You know the honeymoon of rapture. It is all too short, and you soon decline into that morass of disillusion and depression, which is all you know of marriage.
But the bridal honeymoon should blossom into the perfect flower of the perfect marriage.
May my words help you to attain such happiness.
---
Marriage is often a failure. On that point there can be no doubt. It can be the gate of an earthly Eden, but it is, in actual fact, often a hell of torment.
It should be, in the true sense of the word, a Purgatory, that is, a state of purification; but how rarely is that attained!
Then, should we abolish marriage?
Many voices have clamored for its destruction, but that have not shown a more excellent way.
And a far greater number have defended this immemorial institution - the most distinguished thinkers among them.
Marriage is sacred to the believe Christian, Hindu, Muslim (and all others).
Indispensable to the Social Order.
Absolutely necessary in the interests of the children.
It offers the only - even though relative - security to the woman's love of love, and of giving in love.
And men too, on the whole, find in the permanent recognition and responsibility of marriage, the best background for useful and efficient work.
For all these reasons, and also because I believe the permanence of monogamous love-unions to be in the line of sexual evolution and to offer the strongest altruistic leaven to the primitive egotism of Nature's mighty urge - I, too, believe in marriage.
Much is suffered in and through marriage.
But without marriage, humanity would have to suffer much more.
The four corner-stones of the temple of love and happiness in marriage are:
(1) A right choice of marriage partner.
(2) A good psychological attitude of the partners, both to the world in general and to each other.
(3) A solution of the problem of parentage which meets the wishes of both partners.
(4) A vigorous and harmonious sex life.
Sex is the foundation of marriage. Yet most married people do not know the A, B, C of sex. My task here is to dispel this ignorance, and show ways and means of attaining both vigor and harmony in monogamous sexual relations.
I address myself to married men, for they are naturally educators and initiators of their wives in sexual matters; and yet they often lack, not only the qualifications of a leader and initiator, but also those necessary for equal mutual partnership!
They have no realization of their deficiencies. For the average man, of average "normal" genital potency, who performs his "conjugal duties" regularly and with physiological satisfaction to himself, still imagines that he has thereby met all the requirements his wife can make. And if she is not satisfied, and remains in a permanent condition of "suspended gratification" then, with regret or indignation according to his own type of temperament, he simply puts her down as one of those "sexually frigid" women, laments his bad luck, and drifts further and further apart from her.
If he has been fortunate enough to wed a woman of warmer and more spontaneous temperament, who is obviously not indifferent to the rites of marriage - of those rites take place in the same invariably scheduled manner, with no varieties of local stimulation or sensory adornment - sexual satiety will in a few short years intrude itself into the consciousness of both, and equally imperil their marriage. For monotony can only be relived by variation, and, to the uninstructed man, the only possible variation seems to be in the object of his efforts; and the rift in the lute is there, and widens.
No comments:
Post a Comment