Summary
Worms has (apparently) asked if courtship is the time for sowing seeds that will blossom ten years hence, into "domestic hatred."
Yes! Answers Screwtape, Yes! In the glow of love, humans will establish unsustainable relationship rules and then, when the "erotic" attraction dims, they'll grow to hate one another. Screwtape points, specifically, to the grand problem of "Unselfishness."
Basically each party aspires to put the other party's desires first and take semi-secret credit for being 'unselfish' -- and then: resentment! And dishonesty, and so-on.
Screwtape draws some kind of fine distinction between the demon-born negative of 'unselfishness' and the Godly virtue of Charity -- presumably Charity is sincere, but at any rate, he concludes with a slight, allusive non-sequitur: the hope that Slumtrimpet can do something about the Young Woman's "sense of the ridiculous."
Thoughts
Charity v. Unselfishness seems like a fairly fine semantic distinction, but the point here is reasonable: be Charitable (sincerely) or at least be up front about it. And don't expect anyone to be as Unselfish or Charitable as they are at the beginning of a relationship.
And I want to give Lewis credit for focusing on unrealistic expectations of others rather than preaching an unrealistic level of Charity in his readers.
It's one thing not to live up to our expectations of ourselves, but another (worse) thing to hold others to an unreasonable standard.
One other thought: reading Screwtape's unconsidered gender essentialism -- something I suspect would have been utterly common sense in its day -- is a bit amusing to modern ears, especially the bit where he notes that even an advanced Christian woman will make an unholy nag of herself and a similarly advanced Christian man won't get off his ass to help anyone. I suspect this this sort of thing makes for brilliant ammunition in a properly Christian household.
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