§ 110
Modern science shows, and clearly, why it must be so, that man’s emotional tensions are never to be relaxed in the presence of a woman herself tense.
This applies in every other situation in life, as well as in the distinctively erotic. A man’s emotional tensions are not to be relaxed on a woman, but on a relaxed woman.
In every sphere of life the mother[23] is always a relaxed woman to her son, particularly in his childhood, but is never a relaxed woman to her husband, except at her consummation in the erotic episode.
If the husband is unwilling, or unprepared to accept these conditions of marriage, he is marrying a woman to be a mother to him, instead of a wife, and he is completely deluding both himself and her. If he is unwilling or unprepared to accept these conditions of marriage, he needs to wait till he is willing or he needs to be prepared.
This may sound, to some men, like giving entirely and not getting anything in return. But they must realize that getting the response they biologically need themselves, and consciously desire, if they be above the animal level, is a process of constructive giving.
So much of their attention husbands must give in order to get what few really get—the total response in every fibre of their wives’ life-love. They cannot get anything by merely taking. Things merely taken turn to dust in their hands. What they want to get must be lured forth from the unconscious depths of their wives and must, to the wife, seem uncaused, spontaneous, no matter how much the husband knows he has practised art.