Woman / Her Sex and Love Life

by William J. Robinson

The other opinion is that Love, true love, ideal love, or, as it is sometimes called, sentimental love, or platonic love, has nothing to do with sexual desire, with sexual attraction. Indeed, people holding this opinion consider love and sexual attraction—or lust as they like to call the latter—as antithetical conceptions, as mutually antagonistic and exclusive.

Both opinions, as is often the case with extreme and one-sided opinions, are wrong. Both opinions have a reason for their existence, because there is a grain of truth in both of them. But a grain of truth is not the whole truth, and if an opinion contains ninety-nine parts of untruth to one part of truth, then the effect of the opinion is practically the same as if it were all false.

Here is the truth, or at least what I think is the truth, as it appears to me after many years of thinking and many years of observing.

Foundation of Love. The foundation, the basis of all love is sexual attraction. Without sexual attraction, in greater or lesser degree, there can be no love. Where the former is entirely lacking the latter can have no existence. This you may take as an axiom. Some may call it love, but on analyzing it you will find that it is no such thing. It may be friendship, it may be gratitude, it may be respect, it may be pity, it may be habit, it may even be a desire or a readiness to love or to be loved, but it is not love. Experience has proved it in thousands and thousands of sad cases. And the girl who marries a man who is physically repulsive to her, who possesses no physical sexual attraction for her, though she may experience for him all of the feelings mentioned above, namely, friendship, gratitude, respect and pity, is preparing for herself a joyless couch to sleep on. Unless, indeed, she happens to belong to the class of women whom we call frigid, that is, if she is herself devoid of any sexual desire and feels no need of any sexual relations. Such a woman may be fairly or even quite happy with a husband who repels her physically, but whom she likes or respects. And what I said about the wife applies with still greater force to the husband. A man who marries a woman who is physically antipathetic to him is a criminal fool.

I repeat, sexual, physical attraction is the basis, the foundation of love. It is true we see certain cases of love which puzzle us. We cannot understand what "he" has seen in "her" or what "she" has seen in "him." But let us remember this paradox, which paradoxical though it be, is true nevertheless: Love is blind, but Love also sees acutely and penetratingly; it sees things which we who are indifferent cannot see. The blindness of Love helps her not to see certain defects which are clearly seen to everybody else; but, on the other hand, her penetrating vision helps her to see good qualities which are invisible to others. And a homely person may possess certain compensating physical qualities—such as passionate ardor or strong sexual power—which, render him or her irresistible to a member of the opposite sex.

But homeliness, ugliness or deformity have their limits, and I challenge anybody to bring forth an authenticated case in which a man fell in love with a woman—or vice versa—who had an enormous tumor on one side of the face, which made her look like a monstrosity, or whose nose was sunk in as a result of lupus or syphilis, or whose cheek was eaten away by cancer. Love under such circumstances is an absolute impossibility, because there is physical aversion here, and physical aversion is fatal to the genesis of love. A man who loved a woman may continue to love her after she has become disfigured by disease, but he cannot fall in love with such a woman.

I will repeat, then, and I trust you will agree with me on this point: sexual attraction is the foundation of all love between the opposite sexes. Where sexual attraction is lacking you can give the feeling any other name you choose: it will not be love.

Other Requisites. But a foundation is not a whole structure. To insure the stability of a high intricate building we must give it a good solid foundation; but the foundation does not make the building. That still remains to be built. So sexual attraction is the foundation of all love, but it does not constitute love. Many more factors, many more wonderful stones are needed before the wonderful structure called love is brought into existence. This wonderful structure sometimes goes up in the twinkling of an eye, as if by the touch of a magic wand—who has not seen or heard of instances of "love at first sight!"—but the rapidity of the growth of the structure called Love does not militate against our assertion that many stones, much variegated material, and a strong cement are needed for its completion. Fairies sometimes work very quickly.

A little thought will show clearly that Love is not merely sexual love, not merely a desire to gratify the sexual instinct. If love were merely sexual desire, then one member of the opposite sex, or at least one attractive member, would be as good as any other. And indeed in animals and in the lower races, where love as we understand it does not exist, this is the case. To a male dog any female dog is as good as another, and vice versa. Cats are not particular in the choice of their mates, nor are cows, horses, etc. And the same is true of the primitive savage races, and even among the lower uneducated classes of so-called civilized races. To the Hottentot, to the Australian bushman or to the Russian peasant one woman is as good as another. If the male of a low race has some preference, it will be in favor of the woman who happens to have a little property.

In fact I make the assertion that real love, true love, is a new feeling, a comparatively modern feeling, absent in the lower races and reaching its highest development only in people of high civilization, culture and education.