How To Stop Worrying And Start Living

After leaving college, I got a job with a large industrial organisation, and five years later, this company sent me across the Pacific to act as one of its representatives in the Far East. A week before leaving America, I married the sweetest and most lovable woman I have ever known. But our honeymoon was a tragic disappointment for both of us-especially for her. By the time we reached Hawaii she was so disappointed, so heartbroken, that she would have returned to the States, had she not been ashamed to face her old friends and admit failure in what can be-and should be-life's most thrilling adventure.

We lived together two miserable years in the Orient. I was so unhappy that I had sometimes thought of suicide. Then one day I chanced upon a book that changed everything. I have always been a lover of books, and one night while visiting some American friends in the Far East, I was glancing over their well-stocked library when I suddenly saw a book entitled Ideal Marriage, by Dr. Van de Velde. The title sounded like a preachy, goody-goody document. But, out of idle curiosity, I opened it. I saw that it dealt almost entirely with the sexual side of marriage-and dealt with it frankly and without any touch of vulgarity.

If anyone had told me that I ought to read a book on sex, I would have been insulted.

Read one? I felt I could write one. But my own marriage was such a bust that I condescended to look this book over, anyway. So I got up the courage to ask my host if I could borrow it. I can truthfully say that reading that book turned out to be one of the important events of my life. My wife also read it. That book turned a tragic marriage into a happy, blissful companionship. If I had a million dollars, I would buy the rights to publish that book and give free copies of it to the countless thousands of bridal couples.

I once read that Dr. John B. Watson, the distinguished psychologist, said: "Sex is admittedly the most important subject in life. It is admittedly the thing which causes the most shipwrecks in the happiness of men and women."

If Dr. Watson is correct-and I am persuaded that his statement, sweeping as it is, is almost, if not wholly, true-then why does civilisation permit millions of sexual ignoramuses to marry each year and wreck all chances for married happiness?

If we want to know what is wrong with marriage, we ought to read a book entitled What is Wrong With Marriage? by Dr. G. V. Hamilton and Kenneth MacGowan. Dr. Hamilton spent four years investigating what is wrong with marriage before writing that book, and he says: "It would take a very reckless psychiatrist to say that most married friction doesn't find its sources in sexual maladjustment. At any rate, the frictions which arise from other difficulties would be ignored in many, many cases if the sexual relation itself were satisfactory."

?How To Stop Worrying And Start Living? By Dale Carnegie 180

I know that statement is true. I know from tragic experience.

The book that saved my marriage from shipwreck, Dr. Van de Velde's Ideal Marriage, can be found in most large public libraries, or bought at any bookshop. If you want to give a little gift to some bride and groom, don't give them a carving set. Give them a copy of Ideal Marriage. That book will do more to increase their happiness than all the carving sets in the world.

[Note by Dale Carnegie: If you find Ideal Marriage too expensive, here is another book I can recommend: A Marriage Manual, by Drs. Hannah and Abraham Stone.]

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I Was Committing Slow Suicide Because I Didn't Know How To Relax By

Paul Sampson

Direct-Mail Advertising, 12815 Sycamore, Wyandotte, Michigan UP to six months ago, I was rushing through life in high gear. I was always tense, never relaxed. I arrived home from work every night worried and exhausted from nervous fatigue Why? Because no one ever said to me: "Paul, you are killing yourself. Why don't you slow down? Why don't you relax?"

I would get up fast in the morning, eat fast, shave fast, dress fast, and drive to work as if I were afraid the steering wheel would fly out the window if I didn't have a death grip on it. I worked fast, hurried home, and at night I even tried to sleep fast.