§ 41
But it is impossible for any woman to know what sort of erotic life will be hers with any man whom she consents to marry. At present every marriage is a trial marriage for a woman, and for the uninstructed man as well. Only the marriage composed of a woman and a fully prepared man can be said to have any reasonable assurance of being permanent.
The other emotions than love are readily transferred from one object to another. Love is not easily transferred as, primarily, it has only one object, the human of the opposite sex, and where the love in question is the elaborately developed love, that has its roots deep in the erotic soil of the unconscious of both partners, which it invariably has, if the husband knows how to control himself, the transfer is more like the transplanting of a huge tree.
It all depends on the unconscious depth of the love whether it can be transferred or not, or how long it may take. From this the corollary is that the so-called love that is fickle is not worthy of the name. Fickleness in a woman shows lack of skill in the man. Fickleness in the man shows him to be not a man but an autoerotically minded boy.
CHAPTER IV
INSTINCTS
§ 42
In a consideration of the essential factors in a happy marriage we are dealing primarily with the most fundamental of the instincts. For all practical purposes it is sufficient to distinguish broadly the two main groups of instincts that are associated with the ideas of love and of ego.
In popular language we are inclined to say that whatever one does without conscious forethought is instinctive, yet on further consideration it appears that unplanned, impulsive acts or groups of acts may, according to one’s bringing up, be habitual acts. These are acquired, not innate acts, and yet as soon as any mode of behaviour becomes habitual or automatic, the acts constituting it, occurring without forethought or conscious control, are as unpremeditated as is any instinctive act. One needs, then, to be careful not to consider as instinctive what is merely habitual.