The Case of Wagner. There is, of course, the famous example of Wagner who, at fifty-seven carried off the beautiful wife of Hans von Bülow, almost thirty years his junior, and lived happily with her until his death. But Wagner was at the time a marvelous example of physical and mental activity, energy and creative power. In no way, barring his facial appearance, could he suggest age or decay to his young wife. He remained to the last a romantic figure.
The glamor, however, which may surround a successful composer with a picturesque past, is not likely to dazzle in any way the bride of a riding master or of a New England manufacturer.
A Parent Fixation, as I explained in the chapters on the Family Romance and on Incest, is the more acute as it drives its victim to seek a closer duplicate of the parent type.
The man who seeks a woman for his mate because his mother was a woman is influenced by the most normal and biologically valuable of mother fixations. The race would come to an end but for that form of fixation.
The son of a blonde mother who cannot love a woman unless she is also a blonde, is less normal and less free in his choice of a mate than the preceding type. He is inhibited by childhood memories, but then, education and civilisation are little more than inhibitions caused by childhood memories. That type simply marries in "his set" and can lead an otherwise very normal life.
He, however, who is irresistibly attracted by a woman exactly like his mother, not only as far as appearance, but also as far as age goes, is a childish, regressive neurotic, seeking the safety of childhood conditions and obsessed at times by unconscious incestuous cravings.
The Rock of Physical Incompatibility is often one on which such adventures are shipwrecked. A very young woman, ignorant of the sex life and its problems, unable to realise its meaning before marriage, may develop immediately after her union to an elderly man a very passionate temperament.
Either she will repress her cravings for physical love, which her too mature mate is unable to gratify, and she will develop anxiety states or hysteria.
Or she will be too healthy to repress her desires, and her disappointment may change her love into scorn, especially when conversation with other women or a clever suitor opens her eyes to what is lacking in her life.
A separation, sometimes complicated by the usual triangle situation, may become unavoidable.