Conjugal affection

“ We found that love has only slowly become the refined feeling it is in the minds of cultivated persons in modern times, although conjugal affection is far from being unknown, even among very rude savages. ”

“ We must not allow ourselves to be blinded by sentimental tears, therefore, to the extent of supposing that offspring invariably increase conjugal affection. A long observation of our fellow-creatures convinces us, on the contrary, that the presence of children operates in precisely the opposite direction, and that if we are going in search of “romantic” love, lasting long after the [Pg 181] first years of marriage, we are much more likely to find it among infertile than among fertile couples. ”

“ WHY CONJUGAL PRECEDES ROMANTIC LOVE The conclusion to be drawn from the testimony collected in this chapter is that genuine conjugal love—the affection for a wife for her own sake—is, like romantic love, a product chiefly of modern civilization. ”

“ But then, we do not, when we marry, look so much for the fire and heat of love; we are content if the common cares and joys of conjugal life induce in the course of time the warm, equable glow of affection. ”

“ Young people thus united may continue their studies before procreating children, and their marriage will stimulate them to work.
When the intoxication of the honeymoon is over, the continuance of conjugal happiness depends on an intimate adaptation of the two conjoints in sentiments, intelligence and sexual appetite; an adaptation which purifies love on both sides. Work in common, a common ideal, mutual respect full of affection but free from flattery, and a reciprocal education which does not degenerate into pedantry nor tyranny, are the principal conditions for conjugal happiness. ”

“ The secret of conjugal felicity is contained in this formula: demonstrative affection and self-sacrifice. A man should not only love his wife dearly, but he should tell (p. 7) her that he loves her, and tell her very often, and each should be willing to yield, not once or twice, but constantly, and as a practice to the other. ”

“ Not only may a deviated passion be brought back to the conjugal bed, but certain discords may be restored to harmony, and the couple may find new desire and mutual affection which have been put to the test. ”

“ When a husband, bound with the indissoluble tie of affection to the woman of his heart, voluntarily sacrifices to her everything dearest in the world, and finds in her affection ample recompense for his direst privations, who would dare to attribute this to the physical sexual tendency common even to the brutes? a tendency, which, besides manifesting itself only at detached periods of time, disappears altogether in old age, whereas conjugal love runs beyond the confines of time. ”

“ There is no sentiment of the human heart that is more elevating and refining in its tendency than the love which a husband feels for his wife, and the affection he has welling up in his breast for his children. ”

“ In order that she may be contented with her lot as a polygamous wife, she is taught from childhood to look upon conjugal love as a weak and foolish sentiment, and upon marriage as the only way to secure a future life. ”

“ A happy wife, happy during and after half a lifetime spent in wedlock which did not escape the usual number of family troubles and sorrows, said once to me that the trouble with marriage was that conjugal impulse and conjugal sense were the scarcest faculties of the feminine nature. ”

“ Such a conception of woman and marriage is unfortunately very common and is incompatible with true conjugal happiness.
On the other hand, it is not enough for the husband to esteem and respect his wife as a faithful companion, to whom he is united in a purely intellectual way. For the couple to find lasting and complete happiness in marriage, love, however ideal it may be, should be accompanied by sexual enjoyment. In short, intellectual and sentimental harmony should be combined with sensual harmony in a single and sublime symphony. ”

“ Her husband thinks himself so happy in her that he takes all occasions to speak well of her, as one of the best of women. It is no indecency at all, but a laudable instance of conjugal love, for husbands and wives to give one another their due praises. ”

“ So strong is the insistence upon this absolutely equal distribution of a husband's affection, that men are warned of severe punishment in a future state of being, if they love one wife more than another. ”

“ Had I then understood the sex as well as I now do, I might have foreseen that a wife's affection augments, instead of diminishing; that the love the pure and devoted matron bears her husband increases with time, and gets to be a part and parcel of her moral existence. I am no advocate of what are called, strictly, "marriages of reason"—I think the solemn and enduring knot should be tied by the hands of warm-hearted, impulsive affection, increased and strengthened by knowledge and confidential minglings of thought and feeling ”

“ But it is well known that this conjugal complacency belongs only to the weaker portion of the sex, who are scarcely alive to the responsibilities of a wife as a constituted check on her husband's pleasures, which are hardly ever of a rational or commendable kind. ”

“ The above observations entitle us to separate from this mass of men a million husbands. Suppose for an instant that these, being satisfied and always happy, like our model husband, confine themselves to conjugal love. ”

“ What We See in Our Mate. The many handsome men whom we have met, and who are mated to homely wives, the many wives we have observed, mated to impossible husbands, and whose affection for their unprepossessing life partner is genuine and in no way dictated by sordid considerations, the many triangles we know of, in which a very inferior lover or mistress is preferred to an admittedly superior husband or wife, are evidence of the involuntary, nay compulsory, character of the love choice. ”

“ The individual cravings of husband and wife must be reconciled by mutual good will and forbearance if they are to be happy. Attention should be paid in particular to not allowing habit, "the worst foe of married happiness," to become too well established in the home, and to cultivate that love and affection which survives the decline of the sexual faculties. ”

“ The friends may indeed grow into lovers, and then some sort of solution, by divorce or intrigue—scarcely however a desirable kind of solution—becomes possible. But we are here taking the highest ground and assuming that honourable feeling, domestic affection, or a stern sense of moral duty, renders such solution unacceptable. In due course the husband returns, and then, to her utter dismay, the wife discovers, if she has not discovered it before, that during his absence, and for the first time in her life, she has fallen in love. ”

