Married Love

"Contr

all my Humours and Dispositions: in all my Distempers of Mind, visionary Causes of Mortification, and Fairy Dreams of Pleasure. I h

en him by father, doctor, and friend. He is considerate in trifles, he speaks no harsh words, he and his bride go about together, walk together, read together, and perhaps, if they are very advanced, even work together. But af

ment of his profound love. Probably it is. But gnawing at the very roots of his love is a hateful little worm-the sense that she is contrary. He feels that

impassioned, tenderness on his part is met by coldness or a forced appearance of warmth, which, while he may make no comment upon it, hurts him acutely. And thi

are ready to seek the explanation of their own ill success in a rival. On some occasion when her coldness puzzles him the man is perhaps conscious that his love, his own desires, are as ardent as they were a few days before; then, knowing so intimately his own heart, he is sure of the steadiness of its love, and he feels acutely the rom

caprice is, or appears to be, a negation of reason. And as reason is man's most precious and hard-won faculty, th

asonableness is a flaw it hurts him to recogn

ot religious and many kinds of moral teachers preach restraint to the man? He reads the books written for the guidance of youth, and finds "restraint," "self-control," in general terms (and often irrationally) urged i

cteristic in all the best of our young men, he begs, implores, or pets her into telling him some part of the reason for her fresh grievance. He discovers to his amazement tha

ce. He learns from them that "restraint" is advised from every point of view, but according to the character of the author he will find that "restraint" means having the marriage

ment then, he may begin

or many times, that the night comes when the man who has heroically practise

doctor or his friends tell him more than the chief European authorities on this subject? T

erally confirmed this rule, which seems to me to conform very well to the normal state to which man[2] has become gradually adapted during thousands of years. Husbands who would consider this average as an imprescriptable

the other hand, there are many who are willing to go not only so far, but further than this in their self-suppre

to go further, the great que

wife unsatisfied, incomprehensible-capricious. Then it may be that, disheartened, he tires, and she sinks into the dull apathy of acquiescence in her "

ne nature. The kindly ones smile, perhaps a little patronisingly, and tell us that women are more instinctive, more child-like, less reasonable than men. Th

of planets or the collecting of insects. Woman is not essentially capricious; some of the laws of her being might have been discovered long ago had the existence of law been suspected. But it has

tched at the easy theory that women differ from themselves by being capricious. Moreover, by attributing to mere caprice the coldness

rtists have been mainly men. Consequently woman's side of the joint life has found little or no expression. Woman has been content to mould

te man and laugh at his attempted restrictions, woman has bowed to man's desire over her body, and, regardless of its pulses, he approaches her or not as is his will. Some of her rhythms defy him-the moon-month tide of menstruation, the

ves have receded, leaving sand where he had expected deep blue wate

in his bride's coldness when she yields her sa

recognise the delicate signs of her ardour. In our an?mic artificial days it often happens that the man's desire is a surface need, quickly satisfied, colourless, and lacking beauty, and that h

recognise and welcome it in her. Seldom dare any woman, still more seldom dare a wife, risk the blow at her heart which would be given were she to offer charming love-play to which the man did not respond. To the initiate she will be able to reveal that the tide is up by a hundred subtle signs

e (all unconscious that it was so) she felt a yearning to feel his head, his lips, pressed against her bosom. The sensitive inter-relation between a woman's breasts and the rest of her sex-life is not only a bodily thrill, but there is a world of poetic beauty in the longing of a loving woman for the unconceived child which melts in mists of tenderness toward her lover, the soft touch of whose lips can thus rouse her mingled joy. Because she shyly asked him, Mrs. G.'s husband gave her one swift unrepeated kiss upon her bosom. He was

m of the purblind social custom

lations with her husband fundamentally different from those with her brother. When she discovers the true nature of his body, and learns the part she has to play as a wife, she may refuse utterly to agree to her husband's wishes. I know one pair of which the husband, chivalrous and loving,

not a fact. One highly-educated lady intimately known to me told me that when she was about eighteen she suffered many mon

e. It will be difficult or impossible for such a bride ever after to experience the joys of sex-union, for

poem which vividly expresses t

th men who hav

who, the bridal

t rise from insti

ozen things, a

t, masked with t

th-love years-the

us. So, shamm

d by the side

eace may ripe

are we-well ho

rine

n terms of the reactions of the prostitute. They argue that, because the prostitute showed physical excitement and pleasure in union, if the bride or wife does not do so, then she is "cold" or "under-sexed

ble of understanding feminine psychology, for prostitutes are hardly more than automata trained for the use of

oung blood a man has given up and gone now and again for relief to prostitutes, and then later in life has met the woman who is his mate, and whom, after remorse for his soiled past, and after winning her forgiveness for it, he marries. Then, unwittingly, he may make the wife suffer either by interpreting her in the light of the other women or perhaps (though this happens less frequently) by setting

ur in a truer light had he known that some creat

c ideal of the early Church and the fact that man has used woman as his instrument so often regardless of her wishes. Women's education, therefore, and the trend of social feeling, has lar

oth law and custom have strengthened the view that he has the right to approach his wife wh

the myth of her capriciousness, seems not to be suspected. We have studied the wave-lengths of water, of sound, of light; but w