Marriage Advice from Barrow Cadbury 1933

While preparing for a wedding this coming Saturday I ran across this quote from Barrow Cadbury (a Quaker who was related to and worked in the Cadbury Chocolate factory in Bournville England) on marital advice. I really enjoyed reading it.

Barrow Cadbury, after forty years of marriage, wrote in 1933 some notes ‘gathered from personal experience and from observation’ for the help of young people in the Bournville works:

Start out together on a fifty-fifty basis, each sharing with the other, and thereby doubly enriching both. Recognise the equality of the service each performs, even though the work differs…The wider your interests outside your regular occupation, the more companionship you will enjoy together, and the happier and more fruitful life will be. After all, if two people are going to live together for thirty, forty, or sixty years they must have interesting things to talk about, or they will get cruelly on one another’s nerves. It needs a real effort to cultivate new interests, but the effort is well repaid… The foregoing suggestions are dictated by a common-sense view of life, and common sense is one of God’s best gifts, which is not always used. But for the full enjoyment of all that God gives us in marriage and home life we need spiritual union. Underlying all must be the spiritual union and communion which bring into married life the power and grace which can carry a couple through the most difficult times of testing. The fellowship of fellow Christians which many of us enjoy when worshipping with them is of real spiritual help in life. Much in life goes by precedents, and the habit of attending a place of worship has proved of real value to many parents and children, together helping to create the spiritual bond which unites them and should unite us all.