Woman Her Sex and Love Life Part 22

The latter kind of fear is, of course, more often manifested--even though unconsciously--in women. Women who have no love for their husbands are nevertheless often fiercely jealous, because consciously or unconsciously they are afraid that their husbands may desert them for other women, and that they may thus find themselves in a precarious economic condition.

Another factor in jealousy is wounded _vanity_. We do not like to feel that somebody is considered superior to us. This feeling of wounded vanity is present in other varieties of envy or rivalry. A person who loses in a race or gets a lower mark in his examination than his rival may be filled with a feeling of envy and hatred almost equal in intensity to, though never as painful as, s.e.xual jealousy.

Another factor in jealousy is _anger_ over loss of what we consider our property. In our present social order the man considers his wife his absolute property, and so does the wife consider her husband. And there is anger that a stranger should dare to rob us or make use of our property, just as there would be anger if a thief came and robbed us of a valuable material possession. This anger or rage part of jealousy is not a sign of love. It is very far from being so. Because it manifests itself also in men and women who have not a particle of love for their spouses; it manifests itself in spouses who have nothing but hatred and loathing for their partners.

Another important factor is _pain_, pain that the person we love has ceased to love us. When we love a person and our love is not reciprocated, we feel pain which may rise to the degree of agony, even when there is no rival in the field. But when a person who loved us has ceased to love us--or we imagine so--and has transferred the love to another person that pain is so much the greater.

I will digress here for a moment to state that the fear that a person has ceased to love us because he loves somebody else is often groundless. It is based upon the erroneous and vicious idea that a man cannot possibly love two women at the same time, or that a woman cannot love two men at the same time. Psychologists, particularly those who have made a special study of s.e.xual psychology, know that this idea is false. They know that love may be directed at the same time towards two or three individuals. They know that a second love not only does not necessarily destroy or diminish a first love, but may deepen and strengthen the latter.

Another element is pure _envy_. Just mean envy that somebody should have what we haven't, or what we have but are in danger of losing.

Just as we envy others an automobile, a fine house, a high social position, etc., when we have not got them or have been deprived of them.

A point that I would like to mention is, that if husbands who have become impotent--having lost either the desire or the power, but particularly the latter--become jealous, their jealousy knows no bounds. No strongly potent man ever reaches the same intensity in jealousy as is reached by a s.e.xually weak or impotent man. The knowledge that another man has displaced him and that he himself could not replace that other man _even if he were permitted to_ fills him with impotent rage; and, as is well known, impotent rage is always more intense than rage that is potent. Women are free from this kind of rage, because women are never impotent in this sense. (They may be frigid, but they are never devoid of the _potentia coeundi_, except in extremely rare cases of _atresia v.a.g.i.n.ae_ or the absence of the external genitals.)

There are a number of other components which go to make up this "queen of torments" or "king of torturers" jealousy, but those I have enumerated are the essential ones.

What are they? Fear, vanity, anger, envy and pain. None of them admirable qualities, none of them, with the exception of the first and the last, even deserving our compa.s.sion. All of them anti-social and anti-individual qualities. Should not everything be done to eradicate such a rank weed, which draws its sustenance from roots each one of which is dipped in poison?

We are told that in our primitive state jealousy was a social instinct; that by killing and keeping away rivals it helped to found and cement the family and to keep it pure. I do not care to enter here into a discussion of this point. But whatever useful role jealousy may have played in the remote ages (I doubt that it has), it is now an utterly useless, utterly vicious, utterly anti-social and anti-individual emotion. It is opposed to social life and it destroys individual happiness. And everything possible should be done to smother it, to strangle it, to eliminate it entirely from human life.

Yes, I find no compensation whatever for jealousy; I find no place for it in our modern life and I am in complete agreement with Forel, who calls jealousy "a heritage of animals and barbarians." "That is what I would say," he says, "to all those who, in the name of offended honor, would grant it rights and even place it on a pedestal. It is ten times better for a woman to marry an unfaithful than a jealous husband....

Jealousy transforms marriage into a h.e.l.l.... Even in its more moderate and normal form, jealousy is a torment, for distrust and suspicion poison love. We often hear of justified jealousy. I maintain that _jealousy is never justifiable_; it is always a stupid, atavistic inheritance, or else a pathological symptom."

