It is hard enough for any man to hold in check any instinct; but, when he is holding the love instinct in check, in the face of everything including his wife herself, unanimously calling upon him to throw away all restraint, it becomes the most difficult, and (because of its results, not its difficulty) the most desirable accomplishment possible.
It is hard for a woman of refinement, culture and puritanical antecedents to relax the inhibitions necessary to be relaxed in order for her to gain her own erotic acme. If she realizes that her husband must have his, anyway, regardless of hers, this realization makes her still less able to relax.
§ 103
If on the other hand she is assured by experience from the first that her erotic acme will be taken care of with absolute reliability by the only person in the world who can insure its coming, her own inhibitions are much more likely to be overcome, and she to become relaxed and open to him at his approach.
The vital importance, therefore, to the man, of doing everything in his power to make himself absolutely sure, even from the very first, that the erotic needs of his wife are amply taken care of by him, will be clearly seen when he realizes that if he does not do it himself, instinct (which is as strong in a woman as it is in a man) will ceaselessly pull her in the direction of getting these needs supplied by some other man. If the husband has not the strength of will to overcome his own instincts to the minor degree of retarding, for his wife’s health, the relaxation of his own erotic tension he will be unable consistently to blame her.
Man’s historic remedy for this defect in himself—namely, shutting up his woman behind the doors of a harem—and the remedy that followed this, of shutting her in behind psychic bars of repressions and inhibitions, is the infantile method of force. Its success has been slight. The only thing that doors and locks confine is the body, and perhaps that was all he wanted. And likewise the only thing that inhibitions and bars of repression can restrain is the physical manifestation of the sexual impulse. The instinct itself cannot be annihilated. We know quite well what happens to different types of people when the expression of the sexual impulse is completely inhibited. Man or woman is equally affected by this suppression, but woman in general has been the more suppressed.
§ 104
It cannot be overlooked that the constant pull exercised over every woman by her erotic instincts, even though they be so repressed that she is utterly unconscious of them, is more racking in the more refined and cultivated type of woman than in the other. Lacking the satisfaction of her erotic desires she unconsciously seeks gratification in numerous activities toward which this blind erotism is the only efficient cause. And as the real need is never met, these substitute activities never completely satisfy.