On the other hand, it is equally true that sometimes such an attempt at self-control leads to nervous strain, irritability and alienation. These also are facts.
Personally, I would submit marital relations to the two tests I have proposed, and add that we have succeeded in oversexing ourselves to an extent which cannot be ignored; that we have "repressed" till we are obsessed; and that, before we right ourselves, we shall have to make many experiments, try many roads, and suffer many things. It is then above all necessary that we be very gentle to one another and even a little patient with ourselves. I conceive it much better to use contraceptives than to bear unwanted children; I conceive it also better to use them than to be cruel to others or become neurotic oneself; but that it is the ideal I do not believe.
XI
COMMON-SENSE AND DIVORCE LAW REFORM
"Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder."
In view of what I have said[I] about our marriage and divorce laws, several people have asked what I should actually propose in the way of reform, and I am glad to take the opportunity of a new edition briefly to answer this question.
[Footnote I: See Chapter V.]
I do not wish to see reform take the line of a longer list of "causes" for divorce, such, for example, as drunkenness, insanity, imprisonment for life, and so on. I should prefer to abolish these lists altogether, and to bring all divorce cases under some form of "equitable jurisdiction," each case being decided on its merits.
It should be the business of the court to decide whether the marriage desired to be invalidated has in actual fact any validity or reality at all; and to declare the couple divorced if it has not. In such courts men and women (or a man and a woman) should act together as judges.
It will be urged that to decide such a question is beyond the power of any human judgment; but I submit that in fact such decisions are being given every day. A judge who grants a judicial separation is deciding that a marriage has ceased to be real or valid, and he divorces the couple a mensa et thoro, though leaving them without the power to marry again. He actually "puts them asunder" more rigidly than a divorced couple. Since this is possible, it cannot be impossible for him to decide that the marriage must be wholly dissolved, with freedom of re-marriage to other partners; though such a decision, being even more grave, should not be reached without certain safeguards.