In the first place they ought to know that true marriage must be founded upon true love, not upon sensuality. Marriage founded upon blind passion, aroused by external qualities, is not capable of enhancing the spiritual and corporal resources of man and will never bring true happiness of any considerable duration. Real happiness does not lie in the realization of the desires. Only true love, not sensuality, can give life or enrich the life of the married couple.
The essential for a happy union is that the contracting parties should be more or less each other’s equal. The “law of parity” is especially true in marriage. Like selects like. The young people should be of the same social position and, if possible, of equal education. Love is the union of sentiment, and lasting happiness in marriage is only possible where there is perfect understanding between husband and wife.
The young people should further be in full sympathy with each other’s views of life. The reason why so many marriages of to-day prove failures is that this rule is disregarded. Modern men are drunk with sensual pleasure and lay an exaggerated emphasis on physical qualities. They do not look for responsiveness and sympathy in their future partners but for vulgar eroticism. Animal sensuality in all its organic spontaneity control their choosing of a wife. Hence she is often taken from such walks of life where pleasure is the chief aim of existence. No wonder that such actually bought happiness soon languishes, and the man finds that the woman he has chosen as his life-partner has nothing in common with him except the mania for pleasure. The craze for luxuries of home and dress and the extravagance of the entire mode of living has taken such a hold upon modern women that most of them sell themselves into matrimony to the first man whom they consider able to provide them with luxuries, without regard to the manly qualities such as courage, intelligence, education, culture, generosity and chivalry, qualities which in former times made men attractive to women.
The parties contracting marriage should be of suitable age. A difference in age from seven to fifteen years will bring the happiest results. In our climate a woman’s sexual life ceases about the age of forty-five, and man’s about sixty. Hence there is a difference of about fifteen years in favor of the man.[CM] In our climate the best age for women to become wives and mothers is from twenty-four to twenty-eight years.[CN] If the man is then about ten years older, the couple is physically well mated.
The time between engagement and marriage should be neither too short nor too long. A period not shorter than three months and no longer than a year should elapse between the engagement and the marriage. It is an absurdity to expect real love from a young man and a young woman, who have seen each other only a few times, because of the legality of the act. Especially does it require a certain length of time and considerable skill and delicacy to overcome the tendency of shyness, which is a part of a woman’s nature, and of prudishness, which is instilled in the girl from the very moment she is capable of thinking. This questionable virtue is taught at home and at school, and becomes a part of her very being. It follows her as she grows up, clings to her, influences her and molds her. Hence, if the husband does not wish to begin married life with rape, he will have to associate with her long enough, till she becomes aware that the wife has no need of maidenly coyness and may indulge in the luxury of bestowing gallant attention without appearing indelicate and bold. The girl also needs enough time to study the man, his mode of life, his habits, his degree of honesty and purity, and what is the principal thing, his health. Love will surely desert the home where the young bride has left her bridal chamber afflicted with gonorrhoea or syphilis, and happiness will scarcely attend the wife and the husband who has spent the strength of his youth on venal creatures and now looks for a cure and for restoration by the impotent soiling of a chaste virgin.
Enough time, therefore, should be given both parties for mutual study. On the other hand, too lengthy engagements keep the affections and the passions in an excited and unnatural condition, which after a time tends to weaken the nervous system and thus undermines health.
The following case is very instructive. Mr. L., twenty-seven years of age, an assistant professor in a well-known college, and his bride, a teacher, thought that their economic conditions did not allow them the luxury of an increase in the family. So they agreed to a total abstinence of marital relations in the first year of their married life, but fully indulged in frustrate erotism, such as caressing, etc. The result is that L. has now to be treated for atonic impotence, manifested by premature ejaculation.
Wedding.—The wedding-day should be selected to take place about ten to fifteen days after the end of the menstruation. It is most desirable that the first sexual relations should be fruitless. Hence the wedding should be selected during the period when conception is least likely to occur. The time immediately before the period, and still more, immediately after following it is the most favorable to conception. In the first place, ovulation and menstruation are generally synchronous. Then during the intermenstrual period the plug of the clear viscid mucus which is secreted by the cervical glands blocks up the passage and interferes with the entrance of the spermatozoa into the uterine cavity, unless removed by female ejaculation which does not always occur at the right moment. This obstruction is washed away each month by the menstrual discharge. Impregnation is, therefore, most likely just after the menstrual epoch, while the middle of the intermenstrual period is the time of comparative sterility.
The next important question is the selection of the room and bed for the married couple. In the aristocratic European families husband and wife occupy different bed-rooms. Throughout Germany, even among the poorer classes, husband and wife, although occupying the same room, have at least different beds. Here in our country it is the custom, even among the well-to-do, to sleep in one bed. This unhappy custom, apart from its unaesthetic aspect at the time of menstruation, leads easily to excesses, and many a young couple has ruined its life by excessive sexual indulgence. There should be chastity even in the marriage relations. It is hence to the best interest of husband and wife that they should at least occupy separate beds, if the circumstances do not allow the luxury of separate bed-rooms. The most refreshing sleep can only be attained by occupying the bed alone.
Concarnationis posituræ.—Complexus venerei positurae numero sex sunt aliis temporibus apud alias gentes usitatæ. Vir supra, vir infra, stando, sedendo, a latere and praepostero (more bestiarum).