In sex activity that is truly erotic there is no conflict in the man and none in the woman. It may be said that sex activity never becomes truly erotic until these conflicts have subsided.
But in the unhappy marriage a part of the conflict on the husband’s part comes from his unconscious realization that he has not assumed the truly masculine rôle.
§ 186
A brief résumé will be now given of conclusions so far reached. Man’s control, while difficult for him to gain and particularly in the love episode, is yet essential to his perfect union with his mate, unless there is proved to be, which has not yet been done, a congenitally uncontrollable type of men. Such men could never satisfy any except women who are erotically the most highly developed, in the sense that anything or nothing would send them into transports—a comparatively rare type of woman.
Haste on the man’s part in the love episode, his acknowledged precipitateness, his hurry to relax sexual tension, is due directly to his own anesthesia, his insensibility to the preliminary reactions of his mate, and in some cases a total ignorance of the existence of her final reaction. He does not know what effect in his mate he should really strive to get.
A knowledge of that effect involves a recognition of the fact that all women are unconsciously trying continually to test the man’s psychical strength. Many actions of women cannot be accounted for except by assuming this unconscious motive, for which, of course, there is a biological cause in the attempt of nature to mate the woman with the strongest man. The congenitally uncontrollable (if any exists) man will go down under this test, uniformly.
This biological cause produces in the woman the tendency to dissemble. This tendency makes the woman coy, bashful, modest, reserved, retiring. As animal she is always facing away from the male in the sexual act and as Ellis has noted, only the human female has in the human love episode turned so as to face the man. But this subhuman characteristic is always present in the woman, manifesting itself in some of her actions if not in all, and constitutes an obstacle to the man’s self-control; for, unless he has insight enough into the feminine character to discount her dramatic prevarications, he will infer that it is useless and hopeless for him to try to produce any effect whatever in her, so he might as well produce what effect he can—namely, in himself. He does not know that the most satisfactory result in his own feelings is produced by the reactions which he effects in her, through the reservation of his own supreme reaction until she is past knowing it herself, until, therefore, he has convinced her that his control is greater than hers, that his strength is greater.
As it is evident that in animal copulation whatever acme is reached is reached simultaneously by both sexes, because of the briefness of the act, it is reasonable to suppose that the man’s unconscious situation contains the implication that his own erotic acme necessarily involves the woman’s. In other words every man has an unconscious phantasy that when he has completely satisfied himself his mate is completely satisfied. Only after years of married life do some husbands begin to suspect that something is missing from the marital relation.
If the male subhuman animal is excused from any concern as to the proper reaction of the female, that does not excuse any man and yet in so far as he is animal he has no cause to act otherwise than take his satisfaction without delay. The female animal is accessible only in the rutting season. Human woman is at all times accessible to the love expressed in true mating. Human sexuality has not only made a fundamental distinction between procreative and erotic love episodes but also has almost obliterated the periodicity in the sexual accessibility of the woman. Therefore human love is toto cælo different from animal copulation.