The Next Step. Free love may be the next step in the evolution of the sexual partnership but it certainly will not be the solution of the marriage problem.
As far as the mates themselves are concerned, free love will only be a success in the case of extremely normal individuals for whom the sexual relationship means solely physical gratification. As soon as affection intervenes in those unions, the thousand forms of jealousy we shall describe in another chapter will enter into play.
Jealousy among free lovers cannot but rage more fiercely than among the legally married. A thousand details of married life are simply meant to establish the mates' ownership of each other in their own eyes and in the eyes of the world. The number of war marriages contracted hastily during the great European conflict by young men and women on the eve of the bridegroom's departure for Europe testifies to the powerful "safety" symbolism of the marriage ceremony.
A gullible young man in love with a girl would not have trusted her alone during his absence from home. She might have experienced a change of heart. After going thru a wedding ceremony with him, however, he knew that she could not change her mind and love another. As a matter of fact most of those unions were disastrous. A virgin might have waited. A young woman left alone after a few days of erotic enjoyment was naturally an easy prey for any clever tempter. The bridegroom, on the other hand, went away blissfully, secure in the thought that the marriage certificate, the ceremony, the wedding ring, the transformation of Mary Brown into Mrs. John Smith would protect his "honor" while he was away.
Blissful Blindness. Some of the cleverest, most cynically suspicious husbands and wives go thru life blissfully blind to their mate's sidesteps. They see thru anyone else's husband or wife but they seldom suspect their husband or their wife. The stress which they place on the possessive works in their case as the fetish which a savage takes into battle. In hoc signo vinces.
It is only in the so called smart set that men and women allude to their mates by their first names. The working classes, sexually the most conservative and puritanical, use the expressions "my man" or "the missus"; middle class men and women pompously refer to their mates as Mr. Smith or Mrs. Smith, always reminding their hearers of the legitimacy of their union. The celebration of wooden weddings, silver weddings, etc., is a means of reminding the community that Mr. and Mrs. John Smith own each other, just as the engagement diamond is a scarecrow proportionate in visibility to the prospective bridegroom's fortune.
Even if free love unions became the adopted standard of the land, those unions would be celebrated with appropriate ritual, the aim of which would be to tie the man to the woman and the woman to the man and to warn away sexual hunters of both sexes.
Free love will not be possible until the absolute equality of men and women has been accepted, not only theoretically but practically.
Before that equality is a fact, there must be written into the statute books some form of financial assistance to the woman disabled by pregnancy and lactation and which will enable her to retain her independence regardless of her physiological condition.