Woman, William J. Robinson [classic literature books txt] 📗

Prevention and Cure—Prophylaxis of Jealousy—Fitting Remedy to Circumstances—The Neglectful and Flirtatious Husband—No Question of Love—Advice to the wife of the Flirtatious Man—An Efficient Though Vulgar Remedy—Jealousy Must Be Experienced to Be Understood—Necessity for Freedom of Association—Lines of Conduct for the Wife—Contempt for a Certain Type of Wife and Husband—The Abandoned Lover—The Effects of Unrequited Love—Sublimated Sexual Desire—Replacing Unrequited Love—The Attitude of Goethe—Simultaneous Loves Possible—Successive Loves Possible—Eternal Loves—When Sex Relationships May Be Beneficial—Purchasable Sex Relations and Their Value—The Broken Engagement—The Terrible Effects on the Young Man—The Young Streetwalker—Sex Relations with Fiancé—Inundating Sense of Shame—Collapse—Attempts at Suicide—An Active Sex Life—The Results—The Prevention of Jealousy.

We are all agreed that prevention is more important than cure. But when a patient comes with a fully developed disease it is futile to speak to him of prevention. It is too late to sermonize. What he wants and what he needs is a cure, if such can be had. What has preceded has reference chiefly to the prophylaxis of jealousy, to the prevention of the development of this disease in the future.

The question is: Is there a remedy for this malady? Is there a cure for this horrible disease of jealousy?

The conditions are extremely complex, and the remedy must be fitted to the circumstances. Let us assume that the husband neglects his wife and causes her to be jealous, not because he is in love with another woman, but because he is flirtatious, light-headed, feather-brained and inconsiderate. Such cases are in the great majority. Many husbands who like or love their wives and who believe themselves secure in their love think it is quite proper for them to hunt for new conquests and to carry on petty love affairs with as many girls or women as they comfortably can. There is no question here about love—it is just flirtation or sexual relations. When this is the case the wife should have a frank and firm talk with her husband; she should tell him that she does not like his behavior and that it makes her unhappy. In many instances this alone will suffice to effect a change in the husband's conduct. Where this does not suffice, where the husband is too egotistic and does not want to give up his little pleasures, then it is left for the wife to adopt the old and rather vulgar remedy. It is old and, as said, rather vulgar, but it has the merit of efficiency: it very often works. Let the wife adopt similar tactics, let her also flirt, let her go out and come back at uncertain hours, let her keep the husband guessing as to where and with whom she is. And nine times out of ten this, under the circumstances, fully justifiable conduct on the part of the wife will effect a quick and radical change in the conduct of the husband. He will be only too glad to cry quits. Some people are utterly devoid of imagination. They lack the ability of putting themselves in another person's place. Jealousy particularly is not a feeling which any one can understand without having experienced it, unless he is endowed with the imagination of a great poet. And as few husbands have a great poetic imagination, it is only after they have felt the claws of the monster tearing at their own hearts that they can understand their wives' feelings, and are willing to act so as to save them—and themselves, of course—the cruel tortures. Many wives and many husbands have talked to me and written to me on the subject, and, as stated before, in nine times out of ten the remedy worked.

But how about the tenth case? How about the cases where the husband is unable or unwilling to give up his outside flirtations and relations? We, advanced sexologists, know that not all men, no more than all women, are made in the same mould, and what is possible or even easy for nine men may be very difficult or absolutely impossible for the tenth. We know that there are some men to whom an ironclad monogamic relation is an absolute impossibility. The stimulation of other women—either the purely mental, spiritual stimulation or the stimulation of physical relations—is to them like breath in the nostrils. In fact, there are some men whose very possibility of loving their wives depends upon this freedom of association with other women. They can be extremely kind to and love their wives tenderly, if they can at the same time associate—spiritually or physically—with other women. If they are entirely cut off from any association with any other woman they begin to feel irritable, bored, may become ill, and their feeling towards their wives may become one of resentment, ill-will, or even one of hatred. This is not the place to talk of the wickedness of such men—thus they are made and with this fact we have to deal.

