This feeling of identity is not only thus physical in the husband and wife at the climax of erotism, but is given tangible, visible, and in all ways perceptible, manifestation in their children. It is given ideal existence in the community of interests it engenders in connection with the family life, interests which are here the expression of the ego-instinct, but here, as they should be, interests arising from the subordination of the ego-instinct to the now brightly revealed love instincts, which are not accessible to consciousness until after enlightenment in the technique of the love drama.
Those people also are unable to give fullest expression to themselves in the love episode who consciously or unconsciously, frankly or otherwise, place the egoistic-social motive above the love motive, who marry “for a meal ticket” or for any other egoistic-social motive such as wealth or position.
Both of these may be taught, if they can be made to see their false positions. Those who overweight the physical motive can, unless their intelligence is of too low an order, be made to see eventually, that they are contenting themselves, or trying to make themselves content, with much less happiness than they are capable of. Those who overemphasize the egoistic-social end of their relation to their spouses, can be instructed in love, so that they can raise their union to the higher order, unless, of course, there is the comparatively rare absolute incompatibility of temperament.
Marriage need not in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred be dissolved. Within reasonable limits; that is, excluding the widest possible divergence of taste and interests, almost any man can learn to control the erotism of almost any woman, if he wishes to take the trouble to learn how to do it.
§ 172
Most emphatically this does not mean that the control here referred to is all there is to a perfect marriage. It has been reiterated that the erotic control is only the foundation, but important as all foundations are. The erotic control leads not only to the maximum egoistic-social freedom, but to the greatest possible development of each of the partners’ distinctive personality.
The love confidence gained by the establishment of the one-way control in the erotic sphere only opens the windows of the house of love to the invigorating air of the outdoor world.
The unhappily married are unhappy because each is watching the other continually, devoting to this conscious and unconscious surveillance so much energy that either they have none left for the development of the properly subordinated egoistic-social interests or they lose so much energy in the unconscious conflict that they tend to become neurotic.
The unhappy married ones’ lack of love confidence is the most deeply gnawing care known to human misery. No egoistic-social interest of either but is regarded by the other as drawing him or her away.