“Naomi’s Advice”___________________________________________“Naomi’s Advice” Be Grateful and Don't Expect Too MuchBy Christina SimmonsThe Guide’s 1940s column “Naomi’s Advice” addressed mostly her majority of young single female readers, but Naomi did offer words of wisdom to married women as well. While her advice to the single could be quite critical of men, her advice to the married demonstrated her more conventional side: Once married, except in cases of non-support or abuse, she told women to accept their lot and not ask too much.Naomi worked with the concept of “modern marriage” that had evolved in the first few decades of the century. The man was still supposed to provide economic support and the women ideally be home-makers within a marriage based on love. But “modern marriage” called for more emotional and sexual expressiveness within that love. The married people who wrote to Naomi were writing because they were unhappy about something–and often it was about the lack of that emotionally warm love. Some women complained of men’s alternating rages and emotional coolness or a generally unpleasant atmosphere in the home. But even without such drama, some wanted more. One woman, for example, wrote that a boarder in their home had fallen in love with her and wanted her to divorce her husband. She told Naomi, “My husband works hard and takes care of me, but sometimes I wonder if he loves me.” She seems to have been looking for something beyond the basics.Naomi was not very sympathetic to such complaints and seemed to feel that wanting that kind of expressive love was an unnecessary extra in marriage, particularly for women. She told wives to examine their own behavior first and correct their own faults – to be kind, not waste money, not nag, and be accommodating to men’s needs. The basics were for the man to provide financial support and not be abusive, for which a wife should be grateful. She told one reader that economic providing WAS love.Naomi was supportive of her readers’ concerns about one condition that supported modern marriage-living in a nuclear family and having some privacy to cultivate that intensive love. A significant minority of married letter writers complained about the interference of relatives in their marriages – a problem likely increased during wartime housing shortages that forced many people to move in with relatives. Many African-Americans had traditionally relied on the extended family, given the poverty and racism they faced, so this issue probably stirred strong feelings for many. Naomi definitely took sides against extended family intrusion: She especially condemned men’s mothers who, she said, “have nothing to do but sit around and make life miserable for their sons’ wives.”However, by far the largest number of complaints from married women involved men’s greater social freedom. Sometimes women complained about their husbands refusing to let them go out, even with girlfriends, while the men went out on their own. One described the shocking difference from before marriage, when her bo