§ 108
A correspondent of Ellis (Vol. III, p. 210) writes that, one cause, serving to disguise a woman’s feelings to herself and make her seem to herself colder than she really is, may be looked for in “the masochistic[22] tendency of women, or their desire for subjection to the man they love. I believe no point in the whole question is more misunderstood than this. Nearly every man imagines that to secure a woman’s love and respect he must give her her own way in small things and compel her obedience in great ones. Every man who desires success with a woman should exactly reverse that theory.”
The unsatisfactory nature of this communication comes from the ambiguity as to small things and great things. What are small and what great? The answer is that the small things are those concerned with egoistic-social impulses, the great things are the erotic. From the truly erotic point of view no egoistic-social impulses lead to great, valuable or important actions. A man may defer to his wife’s judgment in all kinds of every-day affairs, unless this deference is unmistakably due to an actual lack of confidence on his part, because confidence of all kinds is based on love confidence.
And a man who not only defers to his wife’s judgment in egoistic-social lines but in addition continues to “compass her with sweet observances,” being always chivalrously polite and attentive to her, if he fail to control her erotically, will completely dissatisfy her. His attentiveness will actually annoy her. She unconsciously realizes that he is playing the obedient little boy to her, and thus making out of her a mother and not a wife.
The masochism referred to is an exaggeration. The natural desire of the woman for erotic subjection is not masochism in the ordinarily accepted sense, which means the pleasure experienced by some neurotics as a result of pain inflicted upon them by others.
What Ellis’ correspondent means is that giving a woman her way in great things and compelling her obedience in small things equally show that love confidence without which any man’s actions will continuously gall the wife’s unconscious. If he yields to her in great egoistic-social issues, he shows the same confidence in the superiority of the erotic instincts (the love confidence par excellence) that he shows in compelling her obedience in small things.