Sexual relations

“ We declare it an “absurdity” for a young boy or girl of sixteen years to be bound for life in marriage and yet nothing appears more natural than a being of that age maintaining sexual relations with another, of the emotional or physical sort. Moreover, the sexual life from fifteen to twenty years of age differs from the sexual life consider at thirty-five or in the autumn of life. ”

“ In the problem of sexual relations he distinctly sides with the woman from deep conviction. There is a great deal of tenderness and delicate feeling in his conception of the position of the girl and the woman. ”

“ Even under the present state of society, there is a solution to one problem. Many young men, like myself, have strong sexual passions, but we do not like to consort with those who, starting out with a debased idea of sexual relations, have debauched it. Now we meet girls who are also passionate and who, were it not for the knowledge that their life would be ruined, would be only too glad to have intercourse with us on the basis of mutual sexual attraction and passion. ”

“ In all this we can but observe the worship of the sexual; though obscure, yet every manifestation of human existence points to it. The good people of the earth profit by the grand and noble sexual unity in the marital existence, and by the pure, social relations, and chaste affections of the unmarried; [8] but these are but a small part of human society. The masses express their worship for the sexual by debauch, dissipation, vice and crime. ”

“ All thoughtful persons perceive that the ideas of the morality of sexual relations upheld by the religions and laws of the Western nations are in our time undergoing a radical transformation. ”

“ In the first place I wished to say that there is a settled conviction, which has taken root in all classes of our society, and is supposed by false science, that sexual intercourse is indispensable to health, and that, as the marriage state is not always practicable, sexual intercourse outside of marriage, imposing on the man no obligation beyond a money payment, is perfectly natural, and therefore deserving of encouragement. ”

“ Such children seldom result from the "tired bed" or worn-out passion, love killed by sexual excesses, indifference on the part of one of the participants of the union, "duty" intercourse without affection or passion, or forced sexual relations. ”

“ Thus prepared, the young man approaches the time when he can seriously think of making the acquaintance of a girl who as his wife is to satisfy his heart and his sexual needs. Most men of the educated classes enter the marriage-bed with the consciousness of leaving behind them a whole army of prostitutes or seduced women in whose arms they cooled their passions and spent the vigor of their youth. ”

“ But my scepticisms about the current legal institutions and customary code are not exhausted by these modifications I have suggested. I believe firmly in some sort of marriage, that is to say an open declaration of the existence of sexual relations between a man and a woman, because I am averse to all unnecessary secrecies and because the existence of these peculiarly intimate relationships affects everybody about the persons concerned. It is ridiculous to say as some do that sexual relations between two people affect no one but themselves unless a child is born. ”

“ Knowledge of sexual matters gives rise to the tendency of picturing erotic situations and relations, impelled by the pleasurable emotion of placing the mother, or the subject of the greatest sexual curiosity, in the situation of secret unfaithfulness and clandestine love affairs. ”

“ Amongst the letters are intimate human documents which pathetically disclose, as does professional experience, how frequently happiness is marred by ignorance of either the principles or the [6] methods which should condition the true conception of sexual relationships. ”

“ I have often convinced myself that the behavior of girls and of women is considerably influenced [Pg 131] by this more or less unconscious factor, indeed that the progress of their sexual development, like that of male patients who feel unmanly, the formation of social and professional relations and love relations, are immediately checked as soon as the patient is allowed to play a real 'feminine' or subordinate part or presupposes this expectation from others. ”

“ We have seen that a certain degree of variation is involved in the sexual relationship, as in all other relationships, and unless we are to continue to perpetuate many evils and injustices, that fact has to be faced and recognized. ”

“ Accordingly, in contrast with the sex relations of the rawest period, in which promiscuity of sexes exists without distinction of age, now one generation is excluded from sexual intercourse with another. Sexual intercourse, however, exists between brothers and sisters, male and female cousins of the first, second and third remove. ”

“ These are the main functions of the sexual impulse, and in order to understand any further object of the sexual relationship—or even in order to understand all that is involved in the secondary object of marriage—we must go beyond conscious motives and consider the nature of the sexual impulse, physical and psychic, as rooted in the human organism. ”

“ And nearly everywhere it is the female who has the chief voice in the establishment of sexual relationships. The males compete for the favour of the female by the fascination of their odour, or brilliant colour, or song, or grace, or strength, as revealed in what are usually mock-combats. ”

“ All the historians of morals in general, and of marriage in particular, have set forth this fact, and illustrated it with a wealth of historical material. We have as yet no generally recognized sexual morality which has been based on the specific sexual facts of life. That becomes clear at once when we realize the central fact that the sexual relationship is based on love, at the very least on sexual desire, and that that basis is so deep as to be even physiological, for in the absence of such sexual desire it is physiologically impossible for a man to effect intercourse with a woman. ”

“ The paths of civilization, from the complete promiscuity of sexual intercourse to the lofty ideal of life-long monogamic union, has not been a straightforward one, but has been marked by various aberrations of sexual relationship; hetairism, prostitution, polyandry, incest, rape, the jus primae noctis, etc. The anthropologist is able to trace the successive stages of the development of the institution of monogamic marriage ”

“ Those also themselves greatly need enlightenment who, for instance, advise a young bridegroom who has always lived a chaste life to visit a prostitute before marriage, in order to prove his sexual potency. ”

