§ 84
The thought that the husband is getting an egoistic-socially valuable possession by the exercise of his rights at the first love episode is therefore quite absurd. He is performing an act which is in the nature of a creation, if rightly carried out, but which is destruction if he does not himself hold his instincts under absolute control.
That the love episode does not take away from woman anything that makes her poorer is indicated by the fact, noticed by Ellis and others, that woman’s erotic nature is deeper and stronger than man’s. For the development of this great erotic nature it is as absolutely necessary for her to be controlled by a man quite master of his own sex instincts, as it is necessary for an ovum to be met by a zoösperm, if it is going to develop any further than its ovum condition.
At a single love episode, neither can the woman’s all be taken by a man nor can her development be completed. The first episode is only the beginning of a development, that needs the entire excess energies of her man for the rest of their joint lives. In the sections on virginity it will also appear that except in a superficial egoistic-social sense, her psychical virginity cannot always be terminated at the first love episode.