“ In these moments she caught glimpses of herself, not as this draggled, pain-gripped, hungry creature, the prey of frenzied, torturing moods, but as a wife tenderly beloved, a happy mother of little children, the mistress of comforts that her husband had won for her, the appointed dispenser of blessings; a wife tenderly beloved, the true owner of her husband’s heart, a woman whose work it was to grow daily in strength and grace, that she might be more and more his helper, his lover. ”

“ The husband and wife must have loved each other dearly, for if they were not looking into each other’s eyes their glances at least followed one direction, as if they could not but see, feel, and think the same thing. ”

“ But understand that neither the one nor the other is love, in the true sense of the word, and that both are inferior to it.
Does the father, watching, with moistened eyes, his child at its mother's breast; does the husband, bending with solicitude over the sick-bed of his wife; does the wife, clinging to her husband through evil report and good report, through broken fortunes and failing health, indicate no loftier emotion than lust, no warmer sentiment than friendship? ”

“ In the interim, for the better schooling of her in these instructions, and that the wholesome doctrine of a matrimonial duty may take the deeper root in her mind, you must needs carry yourself so on your part, and your behaviour is to be such, that you are to go before her in a good example, by entertaining her unfeignedly with a conjugal amity, by continually approving yourself in all your words and actions a faithful and discreet husband ”

“ Avoid being too constantly the lover of your wife, because the lover-husband is such a revelation to a woman that when the day arrives—the fatal day!—on which the husband remains alone and the lover has ceased to exist, your wife will forget everything you may have done for her: your constant attentions, your assiduity to your profession or business, your forethought for her future and that for her children—all that will count for nothing when she realizes that the lover is gone. ”

“ Now the woman’s behaviour should be such towards the man, as to require his affection by increasing his delectation; that the new-born love may not be blasted as soon as it is blossomed, that it may not be ruined before it be rooted.’ ‘Husband and wife should be like two candles burning together, which make the house more lightsome ”

“ The sentiment for marriage can be deepened by a rational understanding of the passion that attracts and unites the sexes. We need an apotheosis of conjugal love as a basis for a new appreciation of marriage. Reverence for love should be fostered from the outset of the adolescent period by parents and pedagogues. ”

“ Hence at a time like this, when people live for society and in society, there is no place for conjugal intimacy.—Moreover, when a married couple occupy an exalted position they are separated by custom and decorum. ”

“ If I were able to give girls only one sentence of advice as to how to keep their husbands in love with them, I should choose this one—Never revolt the man’s senses. For, remember, this particular aspect of affection called being in love is caused by the senses of both participants being exalted. ”

“ There are many married women for whom marriage is neither l’amour goût, nor l’amour passion, nor l’amour savant, nor yet any other love, but a mere mechanical transaction. If the husband is indifferent he cannot rouse his wife’s love. Not motherhood, but the lover’s kiss, awakes the Sleeping Beauty. ”

“ Let the husband keep his head, and THE WIFE UTTERLY LOSE HERS, throwing it to the winds, to be wholly swept away by the whirlwind of her passion; feeling free, delighting, to let it go, go, go, no one cares where! ”

“ So they join hands, these two: the sweetheart becomes the wife; the lover is the husband.
He is still chivalrous to every woman, but to his wife he pays the gentler deference which was the sweetheart’s due. He loves her, and is not ashamed to show it. He brings her flowers and books, just as he used to do when he was teaching her to love him. He is broad-minded, and far-seeing—he believes in “a white life for two.” He knows his wife has the same right to demand purity in thought, word, and deed from him, as he has to ask absolute stainlessness from her. ”

“ The warmest-hearted and most unselfish women soon learn to accept quiet trust and the loyalty of a loving life as the calmest and happiest condition of marriage; and the men who are sensible enough to rely on the good sense of such wives sail round the gushing adorers, both for true affection and comfortable tranquillity.
Just let a young wife remember that her husband necessarily is under a certain amount of bondage all day ”

“ Moreover, your wife will often find herself just on the point of indulging in soliloquies, and on such occasions her husband may recognize the secret feelings of his wife.
Is there a man as heedless of love’s mysteries as not to have admired, over and over again, the light, mincing, even bewitching gait of a woman who flies on her way to keep an assignation? She glides through the crowd, like a snake through the grass. ”

“ The danger lies in the possibility that these foundations for conjugal love will not have been lain by the time that romantic sentiments begin to grow dim. It is this crisis in the married life which seems disappointing in the afterglow of the engagement and honeymoon. ”

“ It is in the conjugal state where all the kind and humane attributes of woman are augmented and softened by the mighty influence of human love, that we most frequently behold her supporting and cheering her partner, when visited by the rough blasts of adversity ”

“ Affection might and ought to spring up from the relation. But any affection powerful enough to endanger the cohesion of the family would be condemned. A wife might therefore be divorced because her husband had become too much attached to her; an adopted husband might be divorced because of his power to exercise, through affection, too [70] great an influence upon the daughter of the house. ”

“ Well, obviously, if he cares more for you than you do for him, that instinct would still be in a state of excitement; so that you would have this very powerful factor upon your side to assist you in keeping your husband’s interest and affection. Marriages are generally much happier when this is the case, but it cannot be arranged—it is a question, one might almost say, of luck. Nothing was ever truer than the French proverb, “Between two lovers there is always one who kisses and one who holds the cheek.” And if the girl is the one who holds the cheek she is fortunate indeed. ”

“ Let any wife picture to herself how she would feel, if, after schooling her heart to submission, after realizing that she was no longer to be first and dearest in her husband’s affections, she were to be constantly hearing the friends and relations of the young girl to whom her husband was engaged, boasting of his devotion to her, and openly expressing their belief that he had never loved before! ”