Married Love

Brok

ld? How answer the dumb appeal for help we so often

each found the one who will give eternal understandi

om and the sweetness of the relation often does bring real happiness. How lo

being. Much of the sex-attraction (not only among human beings, but even throughout the whole world of living creatures) depends upon the differenc

utual knowledge beneath their feet. While even the happiest pair may know of divergencies about religion, politics, social custom, and opinions on things in general, these, with goodwill, patience, and intelligence on either side, can be ultimately adjusted, b

y darkness have affected even the few who lead us, and who are prosecuting research in these subjects. And the two young people begin to suffer f

s exceptions, and comfort themselves with the thought of some of their friends, w

iage are generally those who have missed the happiness they expected. True as this may be in general, it is not permanently and profoundly true, and the

tive, and slightly abnormal people, it still remains an astonishing and tragic fact that

and of all the innumerable marriages of which the inner circumstances are kno

by the loved and loving partner, to be perfectly happy marri

th hers. The surface freedom of our women has not materially altered, cannot materially alter, the pristine purity of a girl of our northern race. She generally has not even the capacity to imagine the basic facts of phy

ined about all ordinary things, and he enters marriage hoping for an even higher degree of spiritual and bodily unity than does the girl or the wo

more often by the sex-life of marriage is of the two the more profound

d essences; and this one supreme thing is expose

s. As I am addressing those who I assume have read, or can read, other books written upon various ramifications of the subject, I will no

aspects of prostitution that there is no need to labour the point that no marriage can be happy where t

f selfishness. It is with the subtler infringements of the fundamental laws we have to deal. And the prime tragedy is that, as a rule, the two young people are both un

utside some experience, some subtle delight, and fails to understand the needs of the loved one. Trivialities are often the first indicators of something which takes its roots unseen in the profoundest depths. The girl may sob for hours over something so trifling that

sly from the soil of their mutual contact. Gradually or swiftly each heart begins to hide a sense of boundless isolation. It may be urged that this statement is too sweeping. It is, however, based on innumerable actual lives. I have heard from women whose marriages are looked upon by all as the happiest possible expressions of h

d more ordinary natures. The disappointment of the married is expressed not only

and making it possible to start afresh with someone else, their lives would be made harmonious and happy. But often such reformers forget that he or she who knows nothing of the way to make

se. As Ellen Key says, "Love requires peace, love will dream; i

r those who have leisure to spend on love-making, the opportunities for peaceful, romantic dalliance are less to-day in a city with its tubes and cinema shows than in woods and gardens where the pulling of rosemary or lavender may be the sweet excuse for the slow and profound mutual rousing of passion. Now physical passion, so swiftly stimulated in man, tends to override all else, an

elieve mutual pleasure in the sexual act has any particular bearing on the happiness of life." (Amer. Med. Assoc. Rep. 1900.) This is, perhaps, an extreme case, yet so many distinguished medical men, gynecologists and physiologists, are