Extramarital sex

“ In the past few years all interested observers of social phenomena have been appalled at the lightness with which a great majority of the upper middle classes regard matrimony.
Intelligent women, readers of good books, and themselves often friends of authors, artists, musicians, and other creative personalities are all absorbed in the most vital topics of the day, chief of which is the discussion of the normal adjustment of the sex relation. Indeed, it has been charged that both women and men in this stratum of society talk sex ad nauseam. ”

“ A man once said to me—"One can endure anything for the sake of a beloved wife." But the wife is only utterly beloved when she and her married lover have not only entered paradise together, but when she [83] fully realises, through insight gained by her own experiences, the true nature of that of which she is depriving her husband so long as her bodily condition makes sex-union with him impossible.
Much has been written, and may be found in the innumerable books on the sex-problems, as to whether a man and woman should or should not have relations while the wife is bearing an unborn child. ”

“ There may be other young women (if I may so speak) who are so heart-broken because of the oppression of their sex, as wives, so disgusted with the state matrimonial under the present constitution of society, that they would not marry—oh! ”

“ Even if he lies with her with the intent of marriage, mutually agreed between him and her, she is not considered as his wife and even if she dedicated herself only for him, rather the opposite is true and he must be forced (by Beis Din) to send her away from his home. ”

“ When one observes how all the most honorable and lucrative positions in Church and State have been reserved for men, according to laws which they themselves have made so as to debar women; how, until recently, a married woman's property was under the exclusive control of her husband; how, in all transactions where husband and wife are considered one, the law makes the husband that one—man's boasted chivalry to the disfranchised sex is punctured beyond repair. ”

“ To the bride brought up under the old taboos, the sex experiences of early married life are apt to come as a shock, particularly when the previous sex experiences of her mate have been gained with women of another class. Indeed, so deeply has the sense of shame concerning the sexual functions been impressed upon the feminine mind that many wives never cease to feel a recurrent emotion of repugnance throughout the marital relationship. ”

“ For the disorder which leads to this confusion of the sex-relation, the first remedy is to establish the independence of the woman.
The problem of marriage will remain acute—and, indeed, ultimately insoluble—until the contracting parties enter it upon the basis of an equal partnership. The conception of marriage as a “career” for women has done much to destroy the only conditions under which marriage can ever be successful. ”

“ Nine tenths of all maidens who are given an opportunity to marry, enter matrimony in complete ignorance of motherhood and its duties. The unpardonable prudery that prevents mothers from speaking to their grown daughters about the important functions of sex, leaves them in a state of densest ignorance concerning their duties to their husbands and to themselves. The entrance into marriage means to most women entrance into an utterly strange world. Their conceptions of marriage are purely imaginative, drawn from novels of doubtful value, and are usually very foreign to reality. ”

“ The prospective wife and mother is kept in complete ignorance of her only asset in the competitive field—sex. Thus she enters into life-long relations with a man only to find herself shocked, repelled, outraged beyond measure by the most natural and healthy instinct, sex. It is safe to say that a large percentage of the unhappiness, misery, distress, and physical suffering of matrimony is due to the criminal ignorance in sex matters that is being extolled as a great virtue. Nor is it at all an exaggeration when I say that more than one home has been broken up because of this deplorable fact. ”

“ The reasons that govern the matrimonial choice are often inscrutable, and women [64] are protected, by the very fact of their sex, from ever being called upon to make them known. But if Mary Bradley had, at any time, repented her choice of a husband, no one had ever heard her express such a thought. ”

“ In consequence of this natural generosity, man, in his relation to his wife, is compelled, first of all, to be worthy of esteem, since her whole peace of mind depends upon his being held in esteem by her. Nothing so irrevocably kills the love of the wife as the meanness or infamy of her husband. Indeed, the female sex will pardon in our sex every thing but cowardice and weakness of character. The ground of this is by no means a selfish calculation upon our protection; but solely the impossibility to submit to such men, as woman's destiny nevertheless requires her to submit. ”

“ Although the last few years have done much to restore woman to some of her ancient rights and privileges, there are still among us a distressing proportion of ignorant, coarse and consequently ruthless men who are not debarred from becoming husbands. Such men have been in the past in the habit of “using their wives” regardless of the desires or even the actual health requirements of the unfortunate women who are tied to them, and such men have made a practice of continuing to indulge in sex union even through the later stages of pregnancy. ”

“ Such prudish or careless husbands, content with their own satisfaction, little know the pent-up aching, or even resentment, which may eat into their wife's joy.
In many cases, however, the man is also the victim of the social customs which make sex-knowledge for women taboo.
It has become a tradition of our social life that the ignorance of woman about her own body and that of her future husband is a flower-like innocence. ”

“ The state, indeed, is generally obliged to grant a divorce to the wife, if she insists upon it. The female sex must be favored by the law to this extent, for the reason that, although the suit of the wife may prove nothing against the husband, it proves, at least, the absence of love in her, and no woman should be forced to give herself up without love. ”

“ Husbands had power of life and death over their wives. In certain countries today it is only the man who can dissolve the marriage bonds and cast off his wife.
But gradually the old standards which were applied to men and women are changing. New laws are written on our statute books. Civil laws protecting male rule apply only to the wealthy classes and their intercouse with the working class. In sex relations the sentiment, in America particularly, has swung around in favor of woman. ”