“ Very gradually, however, a change takes place in this respect, so that in every period of social life since the very earliest, the modesty of young girls, the high valuation put upon the preservation of virginity, the ethical approbation of chastity in the wife, respect for the duties and rights of the mother, the reverence felt for the matron—all these, throughout the sexual life of woman, have had a civilizing, ennobling, and elevating effect. ”

“ Besides it must be remembered that in order for a perfect intimacy between two people their bodies must by the nature of the case be free to each other. The sexual and bodily intimacy may not be the object for which they come together ”

“ Whatever the real benefits, and there is no occasion for questioning them, of the sexual order thus established, it becomes clear that in certain important respects it had an unnatural and repressive influence on the erotic aspect of woman’s sexual life. ”

“ Indeed, in this country, psychoanalysts, of the first rank in other respects, have been said to recommend both men and women patients to make what arrangements they could to indulge in sexual intercourse, even if unmarried. ”

“ That active and somewhat savage dislike must have had its origin in the consciousness that the perpetual virgin was a witness, however reluctantly, to the unpalatable fact that sexual intercourse was not for every woman an absolute necessity ”

“ Girls of the class who have “fellows” tend to justify sexual intimacy if they are “going to marry”, if the man says he will marry if there are “consequences”, if the relation is with only one man, and not for money. ”

“ In addition to what we have said in Chapter III. of this volume, in reference to the physical, intellectual, moral and sexual differences between men and women, it is necessary now to call the attention of young husbands to the fact that in woman there exists less sexual desire and satisfaction than in man. ”

“ For ages, the whole situation has been left in a condition of most deplorable, not to say damnable, ignorance; and no honest endeavor has been made to find out and act up to the truth in the premises. Husbands and wives have engaged in coitus ad libitum, utterly regardless of whether it was right or wrong for them to do so! They have taken it for granted that marriage conferred on them the right to have sexual intercourse whenever they chose, (especially when the man chose,) and they have acted accordingly. ”

“ But as the brain and its faculties develop, powerfully aided indeed by the very difficulties of the sexual life, the impulse for sexual union has to traverse ever longer, slower, more painful paths, before it reaches—and sometimes it never reaches—its ultimate object. This means that sex gradually becomes intertwined with all the highest and subtlest human emotions and activities, with the refinements of social intercourse, with high adventure in every sphere, with art, with religion. ”

“ In saying the husband is rarely if ever to blame for a frigidity problem I am running counter to a vast body of information that has been published; in the 1930’s in particular, book after book appeared, each showing conclusively that a happily married sexual life depended on the male’s skill in arousing the woman. ”

“ It will appear, as this discussion proceeds, that the sexual problems of today are conditioned by the inhibitions placed by modern economic conditions upon the natural and instinctive expression of the erotic impulse. In brief, both men and women talk [18] sex and particularly women, in a certain extensive class of society, for the real though disguised purpose of exciting themselves sexually. ”

“ Not in this respect alone, however, is the sexual life of woman of paramount importance; it is, in addition, the mainspring of the well-being and progress of the family, of the nation, of the entire human race. ”

“ The thrill of the sexual union is easily explained and disposed of once and for all:—It is the superior, the oldest, most traditional, and most unalterable part of us—our body—approving the act of procreation, which promises a continuation and a multiplication of Life. ”

“ By illicit intercourse with women we mean, sexual intercourse out of wedlock. The term applies either to intercourse between any man and a prostitute, between an unmarried man and a married woman, between an unmarried man and an unmarried woman or between a married man and a married woman not his wife. ”

“ The social significance of the sexual life of woman is disproportionately greater and farther reaching than the sexuality of the male, as the former is concerned with the fundamental principles of human social life, influencing the constitution of the family, and controlling the good of the coming race. ”

“ The art of love certainly includes such primary facts of sexual hygiene, but it involves also the whole erotic discipline of marriage, and that is why its significance is so great, for the welfare and happiness of the individual, for the stability of sexual unions, and indirectly for the race, since the art of love is ultimately the art of attaining the right conditions for procreation. ”

“ But such opportunities of social recovery are open to very few; most women of the upper classes sink rapidly and far in the social scale as soon as it is publicly known that they have experience of illegitimate intercourse. ”

“ I urge, then, that those who attempt to direct young men through the mazes of sexual life should hold up ideals not only of pre-marital continence, but also of post-nuptial temperance and harmonious adjustment between husband and wife. ”

“ Sexual excesses in the country are more conformable to nature. Apart from marriage, we meet with concubinage, infidelity, and sometimes prostitution, but these excesses are never widely spread in small places where every one knows each other. ”

“ A 26-year-old workingman relates: ‘At 17 years of age an older friend of mine induced me once to have sexual intercourse with a woman—I was unaware at the time of my urning disposition—and I felt such disgust that I vomited. ”

“ The wise adaptation of these regulations requires, however, a full understanding of the mental and physical processes, an exact recognition of the bodily states and intellectual sensibilities, of woman regarded as a sexual being. ”

“ But because of the more or less clear consciousness that sexual intercourse is really what is most desired in love, and because of the lack of courage openly to admit it, attempts are made to justify it from a social standpoint. ”

“ After mature consideration, a man and a woman are led by sexual attraction, combined with harmony of character, to form a union in which they stimulate each other to social work, commencing this work with their mutual education and that of their children. ”

“ In the unmarried person: onanism or prostitution, or both. Is that morality? Such people must either forever forego love, marriage, and normal, lawful sexual intercourse, or face sterility in wedded life. ”