A Plea for Monogamy

by Wilfrid Lay

§ 149

Haste in the husband comes primarily from fear. Fear makes the thief hurry through his thieving. The pickpocket must be so deft and swift that the victim’s consciousness is not aroused to the theft. But a true husband-lover is not, in the love episode, stealing anything from his wife, no matter how much his actions may resemble those of a thief. His aim should be not to avoid arousing her consciousness, but to awaken it to the gift he is offering her.

Fear makes anyone telescope, curtail, syncopate and abbreviate any act, selecting out of all the portions of the act some element of it, considered perhaps the cream of it, and cutting out all the rest of it. Fear alone—the fear felt by the thief—is unconscious motive enough for haste on the husband’s part. If he did not fear her erotic acme, or her reactions that occur prior to it, he would not repress them, or allow her to repress them. Why should he fear to give his wife the same erotic acme in every love episode that he uniformly gives himself?

He fears—unconsciously, to be sure, for the most part—that, if his wife develops so strong an erotic reaction, she may have an irresistible craving to satisfy herself when he is not present, thus giving herself to another.

Haste in the husband is therefore due to a fear that he may lose his wife’s passion, if it be aroused. He does not realize that the modern educated civilized woman is unable to give herself to any but the one man who has first aroused her deepest passion; and that the more educated and cultivated she is, the more surely she is centred upon the one man about whose being the entire erotic sphere rotates as on an axis.

Man’s fear that his wife may be or become “oversexed” is at least a part of the cause for his haste in the love episode. Unconsciously, of course, he does not want her to have the same ecstatic pleasure as he has himself. Not only because, in his squinting regard, this puts her in the prostitute class, but also because he fears her becoming too passionate for one man and therefore requiring two or more. This is based on an undercurrent of opinion among men that a woman’s sexuality is fundamentally stronger than a man’s; and that her comparative leisure in view of his own, will tend to foster in her the desire for sexual gratification.

Added to this is the other erroneous supposition, common among ignorant men, that excessive indulgence in the pleasures of the love episode has a weakening effect on the man. Viewed as excretions, as the seminal products have been until today, it would seem quite illogical to fear an evacuation of these at least once a day. But although they have been regarded as excreta, there has always been an unconscious belief in men that their retention somehow strengthened the brain. Still a way has been pointed out (see [§ 100]) for the love episodes to be continued without this fear.

A consideration favouring the erroneous belief that the seminal products should not be ejaculated too freely is the phenomenon of a certain lassitude and inactivity following the love (?) episode as it has been hastily put through by many men. On the contrary the perfectly balanced love episode cannot have this unpleasant result. It ensues only when the episode has been imperfect either through too great haste or through the lack of suitable response on the wife’s part. If both share equally, i.e., if the husband reserves his own acme, the result is perfect. It cannot be perfect in any other way than that perfectly shared in flawless mutuality. The evocation of the suitable response on the wife’s part lies wholly in the husband’s self-control. Whether the effect is caused principally by psychical or by physical causes, it is he that in all cases is responsible. Without his proper conducting of the love episode, she is impotent and anesthetic. She cannot feel what he does not do. She cannot see what he does not show her. Who can blame her if her unconscious passion, over which she has never had, has not now and never will have any control, is magnetized by the really superior conduct of another man?

In brief, divorce is in the power of the husband to render imperative or impossible. The wife has essentially nothing to say in the matter except that she has found in her husband a rover among women, a beast that treats her brutally or an ignoramus who is not competent to be either a good husband or a good father.