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| On Finding Love After a Loss |
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Florence Yerly was a friend from Reagan's hometown whose husband died in 1951. Reagan wrote to offer comfort and advice about life, love,
sex and fate. |
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Dear Florence:
I have put off answering your letter of last September mainly because
I was resisting the urge to "give advice." I know I shouldn't and
that you have every right to tell me to mind my own business but now
I'm going to play "old Professor" (of swimming probably) and speak my
piece.
Your letter led me to believe you are embarked on a course which can
only lead to unhappiness and a barren future and this is all wrong.
You are young and very attractive and have a great deal to offer some
worthwhile man and both you and your son need a man in your life or
lives.
You spoke of your aunt and the "ideals" she gave you. It is high time
you reviewed those teachings in the light; not of modern living; but
of modern knowledge. I too was raised in a home where "ideals"
similar I'm sure to yours were taught, by my Mother. Now I have the
highest regard for her and for her teachings but I have had to go on
from there and find a "code for living" in keeping with my conscience
and knowledge of right and wrong. This does not mean casting her
principles aside but rather it is building to meet my present needs
on a foundation I learned from her. At the same time I have learned
painfully that some "idealism" is in effect a flight from reality.
You say you believe there is one love in life for each of us—this is
just not true. Can you believe that God means for millions of really
young people to go on through life alone because a war robbed them of
their first loves? Maybe you'll resent this Florence but I must say
it—you have to look into your own heart and ask yourself if you
really believe in one love now lost to you or if this is a shield
behind which you hide because your past experience did not measure up
to your girlhood dreams and now you fear men.
I will grant you that all of us grow up with a "moonlight and roses"
outlook on romantic relationships and sometimes it comes hard to
reconcile this dream with the actualities of physical contact. To
show you how "over idealistic" my training was—I awoke to the
realization (almost too late) that even in marriage I had a little
guilty feeling about sex, as though the whole thing was tinged with
evil.
A very fine old gentleman started me out on the right track by
interesting me in the practices of, or I should say, moral standards
of, the primitive peoples never exposed to our civilization—such as
the Polynesians. These peoples who are truly children of nature and
thus of God, accept physical desire as a natural, normal appetite to
be satisfied honestly and fearlessly with no surrounding aura of sin
and sly whispers in the darkness . . .
I guess what I am trying to say is that I oppose the dogmas of some
organized religions who accept marital relationship only as a
"tolerated" sin for the purpose of conceiving children and who
believe all children to be born in sin. My personal belief is that
God couldn't create evil so the desires he planted in us are good and
the physical relationship between a man and woman is the highest form
of companionship . . .
The world is full of lonely people—people capable of happiness and
of giving happiness and love is not a magic touch of cosmic dust that
preordains two people and two people only for each other. Love can
grow slowly out of warmth and companionship and none of us should be
afraid to seek it.
Now I'm going to seal this letter very quickly and mail it because if
I read it over I won't have the nerve to sent it—
Merry Christmas and Much Happiness.
Sincerely,
Dutch
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