But can anything be done to eradicate this agonizing, tormenting emotion? I believe it can, and the ways and means to the eradication of this evil will be found on a.n.a.lyzing its components. We may not be able to destroy all the components; if we destroy the greater part of them much will have been accomplished.

The underlying factors of jealousy are: the primitive instinct, also present in many animals, our ethical and religious ideas and our economic system. The primitive instinct we can repress and modify; we can hardly hope to eradicate it entirely. But our ideas and economic system we can change. It is easier to change ideas than it is a system, and it is with our ideas we should commence.

The first idea we must endeavor to destroy is that it is impossible for a human being to love more than one other human being at the same time. We must show that the love of the modern educated and esthetic man and woman is an exceedingly complex feeling, and that a man may deeply and sincerely love one woman for certain qualities and just as deeply and sincerely love another woman for certain other qualities.

Of course, love cannot be measured by the yard or bushel, nor can it be weighed on the most delicate chemical balance. And it may be impossible to determine whether he loves both women exactly alike or he loves one woman more than the other. But that one love does not exclude another, that it may even intensify the other love, that is certain, and is the opinion of every advanced s.e.xologist.

Max Nordau, a man of high and austere ideals, a man whom n.o.body will accuse of a tendency to licentiousness, says in his Conventional Lies: "It may sound very shocking, yet I must say it: we can even love _several_ individuals at the same time, with nearly equal tenderness, and we do not necessarily lie when we a.s.sure each one of our pa.s.sion.

No matter how deeply we may be in love with a certain individual, we _do not cease_ to be susceptible to the influence of the entire s.e.x."

And Iwan Bloch, than whom no greater investigator in the field of s.e.xology ever lived, asks the question: "Is it possible for any one to be _simultaneously_ in love with several individuals?" And he immediately says: "I answer this question with an unconditional 'yes.'" And he says further: "It is precisely the extraordinary manifold spiritual differentiation of modern civilized humanity that gives rise to the possibility of such a simultaneous love for two individuals. Our spiritual nature exhibits the most varied coloring.

It is difficult always to find the corresponding complements in one single individual."

Prof. Robert Michels says: "It is Nature's will that the normal male should feel a continuous and powerful s.e.xual attraction towards a considerable number of women.... In the male the stimuli capable of arousing s.e.xual excitement (this term is not to be understood here in the grossly physical sense) are so extraordinarily manifold, so widely differentiated that it is quite impossible for one single woman to possess them all."

Prof. von Ehrenfels wittily remarks that if it were a moral precept that a man should never have intercourse _more them once in his life_ with any particular woman, this would correspond far better with the nature of the normal male and would cost him far less will-power than is needed by him in order to live up to the conventional demands of monogamy.

And Havelock Ellis cautiously says: "A certain degree of variation is involved in the s.e.xual relations.h.i.+ps, as in all other relations.h.i.+ps, and unless we are to continue to perpetuate _many evils and injustices_, that fact has to be faced and recognized."

I have devoted considerable s.p.a.ce to this topic, and I have, contrary to my custom, quoted "authorities," because I consider this point of the utmost importance; it is the first step in combating the demon of jealousy. If our wives, fiancees and sweethearts could be convinced of the truth that a man's interest in or even affection towards another member of the female s.e.x does not mean the death of love, or even diminished love, half of the battle would be won. Half of the misery, half of the quarrels, half of the self-torture, half of the disrupted homes, in short, half of the tyrannical reign of the demon of jealousy, would be gone.

We must teach our women and men this truth, teach it from p.u.b.erty on.

We must show them that not every woman can necessarily fill out a man's entire life, that not every woman can necessarily occupy every nook and corner of a man's mind and heart, and that there is nothing humiliating to the woman in such an idea (and _vice versa_). She should be taught to find nothing shameful, painful or degrading in such a thought. I know that these ideas are somewhat in advance of the times, but if n.o.body ever brought forward any advanced ideas because they were advanced there would never be any advance.

Then we must teach our men that when they marry a woman she does not become their chattel, their piece of property, which n.o.body may touch, n.o.body may look at or smile at. A woman may be a very good, faithful wife and still enjoy the companions.h.i.+p of other men, the pressure of another man's hand or--_horribile dictu_--even an occasional kiss.

Then we must teach our men _and_ women that there is essentially nothing shameful or humiliating in being displaced by a rival. The change may be a disgrace for the changer and not for the changed one.

