Part 7 (2/2)
Here again there are no absolute rules. Miss Royden, for instance, has written a most notable chapter called ”The Sin of the Bridegroom” in which with fine candor she points out how cruel it may be for a husband to suppose that on the first night of his marriage, and after a day of great fatigue, his wife will necessarily be emotionally attuned for her first experience of intimacy, and how fatal the results may be if he imposes himself upon her in an unresponsive hour. I am sure that every word in that chapter is true and important. I agree with the suggestion that every man should read it before he marries. But it is also true that many couples who did then experience intimacy can look back upon the first night of marriage as on a sacred occasion which they recall with wonder.
Yes, there are no absolute rules. But there are unalterable facts. And the supremely important one here is that s.e.xual intimacy is only a perfect experience when it is a mutual experience. I think the delusion is nearly dead that woman is a pa.s.sionless creature, who will never actively desire her husband but who ought to be willing to receive him whenever he desires. Happy marriages can only be built upon the grave of that misconception. It was held to be a view honoring to women. As a matter of fact it led to a great deal of cruelty. No doubt women differ greatly, but in every woman who truly loves there lies dormant the capacity to become vibrantly alive in response to her lover, and to meet him as a willing and active partic.i.p.ant in the sacrament of marriage. And till that dormant capacity has been stirred into life s.e.xual intimacy may be actually repulsive, with the result that children may be born who are not in the full sense the product of creative love, and that the relations of husband and wife may remain difficult and unsatisfying to both.
This is not what G.o.d ordained. There is an art of wooing which Nature teaches to many men, and would, I think, teach to all men if they were patient and willing to learn. It consists in a love-making that appeals to the mind, the heart, and ultimately the body, and through it alone can a woman be attuned for her natural part in marriage. It is her inalienable right thus to be wooed before s.e.xual intimacy is asked for, and husbands who are too impatient to offer such wooing do her a real wrong.
There are times when a woman cannot respond, and a true husband must learn to recognize such times. Some of them are perfectly obvious. When a woman is not well, or is fatigued--when pregnancy has advanced beyond its early stages--when full health has not been recovered after childbirth--at these and at other times the conditions are not present for a true s.e.xual experience, and in the name of his love a man must learn not to ask for what cannot be freely given.
None the less it is not always and only the husbands who make mistakes in this part of life. A woman must be at least willing to be awakened and made responsive, and many women have a strange power of controlling themselves in this matter. They can repress their natures even when desire has begun to stir. They can remain cold at will. And they do it for many and varied reasons. Sometimes their reasons are purely selfish--they cannot or will not be bothered. Sometimes they allow a sense of pique over some trifling grievance to inhibit their natural instincts. Sometimes because they shrink from the labors of motherhood they acquire a distaste for this whole side of married life. And meantime their husbands are men in whom ardent love naturally, inevitably, and rightly produces a desire for intimacy. They may be willing to be patient. They may study their wives' moods, and try to learn to be chivalrous lovers. But if day after day they meet with no response--if on the contrary they find their wives deliberately checking all response, is it not clear that a situation is created that cannot but threaten married happiness? Is it not inevitable that husbands so treated should begin to wonder whether their wives really love them? For love makes people unselfish, and equally it makes them understanding. On the other hand, when wives do understand, and learn in this respect to be generous, they bind their husbands to them in new chains of affection. In some husbands almost the strongest emotion they have towards their wives is a sense of profound grat.i.tude for a generosity that made those wives willing to meet them again and again in love's high places, and allow them that ultimate expression of their pa.s.sion through which nature is restored to balance and peace.
And surely it might help wives to attain to that generosity if they would but remember that it is love for them that kindles pa.s.sion, and that it is an ever-renewed sense of their lovableness that keeps their husbands so eager.
But there is another strange reason that keeps some wives physically unresponsive, and so prevents any perfect s.e.xual experience. It is a reason that only operates with refined and spiritually minded women, and though its results may be very serious it seems to them a right reason. What I am thinking of is a sense that it is not quite right or quite seemly or quite refined to allow the primitive instincts of the body to awaken. In other words, such women are afraid of pa.s.sion in themselves, and suspect that it is not quite consistent with their moral and religious ideals to allow it to have sway. And so they never frankly and openly accept their own s.e.xuality. It may be natural enough in view of the terrible ways in which men and women have misused and degraded pa.s.sion. It is almost inevitable when women have been brought up to believe that morality consists chiefly in self-suppression.
