between the two who thought they were
entering paradise together, is generally a sense of loneliness, a feeling
that the one who was expected to have all in common, is outside 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 of our natures. The girl
may sob for hours over something that at first appears so trifling that
she cannot even tell a friend about it, while the young man, who
thought that he had set out with his soul's beloved upon an adventure
into celestial distances, may find himself apparently up against some
barrier in her which appears incomprehensible or frivolous.
Then, so strange is the mystical inter-relation between our bodies, our
minds, and our souls, that for crimes committed in ignorance of the
dual functions of the married pair, and the laws which harmonize them,
the punishments are reaped on plains quite diverse, till new and ever
new misunderstandings appear to spring spontaneously 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 cases. I have
heard from women, whose marriages are looked upon by all as the
happiest possible expressions of human felicity, the details of secret
pain of which they have allowed their husbands no inkling. Many men
will know how they have hidden from their beloved wives a sense of
dull disappointment, perhaps at her coldness in the marital embrace, or
from the feeling that there is in her something elusive which always
evades their grasp.
Now that so many "movements" are abroad, folk on all sides are
emboldened to express the opinion that it is marriage itself which is at
fault. Many think that merely by loosening the bonds, and making it
possible to start afresh with some one else, their lives would be made
harmonious and happy. By many such reformers it is forgotten that he
or she who knows nothing of the way to make marriage great and
beautiful with one partner, is not likely to succeed with another. Only
by a reverent study of the Art of Love can the beauty of its expression
be realized in linked lives.
And even when once learnt, the Art of Love takes time to practice. As
Ellen Key says, "Love requires peace, love will dream; it cannot live
upon the remnants of our time and our personality."
There is no doubt that Love loses, in the haste and bustle of our modern
turmoil, not only much of its charm and grace, but some of its vital
essence. The result of the haste which so infests and poisons us, is often
felt much more by the woman than by the man. The over-stimulation of
city life tends to "speed up" the man's reactions, but to retard hers. To
make matters worse, even for 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,
and the untutored male sees but one thing -- the accomplishment of
desire. The woman, for it is in her nature so to do, forgives the
crudeness, but sooner or later her love revolts, probably in secret, and
then forever after, though she may command an outward tenderness,
she has nothing within but scorn and loathing for the act which should
have been a perpetually recurring entrancement.
So many people are now born and bred in artificial and false
surroundings, that even the elementary fact that the acts of love should
be joyous is unknown to them. Havelock Ellis ("Psychology of Sex,"
vol. 6, 1913, p. 512) quotes the amazing statement of a distinguished
American gynecologist, who said, "I do not believe mutual pleasure in
the sexual act has any particular bearing on the happiness of life." This
is, perhaps, an extreme case, yet so many distinguished medical men,
gynecologists and physiologists, are either in ignorance or error
regarding some of the profoundest facts of human sex-life, that it is not
surprising that ordinary young couples, however hopeful, should break
and destroy the joy that might have been their lifelong companion.
WOMAN'S "CONTRARINESS"
"Oh! for that Being whom I can conceive to be in the world, though I
shall not live to prove it. One to whom I might have recourse in all my
Humors and Dispositions: in
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