And it would be enough to take fear itself as an illustration of the variability of its content. When fear becomes fixed in a phobia, it is extraordinary how irrational the association is, viewed from any logical standpoint. A woman fears mice or snakes, although she has never been injured by either, or beetles, although possibly she has never touched one. Or she fears to cross an open square, and nearly faints if she has to do so alone, although there is not a chance in ten thousand that any harm would come to her. An association of an emotion so profound as fear with some chance place or occurrence is ample proof that the emotions themselves have no essential connection with any external object. The absence of fear in some persons under circumstances where people generally would be afraid also demonstrates the ready dissociation of emotions from particular experiences. One can learn to like or to dislike almost anything.
To a certain extent this is true of love but far less so if we restrict the use of the term “love” to its more ideal phases. When we speak of “Off with the old love and on with the new,” it will be conceded that we speak not of true love but of a very shallow interest.
§ 39
A young woman, Miss F., married a man who made an ideal lover and to whom she responded passionately; but yet she was not happy with him. She had in reality fallen in love more or less unconsciously with a previous suitor. She frankly told her husband she could not love him fully, divorced him and subsequently married her first lover.
One might say that, if the reassociation of love emotions were as easy as that of most other emotions the young woman might have learned to love her husband. She evidently tried to do so, but she made the mistake, made by many uninstructed young women, of going against her better judgment in marrying the man she did. Her first lover was not in a financial condition to marry. She wanted to marry, and took the first available man. So, as in many cases, the fear of not getting married at all forced her to take a man whom she did not love enough. She must have been more or less conscious of this all the time. She made, however, a definite attempt to reassociate her love emotions. She was not able to do it. Her husband, although he is described as an ideal lover, was not able to arouse her full passion.
§ 40
Then there is the case of Mrs. G., who married the prominent Dr. G. practically on a wager. She did not love him, but in a spirit of bravado declared to a girl friend that she could make him marry her. Not himself being in absolute control of his own erotism, he succumbed to her charm. Not knowing also the part a husband is required to play in the marital life in order to make it a success, he did not make her love him, did not evoke in her the responses which make a woman the object of a man’s deepest passion. So, as in a great many marriages, he did not really love her, and she divorced him after a few years.
Both women were unfortunate in their choice of a man. The resultant divorces could have been obviated by the knowledge neither man had. But this is the history of most divorces where the couples have come to grief on obstacles considered to be erotic.
Neither of these women clearly distinguished between egoistic-social and erotic motives because neither of them had had erotic experiences, and in their marriages they failed also to get the highest type of erotic experience.