It does not at all mean that the change has been made because the rival is superior; it is a well-known fact that the rival often _is_ inferior. The change is often made, not because the changer has gone upward, but because he has gone downward, has deteriorated. And the changer often knows it himself.

Inculcating those ideas would do away with the feeling of wounded vanity which is such an important component in the feeling of jealousy.

Further, we must teach our children from the earliest age that jealousy is "not nice," that it is a mean feeling, that it is a sign of weakness, that it is degrading to the person who entertains it, particularly to the person who exhibits it. Ideas inculcated from childhood have a powerful influence, and the various ideas exposed above _would_ have an undoubted influence in minimizing the mephitic, destructive effects of the feeling of jealousy. People properly brought up will always succeed in controlling or suppressing certain non-vital instincts or emotions on which society puts its stamp of disapproval, which it considers "not nice" or disgraceful.

I am, therefore, an optimist in relation to the eventual uprooting of the greater number of components of the anti-social feeling of jealousy. And when woman reaches economic independence, then another component of the instinct of jealousy--the terror at losing a provider and being left in poverty--will disappear.

=Jealousy Not Toward Rivals.= Jealousy need not express itself toward a s.e.xual rival only. A person may be jealous of people who can never be s.e.xual rivals; the jealousy need not even be of people; it may be of inanimate objects, of a person's work, profession or hobby. Thus a wife may be intensely jealous of her husband's mother, towards whom he is very affectionate or simply kind and considerate. She may be jealous of her own children if she notices or imagines that the father loves them intensely, or if he spends a good deal of time with them.

She may be jealous of his male friends, and many a husband had to give up, not only his female acquaintances, but his life-long male friends--in order to preserve peace in the family. A wife may be fiercely jealous of her husband's success and reputation, and cases are not unknown where the wife put every possible obstacle in her husband's way, in order to make him fail in his work, to make him turn out mediocre work, all from fear that his success would gain him admirers, which might perhaps take him away from her. Wives have been known to do everything in their power to _exhaust_ and weaken their husbands, to make them physically unattractive, only to keep them. And so powerful is this primitive, childish, savage feeling, this desire for exclusive monopoly, that there is _nothing_ a jealous wife, sweetheart or mistress may not do in order to retain the man, in order to regain him, or, having lost him irretrievably, in order to revenge herself. And what is said about the woman is applicable with equal force to man. It is a huge mistake to a.s.sume that jealousy is woman's prerogative, her particular characteristic, or even that it is stronger in her than in man. A man can be as savagely jealous as any woman and suffer the same tortures of h.e.l.l.

=Jealousy Defeats Its Object.= One of the worst features about jealousy is that it defeats its own object. We have been told, as stated before, that jealousy was once upon a time a racial instinct, that by frightening away rivals it helped to found the family and to keep it chaste and pure. Quite the contrary is true now. More than one man has, by accusing his innocent wife of infidelity and by torturing her with baseless suspicions, driven her into the arms of a lover. We are all more or less susceptible to suggestion, and by continually suspecting a wife of a love affair or illicit relation a man may implant the seed of suggestion so strongly that it may grow luxuriantly and the wife may be unable to resist the suggested temptation. And very often the very lover is suggested by the husband.

"Yes, don't attempt to deny it. It is useless. I know you have relations with X. I know you are his mistress." He kept on repeating it so often to his absolutely blameless, innocent young wife and he made her so wretched by his rudeness and brutality that one day she did go over to X's rooms and did become his mistress. And after that she could stand her husband's outbursts with equanimity. "If I have the name I might as well have the game," is a good bit of psychologic wisdom. And a husband should be very careful about even suspecting a wife unjustly, and thus make the first step towards rendering his baseless suspicions a reality, his unjust accusations justified. And, of course, what is true of the husband is also true of the wife. Many a wife has driven her indolent husband into the hands of prost.i.tutes or mistresses by her incessant nagging, false accusations and vicious epithets applied to all his female friends and acquaintances.

Yes, from whatever angle you consider it, jealousy is a mean, nasty, miserable feeling. Because it is a more or less universal feeling, because "we cannot help it," does not render it less mean, less nasty, less miserable.

I do not for a moment imagine that characterizing jealousy the way it deserves to be characterized, calling it a shameful, savage, primitive feeling, etc., is at once going to banish it from the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of men and women in which it has found an abiding place; throwing epithets at it will not cause it to unfasten its talons. Unfortunately, I know only too well that our emotions are stronger than our reason; the man or woman at whose poor heart jealousy is gnawing day and night is not amenable to reason, is not curable by arguments; all we can do is to sympathize with such a person and ask the Lord to pity him or her.

