Then US President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan hug during a luncheon in New Orleans, Louisiana in this 15 August 1988 file photo.File photo | Mike Sargent / AFP
You can love or hate Ronald Reagan's politics, but it's tough to argue with his views on marriage. His second marriage, that is.
Days before his son Michael's wedding, the future U.S. president was full of advice.
In a recently published letter, dated June 1971, Mr. Reagan urges his son to approach marriage as "the most meaningful relationship there is in all human life."
Unusual for a man born in 1911, Mr. Reagan acknowledges that a husband isn't automatically God's gift to woman.
"It does take quite a man to remain attractive and to be loved by a woman who has heard him snore, seen him unshaven, tended him while he was sick and washed his dirty underwear," he writes. "Do that and keep her still feeling a warm glow and you will know some very beautiful music."
That being said, the majority of the letter focuses on cheating. The late president warns against subscribing to a version of manhood based on locker-room stories, "smugly confident that what a wife doesn't know won't hurt her."
Any man can find a "twerp" who will go along with cheating, he adds.
But the truth is, he continues, even if a wife never finds lipstick on the collar or catches a man in a flimsy excuse, "a wife does know, and with that knowing, some of the magic of this relationship disappears."
Was Mr. Reagan speaking from experience? His detailed descriptions beg the question, and later in the letter, he makes an oblique reference to his failed marriage (1940 to 1949) to actress Jane Wyman.
"Mike," he writes to his son, "you know better than many what an unhappy home is and what it can do to others."
Commenting at Patheos.com, Deacon Greg Kandra suggests that Mr. Reagan's "own failings as a husband are scribbled in every line. He's writing about himself."
Whether or not that's true, history suggests Mr. Reagan learned from his divorce. He was married to Nancy – happily, it seemed – for 52 years until his death at age 93.
One of Nancy Reagan's press secretaries reportedly once said, "They never took each other for granted. They never stopped courting."
Mr. Reagan must have followed his own advice.
What do you make of Ronald Reagan's marriage advice? Is it trite – or do you see pearls of wisdom in there?