Woman Her Sex and Love Life Part 23

_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 s.e.x is applicable with practically the same force to the opposite s.e.x. Suppose A is intensely jealous of and deeply, pa.s.sionately 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 _subst.i.tute_. I mean a living subst.i.tute. Mere s.e.xual 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 subst.i.tute 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 subst.i.tute may be found. The subst.i.tute 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 subst.i.tute love. I do not believe in people losing their health and their minds on account of suffering which does n.o.body any good.

But I will go still further. Where a subst.i.tute love--great or minor--cannot be found, then mere s.e.x relations may help to diminish the suffering, to quiet the turbulent heart, to relieve the aching brain. As everything connected with s.e.x, so our ideas about illicit s.e.x relations that are not connected with love, are honeycombed with hypocrisy and false to the core. While purchasable, loveless s.e.x 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 subst.i.tute for genuine love relations.

I am not spinning theoretical gossamer webs. I am speaking from experience--the experience of patients and confiding friends. I could relate many interesting cases. And I may, in a more appropriate volume. Here one or two will have to suffice.

He was twenty-six years old and a senior student in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York. He had been in love with and had considered himself engaged for four or five years to a young lady two years his junior. She was, of course, the most wonderful young lady in the world, the whole world; in fact, there was not another one to compare her to. She was unique; she stood all alone. But for a year or so she was getting rather cool towards him; which fanned his flame all the more. And suddenly he received a note asking him not to call any more, nor to try to communicate in any other way. He did write, but his letters were returned unopened. And soon after he read of her engagement to a prominent young banker. He nearly went insane, and this is used not in any figurative sense. His insomnia was _complete_, and resisted all treatment. When his pulse became very rapid and his eyes acquired the wild look that they do after many sleepless nights an attempt was made to administer hypnotics, but they had practically no effect. Chloral, veronal, etc., only made him "dopy," irritable and depressed, but did not give him one hour of sound sleep. His appet.i.te was gone, now and then his limbs would twitch, and he would sit and stare into s.p.a.ce for hours at a time. To study or attend the clinics was out of the question, and he did not even attempt to take the final examinations. The parents felt distressed, but were unable to do anything for him. The least attempt at interference on their part, any attempt to console him, to induce him to pull himself together, made him more irritable, more morose; so that they finally left him alone. He was practically a total abstainer, but one evening he went out and came home drunk; and after that he drank frequently and heavily. His parents could do nothing with him. One evening on Broadway he was accosted by a young street-walker. She had a pleasant, sympathetic face, and he went with her. _That was his first s.e.x experience._ Up to that time he was chaste. He met her again the following evening. Gradually a sort of friends.h.i.+p grew up between them. She found out the cause of his grief, and with maternal solicitude she tried everything in her power to console him, and he began to look forward to the nightly meeting with her. His grief became gradually less acute, he gave up drinking, which he disliked, and which he had taken up only to deaden his pain; he began to pull himself together, and in six or eight months he took over his last year in Columbia and was properly graduated. He kept up the friends.h.i.+p with the girl for over two years, when she died of pneumonia. He did not love her, but he liked to be with her, as her presence gave him physical and mental comfort. It is possible that she loved him genuinely, but there was never any sentimental talk between them, and there was never any question between them of the permanency of the relations.h.i.+p. They both knew that it was temporary. But he is absolutely certain that but for one of the representatives of the cla.s.s that is despised, driven about and persecuted by brutal policemen and ignorant judges, he would have become a b.u.m, or, most likely, he would have committed suicide--at the point of which he was several times; only pity for his mother and sisters restrained him.

And here is another case. A girl about twenty-eight years of age fell in love with a man four or five years her senior. The love seemed to be reciprocated, and they soon became engaged to be married. He asked that the engagement, on account of certain business reasons, be kept secret. She did not know the man well; she had met him at several entertainments and church affairs and he seemed very nice. He always found some excuses for delaying the marriage, and after they had been engaged about a year he began to insist on s.e.x relations. Though of a refined and n.o.ble character, she was of a pa.s.sionate nature and she did not offer much resistance. Many girls who would under no circ.u.mstance indulge in illicit relations, considering it a great sin, have no compunctions about having relations with their fiances. They lived together for about a year. They were together almost daily, except now and then, when he would go away for a week or two on business. Once he went away--and never came back. He wrote to her that their relations were at an end; that he was a married man and a father of children; he had hoped he might get a divorce, but that now he had changed his mind and that she must forget him, etc. Everything was black before her. It cost her a supreme effort not to faint, and she was supported in this effort by the fact that when the letter came she was in the presence of friends; a terrible, overpowering, all-inundating sense of shame gave her the strength not to betray her condition and her story before the world at large. But as soon as she was alone she collapsed completely. There was the most absolute insomnia imaginable, complete anorexia, but the most distressing features were frequent fainting spells, severe palpitation of the heart and tremors. She had no love for the man--so she said. Her love had turned to hatred and contempt--but the jealousy was all-consuming.

