Devorah Tarrow, Aesthetic Realism consultant, writes:

“How Can a Wife Make Sense of Severity & Sweetness in Herself?”—a question that hits home for every woman—will be the subject of the Understanding Marriage! class on Saturday, Aug 10th, 11 AM-12:30 PM. The class is taught by Barbara Allen, Meryl Nietsch-Cooperman, and other Aesthetic Realism consultants, and is open to all women. The practical and cultural answer presented at this event is based on the following explanation by Eli Siegel, founder of Aesthetic Realism: “Marriage is a means for liking the world through a person. Too often, though, marriage is a contemptuous exclusion of the world.”

Whether recent brides or wives of 30 years, women will have a lively, educational time discussing these sentences by Mr. Siegel from his lecture The Furious Aesthetics of Marriage:

Trying to be tough and trying to be kind is something every married person has to do….All marriages that have gone wrong, have gone wrong because the toughness and the kindness that the individuals in the marriage had to go for, were used against each other. We are all of us tougher than we know….And we are all of us, also, trying to be kind and not feel we are taken in. Life presents us the aesthetic job of being tough and kind at once, and in marriage, that job is made more intense, more insistent.

The class will show how a wife can put together both severity and sweetness when she has the same honest purpose. Learning how this is so, and how the desire for contempt interferes, a wife no longer has to feel like two different people. She can understand how both she and her spouse have an aesthetic problem out of which beauty can be made—and this education is a liberating experience!

The fee for the class is $10. For more information, call 212.777.4490.