Married Love | Page 8

intelligent, he
probably devours all the books on sex he can obtain. But in them he is
not likely to find much real guidance. He learns from them that
"restraint" is advised by practically every author, but according to the
character of the author he will find that "restraint" means having the
marriage relation with his wife not more than three times a week, or
once a month -- or never at all except for the protection of children. He
finds no rational guidance based on natural law.
According to his temperament then, he may begin to practice
"restraint."
But it may happen, and indeed it has probably happened in every
marriage once or many times, that the night comes when the man who
has heroically practiced restraint, accidentally discovers his wife's tears
on her solitary pillow.
He seeks for advice indirectly from his friends, perhaps from his doctor.
But can his local doctor or his friends tell him more than the chief
European authorities on this subject? In Forel's "The Sexual Question,"
he reads the following advice: "The reformer, Luther, who was a
practical man, laid down the average rule of two or three connections
a week in marriage, at the time of highest sexual power. I may say that

my numerous observations as a physician have generally confirmed
this rule, which seems to me to conform very well to the normal state to
which man has become gradually adapted during thousands of years.
Husbands who would consider this average as an imprescriptible right
would, however, make wrong pretensions, for it is quite possible for a
normal man to contain himself much longer, and it is his duty to do so,
not only when his wife is ill, but also during menstruation and
pregnancy."
Many men will not be so considerate as to follow this advice, which
represents a high standard of living; but, on the other hand, there are
many who are willing to go not only so far, but further than this in their
self-suppression in order to attain their heart's desire, the happiness of
their mate, and consequently their own life's joy.
However willing they may be to go further, the great question for the
man is: How far?
There are innumerable leaders anxious to lead in many different
directions. The young husband may try first one and then the other, and
still find his wife unsatisfied, incomprehensible -- capricious. Then it
may be that, disheartened, he gets tired and she sinks into the dull
apathy of acquiescence in her "wifely duty." He is left with an echo of
resentment in his heart; if only she had not been so capricious, they
would still have been happy, he fancies.
Many writers, novelists, poets and dramatists have represented the
uttermost tragedy of human life as due to the incomprehensible
contrariness of the feminine nature. The kindly ones smile, perhaps a
little patronizingly, and tell us that women are more instinctive, more
child-like, less reasonable than men. The bitter ones sneer or reproach
or laugh at this "contrariness" in women they do not understand, and
which, baffling their intellect, appears to them to be irrational folly.
It seems strange that those who search for natural law in every domain
of the universe should have so neglected the most vital subject, the one
which concerns us all infinitely more than the naming 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 been easier, has suited the
general structure of society much better, for men to shrug their
shoulders and smile at women as irrational and capricious creatures.
Vaguely, perhaps, men have realized that much of the charm of life lies
in the sex-differences between men and women; so they have snatched
at the easy theory that women differ from themselves by being
capricious. Moreover, by attributing to mere caprice the coldness which
at times comes over the most ardent woman, man was unconsciously
justifying himself by coercing her to suit himself.
Conditions have been such that hitherto the explorers and scientific
investigators, the historians and statisticians, the poets and artists have
been mainly men. Consequently woman's side of the sexual life has
found little or no expression. Woman has been content to mold herself
to the shape desired by man wherever possible, and she has stifled her
natural feelings and her own deep thoughts as they welled up.
Most women have never realized intellectually, but many have been
dimly half-conscious, that woman's nature is set to rhythms over which
man has almost no more control than he has over the tides of the sea.
While the ocean can subdue and dominate man and laugh at