Like a fire it was burning in her, searing her brain and her soul day and night.

She felt that she was not strong enough to stand this physical and mental torture, and so she decided to commit suicide. As the means she selected gas. Fortunately, the smell became perceptible before the injury was irreparable. She was saved. But she felt that she could not stand the torture very long--and more than anything was she afraid that her mind would give way. She had a special horror of insanity.

And so she decided to make another attempt This time with b.i.+.c.hloride.

Again she was saved. A friend of hers then got an inkling of the events that were transpiring, and she introduced her to some gentlemen friends. They were nice people and more or less radical on the s.e.x question. In order to drown her pain she began to go out very frequently with that crowd, and to her surprise and delight she found that she soon began to think less and less about her contemptible seducer, and, what was more important to her, she was soon able to sleep. For about six months she led an extremely active, almost promiscuous s.e.x life. But then she gave it up, as she felt herself normal and no longer in need of it. She is now happily married.

I am through with this rather lengthy essay on one of the most painful manifestations of human emotional life. I repeat that I am aware that feelings are often stronger than reason; but saying this does not mean a.s.serting that feelings cannot be modified and held in check by reason. And I feel confident that a careful, open-minded reading of these pages and an acceptance of the ideas therein promulgated would aid in _preventing_ a good deal of the misery of jealousy and in curing a certain proportion of it after it has found lodgment in the hearts of unhappy men and women.

There are one or two more points that might be touched upon, but with the freedom of press in reference to s.e.x matters as it exists in this country to-day, I have said all that I could say.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

CONCLUDING WORDS

It is my sincere belief--and I cherish the belief in spite of this horrible, wretched war which seems to be shattering the very foundations of everything that we hold dear, destroying all the humane and moral achievements that have been laboriously built up in the course of many centuries--that the time will come when the world will be practically free from pain and suffering. Almost all disease will be conquered, accidents will be rare, the fear of starvation or poverty or unemployment will no longer haunt men and women, every infant born will be well-born and welcome, and the numerous anxieties and ambitions that now disturb the lives of so many of the earth's inhabitants will no longer plague us. They will be the dead memories of a dead and forgotten past.

Yes, I believe that the time will come when the world will be practically free from pain and suffering. But there is one exception.

I do not believe that we will ever be able entirely to eliminate the _tragedies of the heart_. For our physical ills, which will be few in number, there will be a socialized medical profession; everywhere there will be free hospitals and convalescent homes. The unemployment problem will be dealt with by the State, and dealt with so that there will be no unemployment problem. There will be work for everybody and everybody will do the work which he finds most congenial. But the State, I fear, will be able to do nothing in affairs of the heart.

When John loves Mary with every fiber of his soul, and Mary remains completely indifferent, then no State physician and no Government official will be able to offer any balm or consolation to poor John.

And if Mary loves Robert, and Robert behaves so that he breaks Mary's heart, then no official glue will put it together and no convalescent home will make it whole.

Yes, I believe that love pangs and tragedies of the heart will cause mortal men and women suffering even under the most perfect social regime. But I also believe that these pangs will be less acute, that the suffering will be less cruel than it is now.

Proper ideas about love, freer intercourse between the s.e.xes, a normal and regular s.e.x life, a saner att.i.tude towards many things which are now unjustly considered shameful or criminal will, to a large degree, prevent the heart tragedies and facilitate their cure where they cannot be prevented.

And it is the duty of everybody who loves mankind to study the various phases of human s.e.xuality and help to spread sane and humane ideas on the subject of s.e.x and Love.

The author trusts that WOMAN: HER s.e.x AND LOVE LIFE will help, in some slight degree, in spreading healthy, sane and honest ideas about s.e.x among the men and women of America.

THE END