Bernard Shaw's sneer—
"Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity"—
is justifiable, though the "maximum of opportunity" is better than a maximum of unnatural devices to satisfy and intensify normal and abnormal cravings.
There is a popular belief that an epileptic girl is cured by pregnancy, a state that ought never to occur.
The lack of sex-education causes millions of miserable marriages. Sexual desire is cultivated out of all proportion to other desires, the will cannot control the desire to relieve an intolerable sense of discomfort, and men eagerly seize the first chance of being able to satisfy these fierce cravings at pleasure.
If sex were treated sensibly it would develop into a
powerful instead of an overpowering appetite, and reason would have some say in the choice of a life-partner.
A neuropath needs a calm, even-tempered, "motherly" wife. For him, gentleness, self-control, sound common sense and domestic virtues are superior to wit or beauty. Unfortunately, contrary to public belief, people are attracted by their like, not by their opposites. The sensitive, refined neuropath finds the normal person insipid and dull; the normal person is rendered uncomfortable by the morbid caprices of the neuropath.
There must be no disparity of age, for at the menopause the woman no longer seeks the sexual embrace, and if her husband be young unfaithfulness ensues. Not only that, but she, knowing, probably to her sorrow, how rarely the hopes of youth mature, cannot take a keen interest in his ambitions like a younger woman, or fire his dying enthusiasm at difficult parts of the way. If he be his wife's senior he will be as little able to appreciate her ideas and habits.
An excitable, volatile, garrulous, "neighbourly" woman, or one who can do little save strum on the piano or make embroidery as intricate as it is useless, means divorce or murder. For him, sweetness, gentleness, self-control, sound common sense, shrewdness, and domestic virtues are incomparably superior to any mental brilliance or physical comeliness. He needs a "homely" woman, and should remember that no banking account can match a sweet, womanly personality, and no charms compare to a sunny heart, and an ability steadfastly to "see the silver lining".