Mary And Ralph

Mary And Ralph

These days, new communications technology allows us all to conduct our social affairs at the touch of a button or the click of a mouse. Text messages, email and chatrooms allow us instantaneous access to friends, acquaintances and perfect strangers across the world without ever having to speak face to face, new dating and social networking sites spring up every day, relationships and marriages are made (and broken) via these channels on an even more frequent and burgeoning basis. But all these technological and social changes are largely confined to the past fifteen or maybe twenty years. To try and gain a sense of how romance was conducted i the days before every house had even a television set, let alone a wireless internet connection, we talked to Mary Walton, 84, who married her late husband Ralph on the 14th of July 1942. They remained married until Ralph's death from a stroke in 2000. Mary recalls vividly her first meeting with Ralph:

“He was this handsome young soldier, home on leave from fighting in the war. I'd known him vaguely before the war as he lived only a couple of streets away and our fathers knew one another from around the way. Anyway, it was the middle of June and I was working in Coates, the corner shop at the time. I was outside one morning, stood on the stepladder washing down the windows. As Ralph was coming past from the station, one of the old men from around the way called to him because he was a soldier in uniform, which used to mean you got an awful lot of respect from everybody at that time. So, as Ralph turned to give this chap a reply his kitbag got all tangled up in my stepladder so that when he walked on he pulled me right over! It wasn't that far to fall as it happened, but the bucket of water went flying all over me. Oh, I was livid! Ralph picked me up and started apologising but I wasn't having any of it, I laid right into him, calling him all sorts of names - I was quite the little madam in those days you see and here was this filthy soldier still mucky in his uniform, tipping water all over me and then manhandling me with his dirty great paws! Anyway, there I was scolding him like a fishwife in the street, getting all hot and bothered and he just started to laugh! Well, I couldn't believe it! I thought I'd have a heart attack right there I was so cross, but that's when I first looked at him and saw the man I fell in love with, just standing there laughing at me being cross with his little blue eyes all twinkling and his handsome smile! I just ran out of steam and stood looking up at him, and he told me that he was going home to his bath and that he'd come and meet me for closing and take me out dancing, and I couldn't refuse, couldn't say anything at all. We were married a month after, three days before Ralph went back to the war. You didn't hang about in those days what with all that could get in the way, you saw a chance and you grabbed it! Fifty-eight years of marriage we had together, and I've never regretted a moment of it.”

BONUS : Matchmaking For Marriage Relationship (i)

Revival of traditional matchmaking service

Nowadays, communication has never been so fast; meeting people has never been so easy. But more and more people are looking for and using some kind of matchmaking service -- online or offline.

We all see the revival of the millennium-old traditional matchmaking service industry. People looking for matchmaking service are serious love and marriage seekers. They are quite prepared to pay a huge amount of money in exchange for the highest rate of success in the shortest time possible. The Guinness Book of World Records listed Orly Hod (Orly the Matchmaker) -- whose fees run up to $100,000 -- as the world's priciest matchmaker.

We do not have to look at the statistics before we know that more people live longer today than those a century ago; more people get divorced today than those a century ago. We begin to wonder why marriage relationships would not last longer than those a century ago. Anyone could easily give dozens of reasons.

Of course, most people would think of love and marriage relationships are more an art than a science. But recent research has discovered that even personality and behavior orientations have genetic determinants, and so do marriage relationships.

We also see what the matchmakers are basically applying in matching people is the so-called "scientific" tools -- psychological tests, whether they are called compatibility tests or personality profiles.

Most of the matchmakers take the view that compatibility is the golden rule. They are like those ancient people looking at the sky, seeing the Sun rising from the east and falling to the west and thought that the Sun was rotating around the earth which was believed to be the centre of the universe. As a matter of fact, marriage relationships do not seem to depend on compatibility.

There are numerous real cases that some couples disliked each other badly, but were able to stay together for their entire lives, while some other couples loved each other deeply, but were only able to enjoy each other's company for a very brief period of time. That is why there are so many great love stories like "Romeo and Juliette".

If the problematic issues of marriage relationships can aptly be resolved by employing compatibility tests, life would relatively be easy. But is there anyone who is open-minded and prepared to look into any other alternative means that could really help those desperate marriage seekers?

Relationships might not depend on compatibility.