The Power of Sexual Surrender

by Marie Nyswander Robinson

Such anxiety reactions, I wish to make clear, should not give any real cause for concern. Indeed, one does not have to analyze them or to investigate them. One merely has to be aware that they are the result of the new advance in sensuality, the new ability to surrender oneself a bit more completely than formerly. Advance of this kind is never lost in any final sense.

Let me give you an example of a typical reaction to such an advance. The patient was of the type I call the clitoridal woman. Her orgasm had been exclusively clitoral. Together we had covered the ground that I have presented in this section. She had been able to air her feelings about men and about woman’s lot; she had corrected her view of men and, in a very real way, had begun to view her husband with the eyes of a loving woman. Then one day she came to me in great excitement. It was unmistakable, she told me; during last night’s love-making she had felt, for the first time in her life, distinctly pleasurable vaginal sensations.

But in the next session her attitude was entirely different. She had had a quarrel with her husband over some trivial matter, and she forthwith launched into the kind of tirade against men I had not heard from her for several sessions.

After letting her air her feelings, I pointed out to her the possible connection between her new sensual experience and her regression to her old defenses. She was incredulous and remained so until, a week later, the episode repeated itself in its entirety: vaginal sensations and delight, followed quickly by a quarrel and ill feelings toward her husband. Forewarned, she was now on guard for such negative reactions, and when they did appear, knowing their significance, she was able to handle them, prevent herself from actually acting out her irrational feelings by quarreling with her husband.

In making the above point I do not wish to be misunderstood or thought to be contradicting myself. I am not advising women to fixate obsessively on their new sexual sensations. However, noticing such new experiences will be unavoidable, and I am simply saying that it is helpful to know that they may be followed by minor neurotic regressions.

The above observations now lead me to a closely related matter which I consider to be of central importance.

In the move toward womanhood there comes a juncture in most cases which can be called “the danger point.” When a woman is working with a therapist on her problem, the danger when she reaches this point is minimized by the fact that her therapist is aware of the problem and can usually help her to handle it when it arises. If a woman is working on her problem by herself, however, she should be strongly forewarned of her potential reaction.

This danger point generally comes when a woman who has suffered from frigidity has at last allowed herself to experience orgasm for the first time. Her immediate reaction is one of tremendous relief. But this is almost always followed by the same kind of regression I have described above; only this time the pull-back from her own advance and from her husband is far more powerful. We have seen in some of the case histories in the last section just how dangerous this period can be to the entire relationship. Indeed, the wife may at this point precipitate a crisis of such severity that the marriage itself is endangered.

The form the difficulty takes is always individual; it is usually an exaggerated version of the particular woman’s most typical neurotic characteristic. If she is argumentative, she is apt to start a fight of proportions heretofore undreamed of. If her tendency is to become depressed, her melancholy can become very, very profound indeed. If she is critical and carping, she can make Craig’s wife appear to be a normal, healthy woman.

I am not exaggerating. It is not impossible that many divorces are caused by wives who, by the natural reassurance that marriage to a tender husband often brings, have moved close to their true natures all unwittingly. They achieve orgasm; and then, without the benefit of any insight, the intense anxiety reaction sets in, causing a powerful desire to flee from the frightening situation.