The unconscious polyandry of the average married woman is absolutely proved if she does not regard her husband as satisfying in every way. If there is the remotest doubt of this, if she has the slightest repulsion or disinclination or aversion to any feature, act, mannerism or personal quality of his, she is withholding from him, possibly blamelessly because unconsciously, a feeling which, as she cannot give it to him, she must and does unwittingly give to some other man either seen or dreamed of. Absolute surrender on her part to one man is essential for a strictly monogamous union, a complete union entirely excluding the appeal of every other man under the sun. Any reserve whatever on her part is a reserve that will be kept by the unconscious part of her solely for the use not of her husband but of some other man possibly not yet seen by her; later she may meet him.
How can a woman give herself, if she has keen sense discrimination, to a man who isn’t strong, isn’t clean, isn’t well-dressed, isn’t generous and loving? If she has this fine discrimination she will not run the risk of approaching a marriage with such a man. If a man of undeniable strength (mental, not physical) makes love to her, his sincerity and the strength of his desire will enable her to change other characteristics in him before marriage.
§ 177
There is, as Krafft-Ebing argues, a natural “sexual subjection” of woman (i.e., “women are naturally masochistic”). Saying that the essence of femininity is to be erotically led, does not mean that women are naturally masochistic. In no sense does being led, in the purely erotic or love impulse aspect of the marital relation, imply masochism. Only, however, when the ego impulse is so strong as to need much sacrifice in the love episode can really masochistic feelings occur in the wife; and in the husband only when he uses the love episode as an egoistic act, by which he is to compete with other men in the favour of his wife.
If that jealous stage occur, it is a condition where the full expression of the love instinct itself is diminished in favour of the other. The even momentary thought that his wife could be given a more thorough relaxation in the purely erotic sphere by another than himself, a more perfect consummation than perfection itself, which he has induced in her, is a thought that is in itself masochistic and least likely to occur to either of a thoroughly married pair.
The idea of masochism as an element in marriage is worthy of consideration only because it is the ruling motive of the wife in those unions where the husband has not assumed control of the emotional situation and the wife has been so well trained in the Christian duty of self-sacrifice as to believe that she must suffer—truly a humiliating thought for the husband if he happens to be a man. He thus vicariously suffers from his own ignorance.
Masochism, the tendency to gain pleasure from the pain another inflicts on oneself, is a natural phenomenon at a certain stage of pre-synthetic childish erotic development; and, in all normally developed persons, is outgrown. Indeed, a woman,—and a fortiori, a man, who retains any great masochistic element in his love life—is, in that respect alone, a child and not an adult, and incapable of adult love until that tendency is removed.
But it persists more frequently in women, and constitutes a part of the sexual inhibition already referred to. It is a tendency about which all young husbands should be warned in advance. They are not to allow their wives for an instant to have any reason to infer that the wife’s marital “duty” is to sacrifice herself or any part of herself to the physical or mental pleasure of her husband. The eradication of this idea can be begun by the man long before engagement, in spheres of activity quite far from the sexual, and should be steadily and consistently carried on. He should never ask her to do anything “for him,” especially not anything to which she may have expressed any unwillingness, not to say repugnance, herself. He should see to it that he gets his pleasure from the knowledge that what he does is most likely to be gratifying to her. This is, of course, the attitude of the real man.
A girl should be instructed enough not to be impressed by the mental autoerotism of “lounge lizards” who are feeding their own erotic phantasies by sight and touch of her. They are more than likely to become mentally autoerotic husbands.