Читать книгу A Plea for Monogamy - Wilfrid Lay - Страница 28

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The idea of compensation or barter or quid pro quo must be rigidly excluded from the concept of mutuality; for this measuring of the balance of values of the actual physical performances or even intellectual attainments rests for its validity on the inevitable comparisons which are the basis of all values for the egoistic-social activities. To the greatest erotic success these comparisons are utterly antagonistic. In the erotic sphere, as is later noted,[11] comparisons are not merely odious, but logically impossible. There can be no balancing of giving and taking.

From one point of view, the husband cannot but give all and receive nothing, at least of the character of that which he gives. He gives an emotional reaction to a woman, which no other man can give.

He cannot in return reproduce in himself the emotional reaction of a woman. He cannot react as a woman reacts, if he be a virile lover, for such a reaction, though common enough in run-down marriages, is not the emotional reaction of a man. If his bisexuality leads him to approximate this feminine reaction, he is to that extent himself feminine and not masculine.

One should not, however, ignore the fact that both men and women are normally bisexual to a slight extent, and to that degree woman will desire to exercise some control in the erotic sphere, even if it be only to create in her mate the most complete erotic effects. Also, if a woman with a comparatively large proportion of masculinity in her nature be married to a man with an equal proportion of femininity, a happy marriage may result, if no other adverse elements enter.

But in general it will be admitted that the husband cannot rightly seek for himself the type of erotic reaction which is proper and peculiar to his wife; though it must be confessed that the suggestions operative even in the average married love episode are strongly that way. The husband hears the ecstatic responses of his wife and her repeated inquiries as to his own pleasurable sensations, and the whole situation is such as to suggest to him that he identify in every respect his own feelings with hers.

But to do so is in no degree to make for true mutuality. His own feelings should not be the utter surrender and abandon to physical and mental bliss which he sees so profoundly moving to his partner. His feeling should be a pervading sense of triumph and accomplishment, no less profound for being embedded in sensual gratification. The truth is that biologically the wife has no positive accomplishment to perform in the love episode; for the only accomplishment of which she is capable is the utter dissolution, temporary though it be, of the personality of her husband. If she succeeds, she is in the position of one who, not knowing, should try, by applying a match, to see whether or not gunpowder is inflammable. It is, and she is carefully kept in ignorance of the fact, but plentifully supplied with matches.

If this quite easy accomplishment of the wife is successfully performed, she has no husband left, at least for a while, and the explosion has ruined her own chance of happiness, until more explosive is provided.

The husband’s unequivocal task, therefore, which alone assures his erotically supporting his wife is rigidly to remain uninflammable until she, metaphorically speaking, is in ashes herself. For this scientific reduction of the modern wife, the modern husband needs, for he rarely finds it instinctively, the help of the present-day technique of love as taught by the best erotologists.[12]

This will enable him to avoid being consumed to a condition where he is no longer able to produce any effect at the very time when an effect is most loudly clamored for by nature.

The quick ignition of explosive powder produces only a puff and a flash, but the wife desires no flashlight of that type but a guiding star.

True mutuality, therefore, cannot be present in a couple where the husband does not reverse this process and absolutely retain his own emotional tension until her erotic acme has taken place. It cannot be too often repeated that the only means of securing the wife’s emotional catharsis in the acme of the love episode is the husband’s remaining tense and unrelaxed, avoiding his own emotional catharsis until hers is, beyond the peradventure of a doubt, secured.