She holds back more and more of herself—the vital part that he wants, while, at the same time, she demands more and more from him. The man feels that he is losing, giving up his individuality with all that he cares for most, and, after a period of loneliness and unhappiness, broken, probably, with some bluster and conflict, he gives in and begins not to care.
The result in the end is almost certain. The lower types of husband from time to time, will break away and find compensation in wild love. Some will seek distraction in work, or will develop a temper and nerves. Other men of more refinement will suffer much more, till they too break away at last; they will turn from the reality of life to dreams, unless they too seek and find love and sympathy with some woman, who, without the binding security of marriage, is more careful to understand them and to love them for themselves.
Most wives have yet to learn the deeper responsibilities of love; and this not at all in regard to their duties to their husbands, which most often are too perfectly fulfilled, but in the more intimate and far more exacting task of giving them spiritual freedom as well as sympathy and understanding.
I believe that this failure on the part of so many wives, in holding back just what the man most craves and seeks for, is the real cause, to which all other causes are subsidiary, of that failure in the continuance of the husband’s love, which brings so many marriages, which started in happiness, to the disaster of the divorce courts.
In my opinion, the greatest cause of error is in women’s limited experience which makes their judgments hard. While another cause arises from the tendency, and already I have emphasised more than once (a tendency due to a deep inner cause of sex difference) to throw the whole blame for sexual sins upon men. Some women carry sex antagonism like a flag, which they flourish in every wind. These are, of course, a small minority, but the majority of women fail to take a wide, sane view both on this question of the unfaithfulness of husbands and that of the whole physical relationship of marriage.
And the remedy? Yes, that is the difficult matter. We cannot alter these inharmonies of love by any cut-and-dried reforms. The expression of sex is a question largely of understanding. Its regeneration must begin with a movement, in particular, on the part of women, towards a truer acknowledgment of their own natures and an acceptance of men’s needs.
I dare to think of such a regeneration of Love, but it must come through education in consciousness and a fuller understanding of life. And by education must be understood all that influences the unconscious as well as the conscious self, so that our full life may be lived in harmony, and not with one half of ourself in enmity with the other half.