fill the empty place by summoning memories of the past and idealizing the one who has gone, a form of substitution which if indulged too greatly may degenerate into self-pity and a withdrawal from whole-