Married Love | Page 7

all my Distempers of Mind, visionary
Causes of Mortification, and Fairy Dreams of Pleasure. I have been
trying to train up a Lady or two for these good offices of Friendship,
but hitherto I must not boast of my success."
-- Herrick.
WHAT is the fate of the average man who marries, happily and
hopefully, a girl well suited to him? He desires with his whole heart a
mutual, lifelong happiness. He marries with the intention of fulfilling
every injunction given 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 after a few months, or maybe a
few years, of marriage they seem to have drifted apart, and he finds her
often cold and incomprehensible. If he is a nice man, he will not
acknowledge this even to his best friend. But his heart knows its own
pain.
He may at times laugh, and in the friendliest spirit tease her about her
contrariness. That is taken by every one to mean nothing but a playful
concealment 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 she is at times inexplicably cold; that, sometimes,
when he has "done nothing" she will have tears in her eyes, irrational

tears which she cannot explain.
He observes that one week his tender love-making and romantic
advances win her to smiles and joyous yielding, and then perhaps a few
days later the same, or more 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 this deep,
inexplicable hurt is often the beginning of the end of love. Men like to
feel that they understand their beloved, and that she is a rational being.
After this has continued for some time, if the man is of at all a jealous
nature he will search among his wife's acquaintances for some one
whom she may have met, for some one who may momentarily have
diverted her attention. For the natural man at once seeks the
explanation of his own ill-success in a rival. On some occasion when
her coldness puzzles him he is conscious that his love, his own desires,
are as ardent as they were a few days before. Knowing so intimately his
own heart, he is sure of the steadiness of its love, and he feels acutely
the romantic passion to which her beauty stirs him. He remembers
perhaps that a few days earlier his ardor had awakened a response in
her. Therefore he reaches what appears to him to be the infallible
logical deduction: that either there must be some rival -- or his bride's
nature is incomprehensible, contrary, capricious. Both -- thoughts to
madden.
With capriciousness, man in general has little patience. Caprice renders
his best efforts null and void. Woman's caprice is, or appears to be, a
negation of reason. And as reason is man's most precious and hard-won
faculty, the one which has raised mankind from the ranks of brute
creation, he cannot bear to see it apparently flouted.
That his bride should lack logic and sweet reasonableness -- is a flaw it
hurts him to recognize in her. He has to crush the thought down.
It may then happen that the young man, himself pained and bewildered
at having pained his bride by the very ardor of his affection, may strive
to please her by placing restraint upon himself. He may ask himself: Do
not books on sex preach restraint to the man? He reads the books

written for the guidance of youth, and finds "restraint," "self-control,"
generally, and often irrationally, urged in them all. His next step may
then then be to curtail the expression of his tender feelings, and to work
hard and late in the evenings instead of kissing his bride's fingers and
playing with the lace of her dress.
And then, if he is at all observant, he may be aggrieved and astonished
to find her again wistful or hurt. With the tender longing to understand,
which is so profound a characteristic 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 that this time
she is hurt because he had not made those very advances which so
recently had repelled her, and had been with such difficulty repressed
by his intellectual efforts.
He asks himself in despair: What is a man to do? If he is