What is the wife of such a man to do? Two lines of conduct are open to her—two avenues of exit. The line of conduct will depend upon her temper and upon her ideas of sex morality. But she ought to select the line of conduct which will cause the least pain, the least unhappiness. If she is a woman of a proud, independent temper, particularly if she belongs to the militant type, she will leave her husband in a huff, regardless of consequences. But if she is a woman of the gentler, more pliable, more supple (and I may also say more subtle) type, and if she really loves her husband, she will overlook his little foibles, peccadilloes and transgressions—and she may live quite happily. And the time will come when the husband himself will give up his peccadilloes and transgressions and will cleave powerfully to his wife, will be bound to her by bonds never to be torn asunder. I know of several such cases.

And I will take this opportunity to say that I have the deepest contempt for the wife who, on finding out that her husband had committed a transgression or that he has a love affair, leaves him in a huff, or makes a public scandal, or sues for divorce. Such a wife never loved her husband, and he is well rid of her. And what I said about the wife applies with almost equal force to the husband.

The Abandoned Lover. But what shall the abandoned lover do? Let us take the case of A and B, and let A stand for any man and B for any woman; or, vice versa, let A be the woman and B the man, for in jealousy and love what applies to one sex is applicable with practically the same force to the opposite sex. Suppose A is intensely jealous of and deeply, passionately in love with B; but B is utterly indifferent and does not care what A may feel or do. A and B may be married or not; this does not alter the case materially. Suppose B, if unmarried to A, goes off and marries another man, or, if married to A, goes off and leaves him; or suppose B does not love anybody else, but just remains indifferent to A's advances or repels him because she cannot reciprocate his love. Unrequited love alone can cause almost as fierce tortures as the most intense jealousy. And A suffers tortures. What shall he do? What shall he do to save himself—to save his health, his mind, his life? For he is unable to eat, unable to sleep, unable to work, and he feels that he is going to pieces. He has lost his position and is in danger of losing his reason. What shall he do to escape insanity or a suicide's grave? There is but one remedy. Let him use all his energies to find a substitute. I mean a living substitute. Mere sexual desire may be sublimated, to a certain extent, into other channels, may be replaced by work, study, a hobby or some engrossing interest. A great unrequited love, with the element of jealousy present or absent, cannot be replaced by anything else except by another love. And where as great a love is impossible let it be a minor love or a series of minor loves. When Goethe, one of the world's great lovers, was unable to walk in the broad avenue of a great love he would walk in the by-paths of a number of little loves. The common talk about a person being unable to love more than once in his or her life is silly nonsense. A man or a woman is able to love, and love very deeply, a number of times; and love simultaneously or successively. It is often a mere matter of opportunity. I know that there are loves that are eternal; that there are loves for which no substitute can be found. But these supreme, divine loves are so rare that among ordinary mortals they may be left out of account. They are the portion of supermen and superwomen. Ordinarily a substitute may be found. The substitute love may never reach the intensity of the original love, it may never give full or even half-full satisfaction; but it will help to dull the sharp cutting edge, it will act as a partial hemostatic to the bleeding heart, it will soothe and anesthetize the wound even if it cannot completely heal it. And this is a valuable aid while the sufferer is coming to himself or herself, while the gathered fragments of a broken life are being cemented and while the cement is hardening. Yes, the man or woman who is in inferno on account of an unreciprocated or a betrayed love should lose no time in searching for a substitute love. I do not believe in people losing their health and their minds on account of suffering which does nobody any good.

But I will go still further. Where a substitute love—great or minor—cannot be found, then mere sex relations may help to diminish the suffering, to quiet the turbulent heart, to relieve the aching brain. As everything connected with sex, so our ideas about illicit sex relations that are not connected with love, are honeycombed with hypocrisy and false to the core. While purchasable, loveless sex relations can, of course, not be compared to love relations, still under our present social, economic and moral code they are the only relations that thousands of men and women can enjoy, and they are better than none; and in quite a considerable percentage of cases an element of romance and greater or lesser permanency do become attached to them, and they act as a more or less satisfactory substitute for genuine love