“ If the people were believers in big families, and agreed to have twelve children—no anti-Malthusian would expect more than that—they would be entitled to twelve relations during their marital life. Assuming that not every act is followed by pregnancy, but that it takes on the average three or four times to bring about the desired result, we will have it that during the wife's childbearing period the couple may indulge in sex relations from once in three or four years to once or twice a year. ”

“ In any State where the laws permit freedom of the marriage contract, a man, by virtue of his sex, can find a wife of whatever complexion he prefers; of course he must not always ask too much in other respects, for most women like to better their social position when they marry. ”

“ Women's education and the trend of social feeling have largely been in the direction of encouraging the idea that sex-life is a low, physical, and degrading necessity which a pure woman is above enjoying.
In marriage the husband has used his "marital right" [5] of intercourse when he wished it. Both law and custom have strengthened the view that he has the right to approach his wife whenever he wishes, and that she has no wishes and no fundamental needs in the matter at all. ”

“ Another side to the problem of the young woman's relation to love and marriage is brought to our attention by the lamentable fact that many wives lose interest in devoted husbands when the children come. This is probably true in at least half the families; and many matrimonial disharmonies are the result. This is really one of the greatest problems of marriage which cultured women should consider seriously; for even more than in most other sex problems, it is one for the solution of which women are in a position to take the leading part. ”

“ For two years after the birth of the child her vitality [82] was so lowered that the sex-act was to her so repugnant that she refused her husband any union; and it was thus three years after their marriage before they met in anything like a normal way. By that time the long separation from sex-life, and the strain on the man, coupled with daily familiarity at home, had dimmed, if not completely destroyed, his sense of romance. The natural stimulation each should exert on the other had faded, so that they never experienced the mutual glow of rapture in their sex-union. ”

“ For most men, however, in any case, whether they realize it or not, the woman who has been initiated into the mysteries of love has a higher erotic value than the virgin, and there need be no anxiety on this ground concerning the wife who has lost her virginity. It is probably a significant fact that this anxiety for the protection of women by the limitation of divorce is chiefly brought forward by men and not by women themselves. A woman at marriage is deprived by society and the law of her own name. ”

“ It may be true that monogamy—or single mating— faithfully practised by man and woman alike, is ideally by far the best solution of the sex-relations, and the best for the State to recognise and encourage by all legitimate means ”

“ But, what is still more important, the man ruled by this impulse easily satisfies it in embraces for which he finds unlimited opportunities. A woman in the upper classes of society, if she have a husband, is bound to him alone; and even in the lower classes there are still great obstacles to polyandry. Therefore, a woman’s husband means for her the whole sex, and his importance to her becomes very great. It must also be considered that the normal relation established by law and custom between husband and wife is far from being one of equality. ”

“ The more absolutely the woman is segregated to sex-functions only, cut off from all economic use and made wholly dependent on the sex-relation as means of a livelihood, the more pathological does her motherhood become. The over-development of sex caused by her economic dependence on the male reacts unfavourably on her essential duties. She is too female for the perfect motherhood!
The majority of our young women, I am convinced, have in them the potentiality of a full and perfected love. So, too, have the majority of our young men. For the best type of young man to-day is tired of polygamy ”

“ The young husband, on his return from work, fails to find his wife the bright, attractive girl he married and gradually grows indifferent.
The relation of intercourse to conception is a problem that each husband and wife must settle for themselves. Some educators claim that only for the one is the other allowable, that the bearing and raising of children is the sole aim of married life. Naturally this is the fundamental end of the sex instinct. ”

“ Then there are a few women, quite a 28 small section, who, unless they can realise their ideal in its entirety, will not be content with second best. By an irony of fate, it happens that these are often the noblest of their sex. Yet another small section remain single from an honest dislike of marriage and its duties. It is perhaps not too severe to say that a woman who has absolutely no vocation for wifehood and motherhood must be a degenerate, and so lacking in the best feminine instincts as to deserve the reproach of being ‘sexless.’ This type is apparently increasing! ”

“ On the contrary, the evidence points to the view that as soon as for any reason men ceased to marry with the women of their own blood and went outside of their immediate families for women, they ordinarily secured them in a social, not a hostile, way, and from a different branch of their own group, not, as a rule, from a strange group. In fact, the regular means of securing a wife other than a woman of one's own family seems to have been to exchange a woman of one's family for a woman of a different family. ”

“ What is the philosophy of the relation of sex to a happy courtship and marriage?—The sexual life forms the basis of these experiences. Without the creative principle, these social relations would be impossible. The love and magnetism that draw the sexes together in courtship and marriage, that harmonize their differences and blend their personalities and make the husband and wife one are the expressions of the sexual life. Young people who get the idea that marriage means unrestricted sexual privilege, will sooner or later land in the divorce court, or be compelled to live miserably together. ”

“ The disruptions are not more, it is only the evidences. And it is at the evidence of marital unhappiness that all the criticism is directed.
If the criticism were directed against the condition that divorce tells us of, instead of against the divorce itself, the first aid to the injured would be to establish a social order wherein an equal moral standard for both sexes should be the rule, and where a mother is recognized, and respected and honored in the name of motherhood, whether she is a wife or not. ”

“ Euripides, transferring to the heroic age the practice of his own time, makes Medea complain that her sex had to purchase husbands with great sums of money.2527 “Pars minima est ipsa puella sui,” the Latin poet sings. And, in our days, a woman without a marriage portion, unless she has some great natural attractions, runs the risk of being a spinster for ever. This state of things naturally grows up in a society where monogamy is prescribed by law, where the adult women outnumber the adult men, where many men never marry, and where married women too often lead an indolent life. ”