Woman / Her Sex and Love Life

by William J. Robinson

There are a number of other components which go to make up this "queen of torments" or "king of torturers" jealousy, but those I have enumerated are the essential ones.

What are they? Fear, vanity, anger, envy and pain. None of them admirable qualities, none of them, with the exception of the first and the last, even deserving our compassion. All of them anti-social and anti-individual qualities. Should not everything be done to eradicate such a rank weed, which draws its sustenance from roots each one of which is dipped in poison?

We are told that in our primitive state jealousy was a social instinct; that by killing and keeping away rivals it helped to found and cement the family and to keep it pure. I do not care to enter here into a discussion of this point. But whatever useful rôle jealousy may have played in the remote ages (I doubt that it has), it is now an utterly useless, utterly vicious, utterly anti-social and anti-individual emotion. It is opposed to social life and it destroys individual happiness. And everything possible should be done to smother it, to strangle it, to eliminate it entirely from human life.

Yes, I find no compensation whatever for jealousy; I find no place for it in our modern life and I am in complete agreement with Forel, who calls jealousy "a heritage of animals and barbarians." "That is what I would say," he says, "to all those who, in the name of offended honor, would grant it rights and even place it on a pedestal. It is ten times better for a woman to marry an unfaithful than a jealous husband.... Jealousy transforms marriage into a hell.... Even in its more moderate and normal form, jealousy is a torment, for distrust and suspicion poison love. We often hear of justified jealousy. I maintain that jealousy is never justifiable; it is always a stupid, atavistic inheritance, or else a pathological symptom."

But can anything be done to eradicate this agonizing, tormenting emotion? I believe it can, and the ways and means to the eradication of this evil will be found on analyzing its components. We may not be able to destroy all the components; if we destroy the greater part of them much will have been accomplished.

The underlying factors of jealousy are: the primitive instinct, also present in many animals, our ethical and religious ideas and our economic system. The primitive instinct we can repress and modify; we can hardly hope to eradicate it entirely. But our ideas and economic system we can change. It is easier to change ideas than it is a system, and it is with our ideas we should commence.

The first idea we must endeavor to destroy is that it is impossible for a human being to love more than one other human being at the same time. We must show that the love of the modern educated and esthetic man and woman is an exceedingly complex feeling, and that a man may deeply and sincerely love one woman for certain qualities and just as deeply and sincerely love another woman for certain other qualities. Of course, love cannot be measured by the yard or bushel, nor can it be weighed on the most delicate chemical balance. And it may be impossible to determine whether he loves both women exactly alike or he loves one woman more than the other. But that one love does not exclude another, that it may even intensify the other love, that is certain, and is the opinion of every advanced sexologist.

Max Nordau, a man of high and austere ideals, a man whom nobody will accuse of a tendency to licentiousness, says in his Conventional Lies: "It may sound very shocking, yet I must say it: we can even love several individuals at the same time, with nearly equal tenderness, and we do not necessarily lie when we assure each one of our passion. No matter how deeply we may be in love with a certain individual, we do not cease to be susceptible to the influence of the entire sex."

And Iwan Bloch, than whom no greater investigator in the field of sexology ever lived, asks the question: "Is it possible for any one to be simultaneously in love with several individuals?" And he immediately says: "I answer this question with an unconditional 'yes.'" And he says further: "It is precisely the extraordinary manifold spiritual differentiation of modern civilized humanity that gives rise to the possibility of such a simultaneous love for two individuals. Our spiritual nature exhibits the most varied coloring. It is difficult always to find the corresponding complements in one single individual."

Prof. Robert Michels says: "It is Nature's will that the normal male should feel a continuous and powerful sexual attraction towards a considerable number of women.... In the male the stimuli capable of arousing sexual excitement (this term is not to be understood here in the grossly physical sense) are so extraordinarily manifold, so widely differentiated that it is quite impossible for one single woman to possess them all."