None the less it is a mistaken, and ultimately an irreverent as well as a fatal misconception. It was Jesus who said, ”He which made them at the beginning made them male and female and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh.” There is a place in the holy life for the free, happy, and full expression of the instincts and desires that are rooted in our s.e.x natures. The a.s.sumed inevitable opposition between bodily and spiritual functions has no real existence. We cannot spiritualize the body away. To neglect or simply to repress it is a course that comes to no good. What we can do is to accept, understand, and then use it rightly. And when we do so it turns out that the free and happy exercise of bodily function will harmonize with all the rest of our life till body, soul, and spirit attain to harmony and unity. I think this reluctance to accept our real natures is wrong and unreasonable, but my chief feeling about it is a sense of pity that women for reasons which seem to them good should none the less miss the joy and exaltation which might be theirs, and should compel their husbands to suffer also.
It is strange but it is true that the two commonest reasons for the failure of marriage in this aspect of it are a l.u.s.tful view of it and a mistakenly spiritual view of it. A l.u.s.tful view of it will lead people to be content with merely physical unity, though they are attaining to no union of their mental and spiritual lives. And that means that marriage is a very poor affair. But on the other hand this falsely spiritual view will lead to an attempt to leave the body out. And that is a course of folly for incarnate spirits. The real end of marriage is a unity in which body, soul, and spirit will all play a part, and nothing else really satisfies. It has been wisely said that ”there are liberating and harmonizing influences which are imparted by s.e.xual union and which give wholesome balance and sanity to the whole organism provided that union is the outcome of psychic as well as physical needs. . . . Through harmonious s.e.x relations.h.i.+ps a deeper spiritual unity is reached than can possibly be derived from continence either in or out of marriage.”
The waiting-rooms of specialists in nervous disease are crowded by men and women suffering from nerve trouble through failure to attain harmonious s.e.xual relations in married life. But many of them might have escaped that fate had they only been able to take the simple Christian view of themselves and their natural functions. It was a G.o.d of love who made us as we are, and we only interfere with His plans for us when we try on this earth to live as if we were out of it, or call that unclean which in His wisdom He has set in the center of our life.
III
BIRTH CONTROL
Not only because the subject of Birth Control occupies a very great place in the public attention just now, but also because it does raise very important and real questions for married persons I wish to speak shortly of it here.
Some day, perhaps, the medical profession will do the public the great service of issuing some authoritative statement about the physical aspects of the matter, for there are issues with which only medical men can deal wisely.
And yet it is far from being only or even mainly a medical question.
The moral and social issues involved in it are of great importance.
It is now a matter of common knowledge that it is possible for two persons to live together in s.e.xual intimacy and yet avoid having children. And this has created new problems for the married and new dangers for the unmarried. Probably it has had a great deal to do with the recent increase of irregular s.e.xual relations.h.i.+ps outside marriage.
The women whose sole motive for chast.i.ty was the fear of having children and so of being openly disgraced are now set free to sin against the truth without fear of that particular penalty.
I am not, however, in the meantime concerned with them. It is the problem raised for married persons that concerns me. About two main points I am quite clear.
In the first place, for two healthy young persons to marry with the definite intention of having no children is, I believe, an unchristian thing. If they cannot afford to have children they cannot afford to marry. If at the beginning they interfere with nature they spoil their first experiences of s.e.xual intimacy, which should be spontaneous and untrammelled. I even believe that artificial attempts to postpone the arrival of a first child are a deplorable mistake. The first consummation of love should be closely followed by parentage. Some couples having followed the plan of postponing parentage have, when it was too late, found that by this course they had forfeited the possibility of that great privilege. Of course children mean very hard work. Of course they restrict the freedom of parents to pursue their own pleasure, and use up a large proportion of the family income. But these things are a blessing in disguise. Comparative poverty for young couples is a bracing and a useful discipline. Probably the cream of the nation consists of men and women reared in families of four or five, where the parents gave much individual attention to each child, and by self-denial helped them to a good start in life. When birth control is resorted to in order to avoid the labors of family life it is a purely selfish and quite indefensible thing.
I am thinking of course of healthy parents. Unhealthy parents probably ought not to have children at all.
The second point I am clear about is that for most couples to have as many children as is possible is equally indefensible. Most healthy couples could have far more children than they can do justice to. In fact the plan of unrestricted families results in a threefold wrong. It is nothing less than cruel to women. The overburdened mothers who were confined once a year or once in eighteen months, never allowed to regain full strength between confinements, and made prematurely old, are, I hope, a thing of the past. Marriage on those terms did mean servitude. Further, the plan is cruel to children. They cannot on these terms receive sufficient attention. They are not given a fair start in life, and in many cases do not even receive sufficient healthy nourishment. These things are of course in part due to the artificial conditions of modern life. But the conditions are there and cannot be ignored. And thirdly, the plan involves a wrong to society. We have great need of healthy well-trained children, but society as a whole suffers when children are brought into the world who cannot be properly cared for.
About this point I conceive there really cannot be any doubt whatever.
And thus the problem of birth control forces itself upon our attention.
It is a duty to women, to children, and to the state. The really difficult question is, ”How is it to be achieved?”
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