Page:Fielding - Sex and the Love Life.pdf/159

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WOMAN'S LOVE-RIGHTS
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well as for her more complex sexual physiology. And this fact has to be taken into consideration in the marital relations if there are to be mutual happiness and well-being.

It is impossible to estimate how large a proportion of the cases of neurasthenia and other "nervous" troubles is due to an unsatisfactory condition of the modern woman's love-life.

Dr. Paul Dubois, the famous French neurologist, states in his Psychic Treatment of Nervous Disorders: "A still closer connection is established between the psycho-neuroses and the sexual life, and if patients were a little less discreet on this point we should see that there is very little 'nervousness' in those who have no sexual disturbances."

There are women without number who are in the nerve-racking position of possessing normal sexual desires which are never completely satisfied because (1) of the irrational sex inhibitions which they have acquired as a part of their culture, and (2) of the husband's lack of knowledge of feminine sex psychology.

The last-named factor is of greater importance in many cases than the first, because a tactful, informed husband could help to overcome the irrational inhibitions. He could do this by taking the initiative—and only he can successfully take the initiative in sexual congress—in securing a harmonious adjustment of the sexual relations.

Woman craves love and affection, and if she is placed by marriage in physical juxtaposition to the means of satisfying this craving, without ever enjoying the gratification that her whole organism demands, a state of chronic disorder is bound to ensue. As a result, we have explosive "nerves" with all sorts of concomitant physical and mental disturbances―the price of sexually cheated womanhood.

As much as the evil of sexual excesses in marriage is cau-