The Power of Sexual Surrender

by Marie Nyswander Robinson

I would say that the primary virtue he should cultivate in himself is sensitivity, particularly sensitivity to any advances or changes in her manner of relating to him, to their children, or to friends in their immediate circle. She is trying to rid herself of a lifelong mistrust of men and fear of them. She is trying to dare to be soft, warm, and giving. Every recognition she gets for her efforts will be like manna to her. In many ways she is like a frightened child, and only total acceptance can give her enough courage to advance further.

Let me give a simple example of what I mean: The relationship between a woman patient of mine and her husband had, in the course of their five-year marriage, deteriorated sadly. In their courtship days they had been in the habit of giving each other gifts, frequent and personally meaningful gifts. But now, even on birthdays, they bought presents “for the home” rather than for each other.

During the course of our work the wife, one cold winter day, on the spur of a tender moment, bought her husband a very bright yellow scarf and presented it to him that night. I learned later from him that his first impulse on receiving the gift was to laugh. He dressed most conservatively, and the garish scarf was very much out of keeping with his tastes.

He did not laugh, however, realizing that the gift was an expression of something new in his wife, that it showed a new concern for him and an attempt to begin to show it. Instead he kissed her tenderly and wore the scarf to his office the next day. When he came home that night he presented her with a lovely platinum watch of a make he had once heard her admire. “She looked down for a moment,” he told me, “as though she were confused, and then she looked up at me and put her arms around me and wept a very long time.” Those tears, of course, were the sure beginning of a deep thaw. His sensitivity to his wife’s need at this point in her life had been a decisive element, and her progress from that point on was greatly accelerated.

In counseling husbands to be sensitively attentive to their wives’ needs during this period of change I must warn against one thing. Insincerity or artificiality will not work at all, indeed could actually be harmful. Women are deeply intuitive and can detect any hypocritical attempt to manipulate them. It is not wise to try to express love if you do not feel it. A man who cannot experience real feeling toward his wife should put his main effort into self-inquiry. He may discover that the anger and hurt that have built up in him during the unhappy years that are past are too great to handle alone and he may wish to discuss these intransigent feelings with a counselor or psychiatrist.

I know of one man who, paying lip service to the idea of helping his wife, put in a weekly order at the local florist shop for flowers. When in the next three months she had received “enough,” as she put it, “for an elaborate funeral,” she begged him to stop sending them.

Another man, having ignored any social life with his wife for years, was told that she should get away from her household duties occasionally. He suddenly insisted, therefore, on dragging her on a round of night clubs and theater parties that would have exhausted Elsa Maxwell. His wife was essentially rather shy and withdrawn and of course resented this enforced and artificial approach to her real needs.

Women rightly consider these kinds of gestures a mockery, an expression of a latent hostility toward them rather than as an expression of love. Of course women love luxury, going out, gifts—but only when they express a sensitive awareness on the part of the giver. A rule of thumb that works is to do what one feels but to refrain firmly from doing what one doesn’t feel. Somebody once said that the proper mixture for the real lover is 80 per cent male aggression and 20 per cent feminine sensitivity. The formula has much to recommend it.

One important thing that husbands and wives must learn to do is to share their deeper thoughts, problems, and feelings with one another. Over the years the general withdrawal of both partners has made communication of any kind most superficial, and hope of any important contact through conversation has been abandoned almost entirely. When the wife has finally told her husband of her determination to attack her problem frontally, the couple now have a new opportunity for establishing deep lines of communication. If the husband can seize on this new chance, divest himself of his lonely and habitual reticence, he can help his wife and their entire relationship immeasurably.

Everything may be discussed in such conversations, although one should avoid any recrimination or “confessions” that would hurt the other. Conversation about one’s emotional or reality difficulties, about one’s loneliness, plans, successes, fears, and hopes, are deeply moving to a woman. If a man can learn to share his real inner life with his wife it will help her to realize once more the importance of the woman’s role, make her know that she has her husband’s confidence in those things that are of real importance to him.