I have known a man who lived with his wife in free union, i.e., he was not married to her. He did not believe in marriage. Love was the only bond that should bind people together; as soon as love was no more the people should separate in a friendly, comradely manner. If the wife or the mistress wants another lover, she should be free to take one; she is a free human being and not her husband's chattel slave, etc., etc., etc., to the same effect. Thus the man talked. And he was sincere in his talk--or he thought he was. But one night on unexpectedly returning home he found another man; he promptly fired several shots at the man, which fortunately for both did not prove fatal, and then he beat and choked his wife--who wasn't even his wife legally--within an inch of her life. _And then he married her_ and gave up his free love talk. And I know of any number of men who could philosophize for hours about the disgrace and humiliation of being jealous, but who, as soon as there was a justifiable cause for jealousy, became as unreasonable as a child and as jealous as any unlettered Sicilian woman ever was.

So you see, I am not deluding myself with extravagant hopes. But, nevertheless, this argumentation, this talk, is not entirely useless.

A beginning must be made. This essay may not perhaps help--except for the suggestions that will be made towards the end--those who are already victims of the demon of jealousy, but it may help some people to keep out of his clutches (or should I say: her clutches? I really don't know whether the demon of jealousy is a male or a female.)

Feelings are stronger than reason; but that does not mean that feelings cannot be influenced by reason; they decidedly can be and are so influenced, and their _manifestations_ are modified by this influence; and the more cultured, the more educated a person is (I trust you will know that I use these terms in their true and not their vulgar, misused meaning), the more will his feelings, or at least actions, be influenced by his reason. I am particularly a believer in the effect on our feelings and actions of public opinion, of ideas universally or generally entertained.

Let me give one example which is pertinent to the subject. In former days it was universally held, and in many places it is still held, that when a wife sinned she committed the most unpardonable crime that a human being could be guilty of and that she thereby _dishonored_ her husband. And the only right thing for him to do was to shoot the rival and cast out the wife; or at least to cast her out. This was a _conditio sine qua non_. To take her back to his home was a disgrace, a sign of unpardonable weakness, of degeneracy. Our ideas on the subject have changed a bit. A husband is no longer considered any more dishonored--in some strata of society at least--because his wife sinned than a wife is considered dishonored because her husband sinned; and adultery in the wife is now, by most rational people, considered only different in degree, but not in kind, from adultery in the husband. These humane ideas have gained vogue only within a comparatively very recent period; but their effect has already manifested itself in a great number of instances. Forgiving the erring wife is becoming quite common. A number of cases have reached the newspapers. Recently a wife was implicated in a nasty sc.r.a.pe; her sin was not only unquestionable, but notorious; it was public property.

And nevertheless the husband stood by her and took her back into his home and arms. And the number of such cases which do not reach the newspapers is very, very much larger than the public has any conception of, larger than it would be safe to estimate. And in a large percentage of these cases the husband begins to treat his wife with more love, more consideration, and the tie between them becomes more firm, more permanent.

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

REMEDIES FOR JEALOUSY

Prevention and Cure--Prophylaxis of Jealousy--Fitting Remedy to Circ.u.mstances--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 a.s.sociation--Lines of Conduct for the Wife--Contempt for a Certain Type of Wife and Husband--The Abandoned Lover--The Effects of Unrequited Love--Sublimated s.e.xual Desire--Replacing Unrequited Love--The Att.i.tude of Goethe--Simultaneous Loves Possible--Successive Loves Possible--Eternal Loves--When s.e.x Relations.h.i.+ps May Be Beneficial--Purchasable s.e.x Relations and Their Value--The Broken Engagement--The Terrible Effects on the Young Man--The Young Streetwalker--s.e.x Relations with Fiance--Inundating Sense of Shame--Collapse--Attempts at Suicide--An Active s.e.x 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 circ.u.mstances. Let us a.s.sume 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 s.e.xual 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 s.e.xologists, 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 a.s.sociation with other women.

They can be extremely kind to and love their wives tenderly, if they can at the same time a.s.sociate--spiritually or physically--with other women. If they are entirely cut off from any a.s.sociation 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 s.e.x 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.